[lit-ideas] Re: Imperion hellenon, imperivm romanvm -- and beyond
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2007 07:52:05 -0800
Attributing motives is a tricky business. I've never been very good at it -
at least not according to the people I've attributed motives to. In Yost,
Eric's case you attributed snobbish motives to him and an assumption that he
thought you were stupid for not putting "anti" and "human" together in a
sensible way. I attributed entirely different motives to him. I happen to
know that he has been spending all his time on another listserv where an
anti-humanistic self-loathing environmentalist is dominating the
discussions. I assumed that he peeked in to see what was going here, saw
"anti-humanism" and decided to look it up. Then, since he went to the
trouble of looking it up he thought he would share the interesting results -
because he is kind.
Now, to your interesting comments on Zimmerman's book & review & beyond. I
couldn't quite find what I was looking for in your beyond. What Ferry and
Renaut had in mind in calling Freud, Nietzsche, and Marx anti-humanists was
their undermining of "the subject." The Renaissance Man is the subject.
He is the decider. He makes decisions and accomplishes things. But Freud
chipped away at him. No, RM you do not make decisions. You only think you
do, but in actuality if is your Unconscious that makes your decisions. You
may think you do things because you decide to do them, but you really don't.
Your Unconscious decides those things and you do the things it decides
because your are its creature.
In the case of Nietzsche, Ferry and Renaut focus more on his disciple
Foucault. Nietzsche gets credit because Foucault wrote such things as "My
whole philosophical development was determined by my reading of Heidgger.
But I recognize that Nietzsche won out." [Les Nouvelles litteraires, June
28-July 5, 1984, quoted on page 68 of Ferry & Renaut's French Philosophy of
the Sixties, An Essay on Antihumanism.] Foucault wrote extensively on
prisons and insane asylums and saw them as tools of the dominant class for
subduing the non-conforming. Thus, Foucault was anti-humaninstic in the
sense that he saw the "subjects" autonomy being severely restricted. The RM
may start out thinking he can do and say anything he likes, but he can't.
If he crosses the bourgeois lines then he is incarcerated in prison or in a
mad-house,
I read Foucault's Madness and Civilization, a History of Insanity in the Age
of Reason in 1995 and only read Ferry & Ranaut in 2005; so I didn't consider
F&R's thesis when I read Foucault, but when I did read F&R their thesis
sounded right to me. I read Nietzsche back in the 60s and am less clear on
his role. I subsequently read articles about Nietzsche and perhaps a
biography subsequent to that. His sister mucked around in his writings to
get them to support her adulation of Hitler, so one must tread lightly when
accusing him of such things as being a pre-Fascist, but he did deplore "the
last man." Which isn't exactly anti-humanistic - more a denial of the
subject through some sort of natural degeneration. He needs the ubermensche
to pep him up.
Now in the case of Marx, what F&R have in mind is his removal of the
Subject, the Man who decides things, and the substitution of Deterministic
Historical Forces which bring about events despite what the "subject"
fancies he is deciding and doing. This seems rather clear. If
Deterministic forces are causing events, then individuals aren't. This is
similar to the old Calvinist/Arminian argument: Either God is Sovereign or
Man is. Modern Christians who recoil at the idea of man being sovereign
invoke an antinomy, i.e., both things are true but we haven't God's ability
to see that. Nevertheless we accept that both things are true. Has anyone
invoked such an antinomy in the case of Marxism? I haven't heard of one;
which would leave the deterministic historical forces sovereign.
Lawrence
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
Sent: Saturday, November 17, 2007 6:40 AM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Imperion hellenon, imperivm romanvm -- and beyond
L. K. Helm quotes from Zimmerman's book on German 'imperialism' -- I like
that.
Helm quotes from amazon.com. blurb for the book by Zimmerman:
"With the rise of Imperialism, the centuries-old European tradition of
HUMANIST scholarship as the key to understanding the world was jeopardized.
Nowhere was this more true than in nineteenth-century Germany. It was there,
Zimmerman argues, that the battle lines of today's "culture wars"
were first drawn when anthropology challenged HUMANISM as a basis for human
scientific knowledge. Drawing on sources ranging from scientific papers and
government
correspondence to photographs, pamphlets, and police reports of "freak
shows," Zimmerman demonstrates how German imperialism opened the door to
ANTIHUMANISM. As Germans interacted more frequently with peoples and objects
from far-flung cultures, they were forced to reevaluate not just those
peoples, but also the construction of German identity itself.
Anthropologists successfully argued that their discipline addressed these
issues more productively-and more accessibly-than humanistic studies".
Interesting. I suppose the Germans have written so much (but Zimmerman, as a
scholar _has_ to narrow a topic and make a case -- something I hate about
much of the so-called 'scholar' writing) --. Possibly in Germany at *all*
times, there were trends of humanism, scientificism, anti-scientificism,
etc. Reading Plato's Republic, for example, I note a quote to Wundt,
"Folk-Psychology", which I did not know was a German construction. Grice
speaks of 'folk-psychology' a lot, and I can see that Wundt means _false_
psychology, but at still recognises the thing. We are reminded of the
research into the folk-tales and songs undergone by the Grimms and the
research into comparative philology which is also a treasure of the Germans.
Ditto for classical archaeology. What can be more humanist than that? Just
because Zimmerman has this professional interest in 'anthropology' and is
targeting graduate students in that field does not make it so (to use J.
Evans's anti-performative phrase).
L. K. Helm continues:
"Curtius wrote his "History of Greec" between 1857 and 1867. I thought of
the
Germans Ferry considered antihumanists, Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche and
wondered if there was a "climate of opinion" in Germany when Curtius wrote
that would have influenced him as well as them - albeit in slightly
different ways. He liked the way that the Spartans fought but thought it a
shame that the Spartan government didn't know how to better organize them
for war. This was a concern of the German General Staff as well. Marx,
Freud and Nietzsche were not interested in organizing Germans for war, but
the idea of a common interest in anthropology is provocative."
--- Yes, Curtius -- love that name, since it's, er, so, ... nonbarbarian
(i.e. nonGerman) but more like ... Roman)...
If he had a classical tradition (complete with "Gymnasium" as the Germans
wittily put it, gymne, Greek for 'naked') then he WOULD be interested in
Greek war tactics, unless Marx, Freud and Nietzsche.
Freud, because of his sexual problems, was only concerned with incest and
perversion (or 'abnormal' -- because he thought he was so _normal_ that he
could cure them all, for a fee), and that we have his narcissism, his
Oidipos complex, his Elektra complex. He does speak of Thanatos versus Eros,
so perhaps he would see Thanatos as having to do, a little, with War, but we
may be reminded that Ares, the god of War, was the FATHER of Eros (and he
(Eros) was constantly breaking his (i.e. Ares's) balls.
Nietzsche _was_ into cultural humanistic studies of a broader scope, and I
love his book on the origin of tragedy out of the spirit of music. That made
me into an Apollonian and a hater of all things Dionysian. I see that
Apollonianism (while focused on 'musical' skills, rather than 'polemical'
skills) can lead to a militaristic education, of sorts. At least there is
some ascesis in the worship of 'solar' masculine values, rather than the
decadent khthnoic values of darkness that Dionysios promotes. And of course
his super-man is super-humanism.
Marx was interested in what Aristotle thought about slavery -- and how the
whole of Western civilisation was deemed by the increase in the levels of
poverty that the Greeks could never have foreseen. Go today to Athens, and
see all those gypsies begging (or stealing) money from you. But his enemy
was the burgeoisie, and while we may claim that the Greeks did have such a
concept, Marx needed at least to wait for feudalism for his theory to
develop.
-----
Curtius was possibly a boring historian (not from the fascinating quotes
you're providing to the list), who taught in some boring high-school or
gymnasium, which in those days was no co-ed, and would know that the male
students are basically interested in WAR, which is just as well, as we don't
want them interested in Narcyssus and Hyacinthus and Ganymede.
Then his is a _history_, not a mythology. Task big enough to have the
students realise that it's not all about centaurs and sirens with the
Greeks, but that the fell like good brothers, too, to the arrows of the
Medes.
If his focus is in how to organise an army, I would relate that to the
ever-German idea that you have to _organise_ things, more so an army. It may
have to do with the weapon career of the Kaiser and the rest of it.
Speaking today, the idea of a German empire sounds sarcastic. There is no
place OUTSIDE Germany where German is spoken as a colonial thing. Rodrigo
Santoro was born in Piriapolis, a rather middle-class place in the middle of
nowhere in Brazil, where there _is_ a German community, and so do we have
one in Buenos Aires. But it's more of a ghetto thing, and hardly the fruit
of a colonial empire.
So whatever their dreams for a Roman-type empire army (or armed forces) in
general, were soon fracased.
Incidentally, the Battle of the River Plate, was fought between Germans and
Allies just outside my house, but I wasn't there to witness it. Apparently
there is a long boring film about it -- but I don't speak German [as well]
Now, if Bush is an imperialist, does that also make him an 'anti-humanist'?
I know it made Thatcher so but then she _was_ a grocer's daughter, more into
plants than humans.
Cheers,
JL
Buenos Aires, Argentina
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