REVIEWS

Johnny foreigner

Simon Glendinning, ed., The Edinburgh Encyclopedia of Continental Philosophy, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 1999. xiv + 685 pp., £80.00 hb., 0 7486 0783 8.

If the Encyclopédie project of Diderot et al. is quotes Ryle (of whom one might have expected better) remembered today, it is not because it is much con- addressing an audience in France at a supposedly sulted, but for the tremendous Enlightenment optimism bridge-building conference in 1958, explaining how that made its conception (if not its completion) pos- analytic philosophers have avoided the puff and pre- sible. In historical terms, it is the idea of the Ency- tension of the continent. In contrast to the likes of clopédie that is most important, not what is contained Husserl, says Ryle, within the volumes themselves. The idea of the or British thinkers have showed no inclination to even an Encyclopedia is, however, beginning to look assimilate philosophical to scientific enquiry.… increasingly like a Borgesian fantasy. Most contem- I guess that our thinkers have been immunized porary encyclopedias are decidedly (purposefully) against the idea of philosophy as the Mistress of limited in scope; to be successful they must function, Science by the fact that their daily lives in Cam- bridge and Oxford Colleges have kept them in con- immediately and with some enduring relevance, as tact with real scientists. Claims to Führership vanish sources of reference and information to be used in when postprandial joking begins. Husserl wrote as if piecemeal fashion. To this extent, The Edinburgh he had never met a scientist – or a joke. Encyclopedia of Continental Philosophy works. The Edinburgh Encyclopedia is also, however, the Perhaps the reference to Führership (alluding, as Glen- expression of a grand idea. To this extent, it does not dinning notes, to Husserl – a Jew) indicates what the work. The aim of the encyclopedia, according to its character of this postprandial joking might have been editor Simon Glendinning, is to reveal to the world of like. In a slightly different vein, Glendinning quotes Anglo-American analytic philosophers that so-called R.M. Hare from his lectures on British philosophy, this continental philosophy is neither dangerous nor stupid; time to various German audiences in 1957: that there is no compelling philosophical explanation We do not think it a duty to write books; still less for the continental/analytic divide; and that if they do we think it a duty to read more than a few of – the analytic philosophers to whom Glendinningʼs the books which others write.… Our duty is to Introduction is wholly and unambiguously addressed discuss philosophy with our colleagues and to teach our pupils to do the same – books and articles are – were only to read some continental work ʻin the an unconsidered by-product of this process; their right spirit and … with goodwillʼ this would become content is generally quite familiar from verbal clear. discussion years before they get published … [Brit- Glendinning adopts the strong thesis that the idea ish philosophers] find it hard to discuss philosophy of ʻcontinental philosophyʼ does not just originate with with, or read the books of, people who do not even analytic philosophy, but survives only as its defining seem worried about convincing the sceptic that their philosophical propositions mean something. ʻnot-partʼ. ʻContinental philosophyʼ staggers under the burden of its constitutive negative implications. The lesson that Glendinning draws from these quo- According to the analytic philosophical tradition which tations – and others like them – is that this arrogant coined it, it means inferior philosophy: what, qua doltishness is more or less all that characterizes the analytic philosopher, one does not do, but also what analytic justifications for any substantive differences ought not to be done. For what one hears coming from between analytic and continental philosophy. (Glen- the continent is not the clearly enunciated vowels of dinning, though, is a tad more polite, given that it ʻordinaryʼ English but the incomprehensible jabberings is the analytic side that he is addressing.) Ryleʼs and of Johnny foreigner, not just odd and perverse but Hareʼs standards of philosophical rigour dissolve on morally pernicious. contact with this question, and there remains no philo- If this is a caricature, it is one that analytic philo- sophical reason for the division of philosophy into two sophers have, on occasion, lived up to. Glendinning incompatible streams. They have always been and are

42 Radical Philosophy 102 (July/August 2000) now held apart, Glendinning writes, by ʻgulf-seeking to study them. For whilst Glendinning may be right polemicsʼ for which a psychoanalytically structured that the label first spewed forth from Oxbridge, it has explanation is more appropriate: externalization of subsequently been appropriated precisely in order to (analytic) philosophyʼs internal possibility of failure gain some critical distance from the Ryle/Hare mental- – sophistry. The category of ʻcontinental philosophyʼ ity exhibited above. Continental philosophy in Britain, survives, according to Glendinning ʻonly as long as especially, has achieved a level of self-determination the thinkers and themes [of continental philosophy] which Glendinningʼs remarks fail to recognize – a are not only supposed not worth reading but, in fact, self-determination which long ago dispensed with the are not seriously readʼ. fawning need for Oxbridge acceptance. That Glendinningʼs imagined readership comprises Were Hare a young man today, his attitude towards analytic philosophers is clear, given that the ʻlong publication would, of course, make him unemployable. obscure booksʼ to which Hare refers are in fact seri- And so much the worse for British intellectual life, a ously read by quite a few non-analytic philosophers chorus of voices cry. But the principle of the RAE in the Anglophone world. It also betrays – whether funding system – suitably adjusted to dispel the fiction consciously or not – a certain accommodation to the of that level playing field on which one plays cricket supposed analytic audience, which misses much of in white – looks veritably meritocratic compared to the point of the practice of ʻcontinental philosophyʼ the aristocracy of Oxbridge philosophical hegemony. in Britain over the last few decades. There is no sug- To be fair, Hare is, of course, a dinosaur and an easy gestion, for example, that the will-oʼ-the-wisp nature target here. To many in the thriving non-xenophobic of the category of analytic philosophy will also be analytic and post-analytic scene (viz., Glendinning) revealed. Rather, continental philosophy, once read and Hareʼs comments are excruciatingly embarrassing, understood, will be assimilated into the analytic tradi- because, on the whole, analytic philosophers are not tion, because there is no good philosophical reason like this any more. not to do so. In a connected manner, the idea that On the other hand, British philosophy is still domin- the phrase ʻcontinental philosophyʼ is primarily a ated – numerically, culturally, financially, and in terms disparaging one fails to acknowledge those who use of institutional power – by Oxbridge or practitioners it otherwise: for example, those who set up courses of the Oxbridge style. According to Glendinning, the in ʻContinental Philosophyʼ in British university phil- hostility towards continental philosophy from these osophy departments, and the students who choose quarters is based primarily on political and cultural

Radical Philosophy 102 (July/August 2000) 43 differences masquerading as philosophical disagree- sections comprises a general introduction and six or so ment, and his hope is that a philosophical appreciation essays of some five or six thousand words on individual of analytic/continental commonalities would cut across thinkers or, more rarely, on sub-themes. However, there the political-cultural and institutional divide. However, is little editorial coherence in the scope and ambition this overlooks the inextricable intertwinement of the of the essays. In probably the best of the sections, ʻThe philosophical with the cultural-political, which is one Frankfurt School and Critical Theoryʼ, the essays on of the first principles of twentieth-century continental Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Benjamin, Bloch and philosophy. Glendinningʼs ʻsolutionʼ actually reaffirms Habermas all attempt to cover the intellectual careers the location of the problem in the realm of philosophy, of their subjects in their entirety, and each is about as a location that it claims to deny. In effect, Glendinning authoritative an introduction of this length that one is envisages an overcoming of the continental/analytic likely to get. In the section on ʻClassical Idealismʼ, on divide in Idea only. In Britain, however – the only the other hand, the essay on Kant deals only with the place, really, where the distinction is significant – this Critique of Pure Reason and that on Hegel restricts is not a problem that is going to go away whilst the itself to the Phenomenology of Spirit. Within these various institutional and political conditions which self-imposed limitations each of these pieces would gave rise to it remain in place. Ryle and Hareʼs refer- certainly function well as an introduction, which is, in ences – implicit and explicit – to high table, the senior fact, how the encyclopedia will actually be used. Still, common room, the tutorial system, the intimate, male- given the importance of Kant and Hegel for postwar dominated coterie of the colleges and so on, highlight continental philosophy in both Germany and France, the origins of the problem. It is no accident that their treatment here is decidedly unencyclopedic, and continental philosophy made and continues to make symptomatic of the limits of the project as a whole. its mark primarily in ʻnewʼ (i.e. redbrick) universities There is no mention, for example, of Kantʼs aesthetics, and ex-polytechnics. and no section or even subsection on aesthetics more Even so, perhaps a first step in this particular generally, perhaps one of the most important areas of revolution would be for some of the bourgeoisie to go contemporary continental philosophy. over to the side of the proletariat, and The Edinburgh In contrast, Sartre appears as sole or joint pro- Encyclopedia of Continental Philosophy might be the tagonist in at least four of the essays, covering his bait. Unfortunately, though, no analytic philosopher relation to Heidegger, the relation between existential- who is not already sympathetic will be in the slightest ism and literature, existential ethics, and the phenom- inclined to change his or her mind on the basis of this enological aspects of his work. De Beauvoir, on the encyclopedia. This is not the fault of the encyclopedia other hand, commands no individual essay, appearing itself, although a few of the entries are truly very bad, only in relation to Sartreʼs existential ethics and in and would be seized upon with glee by the prosecu- the essay on ʻFeminism and Phenomenologyʼ. If, as tion in the case against continental philosophy. But the author of this latter essay argues, ʻA strong case even where the entries are well-informed, well-argued, can be made for the position that Simone de Beauvoir interesting and useful, it is difficult to imagine them was a principal, if not the principal, originator of having the appeal that Glendinning expects. With existential phenomenology, and later, the founder of regard to the French philosophers of the last fifty feminist existential phenomenologyʼ, why does her years – those who are emblematically ʻcontinentalʼ work not deserve the recognition that the ascription of for some analytic philosophers today – it seems most an individual essay affords other thinkers here? In fact, unlikely that these essays will do much to dispel the no woman warrants a separate entry in the Edinburgh sort of attitudes peddled by Sokal and Bricmont in the Encyclopedia. Those who are included are mostly minds of analytic sceptics. This is – to repeat – not lumped together in essays on feminist philosophy because the essays are badly written, or because their where they receive but scant attention. The essay on subjects are intellectual imposters, but because the ʻFrench Feminismʼ in the section on poststructuralism working out of these philosophies involves a set of begins by pointing out that the thinkers discussed methods, assumptions, aims and philosophical com- under this rubric – Irigaray, Cixous, Kristeva, Witting, mitments that are often alien or anathema to those of Kofman and le Doeuff – have almost nothing in the analytic tradition. common except the fact that they live (or lived) in Most of the essays in The Edinburgh Encyclopedia France and write (or wrote) in French. Le Doeuff, for of Continental Philosophy work in so far as they are example, is profoundly antipathetic to Irigarayʼs work, preaching to the perverted. Each of the eight thematic and Cixous, unlike the others, is primarily known

44 Radical Philosophy 102 (July/August 2000) as a playwright. The indignity and deceptiveness of sing end-of-the-century diversifications are also absent. this sort of homogenization is widely recognized; its Despite sections on existentialism, phenomenology repetition here is, at best, lazy. and psychoanalysis, there is no concerted treatment Glendinning justifies the theme-based approach of the work of Fanon, for example, and the apparent with the idea that ʻit is probably most helpful to think decision not to include ʻcontinentalʼ work from the of Continental philosophy as comprising a number USA (although most of the contributors work and live of smaller, relatively interrelated, schools or move- there) means that issues of race and ethnicity are not ments of thought.ʼ While this works with, for example, tackled, except in the introduction to the section on ʻClassical Idealismʼ and ʻThe Frankfurt Schoolʼ, col- ʻPhilosophy of Existenceʼ, which is, unfortunately, one lecting together ʻPolitics, Psychoanalysis and Scienceʼ of the worst essays in the collection. Lest it should be is arbitrary and awkward. Sartre apart, postwar French objected that precious space needed to be reserved philosophy is divided into ʻStructuralismʼ and ʻPost- for more important thinkers, one might ask why the structuralismʼ. Most authors are sensitive to the poten- longest bibliography in the encyclopedia (seventy-eight tially misleading character of these labels, but this entries across more than two pages, compared to just leaves the reader to question the wisdom of the Kantʼs seventeen and Hegelʼs twenty-five) goes to… structuring division in the first place. It also leads to Dumézil – as the bookend to a purely anthropological a few manifest absurdities. Levinas, for example, is essay with a touching one-page postscript defending categorized as a poststructuralist, when much of his the political credentials of this self-confessed ʻhomme work predates the flowering of French structuralism de la droiteʼ. and his basic philosophical commitments are quite at odds with poststructuralist orthodoxy. Stella Sandford Other themes and thinkers that one might expect in an encyclopedia of continental philosophy encompas-

Seduction and serenity

Jean Laplanche, Essays on Otherness, Routledge, London and New York, 1998. vii + 279 pp., £15.99 pb., 0 415 13108 1.

In the foreword to their classic The Language of return to Freud was all too often a return to dubious Psychoanalysis, Laplanche and Pontalis explain that translations and poor editions. they are analysing the ʻconceptual equipmentʼ of The appearance in translation of a new selection of psychoanalysis, or the set of concepts it has gradually essays by Laplanche, all from the 1990s, is welcome, elaborated in order to account for its own discoveries. but both the publisher and John Fletcher, in his other- The greater part of Laplancheʼs extensive body of work wise excellent editorʼs introduction, overstate their has been devoted to this task of analysis or conceptual novelty. Many of the themes dealt with are already archaeology. He is perhaps the most reflective of all addressed in New Foundations and in the ʻdossierʼ French psychoanalysts. He is certainly one of the most on seduction, translation and drives compiled by John erudite. The five volumes of Problématiques published Fletcher and Martin Stanton for the ICA in 1992. between 1980 and 1987 (summarized in New Founda- The ten short and elegant essays collected here are a tions for Psychoanalysis, published in French in 1987 restatement rather than a new breakthrough. and in translation in 1989) represent a major exercise As in all his work, Laplanche is concerned here in conceptual history. Those volumes examining the with the genesis and fate of Freudʼs concepts. The concepts of anxiety, castration and symbolization, sub- development of psychoanalysis is not viewed as a linear limation, the unconscious and the id, and transference, process: new concepts do not emerge full fledged, are important works in their own right. Laplanche is and original insights are obscured as Freud reverts also the scientific director presiding over the slow to biology, to phylogenesis or evolutionary theories production of a new and complete edition of Freud. in an attempt to consolidate his metapsychology. In The new edition is both a further exercise in Freudian his more evolutionist moments, Freud liked to cite archaeology and a useful reminder that Lacanʼs famous Haeckelʼs law, which states that the ontogenesis of the

Radical Philosophy 102 (July/August 2000) 45 individual reproduces the phylogenesis of the human already sexualized beings who encounter an adult race. Laplanche reformulates this as ʻLaplancheʼs lawʼ: sexuality that is not theirs. Freudʼs use of the term is the development of theory reproduces that of sexuality euphemistic and it covers everything from the ʻacci- and the unconscious. The classic example, referred to dentalʼ exposure of the child to adult sexuality (all elsewhere as the theory of Big Sigmund and Little those nursemaids, wet-nurses and indiscreet parents), Hans, is the hypothesis that castration provides the to actual sexual abuse and rape. Elaborated in the explanation for sexual difference: Freud both recog- 1890s, the original seduction theory held that neuroses nizes and fails to recognize that this is, precisely, a stemmed from an actual sexual trauma, the memory childhood theory of sexuality which predicates sexual of which was repressed in childhood and then reac- difference on a phallic/non-phallic duality rather than tivated at puberty. In September 1897, Freud rejected a more complex distinction between ʻmasculineʼ and his own theory: the unexpected frequency of hysteria ʻfeminineʼ. implied an improbably high number of perverse and Freud famously likened the discovery of the abusive fathers. The reminiscences from which hyster- unconscious to the Copernican revolution: the sun ics suffered were constructions and reconstructions, does not revolve around the earth and the ego is not fantasies and desires pertaining to the Oedipal desire master in its own house. Laplanche demonstrates that for the parent of the opposite sex. Despite the claim psychoanalysis also has a tendency to revert to Ptole- that Freudʼs suppression of the seduction theory was, maic thinking. The decentring gives way to recentring. as Masson has it, an ʻassault on truthʼ motivated by Insight and blindness as Paul de Man would have a failure of the moral nerve, Freud did not deny the said. Laplanche refers to it as innovation and going reality of the sexual abuse of children; in the ʻOutline astray. In astronomy, the Copernican revolution took of Psychoanalysisʼ of 1938, he describes it as ʻcommon science from a closed world to an infinite universe. enoughʼ. Freudʼs ʻCopernican revolutionʼ remains incomplete. Laplanche is not suggesting that psychoanalysis Again and again, Freud blinds himself to his own should return to a literalist version of the seduc- insights. The unconscious that was initially defined as tion theory, but he does insist that a truth or theo- an ʻinternal foreign bodyʼ implanted within the human retical insight can be extracted from it. It provides being becomes a body of repressed memories that can a general theory that accounts for the formation of be recovered through verbalization. If the unconscious the unconscious but whose theoretical problematic is no more than a set of memories, the goal of analysis is insufficiently elaborated. Laplanche describes it as must be to eradicate the unconscious itself: it is no the general theory of primal seduction. Seduction more than a pathological and pathogenic kernel that is an encounter with adult sexuality and an enig- can be excised. If it is no more than a repository matic signifier, and it is inherent in the child–adult of hidden meanings that can be deciphered, psycho- relationship. Unlike Lacan, Laplanche does not equate analysis is nothing more than a variant on the ancient ʻsignifierʼ with a verbal structure. It could be a gesture art of hermeneutics. Freud alternates between the view or an action. A woman who breastfeeds her baby is that the unconscious is a product of repression, and not simply meeting its nutritional needs; she is also the thesis that it is a primordial entity, a phylogenetic communicating with it, addressing signifiers to it. inheritance or a quasi-biological id. Again and again, Laplanche rightly points out that for Freud – to say the unconscious is domesticated as psychoanalysis nothing of Klein – the breast is an eroticized object for attempts unsuccessfully to come to terms with its own the baby, but not for its mother (Luce Irigary would discovery that the unconscious is other, strange and no doubt add that Laplanche strays away from his alien. Psychoanalysis goes astray. Having decentred own insight by failing to see that women are not one the human subject by discovering the unconscious, it sex and have two breasts). Breastfeeding, or simply recentres it on the ego. holding and handling a baby, is suffused with sexuality According to Laplanche, we have to go back to for both adult and baby. The adult is not fully aware the beginning and accept that psychoanalysis begins of all its implications: the gesture, signifier or action with the seduction theory of the 1890s. Few areas in has an unconscious meaning. psychoanalytic theory are more contentious. ʻSeduc- If the signifier-gesture is enigmatic to the adult, it tionʼ is, perhaps, an unfortunate term. Children are is also quite enigmatic to the child too. The enigma not ʻseducedʼ in the sense that Don Juanʼs victims is the stimulus to theorize, to speculate, for instance, are seduced: they do not surrender after a struggle that sexual difference might originate in castration. To with their own sense of virtue. They are always- theorize is to translate, to attempt to replace the enigma

46 Radical Philosophy 102 (July/August 2000) with a meaningful signifier or string of signifiers. But tion do induce a feeling of theoretical claustrophobia. the translation is always a failure: something remains Laplanche denies being a historian of ideas, rejects enigmatic. There is always an element of otherness, the view that the Freudian unconscious has anything of alienness, that cannot be captured or reduced. It is to do with other nineteenth-century theories of the the enigmatic signifier (or thing-presentation) that is unconscious, and chides Freud for his self-depreca- repressed and forms the core of the unconscious. The tory comment that Schopenauer had anticipated his unconscious is not a primordial or biological id, but discoveries. It is rather as though psychoanalysis were something alien that is implanted within the human a continent unto itself, as though there were nothing being during the encounter with the other. Winnicott outside it or alongside it. For anyone outside or even on remarks that there is no such thing as a baby: no baby the fringes of that continent, Laplancheʼs theses look exists outside the relationship with the carer. Laplanche suspiciously like the contention that, unlike the human takes a similar view to the extent that he rejects the subject it decentres, psychoanalysis is self-centred, idea that there is – or was once – some monad-like self-regulating and self-sufficient. organism closed in upon itself, which gradually opened There is something disquieting about this serene itself up to the outside world and the other: this is self-sufficiency. The silence about actual child abuse biological solipsisms or idealism. The enigmatic and is disturbing. To say, like Freud, that it is ʻcommon repressed thing-presentations – the other within – exert enoughʼ and then to say no more is not good enough. pressure from inside and are described by Laplanche Nor is it good enough to remain as silent about it as the ʻsource-objectsʼ of the drives. Sexuality and the as Laplanche does, if only because – to parry the drives come from the outside or from the other, and alternative accusations that psychoanalysis implants they remain alien and non-integrated. The dimension ʻmemoriesʼ in its patients or that it is too close to of otherness is always there. being a form of recovered-memory treatment – psycho- Based upon enormous erudition and a lifelong analysts will have to involve themselves in what they familiarity with Freud, Laplancheʼs theses are seduc- see as a debate that is taking place elsewhere. There is tive. They are also unsettling. The value of the exegesis nothing enigmatic about the rape of children in care. is beyond doubt but the introversion and introspec- David Macey

Virtue after After Virtue

Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues, Duckworth, London, 1999. xiii + 172 pp., £14.95 hb., 0 7156 2902 6. Stuart Hampshire, Justice is Conflict, Duckworth, London, 1999. 93 pp., £10.95 hb., 07156 2950 6.

MacIntyre and Hampshire were already well known a contemporary context or defend it against recent when I was a student in the sixties. Now they are both criticism. at that end stage of their careers where they are giving MacIntyre, too, had a brilliant beginning. He was distinguished lecture series, which is what these books associated with the New Left in its early days but, after are made up of. They well illustrate the different paths an unhappy spell as a dean in Essex at the height of the two thinkers have taken. the student movement, he moved to the USA where Hampshire established an early reputation as one his work seemed to become stalled. There were mutter- of the more independent and original thinkers of the ings about his failing to live up to his early promise; generation of Oxford philosophers who came after but then, suddenly, After Virtue appeared and rapidly Ryle. He wrote a couple of much admired books established itself as one of the definitive works of (Spinoza and Thought and Action); but then he became contemporary philosophy. Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, the sort of job His Paul Carus lectures, which make up the present which seems fatal to serious thought (perhaps it is all book, continue and extend the arguments of After that sherry). Anyway, this book of his Tanner Lectures Virtue. The audience at the lectures must have been shows the after-effects. It is a tired and sorry piece bemused, but their loss is our gain. Instead of the of work, a mere assertion of a Rawlsian, proceduralist philosophical easy-listening that is usually served up account of justice, without any attempt to set it in on such occasions, these lectures have the density and

Radical Philosophy 102 (July/August 2000) 47 tight construction of a text that is written to be read. and Dasein, human being, which has a ʻworldʼ and They constitute a single, brilliantly sustained piece of can apprehend something ʻasʼ something. In the most philosophical argument in which a ʻThomistic Aristot- closely argued part of the book, MacIntyre criticizes elianʼ form of virtue ethics is developed and defended both sets of views. He draws on recent studies of in the context of current ethical positions. Such an dolphins to question the notion that there is a sharp ethic is central to the argument of After Virtue, but dividing line between humans and other animals. what it involves is only sketchily indicated in that Such animals, he argues, have many of the capacities book: these lectures add detail and substance to the which are at the basis of language use, and we should notion. There is no better account of how Aristotelian regard them as ʻpre-linguisticʼ rather than non-linguis- ideas can be developed and deployed in modern ethical tic creatures. thought. As bodily beings we are vulnerable to many kinds of In After Virtue, MacIntyre repudiated what he called afflictions, injuries and disabilities. This is the second the ʻmetaphysical biologyʼ underlying Aristotleʼs ethics. main theme of this study. As MacIntyre observes, He has thought better of that now. A major theme in there is little reference to vulnerability and depend- the present work is that we are physical, biological ence in the history of Western philosophy, which has beings, and ethics must be grounded in our bodily, stressed rather the notions of human autonomy and animal nature. The discussion of the issues raised by independence. This may well be connected with the our animality is the most interesting part of the book. failure or refusal to acknowledge the bodily dimension MacIntyre challenges the widespread and deeply rooted of human existence. A central aim of MacIntyreʼs tendency to separate human beings from the rest of argument is to redress this balance and to draw out the animal world and to treat them as ʻexempt from the moral, social and political implications of such a the hazardous condition of “mere” animalityʼ, despite changed perspective. He goes about this in Aristotelian the well-nigh universal theoretical acknowledgement fashion, by developing an account of the ʻvirtuesʼ, of the truth of evolutionary theory. the conditions for human flourishing. ʻThe virtues of This tendency is strong in both analytic and con- rational agency need for their adequate exercise to tinental work. In the analytic tradition it is evident be accompanied by what I shall call the virtues of in the Davidsonian view that only human beings, acknowledged dependency.ʼ as language users, can be said to have thoughts and Recognition of our bodily being does not prevent beliefs. Heidegger arrives at a similar conclusion when MacIntyre from acknowledging that humans also differ he insists upon a fundamental distinction between from other animals in crucial respects. Language use being which is not Dasein (including animal being) gives us abilities which other animals lack; notably the ability to stand back from our desires and needs, and reflect upon and evaluate them. If we are to flourish as human beings we must develop our distinctive human capacities as rational beings. We must develop from infantile dependence and ani- mality to become ʻindepend- ent practical reasonersʼ. Language use is not the only condition needed for such development. The reali- zation of our rational nature occurs only in and through relationship with others: with parents, teachers, and a wider network of social relationships. MacIntyre goes on to give an interesting account of the form these relationships must take if

48 Radical Philosophy 102 (July/August 2000) we are to develop into independent practical reason- policy which can be intelligently discussed only on ers. MacIntyre refers to these conditions as ʻvirtuesʼ. the basis of some understanding of contemporary Though it has become fashionable again in recent social and political realities. Care of the elderly and years, such Aristotelian language still sounds stilted ill, which would have been the responsibility of the and antiquated. Nevertheless the ideas expressed by it family in early periods (from Aristotleʼs time until are of great importance. They embody a naturalistic very recently), is now being taken over by the state. approach which, on the basis of a theory of human Whether or not this is a desirable development is nature, aims to give account of the moral, social not simply a moral issue, and to explore it properly and ultimately political conditions required for human we need to go beyond the limitations of Aristotelian flourishing. ethics. We all begin life as physically dependent crea- Aristotle himself was well aware of this sort of tures, and many of us will become so again in old point – his Ethics leads directly into his Politics. age. Moreover, illness and disability are conditions MacIntyreʼs arguments lead him in a similar direction. which may afflict us all at any time in our lives. In the ethical sphere, MacIntyre is happy enough to These facts lead MacIntyre to insist that we need pat- recognize that Aristotleʼs account of human nature terns of social relationships of ʻgiving and receivingʼ needs to be supplemented with modern theories of which are not purely reciprocal. Parents, for example, biology, animal behaviour, psychology, and so on. It have ʻunconditional responsibilityʼ for their childrenʼs seems equally clear that MacIntyreʼs latter-day Aristot- welfare. Such relationships cannot be understood as elianism similarly needs to be supplemented with forms of market exchange, in contract theory terms modern social and political ideas. It is MacIntyreʼs (as suggested by rational choice theorists). Indeed, view, one suspects, that the resources for this job are MacIntyre argues, the institutions of contract and best provided by Hegel and Marx; but he is reluctant free market exchange themselves presuppose prior to acknowledge this explicitly. These figures, it seems, communal understandings and practices. are presences lurking somewhere in the background The needs created by human dependency cannot of MacIntyreʼs philosophy, silently exercising an be met either by the family or the state, according influence but seldom explicitly invoked. As this book to MacIntyre, but just how they are to be met in the more that ever makes clear, it is impossible to complete modern world is left open. At this point, his account MacIntyreʼs project of a modernized Aristotelianism becomes notably sketchier, vaguer and, as he puts it, without drawing on the sort of social and political ʻutopianʼ. Unfortunately, however, no specific ʻutopianʼ theories which these figures provide. suggestions are even indicated and, in this context, the Sean Sayers phrase seems to mean little more than ʻunresolvedʼ. There is work still to be done here. But whether it can usefully be done by further pursuit of the sort of Aristotelian virtue ethics that MacIntyre has been Q&A developing is, it seems to me, questionable. For it is Penelope Deutscher and Kelly Oliver, eds, Enigmas: doubtful whether the forms of social and political life Essays on Sarah Kofman, Cornell University Press, needed for individuals to flourish in the modern world Ithaca, 1999. xvi + 284 pp., £ 37.50 hb., £14.50 pb., 0 can be specified in purely moral terms, or that they 8014 2912 9 hb., 0 8014 8141 4 pb. can usefully be thought of as forms of ʻvirtueʼ to be derived from a universal account of human nature in If you wish to become a French philosophical guru, the Aristotelian fashion. there is, in the words of E.C. Bentley, a great deal to For example, the kinds of institutions and social be said for being dead. Sarah Kofman now fulfilling relationship needed for the disabled and elderly to this condition, the process of canonization has begun, lead satisfactory lives in a modern capitalist society in which this collection of essays is an important step. is not simply an issue about ʻvirtuesʼ, though no doubt Two questions immediately arise. What is the exact certain social attitudes of universal human concern and object of the exercise? And is the subject worth it? care must underlie such institutions and relationships. The answer to the first question is fairly obvious, How to realize such attitudes, however, is a social and Enigmas makes a very good case for it. Kofman and political matter which can be decided only in is the author of more than twenty books. Her range is the context of a specific society. In other words, this impressive: there is hardly a philosopher dear to the is not just a moral question; it is a matter of social heart of contemporary French culture, from Freud to

Radical Philosophy 102 (July/August 2000) 49 Nietzsche, from Marx to Derrida, on whom she has This is unfair to a number of pieces, which are not written. Besides, the author herself is a source of real tributes to Kofmanʼs contribution, notably Duncan interest: not only because of her associations (with Largeʼs, on Kofmanʼs Hoffmann, which is admirable. Derrida – some of her texts were first written for his In fact the problem is neatly formulated by Françoise seminar – but also with Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe), Duroux, in her essay ʻHow a Woman Philosophisesʼ, but also because of her life (her father was a rabbi where she makes a distinction among philosophers murdered by the Nazis, she spent part of her childhood between professors and inventors. Most of us spend in occupied Paris and barely escaped with her life: our lives writing commentaries on the masters; only a the last book she wrote was an autobiography, Rue few are ingenious enough to become inventors and pro- Ordener, rue Labat). spective masters. She, of course, would like to argue There is more to it, however, than this. This is that Kofman is an inventor. But if she is, where are when the construction of Sarah Kofman becomes a her inventions, or, if we adopt a Deleuzean definition necessity: she is not only an interesting philosopher; of the task of philosophers, how many new concepts she is also a woman philosopher and a feminist, has she invented? And echo answers: none. and as such a member of a rare species. The trinity There is, however, a less negative answer to the of French feminist theorists, Cixous, Irigaray and question, and this is where the book is entirely justi- Kristeva, is in need of reinforcement, especially on fied. It can be found in Durouxʼs essay or in the essay the philosophical front, since Cixous never claimed by Penelope Deutscher, ʻComplicated Fidelityʼ, which to be a philosopher, and Kristeva is better known as deals with Kofmanʼs relation to Freud. According to a psychoanalyst. Only Irigaray can be said to have Duroux, Kofmanʼs contribution to philosophy is not produced a feminist philosophy. And Kofman certainly a set of concepts, but a technique of reading, or how is a philosopher: by profession and by taste. This a woman philosophizes: not ʻthe intelligent, conscien- makes her all the more respectable, in an atmosphere tious and respectful exegesisʼ of a classic text, but a where the old theory-without-frontiers is being quietly questioning of the motivating forces behind the con- recentred on philosophy proper – thus, Deleuze the struction of a system, of the economy of the concepts philosopher is beginning to overshadow Guattari, the involved, of the interest of the speculation. In a similar stray psychoanalyst. vein, Penelope Deutscher analyses the complicated So the work of construction this collection under- process of fidelity whereby Kofman identifies with her takes can lay claim to a form of historical necessity: author (in this case Freud on woman), appropriates the need for a new French philosophical guru is clear and ʻstylizesʼ him, and reconciles her deployment of (at least in Anglo-Saxon countries: I am not sure masks for her author with close and critical readings Kofman has survived so well in France). But here of the texts. the second question interferes: is she really worth This is where the interest and importance of Kof- the operation? A first reading of Enigmas will raise manʼs work becomes clear, where we can see that doubts, for a simple reason. The essays collected here she is entitled to survive, or to be revived. She is an are very good, some are excellent, but the best ones extraordinary practitioner of an art, the art of close are often not really about Kofman, references to her reading, that we have learnt to associate with the work being of the order of a pretext. The structure name of Derrida, but which is in fact the product of of a typical essay seems to be: ʻon Kofman and Xʼ, a long and venerable French academic tradition that where X turns out to be more interesting, or more concerns all the human sciences, as well as philosophy important, than Kofman. Thus, Paul Pattonʼs essay on and literary studies. It is one of the strong points of metaphor is remarkable, but I have learnt more from the French academy that would-be philosophers and it on conceptions of metaphor in Derrida and Deleuze literary critics are trained in the techniques of expli- than on Kofman. Again, we have essays on Nietzsche cation de textes (techniques of close reading much or Freud, where Kofman makes a somewhat modest neglected in Anglo-Saxon universities). Kofman is a appearance. Even if her reading of Marx (in Camera typical product of this education, except that she brings Obscura) is shown to have influenced Derrida (who an exceptional talent to the practice. This alone should never really acknowledged the debt), we are left with make her an inventor. The essays in this collection, the impression that Specters of Marx is the real thing even those which give rise to the uneasy feeling that and that Kofman, as a philosopher, is interesting but they are not primarily about Kofman, establish this slight. with considerable efficacy. Jean-Jacques Lecercle

50 Radical Philosophy 102 (July/August 2000) Out of its time

Max Blechman, ed., Revolutionary Romanticism, A Drunken Boat Anthology, City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1999. xii + 250 pp., $15.95 pb., 0 8728 6351 4.

In the mid-1960s Arthur O. Lovejoy announced that and their followers, sadomasochistic lovers of the old ʻwe should all cease talking about Romanticismʼ: ʻThe Marxian dialectic of modernity, were the pioneers of word romantic has come to mean so many things this politics. If Walter Benjamin, in a phrase from that, by itself, it means nothing.ʼ If this remains so, if Daniel Blanchardʼs memoir in this volume, regarded ʻromanticismʼ, by itself, is a hopelessly self-referential renunciation of the ʻauraʼ as necessary ʻin the name signifier, how much more meaningful is it when it of his melancholic subjection to modern technicityʼ, is married to the term ʻrevolutionaryʼ? There is, to then Guy Debord promised to redeem it, parodically, be sure, a comforting specificity to the phrase ʻRevo- in his drama of situations, which succumbed to the lutionary Romanticismʼ, but it gives rise to as many logic of the spectacle even as it mocked it behind its problems as it solves. back. The spectre of situationism stalks the pages of For a start, as Max Blechmanʼs mysterious muse Revolutionary Romanticism. insists in the Preface to this provocative collection For Blechman, an American writing his doctoral of essays, ʻThatʼs a tautology – romanticism is revolu- dissertation in France, the situationists embody the tionary.ʼ For another thing, thatʼs not entirely true romantic spirit of the great revolutionary upheaval anyway: it is also an oxymoron – the nostalgic impulse of his parentsʼ generation. And it is this spirit that of romanticism is frequently counter-revolutionary, he wants to resuscitate before it dies out with the as in Balzacʼs novels. In fact, a crude Lukácsian memories of its participants. Blechman, one canʼt case could be made for saying that it is tautologous help feeling, is ʻa dreamer of dreamsʼ, ʻborn out of its in its first phase, before the defeats of 1848, when due timeʼ, like the poet of William Morrisʼs Earthly it is flush with democratic fervour, and oxymoronic Paradise. Like Morris, he appears belated in rela- thereafter, when it becomes more and more mystic, in tion to his immediate romantic precursors (though he the face of a triumphant instrumental rationalism. This turns this tardiness to his advantage, as we shall see). account is unnuanced because it ignores the fact that, Blechmanʼs project for the regeneration of a revolution- as a Westanschauung, romanticism is simultaneously ary romanticism confronts a cultural situation in the reactionary and radical – it rejects the anaemic empti- present not unlike that of post-Napoleonic France, ness of modernity, the disenchantment of everyday in which, according to Lukács, ʻa whole generation, growing up with the gleams of unlimited possibilities, life in the shadow of industrial capitalism, but it suddenly found itself condemned to inactionʼ. does so in the name of an immemorial past whose But if Lukácsʼs melancholy reflections originally imaginative promise offers hope of its re-enchantment invoked a sense of historical tragedy, their reprisal or transformation. Perhaps the only safe way of inter- today points to its repetition as farce. Postmodernism preting romanticism is to appreciate that it represents is one name for this spectacle of the experience of a spectrum of political positions, as the typology of defeat, acted out with a kind of frenzied euphoria in romantic anti-capitalism in Robert Sayreʼs and Michael the Western academy. Recent postmodernist accounts Löwyʼs Révolte et melancolie proposed. of romanticism tend to depoliticize it by insisting, Lovejoyʼs plea for an end to the discussion of in somewhat sinister tones, on its ʻspecial relationʼ romanticism was poorly timed. For in the late 1960s, to postmodern theory. In Fantastic Modernity, for the students of literary critics like Northrop Frye example, the central claim of Orrin Wangʼs ʻDialectical and M.H. Abrams, who had dominated the academic Readings in Romanticism and Theoryʼ is that both debate about romanticism in the 1950s, took it out of discourses structure themselves around the trope of the lecture halls and into the streets. They set it on its modernity. It is as if modernism itself, and especially feet and tried to teach it how to march. Prophetically, its more romantic mutations, from the surrealists to the in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Henri Lefebvre situationists, did not also grapple with this trope or, had hailed the first signs of this fragmentary yet rather, the reality of modernity. Revolutionary Roman- generalized refusal – encompassing ʻacts of verbal or ticism, in its reaffirmation of the now unfashionable physical insubordination, rebellions, revolts, protests, optimism of the soixant-huitards, is a surreptitious abstentionsʼ – as a ʻnew romanticismʼ. The situationists attack on the epigonoi of postmodernism.

Radical Philosophy 102 (July/August 2000) 51 The title of Blechmanʼs book, then, is as much view in RP 94). It is as if the other contributors are prescriptive as it is descriptive: it promises a polemical the critical equivalent of session musicians, turning in reassessment of the libertarian and utopian tradition workmanlike performances in their specialist field for of romanticism, and at the same time offers reference the sake of the prodigious upstart with his experimen- points for the renewal of a leftist, futurist romanti- tal ambitions (Löwy, in this light, is the Ernest Ranglin cism (what Ernst Bloch called its ʻunfinished forward of studies in revolutionary romanticism). dreamʼ). How does the book fulfil this promise? In Blechmanʼs own performance, like his persistent its final essay, Blechman revealingly asserts that ʻThe editorial presence, is seductive. In particular, his Situationist International was the pinnacle of the revo- ʻReflections on Revolutionary Romanticismʼ, the ten lutionary avant-gardes of romanticism that began with theses with which the volume reaches its suitably the Frühromantik and that end with their autonegation.ʼ vatic conclusion, are a rousing plea for the future: In a sense, the volume is an attempt to prove this line ʻthe failure of the great romantic revolt of ʼ68 does of descent. It begins with his own account of ʻThe not only suggest how revolutionary romanticism must Revolutionary Dream of Early German Romanticismʼ, yet be; it also indicates how romantic the movements and follows the tradition through a series of essays, for changing the world must yet become.ʼ Blechmanʼs on Michelet, Morris, Mühsam and Marcuse among ʻnew millenniumʼ arrived early – the first indication others, before arriving at Blanchardʼs reminiscence of ʻa renaissance of revolutionary romantic strugglesʼ of ʻDebord in the Resounding Cataract of Timeʼ. A were manifest outside the WTO conference last Nov- powerful, if impressionistic, sense of a revolutionary ember. In this sense, certainly, there is nothing belated romantic genealogy emerges. The individual essays are about his situationist romanticism. The anticapitalist of uneven quality though. Miguel Abensourʼs treatment protesters at the Seattle demonstration, in all their of News from Nowhere as an ʻexperimental utopiaʼ is colourful confusion, are at least potentially the heirs to utterly compelling, and Christopher Winksʼs account of his tradition. The irony is that, in the face of an almost the mnemic power of monuments and symbols in the spontaneous anticapitalist movement on that scale, the Commune is also fascinating. However, several others, ʻunitary demandʼ of Blechmanʼs ʻromantic imperative like Annie Le Brunʼs comments ʻOn the Subject of for a universal regenerationʼ, ʻAll power to the imagina- Romantic Womenʼ, are weightless and insubstantial. tion!ʼ, at the moment of its seeming triumph, suddenly In his Preface, Blechman boldly asserts that the sounds inadequate. The utopian function of a new strength of Revolutionary Romanticism ʻlies in the ʻnew romanticismʼ might have been reactivated more power of its perspective as much as in the quality effectively if the ʻgreat march of organized labourʼ of the individual essaysʼ. As much or more so. It is arranged for the second day of the Seattle protest had Blechmanʼs overarching narrative that lends coherence converged with the other demonstration, instead of and conviction to the volume. And it is this that creates being diverted by the union leaders. its difficulties. At times, the narrative seems to have Matthew Beaumont been imposed rather too forcefully, a fact betrayed by the diction of Blechmanʼs editorial acknowledgements (Arthur Mitzman, we are told, has ʻradicalized – in fact, restoredʼ an essay published elsewhere, while Sequencing Peter Marshallʼs contribution is ʻa romantic spinʼ on his book on Blake). The problem is perhaps that, with William D. Blattner, Heideggerʼs Temporal Idealism, the exception of Blechmanʼs pieces, the essays donʼt Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, £35.00 hb., deal in sufficient detail with revolutionary romanticism 0 5216 2067 8. itself. Maurice Hindleʼs essay on ʻRevolting Languageʼ is typical in this respect: if it offers a fruitful ʻpoliti- Despite Heideggerʼs pronouncement on the opening cal readingʼ of Keatsʼs ode ʻTo Autumnʼ, it fails to page of Being and Time that time serves as ʻthe reposition him in relation to revolutionary romanti- possible horizon for any understanding of beingʼ, the cism. Blechmanʼs framing essays carry the polemical attempt to substantiate this claim has received scant burden. Unlike some of his essayists, he displays an attention among its interpreters. Typically, studies of obvious political commitment to the revolutionary Being and Time, while focusing on the rich and innov- romantic project as he constructs it (see his ʻReply to ative Division One, tend to downplay or even leave Agnes Hellerʼ, RP 99, which is as much a manifesto aside the difficult and complex issues of temporality. as an intervention into questions raised by her inter- In Heideggerʼs Temporal Idealism, William Blattner

52 Radical Philosophy 102 (July/August 2000) proof. Perhaps Blattner would have come up with a different assessment of the status of Heideggerʼs discourse had he paid more attention to the issue of authenticity, yet both authenticity and historicality, the two great existential and political themes of Being and Time, are largely omitted from consideration. According to Blattner, Heidegger (along with his predecessors Plotinus, Leibniz and Kant) proposes a species of temporal ideal- ism: ʻIf Dasein did not exist, time would not obtain.ʼ As being, or more precisely the being of entities, interpreted as an ontological framework ʻin virtue of which an entity is an entity and an entity of the sort it isʼ, is to be understood in terms of contributes to an overcoming of this deficit by offer- time, it follows that being is also dependent ing an extensive analysis of the role of temporality in on Dasein. Thus the early Heidegger, he argues, is an Division Two of Heideggerʼs early masterpiece. ontological idealist. But this is not the only compre- Like much recent American scholarship on hensive message of Heideggerʼs Temporal Idealism. Heidegger (Dreyfus, Okrent, Olafson, Haugeland, Construed as an expression of ontological idealism, Guignon), Blattnerʼs broadly pragmatist and analytic Being and Time ultimately fails. Having realized this, approach combines impressive textual knowledge Heideggerʼs Kehre – on this issue Blattner does not with a strong emphasis on conceptual analysis and have a lot to say, though – amounts to a thinking about common-sense illustration. Given the seemingly wilful being that escapes the subjectivism of his early thought obscurity and complacency of so much that currently (as well as any recognizable realism) in favour of ʻan passes for Heidegger scholarship, such an attitude, antimetaphysical understanding of the clearing as the at least to this reader, is appealing. Conjoined with space in which being, and hence entities, can stand this approach, however, is the obvious risk of trivial- out as what they areʼ. Although the later Heideggerʼs izing the claims under scrutiny. Heideggerʼs Temporal ʻquasi-mysticismʼ seems rationally indefensible in a Idealism is brimful with tedious examples, involving positive sense (Blattner is by no means a mystic), it Smith, Jones, Brown, and others in a very American enjoys a certain credibility in view of the sheer lack way of life. But philosophically more worrisome is of rationally plausible alternatives. the implied conflation between ontical and ontologi- Defending such strong claims is a vast and challeng- cal research. According to Blattner, Dasein is simply ing undertaking, yet Blattner constructs a strong case a person; for no apparent reason he thus disregards for his view. The first chapter deals with Heideggerʼs Heideggerʼs painstaking attempt at distinguishing his notion of care (Sorge). Particular attention is here existential analytic from empirical human science. paid to the so-called ʻunattainability thesisʼ, which Another difficulty that follows from Blattnerʼs prag- amounts to the claim that Daseinʼs proper ability- matist approach arises from the claim that ʻat its core characteristics, though to be pressed ahead into, are Heideggerʼs enterprise is explanatoryʼ. By invoking the not attainable. It follows from Daseinʼs existentiality impersonal, quasi-scientific language of explanandum (its questionability) that the realization of its self- and explanans, though softened to denote a rela- interpretive ʻfor-the-sakes-of-whichʼ can never simply tion of dependency, Blattner overlooks the modernist be attained but are forever deferred, to be realized. inspiration of Being and Time – the sense in which Dasein is an ability-to-be; it is not to be identified Heideggerʼs interpretive explorations of the ordinary, with any specific ability. Moreover, the seemingly rather than discounting subjective response, aim to unrestricted freedom entailed by the unattainability master it in exemplary ways. An existential analytic, thesis, its expression of groundlessness, gets modified since it analyses that entity which in each case is mine by the so-called ʻnullity thesisʼ, which holds that (Dasein), aims at the attainment of the self; its inherent Dasein ʻcannot press into how things matter to itʼ. perfectionism proceeds by means of self-reflection, not In conjunction with the notion of ʻfallingʼ, Blattnerʼs

Radical Philosophy 102 (July/August 2000) 53 reconstruction of care presents a powerful account of assumption of world-time sequentiality, hence world- human finitude and freedom which avoids some of time is sequential. the pitfalls of more abstract, non-situative conceptions Blattner also argues that Heidegger, though offer- of freedom (e.g. Sartre). It also serves as the basis ing a fairly convincing argument for the thesis that for his interpretation of originary temporality (origi- ordinary time is levelled-off world time, does not nary temporality makes care possible), the meaning entirely succeed in demonstrating that being is tempo- of which is supposed to explain the occurrence of ral through and through. On this point I agree, and in ordinary, physical time. particular with the charge that Heidegger largely fails Blattnerʼs reading of Heideggerʼs derivation of ordi- to develop the notion of praesens – which is not to say nary time from originary temporality (and hence from that it cannot be done. Seemingly, the most promis- Dasein qua care) involves several steps. Stripped to ing way of conducting such an elaboration would, the bone, the contention is that world-time (the flow as Blattner points out, be to link praesens with the of time, understood as a sequence of pragmatic Nows, comprehensive notion of enpresenting. experienced by Dasein in an everyday way), while Despite its shortcomings, this rich and rewarding dependent on originary temporality, is explanatory of book is likely to be the most advanced study of Being ordinary time. Thus if at least one link in the chain and Time currently existing in the English language. of derivation goes to pieces – this is Blattnerʼs overall Espen Hammer point – then the whole edifice collapses. Turning to the first step of the argument, the account of originary temporality, Blattner rightly, in my view, disengages the notion of originary temporality as such Henri who? from that of authenticity. As opposed to a host of commentators, he realizes that ʻauthentic temporality John Mullarkey, ed., The New Bergson, Manchester is … one mode of originary temporalityʼ. Moreover, University Press, Manchester, 1999. xvi + 235 pp., originary temporality is plausibly reconstructed in £40.00 hb., 0 7190 5380 3. terms of non-sequential temporal ʻecstasesʼ (future, Henri Bergson, Duration and Simultaneity: Bergson past, present), where each of these correspond to one and the Einsteinian Universe, edited by Robin Durie, of the three modalities of care: existence, facticity Clinamen Press, Manchester, 1999. xxviii + 211 pp., and falling. £16.99 pb., 1 903083 01 X. Where Heidegger first slips up is in the deriva- tion of world-time from originary temporality. While The 1907 publication of Creative Evolution established succeeding in accounting for datability, spannedness, Henri Bergsonʼs reputation as Europeʼs foremost phil- significance and public time (the four official dimen- osopher and earned him international acclaim. But, sions of world-time), he fails to make good how as John Mullarkey remarks in his introduction to The sequentiality, the fifth and unrecognized, yet according New Bergson, few philosophers have witnessed such to Blattner necessary, aspect of world-time depends a rapid decline in the influence of their ideas. As on originary temporality. But if the derivation of Mullarkey goes on to argue, the widespread diffusion sequentiality fails, then so do the remaining dimen- of Bergsonʼs philosophy was also its dissipation; the sions of world-time, since they ultimately presuppose pervasiveness of its appropriation resulted only in its sequentiality. In arriving at this conclusion, Blattner effacement. By the mid-1920s Bergsonʼs predominance rests his case on the view that ʻthe sequence of world- had all but evaporated. In the ensuing decades (with a time Nows must reflect the sequence of tasks dictated few notable exceptions – among them Gilles Deleuze, by the for-the-sake-of-whichʼ. The difficulty Heidegger whose 1956 essay ʻBergsonʼs Conception of Differ- allegedly faces consists in showing that the purposive enceʼ is published for the first time in English transla- chains of originary iteration of the Present always tion in this collection), his books were little read or generate the right sequence of world-time times. How- discussed. ever, nowhere does Heidegger make such a strong The renewed interest in Bergsonʼs philosophy that claim. Nor is it evident that he should. In my view, these essays demonstrate risks a renewed dissipation. rather than having to show that there is an actual The context of contemporary philosophical interests match between the sequences, it would be sufficient – both analytic and continental – within which Mullar- to argue that since multiple tasks cannot be executed key chooses to situate Bergsonʼs thinking, and so test simultaneously, they would only be possible on the its current significance, might again lead to its particu-

54 Radical Philosophy 102 (July/August 2000) larity becoming effaced. However, it is only through Bergson and cinema, attends only to the conventional Mullarkey taking the risk of effacement that The New narrative and spectatorial aspects of cinema, rather Bergson can emerge. Through the dissipation of inter- than pursuing the repetition of cinematic movement est in Bergsonʼs ideas, through the risk of effacement to be found in Bergsonʼs thought. as these ideas are reconsidered in order to ascertain However, the essays Mullarkey gathers together their current relevance, the possibility is opened of under the heading ʻMindʼ, in so far as they are more an effacement that, through its dissipative movement, directly concerned with a close reading of particular prompts Bergsonʼs return. This is not the effacement books (Matter and Memory, in the case of the essays of Bergsonʼs particularity; it is an effacement through by Frédéric Worms, Marie Cariou and Eric Matthews, which Bergsonʼs particularity can continue to arise. and The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, in the Bergsonʼs philosophy of change and transformation case of F.C.T. Moore), move through and beyond static is generated out of, and perpetuated by, a continual, reception and representation. In the closing section dissipative process of self-effacement. To renew and of Frédéric Wormsʼs 1997 Introduction à Matière et extend Bergsonʼs philosophical project is to create and Mémoire de Bergson, which Mullarkey excerpts, on recreate ideas that go beyond it, thereby repeating the the Summary and Conclusion with which Bergson ends self-effacement out of which that project launches a Matter and Memory, a formal relation of this summary movement beyond itself. is articulated with all that has gone before in terms of The two essays organized in Mullarkeyʼs collection an accelerated repetition of the prior movement of the under the heading ʻLifeʼ are sensitive to these levels book. In reading Matter and Memory so as to grasp of (self-) effacement. In focusing attention on the the complex movement of its interacting speeds and evolutionary movement of life as a process of inven- slownesses, Worms effects the repetition and further- tion and differentiation beyond the boundaries of the ing of the experiment of Bergsonʼs thought. organism, rather than one of filiation and descent that This movement of experimentation recurs through- prescribes such boundaries (Keith Ansell Pearson), out Mullarkeyʼs collection. The experiment with dual- and in arguing for openness and interconnectedness, ism and with the image is taken further by Mullarkeyʼs against pragmatic division and the exclusiveness of inclusion of a previously unpublished 1913 letter from abstract systems with regard to societies and the Bergson to John Dewey. In it Bergson defends what environment (P.A.Y. Gunter), both essays implicitly he terms the partial realism of his doctrines against acknowledge effacement as, at once, an open and Deweyʼs criticisms, situating his extensive use of the indeterminate process of differentiation, and a divisive term image in Matter and Memory, midway between and immobilizing act of closure for the purposes realism and idealism. The experiment with philo- of utility. They assume – as Marie Cariou does in sophical time – a time that Einstein was to deny her rather sceptical appraisal of Bergsonʼs account – is pursued in Timothy S. Murphyʼs essay. This is of memory – that every representation of Bergsonʼs augmented and deepened by the republication of the thought, every sentence that defines it, is a death English translation of Bergsonʼs Duration and Simul- sentence for its fluid mobility. Yet, if the movement of taneity, extended, in Robin Durieʼs new edition, with invention that has come to be known as Bergsonism a number of appendices detailing its hostile reception, is to be relaunched, it is only through the inertia and Bergsonʼs subsequent defence, and the eventual efface- fixity inflicted by representation; a representation that ment of the book from the Bergson canon. is aware of its own dissipative movement and, hence, Through the depth and complexity of the tendencies its own provisionality. of differentiation that Deleuze describes in his 1956 Not all of the essays Mullarkey selects demonstrate essay, the movement of Bergsonism is actualized in an awareness of the movement of ceaseless invention the inverse movement of any writing that returns and transformation they address, nor of the move- to reconsider it. To return to Bergson is, through ment of effacement inherent in their own writing as looking back at him, to enter into coincidence with the a result. Mark Antliff, although offering a fascinating forward-moving process of his thinking. The success glimpse of Matisseʼs creative process as it repeats the of Mullarkeyʼs book lies in its ambition, and often process of Bergsonism, ends his essay with a static in its ability to effect this coincidence, and so create juxtaposition of representations that draws Bergso- Bergson anew. nian duration together with Rosalind Kraussʼs eroti- Mark Ryder cized temporality and the Surrealist art of Ernst and Duchamp. Similarly, Paul Douglass, in his account of

Radical Philosophy 102 (July/August 2000) 55