From: msmorris@watsci.waterloo.edu (Mike Morris)
Subject: Re:  Naphtha and Settembrini 
Organization: University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 18:19:31 GMT


                                 Wednesday, the 29th of July, 1992

Some responses to John Wojdylo: 

I said our discussion is moving beyond Mann. John said:
  It always has been. Mann, after all, is dead and gone. What
  possible use is a dead man to us?

Reading old books is living conversation with dead men.

  I'm glad that you have paid some attention to Kundera. 
  It's also heartening to find that you are not totally a moral relativist,
  to the point that you are even willing to judge some things evil. Let us
  see to what extent you are really willing to shake off the moral
  relativist tag, and to whose detriment your reticence might accrue.

I like Kundera, yes, especially for his common-sensical Enlightenment
rationalist critique of much of what has come since.

I find it interesting that the operative word is ``extent'', since
I find so far in what you are telling me a confusion of an
aesthetic standard, intensity of belief or its extremity (whether
or not I'm willing to kill for my judgments), for ethical judgment. I have
just tried to explain to you how I thought it was possible to judge someone
morally evil and still not think it right to kill them.

Also I think I understand precisely to whose detriment you think my
reticence accrues. I think you're wrong about it.

  The Marxist Naphtha a protagonist for Progress/Reason? And a right-winger to 
  boot?  I think that Mr. Morris has it the wrong way around, at least. Could 
  the source of this curiosity be related to Mr Morris's willingness to lump 
  Marx, Hegel AND Freud in his "left-leaning philosophical lineage"?

First of all, I opposed Progress/Reason to Reaction/Spirit as Mann's
dichotomy. I'm flabbergasted that you took me to mean that Progress/Reason
was Naphtha and Reaction/Spirit was Settembrini. I meant it, of course
John, precisely the other way around. I'm sorry if I gave you any other
impression.

Now, Hegel, Marx, and Freud are clearly vastly complex thinkers, Marx
and Freud in particular having spawned schools of ``Marxists'' and
``Freudians'' within which almost anything together with its opposite
can be found. I did not mean for anything that these thinkers may be
be summarized by handy labels. I did mean, however, to give my label
meaning by something I see common in these thinkers.

In Hegel, he is willing to offer absolution for the Terror in exchange
for a dialectical endpoint of history. The Terror becomes a necessary
step inn the historical process. Marx believes he has discovered
the scientific laws by which history works. Again, present terror
is traded for future social justice. And Freud, again sees scientific
law in the operation of human psychology. The common element in all
three is the trade-off of a mysterious but morally sound human free will
for a more scientific-seeming human determinism.

Settembrini is more left than Naphtha. Naphtha isn't interested in social
justice at all, even as an epistemological endpoint. He's only interested
in the beauty, the intensity, the significance, of human suffering. He's
willing to bring back the Inquisition to cause this suffering, too.

I don't see that Naphtha was ``materialist'' in the slightest. His
idealism goes in another direction. Equally inhuman, I agree, but
different. Naphtha is closer to Auschwitz than the gulag.


I had said:
  I have to hold the ethical imperative higher than any aesthetic one.

John responded:
  This sounds disturbingly like the Western sovietologist who noted that since
  almost no villages in the Soviet Union in the period 1930 to 1953 were 
  simultaneously being terrorised by Stalin's regime, there could not have been
  much of a terror. 

  So the recommendation was to treat Stalin like "one of the boys".

  Western observers have been notoriously slow to figure out the nature of 
  regimes from Stalin, through Ceausescu, to the Serbian military's ambitions
  for the Balkans. (Serbian ambitions for Yugoslavia were known more than 
  18 months ago -- why weren't the Serbians pressured by the U.N then, thereby 
  avoiding the current tragedy in ex-Yugoslavia?) 

  It seems that there is some use for an "aesthetic imperative" after all.

John, I haven't a clue what you mean here. I don't understand how you
seem to think that holding an ethical imperative high means I have
to kill or terrorise anybody. Can't I mean just that the ethical imperative
says I can't kill or terrorise anyone even if I think they're ugly or
standing in the way of artistic progress (i.e., what I called the
right-wing, or aesthetic imperative) and even if I think they're
stupid or standing in the way of social-engineering legislation
(i.e., what I called the left-wing, or epistemological imperative)?

I said:
  I would argue that science is one of the most dictatorial programs we have.

I believe I explained what I meant by ``dictatorial'' here. Since ``left''
is an extension of the scientific program from particles and planets to
human beings, I believe in that direction it becomes especially dictatorial.

It's not hard to see the Romantic side of the lineage I gave for the
right as a reaction to this scientific dictatorship.

I said:
  If the only nasty thing Hitler had ever done was publish _Mein
  Kampf_ (I'm talking about my impression of a book I have not (yet)
  read), then I would say, regardless of the horror of the content of
  the book, anyone would be criminally unjust to kill the man just for
  having written a book. 
	
John responded:
  It's nice of you to condescend to agree with the letter of the Law; a 
  sacrifice on your behalf, your readers know, as you have already told them of 
  your aversion to the dictatorial nature of Facts, and, I'm sure you agree, 
  Facts are vital in the implementation of Law.  

I didn't condescend to agree. There's no other letter of the Law I
agree with more passionately with.

You seem to elide the Fact that before the Holocaust happened,
*it hadn't yet happened*. So, I'm a little confused about what Facts
you are referring to. 

  There is nothing horrific in Mein Kampf; it's rather banal, actually. Le Pen
  does much better in his campaigns for the French presidential elections. _Mein
  Kampf_ tells of Hitler's vision, including a strong displeasure with Jews and
  their influence on the country.  Soon after Mein Kampf was published, Hitler 
  became leader -- with extraordinary powers -  of one of the most powerful 
  nations on earth. Now the typical liberal claims that since Hitler had only 
  *thought* about doing nasty things to stinking Jews, that he'd only published 
  a book (he'd never actually killed any Jew! What a nice man in such a fine 
  suit!) that he can't be judged evil enough to be erradicated himself. 

Pardon me if I don't believe that you can read _Mein Kampf_, or *any other
book*, and predict the future course of human history based on your reading.
Are you advocating that Ralph Mannheim (the translator in English) ought
to be executed or what? If all Goebbels had done was ``think, write,
and make nasty films'' the Allied Powers committed a crime in executing him,
yes. But neither you nor I actually believes this was the extent of the
charge against him.

  And it's not worth excusing no pistol-packing Jewish punk like Misha Zeleny 
  from blowing the brains out of Adolf Hitler in 1929; Adolf's life is too 
  sacred.  As sacred as your son's or daughters.  Let him carry on in power --
  my daughters are safe from the ideas in his book; after all, I taught them
  how to read books like that properly, without getting too angry at the author,
  even if his _publicly stated_ intentions differ from what is revealed in the 
  more intimate setting of the novel or memoir. (As long as they don't
  step out the front door, in Germany in 1935,  then it's O.K.)

Again the confusion between a book and an action. To the extent that my
daughters are in danger from Hitler of stepping out their front door the
man deserves criminal punishment, my daughters and I are justified
in defending ourselves.

You seem to think that 1935 was a necessary consequence of 1929. If
you think that, I am at a loss wondering how you think any moral judgment
is possible. There's only your gun v. my gun.

I said:
  If Naphtha tried to kill my children I'd simply react by slicing him up
  in little bits. If he tried to kill yours, I think that the right thing
  for me to do would be to gun him down... But the guy was just talking.
  Or thinking, writing, making films.  He didn't *do* anything ...

John said:
  Neither did Goebbels, more or less. Shall we petition the Allied Powers for a 
  formal apology for their unjust treatment of Goebbels?

Perhaps you could elaborate on the ``more or less''?


I said:
  I would say that _Mein Kampf_ need not be beautiful (or even moral)
  for its author to retain a Right to Life. I think Hitler lost that
  Right when he killed, ...

John responded:
  Hitler never personally killed anyone (maybe only himself).

I think he did. Quite causally. It's _Mein Kampf_ that didn't.

I continued:
  ... not when he wrote.
 
John said:
  He lost that right -- if anyone ever has it -- when he first stepped into
  a position of influence, when his thoughts first began to be realized.

Here, now, I think I agree, except I would say it's when he acted, when
he killed.

I said:
  If your claim, John, is that the mass murders and war and crimes came 
  from the book, I strongly disagree.

And John objected:
  This is a ridiculous reading of my point. Perhaps you need to retire from
  academia, the workload is getting to you.

  On second thought, sometimes you sound more like a wet-behind-the-ears
  college boy than a geriatric academic.

You do ad hominem so well, John.

For the record, and for future such outbursts, I'm 32. I do research in
general relativity theory. Right now, I'm also teaching intermediate
quantum mechanics. And, I'm a postdoc.

My problem is that I am still reading the same thing into your point.
Perhaps you would care to elaborate in a direction that would disabuse me
of my opinion?
  
  Meanwhile the Serbians struck their first blow towards achieving their 
  ambitions in the Balkans.

  Perhaps there are disadvantages in the (American) liberal world-view
  after all.

Perhaps, yes. It certainly doesn't promise an eradication of evil
in the way that so many fundamentalisms do.

But I do not think that Americans are very liberal, John.

I said: 
  I am certain, though, even without reading it, that _Mein Kampf_
  cannot be criminally unjust. It's just a book.

John responded:
  Laws, by definition, refer to human conduct, not to inanimate objects.

Well, then, let me rephrase to eliminate the metaphor: I am certain,
though, even without having read it, that the writing and publication
of _Mein Kampf_ could not have been criminally unjust. It was just a book.

  How can you judge Hitler to be evil ? He loved Eva, he had perfectly real
  human feelings, he loved his dog, walks in the Austrian countryside, evenings 
  by the fireplace in a snowy mountain chalet, a temper tantrum now and then...
  How can you be so arrogant as to judge all these things that make up "Adolf 
  Hitler"? He had "free will" so you judge him ... so what ? Once you've 
  judged the totality of Adolf Hitler, how does that affect your relationship 
  with your children ?  They like walks in the countryside too, you know.  
  You really are a bastard, aren't you. 

Such a sweet way of putting it. My children aren't mass murderers, you
know. Let me rather ask you, John, how *you*
can judge him evil, since it is *your* characterization of the man that
is so sympathetic?
	
  So you can prove to me that you are not someone's marionette? I await
  your proof.

You see, I'm not the one wanting to kill people here, to make laws
to control those puppet strings. You seem to be. Therefore, I should
think the burden of proof is quite on you. Since you don't have such proof,
and since the old-fashioned model of human free will works better to explain
the observations, (I am willing to expand on this point at great length,
John---which would you like first, my McDonald's gedanken-experiment
demonstrating the impossibility of human determinism, or my Brothers Grimm
argument demonstrating the danger of scientific inference for a system so
complex as a human being?) it makes me kinda wonder at your own no doubt
very high moral purpose in sending those policemen after me merely because
you were able to translate some primitive moral conceptions into equations.

               Mike Morris
          (msmorris@watsci.uwaterloo.ca)


Newsgroups: rec.arts.books