Born-Again Mystic Back On The Ropes
Yet another mystic has sallied-forth and attempted to prove that Hegelian 'Logic' does not destroy brain cells faster than a strict diet of Potassium Cyanide and Ricin. In this case, this neuronally-challenged comrade (Mr G) has very gamely proved the opposite.
[Background details can be found here.]
Visitors can view the trail of shame here and here, (where the reason for my acerbic tone will soon become apparent) but I will merely respond to Mr G's latest batch of loose droppings here (earlier responses to this individual can be found at the above links -- I have also corrected his spelling mistakes, and added links to terms that some readers might not understand):
Again Rosa, you seem to simply misunderstand the word conservative. I was using the word in two senses. First of all in the sense that Wittgenstein at times expressed hostility to what might be called modern scientific civilization (cf., culture and value as well as the debate about the relationship between his ideas and theology).
Our friend here has clearly read very little Wittgenstein, or if he has read any, he did so while heavily inebriated, or with a bag over his head -- or both.
Mr G Gets Another Bright Idea
Wittgenstein began his career in science (in aeronautics -- on this see Sterrett (2005)), so he cannot be accused of being anti-scientific. What he set his face against was scientism. I suspect that Mr G does not know the difference between these two. I think I will leave him in that condition.
The reference to theology is no less inept, for Wittgenstein set his face against it, too, even though he made many remarks about religious belief. Once again, Mr G probably does not know the difference between these two. He should remove that bag; it might help.
I'm not at all convinced that Stalin's Russia might not have offered him a post simply because he was a prominent philosopher....
Wittgenstein is on record as saying that his most important ideas were the result of his conversations with Sraffa (which discussions began in the very early 1930s). He also gathered around him some of the brightest young communists in the UK (at Cambridge University); the vast majority of his friends were prominent communists or Trotskyists. He is on record saying that he felt himself a communist at heart; he identified with the results of the October revolution. His friends say he made remarks supportive of the gains made by workers post-1917.1
In spite of all this, Mr G draws the least obvious conclusion possible, of course --, other than that Wittgenstein was a Martian. I suspect that that will be his next 'big idea'.
Furthermore, Wittgenstein was offered the post of Professor of Philosophy at Kazan University, Lenin's old college. This is not something the Stalinists of the mid-1930s would have offered to a non-red.
But Mr G has an explanation for this Stalinist 'aberration':
This was the era of the popular front.
This is quite remarkable. Does Mr G have evidence (surely overlooked by scholars of this dark period in the history of the terminal decline of the Bolshevik Party) that the internal regime in the USSR grew internally more liberal in the 'Popular Front' period (whatever class-collaborationist antics the world-wide Communist movement was forced to perform at Moscow's behest)?
Remember, this was the era when everyone was under suspicion of being a fascist or Trotskyist "wrecker", when Bukharin and other prominent Bolsheviks were being fitted-up, and executed on trumped-up charges -- hardly an opportune time for such Stalinist paranoiacs to appoint a German-speaking Austrian (and allegedly non-red) to the chair at Lenin's old University.
Mr G accuses me of a lack of knowledge of this period, but the grimy fingers he points in my direction need rotating through a full 180 degrees.
So, the weight of evidence and testimony suggests that Mr G should consider sobering up before drawing any more conclusions about Wittgenstein and Stalinism. Alternatively, once more, he could try working without a bag over his head.
And now we find this baseless slur:
But I think you know so little about political ideologies that its hardly worth pursuing (although its disturbing in relationship to your very grand claims about Marxism and its (un)relationship to philosophy).
Coming from Mr G, the President of the Nescient Society (PENIS for short), this is praise indeed. But, given the above, his tantalising failure to explain does at least save Mr G from advertising his own self-inflicted ignorance once more.
Mr G now resurrects and old cliché:
Secondly, I referred to the fact that the dominant reading of Wittgenstein and the later evolution of Ordinary Language philosophy was conservative in the traditional sense of closing down radical avenues of enquiry (whether or not as individuals people supported Labour governments). There were always dissenting voices (Cavell etc) but a Marxist would surely have something to say about this, and poor old Marcuse could hardly be blamed for taking the dominant interpretation as the one he had to fight.
Earlier, Mr G had alleged that Wittgenstein himself was a conservative; now he has changed this to the "dominant reading" of his work can be so depicted.
More dishonesty.
He claims that this "closes down radical avenues of enquiry", but this is not so, as he has been told. This approach merely refuses to allow the nonsense found in traditional Philosophy to spill over into other areas (for instance, into science and political theory), those it has helped to ruin for millennia, by plastering them with "ruling ideas".
Naturally, this "refusal" would in fact (and did in fact) allow genuinely radical lines of enquiry to develop.
It's rather like a farmer who removes poison from the soil before planting fresh and healthy crops. Of course, Mr G cannot see this since he has poisoned far too many of his own brain cells by his unwise love affair with boss-class theory.
He now alleges that Marcuse cannot be blamed for adopting the "dominant view" of Wittgenstein. First, Marcuse pinched his ideas from Gellner (a notorious anti-Marxist), who retailed a minority view of Wittgenstein. Second, even if this were the "dominant view" (it certainly is on the left!), Marcuse's sloppy work cannot be absolved on that basis. Consider an analogy: the "dominant view" of Marx is demonstrably incorrect, but would Mr G defend someone who adopted it, and who thus failed to check their facts before they retailed a pack of lies about Marx? Surely, even he would not do that. And yet he defends the sloppy work of Marcuse (and thus of Gellner).
Yet more dishonesty.
Now we encounter yet more invention:
It is entirely unclear that Wittgenstein believed that science could replace philosophy (one way in which both thinkers have been understood) or that this is how his project should be understood.
Not only is this not "entirely unclear", it is on the contrary quite clear that Wittgenstein set his face against such a policy. For Wittgenstein, philosophical problems can only be solved philosophically (in his new sense of that word), and scientific problems can only be solved by scientists.
Mr G's odd claim once more confirms his status as a rank amateur Wittgenstein commentator -- but I fear that even that descriptor might be to praise him too highly. [More of the same to come.]
It's unclear that Wittgenstein thought any form of social theory at all was possible.
This is, of course, Peter Winch's idea, not Wittgenstein's.
Mr G now:
I have of course never claimed that Wittgenstein was an empiricist (indeed I would enjoy a response from the anti-philosophers on what exactly his 'objects' in the Tractatus refer to) but it is true that the philosophical crisis he was responding to had been deeply shaped by that tradition deriving back to Hume, which insofar as analytical philosophers admit to being part of a tradition, is very much part of it.
Mr G before he was rumbled:
I'm even less convinced by the success of Wittgenstein's
project. The cry 'I have dispensed with philosophy' too often in the history of
ideas resembles the cry 'I'm beyond ideology and entirely objective'.
Subjectively very convincing but open to lampoon.
Discussing the need to dispense with philosophy cannot be equated with actually
dispensing with it. I should clarify that I'm not entirely sure that one can
dispense with ontology even in everyday talk, let alone theoretical languages. I
think there are always assumptions 'on what there is', and that the project of
replacing ontological talk with 'observation statements' is not a linear path.
If there is such a path then its littered with ontological talk along the way,
and we're far from reaching its end. Its possible that there is not such a path,
and that the kind of transparency envisaged by the project is an illusion.
From this, it is quite clear that Mr G has confused Wittgenstein's method with the empiricism of the Vienna Circle -- which is a confusion put about by ill-informed Stalinists a generation or so ago. Hence, it is interesting to see a Trotskyist of Mr G's stature echoing it 50 years later.
As my good friend 'Babeuf' noted:
John, that's the project of empiricism you're talking about, which Wittgenstein rejected along with other metaphysical clutter. Please don't arrive at judgements without some prior familiarity. But as I said, the exposure of Dialectical Materialism for the junk that it is doesn't require you to take any decisions about the success of Wittgenstein's project, whatever anyone says that was.
Now, Mr G compounds this sophomoric error by asking what the 'objects' of the Tractatus are (with the obvious implication that they are objects of experience). Once more, this is to confuse Russell's system with Wittgenstein's. Wittgenstein's objects are (as he clearly says), logical objects. Russell's system was avowedly empiricist, but in aligning Wittgenstein's with the latter's, Mr G is saying Wittgenstein is an empiricist.
The reference to Hume and the empiricist tradition is equally ill-informed (and damning). That current in Philosophy had a profound influence on many Analytic Philosophers (particularly Russell and the Logical Positivists), but not on Wittgenstein (and he was not reacting to it).
I'd challenge Mr G to prove otherwise, but I have already taxed his overworked remnant of a brain enough as it is.
One thing I notice again and again in these arguments. There is no desire to clarify questions, there is no desire to teach anything, there is just this endless braying and denunciation.
This, of course, is the equal of the kettle calling the sterilising dish "sooty", but given the above exposé of Mr G's studious lack of honesty, his continual invention and his baseless accusations, are the denunciations he constantly receives all that surprising?
Mr G(rime) Offers To Clean Up
Alas the torrent continues:
It is quite simply the language of anti-marxism in the philosophical academy dressed up as Marxism. But if either of you don't believe this (you seem a multi-headed beast) why on earth can't you engage in a civilized way with these objections.
This, from a comrade who would rather listen to the mystical ramblings of that arch-academic, and non-materialist, Hegel, than to a philosophy based on the ordinary language of the working class!
In response to my allegation that he has allowed the last 2500 years of boss-class theory to colonise his few remaining brain cells, he chirrups:
Why 2500 years exactly? Why not 1500 years? Or 3000 years? Why not 200 years? So 'the bosses' since developments in the ancient Greek world, have been responsible for mystifying social relations (oh sorry metaphysical language) and Rosa has now come along to explain everything.
Unfortunately enough for our chronologically-challenged friend, the overwhelming weight of evidence is against him once more. Is this just bad luck? Or, is it because Mr G cannot think like the radical he claims to be? He is happy to accuse Wittgenstein of being 'conservative' while defending ideas that go back at least to Heraclitus.
Plainly he has not examined the evidence I have amassed since it has not been published yet (although brief summaries can be found here, here, here and here), but he is still happy to pontificate in blissful ignorance (not having sufficient materialist curiosity to ask the obvious questions that I have posed) --, just like other DM-clones we have come to know and loathe.
However, one can easily imagine --, for example 150 years ago --, a ruling-class hack/prize fighter saying this of Marx:
Karl has now come along to explain everything...
At some point in human history, someone has to innovate, despite the upset this might cause to the know-nothings of this world like Mr G. He must learn to let the rest of us advance beyond the mistakes of the past, without him throwing any more toys out of his pram.
Mr G is, of course, welcome to cling on to such errors while materialists like me pass him by. I can think of no better punishment.
And, believe it or not, that is the best defence Mr G can cobble-together to excuse his own weak-kneed capitulation to ruling-class thought.
If he had the capacity to show any, I'd suggest he hang his head in shame.
At least then that bag might fall from his wilting shoulders.
Fittingly, Mr G capped this latest tantrum of his with another prize example of dishonesty:
Surprised to see Rosa defending a philosophical ontology of atomism above (i.e., deeply hostile to the idea of the connectedness of the (social?) world). Is this on the basis of scientific observation or is it merely another philosophical thesis? I think we should be told.
Of course, only the inventive and lying eyes of Mr G will be able to find where I defend any ontology, let alone atomism. And Wittgenstein's atomism is not an ontology, as anyone familiar with his work would know.
This is quite apart from the fact that even Wittgenstein abandoned his analysis of language, which Mr G seems not to have noticed.
And it is quite apart from the fact that I do not agree with everything Wittgenstein said.
Unlike Hegel, Wittgenstein was not a 'god'.
And, as I note here, I am quite happy to accept the HM account of social interconnectedness (since this is given in our use of ordinary material language -- you know, the sort of working-class language that is not good enough for elitists like Mr G).
But, from Mr G, all we get is more dishonesty, more fabrication -- just like every other Dialectical Mystic I have had the pleasure of annoying over the last 20 odd years with my materialist barbs.
Notes
1. The full details of Wittgenstein's left-wing/Marxist sympathies can be found in Cornish (1999), pp.40-87. While I do not endorse all, or even most, of Cornish's claims, his book at least has the very great merit of gathering together the vast amount of evidence that others have missed attesting to Wittgenstein's Marxist leanings.
References
Cornish, K. (1999), The Jew Of Linz (Arrow Books).
Sterrett, S. (2005), Wittgenstein Flies A Kite (Pi Press).
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