From: zeleny@husc9.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Douglas Kwitney's _Endless Enemies_ (was Re: She'
Date: 6 Oct 92 05:21:03 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc3.1992Oct6.012104.16111
Organization: The Phallogocentric Cabal

In article <12632@optilink.UUCP> 
cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) writes:

>In article <1992Sep30.121852.15971@husc3.harvard.edu>,
>zeleny@husc9.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:

>>In article <12553@optilink.UUCP> 
>>cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) writes:

CC:
>>>I have not a clue how most of my history professors vote.  They manage
>>>to keep their own political beliefs sufficiently hidden, in spite of
>>>the relevance of the topics covered, that I can't tell if they are
>>>conservatives, radicals, liberals, libertarians, etc.  On the other
>>>hand, in the "sloppy sciences" (philosophy, English), it's real
>>>easy.  Pretenses of objectivity and balance at Sonoma State seem to
>>>have been utterly dropped by professors in some departments.  Let
>>>me give you one recent example.

MZ:
>>Without wishing to challenge the validity of the esteemed Mr Cramer's
>>poignant personal observations, I'll venture a reason against generalizing
>>them to a universal rule.  Most historians, as practicioners of the

CC:
>I don't think that I did generalize them to a universal rule, unless
>Sonoma State University qualifies as the "universe."  (Say it ain't
>so, Joe!)

Nor have I asserted the contrary; my disquisition was intended as a mere
caveat against the possibility of overzealous extrapolation, rather than as
the means of imputing such unscholarly traits to my honorable interlocutor.

MZ:
>>idiographic arts, are committed to the description of the particular, and
>>so find it impossible to separate their own political sensibilities from
>>their professional goal of evaluating the past events.  Accordingly, their
>>political position may be readily discerned each time their narrative
>>passes from the descriptive to the normative.  (For more on this subject,

CC:
>1. Certainly -- assuming that a historian makes a normative statement.
>Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.  It is possible to interpret
>WHY something happens, without making a normative statement about
>that event.

I should think that this is only true in the domains concerned with the
study of efficient causation, such as physics or chemistry.  Once we adopt
the explanatory methodology of attributing teleology to the agents
populating the domain of our study, once we switch, as we must, from the
impersonal "billiard ball" idiom of physical interaction to the language of
final causes, the language of purposes and reasons, we thereby commit
ourselves to the evaluation of the relative importance of these factors,
which is to say, to the making of value judgments.

CC:
>	     Now, it is frequently true that historians sometimes
>engage in value judgements, such as, "Slavery is wrong," or "Genocide
>is bad," but frequently they avoid such observations at all.  Leni
>Yahil's _The Holocaust_ is remarkably free of value judgements,
>perhaps because the description speaks for itself.

Though I am barely familiar with the book in question, I submit that its
very title, originally designating an all-consumed burnt offering to the
gods, but unhappily and inappropriately extended by Elie Wiesel to cover
the Nazi Judeocide, already furnishes an example of a value judgment, and
one whose appropriateness is frequently contested by historians.

Furthermore, I invite my readers to consider how the same events might have
been treated by a positivist historian writing on behalf of the victorious
Nazi regime, revelling in the sentiment of a well-executed solution to a
pernicious social problem, yet not allowing these facile value judgments to
find a superficial expression in is work.  Despite his scrupulous Weberian
methodology, he could hardly be expected to order the causal factors in the
same way as Hannah Arendt, Raul Hilberg, or, as I would venture to guess,
Leni Yahil.  And so his narrative would inevitably differ from theirs.

CC:
>2. A professor when writing a book has less of an obligation to
>be completely balanced in his presentation, then when giving a
>lecture in an introductory American history class.

I see no reason as to why this should be the case.

MZ:
>>the gentle reader would be well advised to consult Herbert Butterfield's
>>_The Whig Interpretation of History_, and, in the opposite corner, Max
>>Weber's _Science as a Vocation_.)  On the other hand, most philosophers
>>specializing in the nomothetic aspects of their discipline will profess to
>>eschew value judgments altogether, and in any case will direct their
>>attention to the timeless abstract universals having little to do with
>>mundane political positions.  Hence their writings will not generally lend
>>themselves to a facile classification of this sort.

CC:
>I guess I just have a philosophy professor, not a philosopher.

In view of my remarks in the preceding article, this remains to be
demonstrated.

>>CC:
>>>Perhaps one reason I felt no need to finish reading Roger Kimball's
>>>_Tenured Radicals_ is that there wasn't anything terribly surprising
>>>to me in it.

MZ:
>>Something tells me that Mr Cramer is unlikely to be terribly surprised by
>>anything he might find in a book.  Based on his past record, I conjecture
>>that he would either accept it wholesale as gospel of all right-thinking
>>individuals, or reject it out of hand as pernicious liberal propaganda.

CC:
>Oh, heavens, no.  I get surprised a frequent basis.  I find things
>that I would not have suspected.  If they seem bizarre or unbelievable
>enough, I attempt to determine their falsity.  I have started many
>an effort seeking proof of X, and ended up with proof that X was
>false, or even more often, that X is a trivial issue, and the real
>issue is Y.
>
>Douglas Kwitney's _Endless Enemies_ is a counterexample to your
>assertion about my approach to books.  I started out largely in
>agreement with Kwitney's claim -- that the U.S. Government,
>through incompetence and venality, has played a major role in
>creating many of the hostile governments around the world.  But
>by the time I finished reading Kwitney's manipulative, and in many
>cases severely distorted accounts, he had pretty well persuaded
>me that the beliefs I entered the book with were quite wrong.

Again, I am unfamiliar with the volume in question; however it must be
remarkably convoluted to effect in its reader a conclusive refutation of
its own ostensible theses.  Might not this perverse effect be due to a
pernicious U.S. Government plot?

>-- 
>Clayton E. Cramer {uunet,pyramid}!optilink!cramer  My opinions, all mine!
>Lesson learned from Gov. Wilson's signing of AB 2601: if you don't get 
>your way, have a riot.  Next time, Gov. Wilson will cower appropriately.

cordially,
mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu
"Nous donnons la mort, nous saurons la subir."
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books