Theoria

(I started writing this a few days ago after that fiasco of a discussion at Crooked Timber, but then opted against it – what is there to be said that hasn’t already been said… and ignored or dismissed? A recent “poll” on a philosophy gatekeeping website on the biggest embarrassment to the discipline changed my mind. One wonders why a certain “Brian Leiter” isn’t also listed!)

Hegel writes, in the ‘Preface’ to the Phenomenology, the following:

The true shape in which truth exists can only be its scientific system. The goal I set myself is to contribute to bringing philosophy nearer to the form of science – to help it renounce its name as love of Knowning, and become actual Knowing. [Yovel's translation.]

or

The true shape in which truth exists can only be the scientific system of that truth. To participate in the collaborative effort at bringing philosophy nearer to the form of science – to bring it nearer to the goal where I can lay aside the title of ‘love of knowledge‘ and be actual knowledge – is the task I have set for myself. [Pinkard's translation.]

or

The true shape in which truth exists can only be the scientific system of such truth. To help bring philosophy closer to the form of Science, to the goal where it can lay aside the title ‘love of knowing’ and be actual knowing – that is what I have set myself to do. [Miller's translation]

I can’t find my copy of Baillie’s translation, which is in many respects the most ridiculously elegant translation of the Phenomenology.

There was a time, as an undergraduate, I possessed the desire to become, as they say, a “professional” philosopher. I’m glad I did not end up pursuing that vocation. The reason has nothing to do with the pitiful job market in philosophy this year and, presumably, next year. But, rather, with what can only be characterized as the dominant vulgar pseudo-Hegelianism that dominates the mainstream of Angl0-American (and, indeed, Canadian) philosophy. Contemporary English language philosophy has followed Hegel through the first step – beyond the ‘end of philosophy’ – but it has not reached the point of ‘actual knowledge.’

Hegel’s point here is that prior to him, philosophy remain philo-sophia: that is, a love of knowing and, hence, an inability to actually possess knowledge. His goal, of course, is not only to attain knowing, but attain it to the extent that it is absolute knowing. That is, the entirety of the logos; all that can be known and all that needs to be known. Of course, Hegel recognizes that there is much data that will be accumulated well after the completion of his philosophical program. What matters for Hegel is that he has (or so he claims) outlined the systemic structure of absolute knowing. (That is, “actual knowing” is in principle; this is the epistemological counterpart to his “end of history” thesis.) The outline of this systemic structure will thus enable the integration of the particular and the universal leading to what he calls the “concrete universal.”

Now, how does this relate to the contemporary philosophical scene? At least as the discipline is organized in Anglo-America? Two things are certain: philosophy, as it is practiced in Anglo-America, is no longer philo-sophia (Hume was likely the last lover of knowledge or wisdom in the English langauge tradition) but, at the same time, philosophy has not moved on to actual knowing. Rather, contemporary Anglo-American has forgotten the task of not only loving knowledge (or wisdom), but it has failed to attain or possess knowledge (or wisdom). What we see, instead, is an extreme hostility to sophia – if not an outright hatred of it – and a petty policing of truth procedures. While originally merely policing the truth of rival disciplines, contemporary Anglo-American philosophy has now turned in on itself, policing itself as violently as it policed other disciplines – hence, for instance, the proliferation of the most vulgar forms of positivism to the extent that one of the most famous “philosophers” in the world doesn’t even produce interesting work beyond a list and a substantial gossip weblog: the Perez Hilton, if you will, of the academy.

This policing, both of the outside and of the inside, explains the extreme hostility to certain figures – regardless of their merits or lack thereof – such as Leo Strauss or Martin Heidegger or Jacques Derrida. These three – again, regardless of the merit or lack thereof displayed in their work – have, at least, that love of knowing, that love of wisdom. This is what makes them intolerable to the policemen of petty truths. This also explains why contemporary Anglo-American political and social theory remains interested in figures like this (we might add Hannah Arendt, Claude Lefort, Slavoj Zizek, and Alain Badiou among others): as contemporary political and social theory is practiced, the concern for “the Good” remains important. True philosophy – the love of knowledge, of wisdom guided by a concern with “the Good” – is no longer practiced in Departments of Philosophy; it can only – with a few exceptions – in the marginal wings of sociology and political science. Perhaps a rather ironic location given the nihilism and positivist ideology that characterizes the contemporary social sciences (that is to say, the liberalism). But, of course, it isn’t the institutional location of philosophy that matters. What matters is that some – if even a few – remain concerned with “knowledge,” with “wisdom,” with “the Good.” The Sophists can have the philosophy departments.

I’m sure, however, I’ll be dismissed as “the less I know, the less I know it” by the official policemen of the discipline!