Baudrillard on 9-11: American Derangement Syndrome and the Ideology of Resentment

MAY 30, 2006   RICHARD LANDES   37 COMMENTS

I recently got a book by Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion Terror and the Future of Reason. (Hat tip: Lawrence Barnes)

It’s hard to judge the entire argument and I’ll probably blog on it later (my initial sense is that he reduces religion to its theocratic and dogmatic variants). But his treatment of the liberal response to Islamism is excellent, and in it he quotes Jean Baudrillard, one of France’s most “brilliant” sociologists. The passage is worth quoting here since it embodies so much of what is wrong with French — and by extensiion, European, and by further extension, progressive, anti-Americanism — a staggering and spectacular insight into American Derangement Syndrome.

Jean Baudrillard, The Spirit of Terrorism
Le Monde, November 2, 2001
(I have adjusted the translation according to my reading of the French original.)

That we have dreamed of this event, that everybody without exception has dreamt of it, because everybody must dream of the destruction of any power hegemonic to that degree, — this is unacceptable for Western moral conscience, but it is still a fact, and one which is justly measured by the pathetic violence of all those discourses which attempt to erase it.

In the end, they did it, but we wanted it.

Got to give him credit for honesty. For those innocent Americans who are not familiar with French discourse, allow me to unpack this remarkable piece of prose. Part of what Baudrillard is trying to say is that when any nation or culture becomes as powerful as the USA, they provoke a resentment so deep that others wish to see it destroyed. On one level, this is true. Even as some people around the world shed tears, somewhere deep inside was a thrill at seeing the mighty brought low. And this is a deep-seated instinct in humans, as Helmut Schoek has argued so persuasively in his book, Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior. But it is, as he explains, a zero-sum emotion with a terrible cost.

He is aware that such sentiments are “unacceptable for the Western moral conscience” (Schoek argues that Western economic development is based on a partial renunciation of envy), but he defends himself. This is not a base reaction. Baudrillard deals not with emotions we can control, but with “facts” — and the key “fact” is that “everyone without exception… must dream of the destruction…” Not one to take responsibility for his base emotions, Baudrillard wants to claim that his feelings are a) universally shared, and b) an entirely predictable response to American hegemony.

If one does not take that into account, the event loses all symbolic dimension to become a pure accident, an act purely arbitrary, the murderous fantasy of a few fanatics, who would need only to be suppressed. But we know very well that this is not so. Thus all those delirious, counter-phobic exorcisms: because evil is there, everywhere as an obscure object of desire. Without this deep complicity, the event would not have had such repercussions, and without doubt, terrorists know that in their symbolic strategy they can count on this unavowable complicity.

Now that we’ve established the objectivity of these emotions, we begin to understand how they give meaning to this deed, how it transforms it from a mere marginal, extremist act, into one of symbolic power. The complicity of which he speaks is the intense emotional sympathy that people like Baudrillard and others who share his profound resentment of American hegemony feel. The terrorists know they can count on this “unavowable complicity.”

Of course, Baudrillard, being brave and honest, a Nietzschean superman, can avow the unavowable. (Later in the essay, he calls on us to go “beyond Good and Evil.”) It doesn’t matter so much that the sentiments here expressed are precisely what Nietzsche viewed with greatest contempt — ressentiment. Apparently Nietzsche was entirely correct in using the French term to designate this particular sickness of the soul.

It is worth noting here that the reference to the terrorists knowing they can count on this complicity recoups a remarkable chronological relationship between 9-11 and the delirious hate-fest directed against both the USA and Israel at Durban which had just finished four days earlier on September 7, 2001. This UN sponsored event, intended to inaugurate the 21st century with a world-wide conference dedicated to eliminating racism around the world, turned into its opposite, a non-stop, grotesquely unhinged assault on the USA and Israel, a platform for every kind of hatred as long as it was directed against white “racism,” at once passing over in silence the live racism of Arab slave trade of black Africans, and offering these same active racists a feast of hatred aimed at their enemies. As the Israeli representative noted in his speech to the conference:

But here today, something greater even than peace in the Middle East is being sacrificed – the highest values of humanity. Racism, in all its forms, is one of the most widespread and pernicious evils, depriving millions of hope and fundamental rights. It might have been hoped that this first Conference of the 21st century would have taken up the challenge of, if not eradicating racism, at least disarming it: But instead humanity is being sacrificed to a political agenda. Barely a decade after the UN repealed the infamous ‘Zionism is Racism’ resolution, which Secretary-General Kofi Annan described, with characteristic understatement, as a “low point” in the history of the United Nations, a group of states for whom the terms ‘racism’, ‘discrimination’, and even ‘human rights’ simply do not appear in their domestic lexicon, have hijacked this Conference and plunged us to even greater depths.

Bin Laden clearly had planned 9-11 well before Durban, but as he recently commented, he could have called it off. Instead, not only did Durban not discourage him (which it might have had it raised the hue and cry about Muslim racism), it almost surely led him to believe that the world would cheer him. And, as Baudrillard reveals her less than a month later, Bin Laden was not wrong.

This goes much further than hatred for the dominant global power from the disinherited and the exploited, those who fell on the wrong side of global order. That malignant desire is in the very heart of those who share (this order’s) benefits. An allergy to all definitive order, to all definitive power is happily universal, and the two towers of the World Trade Center embodied perfectly, in their very double-ness (literally twin-ness), this definitive order.

In case you haven’t caught on, Baudrillard loves this “malignant” resentment. For him it is the spirit of anarchy that is “happily universal.”

No need for a death wish or desire for self-destruction, not even for perverse effects. It is very logically, and inexorably, that the rise to power of power exacerbates a will to destroy it. And power is complicit with its own destruction. When the two towers collapsed, one could feel that they answered the suicide of the kamikazes [sic] by their own suicide. It has been said: “God cannot declare war on Itself”. Well, It can. The West, in its God-like position (of divine power, and absolute moral legitimacy) becomes suicidal, and declares war on itself.

The epigrammatic French of “No need for…” seems to mean “[We have] no need [to posit] a death wish or desire for self-destruction” in order to understand this reaction. The reaction is logical, inexorable.

Again, we return to Baudrillard’s attempt to disguise his base emotions in logic, objectivity, inexorability. No need? But what if, whatever its source, however powerful its pull, this reaction is self-destructive, it does reflects a death wish, it is, however “understandable,” profoundly perverse? From the perspective of people who find liberation of both themselves and their fellow citizens in their pruning back of envy and resentment, however limited our success, Baudrillard’s indulgence in this emotion seems like an act of profound self-destruction. Especially given the circumstances. It is precisely this resentment which will destroy the Europeans, which makes them vulnerable to demopaths and the Eurabian future in store for them. It is, in part, what brought down Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

There is another interesting element in this paragraph of suicidal denial. “The West,” he tells us in his characteristic tone of certainty, “in its God-like position (of divine power, and absolute moral legitimacy) becomes suicidal, and declares war on itself.” Actually, the whole point of the West’s success, intellectual as well as moral, comes from its willingness to be more modest about its claims and hence tolerant about dissent, and more self-critical about its behavior. If there are God-like claims to divine agency and absolute moral legitimacy, it comes from the Muslim terrorists, whose ideology apparently holds little interest for Baudrillard. His statement, shorn of its willful ignorance and projection should read: “It has been said, ‘Europe cannot declare war on itself.’ Well, it can. The Europeans, in their radical bad faith and envy (of American hegemony, and relative but clear moral legitimacy) becomes suicidal, and declares war on itself.”

I skip some of the text to focus on his analysis of American hegemony.

When the situation is thus monopolized by global power, when one deals with this formidable condensation of all functions through technocratic machinery and absolute ideological hegemony (pensée unique), what other way is there, than a terrorist reversal (literally, transfer) of the situation? It is the system itself that has created the objective conditions for this brutal distortion. By taking all the cards to itself, it forces the Other to change the rules of the game. And the new rules are ferocious, because the stakes are ferocious. To a system whose excess of power creates an unsolvable challenge, terrorists respond by a definitive act that is also unanswerable. Terrorism is an act that reintroduces an irreducible singularity in a generalized exchange system. Any singularity (whether species, individual or culture), which has paid with its death for the setting up of a global circuit dominated by a single power, is avenged today by this terrorist situational transfer.

Now it gets interesting, because here we see most clearly Baudrillard’s sleight of hand. America unquestionably dominates the global scene in an absolute fashion: it monopolizes power, takes all the cards for themselves. This is important, since were it not so, the resentment would not be objective, but subjective, and therefore, those who feel it might be held responsible for it.

Now granted, since the “thiry years’ war” of 1914-45 and the rise of America to a position of global dominance, France has suffered from a loss of prestige that it once had. But America’s dominion bears little resemblance to the kind of truly suffocating and contemptuous hegemony that France (and England, and the rest of the European imperial powers of the 19th, a fortiori earlier imperial powers including Islam) had exercised when they dominated the globe. And yet, in order for his ressentiment to operate symbolically, it must be unquestionable, “objective”ly true that American hegemony leaves no room for anything else. It must be absolute in order to deserve the hatred it inspires.

But American hegemony is the least monopolistic, the least forceful of all the cultural hegemonies known world-wide… hegemony lite. And the French in particular, have been the recipient of the most generous (and historically unprecedented expressions of America’s lack of imperialist instincts, having twice been saved by American forces and twice given back its independence, the second time with a great deal of foreign aid and a seat on the UN Security Council with veto-power. As Walter R. Meade notes:

This phenomenon [of anti-americanism] persists despite the fact that few countries benefited more from the American security umbrella in the twentieth century.

France has done very well in the world where America exercises hegemony. They have pursued, often at the expense of the USA, their own way diplomatically, economically, culturally. They have prospered as never before, and had a stable and durable republic as never before. In other words, if there is a people who should not be resentful of American, but rather grateful, it is the French. And yet, among the vast array of anti-American forces taking shape so ominously around the world, they are among the leaders of the pack, with this passage from Baudrillard as a flag flying on the prow of that ship.

So what are the “objective conditions” of her resentment at this hegemony? As far as I can make out, the hegemonic force that suffocates French society, especially among the elites, allowing — at least where the USA is concerned — a “pensée unique”, is resentment that the Americans occupy a place that should be France’s, a sentiment they share (unwittingly?) with the Arabs. When stripped of its intellectual gloss, what we here witness is the deep frustration of the French — and the Europeans — that, by rules that allow them to win, they cannot. No matter how hard they try, by the rules of meritocracy and voluntarism that dominate so much of modern societies choices — what movies you go to, what products you buy, who generates successful innovations — they come in a painful second to the US. Could this be why Europeans find it so easy to explain Palestinian hatred of the Israelis as “intolerable despair” and “hopelessness.” They experience the same “identification” with the “intolerable” helplessness of losing competition to the Americans that the Palestinians feel in their efforts to win their zero-sum competition with the Israelis.

The “absolute” hegemony of the US actually resembles more the feeling of despair that overcomes an athlete when he realizes that some other athlete will consistently beat him. [The Euro and the EU -- and Eurabia -- were supposed to allow Europeans to compete successfully with the US. But no, things are not working out as they wished.] Does that mean you blow up the stadium, or cheer when someone else does it? This is not “objective grounds” for hatred. This is the height of subjectivity, and height of base motives. But Baudrillard can’t stop himself, and it must be someone else’s fault. Into the spell of words he plunges.

Terror against terror — there is no more ideology behind all that. We are now far from ideology and politics. No ideology, no cause, not even an Islamic cause, can account for the energy which feeds terror. This energy does not aim anymore to change the world, it aims (as any heresy in its time) to radicalize it through sacrifice, while the system aims to realize (the world) through force.

Say what? There is plenty of ideology at work here. But never mind. The energy is, indeed, emotional. It is not, however, a force of nature, a juggernaut that will wipe everything out in its path. And, having studied many heresies, I do not recognize his sweeping generalization — or even his invocation of this base resentment as characteristic of “any heresy in its time.” Garbing his emotions in grandiose disguises — a radical, self-sacrificing heresy, an energy that drives world history, Baudrillard has managed an ideological coup. Now the “system” by which America has achieved its unique hegemony becomes the symbolic expression of “force”, and the violent reaction it inspires, the epitome of liberating resistance. But it’s just the contrary: American (Western liberal) hegemony comes above all from “voluntarism“, and the resistance comes from the very forces that produce the most suffocating, force-driven, self-impoverishing hegemonic societies — envy, theocracy, patriarchy, honor.

Baudrillard insists there is no need for discussions of “self-destructiveness” and “suicidal impulses.” I beg to differ. Only by confronting and renouncing this debasing envy and the distorting lens it focuses on everything — a phenomenon to which Baudrillard’s own essay bears eloquent testimony — is there any hope that Europe can save itself. Baudrillard seems to think himself a successor to Nietzsche — bold enough to look the painful truths right in the eye and speak them aloud. But when I read this convoluted and self-deceiving indulgence in the very resentment Nietzsche despised, I’m filled above all with the sickening sense of witnessing someone who should — were he sufficiently aware — be experiencing Sartre’s “nausea”. Indeed, if anything, Baudrillard has taken Sartre’s place as both a brilliant useful idiot and a patron saint of “bad faith.”

As long as he avoids the freedom to chose to which, as Sartre claims, he is doomed, and indulges in the bad faith to deny that he (and “everyone else”) has that freedom, he (and everyone else he so inspires) is doomed. As the scripture he probably has no time for would advise him: “choose life.”

Read the whole piece by Baudrillard, or even the book. If Europe becomes a Muslim continent in the course of the 21st century, Baudrillard has written its epitaph.

Political Science vs Philosophy - General Discussion - Lawstudents.ca

Political Science

Rtime Wrote:


Posted 30 March 2010 - 05:50 PM

Hello all, I'm going into my first year undergraduate and I'm trying to decide on whether to take Political Science, Philosophy or double major in both? I know it's best to take what interests you, but they both seem like interesting majors to me. That being said, which one would be better prep for law school? Is one slightly easier? Is one filled with more exams vs the other? Opinions on this matter would be greatly appreciated!! Thanks in advance everyone!



WetSnow Wrote:

Posted 30 March 2010 - 09:00 PM

You always have the option of a Combined major in both, which wouldn't take you any extra time. I started out in Poli Sci and switched to a Combined major in Poli Sci and History. What you should really do though is look at the upper year course selections in each department and maybe choose the one with the most variety. My school's Poli Sci program offers a large course selection and I was able to achieve a nice balance between practicality and 'hard thought' by choosing my 4th year seminars in US foreign policy and contemporary political philosophy.

If I had the chance to go back and do it again though I probably would have started out with philosophy. It really allows you to think critically about any possible subject you can imagine; all disciplines have their roots in philosophy. However, if you are interested in law I would avoid the more spiritually based philosophy classes (i.e. Zen, Buddhism etc.) and stick to either the Analytical or Continental schools of thought. That being said, philosophy exposes you to a lot of different things and I wouldn't be surprised if by the end of it you decided that law school wasn't for you. In my opinion not a lot of hard thinking goes on in Political Science and you can really lose yourself in the 'issues' and turn into a newspaper junkie, or worst yet, a tweed-wearing activist.





Lateralus Wrote:

Posted 31 March 2010 - 06:46 AM

I'm finishing up an Honours degree in Poli Sci with a Minor in Philosophy, and I think I got the best balance out of both the subjects. While philosophy is great, I found that towards the end of my degree I was asking my self who fucking cares? more often than I'd like in reference to some ideas. That being said, Philosophy does provide a great foundation to take on any subject because you learn to think critically. By far the best course I took in undergrad was a course called 'Thinking Critically and Analyzing', which was pretty much a year-long LSAT course, and dealt with pretty much all the stuff you will eventually have to learn when you start studying for the LSAT (necessary and sufficient conditions, causality, argument structure, etc.) If you can find a course equivalent to this I say take it.

Poli Sci is great but, again, towards the end of my degree I loathed any course that dealt with political theory, such as IR. Stuff like this was interesting at first but the more practical courses like Municipal/Provincial/Public Policy I found to be much more interesting (and I did better in) because it dealt with issues and concepts I could relate to. I also think these kinds of courses will be much more useful in law school than say, a course that deals with Jean Baudrillard's political philosophy and how it applies to 9/11. - Link: Baudrillard on 9-11

Either way, take a broad range of courses in 1st year and take what interests you, or else you might find yourself pretty miserable.

NOAM CHOMSKY - BIOGRAPHY

(Avram) Noam Chomsky is an eminent linguist and a radical political philosopher of international reputation. He was born on December 7, 1928 in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania, USA) where he grew up in a family of Ukrainian and Belarusian Jewish immigrants who had gone through New York before settling in Philadelphia. According to Chomsky they remained "immersed in both Hebrew culture and literature." Not surprisingly, therefore, Chomsky’s parents both taught at a Hebrew school. Before he was two years of age they sent him to an experimental progressive school, where he remained until the age of twelve. There he would learn that everybody has a place and that everyone can do something important. Chomsky himself remembers a childhood absorbed in reading. He can see himself curled up on a sofa reading the books he used to borrow from the library often up to a dozen at a time. Having until then been to a school where he would neither experience competition amongst his classmates nor any kind of ranking relative to others, he would not learn until middle school that he is a good student. His years there and subsequently in high school, however, were characterized by ruthless competitiveness and they remain a period of his life almost completely blocked out of his memory, except for the emotional aspects, which he has qualified as rather negative.

Today Chomsky is Professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he has taught all of his career. He founded generative linguistics, which in and of itself was a revolution in his field and beyond. He also became known to the general public, both at home and abroad by being a committed intellectual with a clear inclination for what he referred to early as "anarcho-syndicalism". Syndicalisme is a French word derived from Greek that means "trade unionism".

The first article Chomsky ever wrote was published in the school newspaper just a few weeks after his tenth birthday as an editorial on the fall of Barcelona in the Spanish Civil War. Chomsky came across anarchism very young and even published an anti-fascist article when he was just twelve. Thanks to an assistance program for persons with disabilities in New York City in the 30s, Chomsky’s uncle who was a hunchback had been given a newspaper stand to tend behind the exit of the subway station of the 72nd Street and Broadway. The kiosk, as a result of being behind the exit hardly made any money, but it became a forum where radical ideas came together, and where the young Chomsky would work in the evenings and take part in the rich intellectual debates. Chomsky would even declare years later that it is where he got his political education.

Chomsky has been a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and of the National Academy of Sciences. Over the years Noam Chomsky has been invited to numerous major universities all around the globe. He has received at least ten honorary university degrees from around the world. In 1988, Japan awarded him with the Kyoto Prize for the Basic Sciences category. In terms of its prestige, its intent, and its monetary value ($350,000), it is very similar to the Nobel Prize. He has been the eighth most cited intellectual in the scientific literature for a long time and was identified in 2005 by the British magazine Prospect as the most influential living scholar in the world.

Indeed his influence extends beyond that of science and in 1992 The Arts and Humanities Citation Index recognized Chomsky as being cited more than any other living scholar in the eighties and early nineties. Indeed, with William Shakespeare, Karl Marx and the Bible, Chomsky is apparently one of the top ten most cited in the humanities.

In 1945 he began studying philosophy, mathematics and linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania where his teachers included the famous philosopher and systems scientist C. West Churchman, the distinguished philosopher Nelson Goodman and the renowned linguist Zellig Harris. In 1949 Noam Chomsky marries the linguist and education specialist Carol Schatz’s whom he knew since early childhood and with whom he would have three children, two girls and one boy (Aviva, Diane and Harry). Carol Chomsky died of cancer in 2008. Under the guidance of teachers such as the Russian linguist and literary theorist Roman Jakobson and one of his former mentors Nelson Goodman, Chomsky did research for several years at Harvard University on the grammatical constructions of Hebrew. In 1955 he presented a doctoral thesis on syntactic structures entitled "Transformational Analysis", which would pave the way for his revolutionary concept of transformational grammar.
Chomsky then joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge where he was first appointed professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics, before being promoted and take the Ferrari P. Ward chair in 1966. Finally in 1976 he became "Institute Professor", a title which is given to members of the faculty who have made major contribution to both their field as well as the MIT community. In total, Chomsky would teach linguistics at MIT for fifty years, retiring from the job in 2005.

A question often asked throughout the years by many people, including Chomsky himself, has been whether there is connection between Chomsky’s theoretical pioneering linguistics and his activist progressive politics. And if so, how strong is it? Chomsky today gives essentially the same answer to the question as he has throughout his career. Already in an 1971 interview he answered in a most interesting and genuinely honest way:
I would be very pleased to be able to discover intellectually convincing connections between my own anarchist convictions on the one hand and what I think I can demonstrate or at least begin to see about the nature of human intelligence on the other. But I simply can’t find intellectually satisfying connections between those two domains. I can discover some tenuous points of contact. [...] I happen to believe in the libertarian conclusions and I would like to discover a solid base for them in some conception of human nature. But of course I have to leave an open mind to the possibility that maybe I am completely wrong about this. Maybe in fact human beings are fundamentally competitive, aggressive. Maybe they have all the hateful characteristics which capitalist ideology presupposes. That’s a possible - empirical possibility. I don’t believe it but I also don’t think I can disprove it. I would like to believe that it’s false and that a different society will bring out and be built upon other much more desirable characteristics of human beings. And I would like to be able to show those characteristics exist, that they are in a sense fundamental. That they are muted and in fact deformed by capitalist ideology. But that remains to be demonstrated in my opinion and I don’t want to claim to have a demonstration where I only have a hope.
In strictly academic circles Noam Chomsky is best known as the theoretician who came up with the theory of transformational generative grammar, which revolutionized cognitive and linguistic sciences in the middle of the twentieth century. Since then, it has had a very important impact on both the analytic philosophy take of philosophy of language and philosophy of mind, as distinct to the continental philosophy one. Philosophy of language investigates the use, nature and origins of language. Whereas philosophy of mind studies the nature of the mind, its properties, but also consciousness. We must think of what is known as the mind-body problem (Descartes), and particularly the discussion of the origin of knowledge common to both philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. The analytic and continental traditions approach each philosophy in ways that are significantly different.
It is important to note it is increasingly argued today that the opposition between analytic (Anglo-American) and continental (European) or critical philosophy is a division that needs to be transcended. One proponent of this view is the continental philosopher Simon Critchley, who teaches at the European Graduate School (EGS). He points out that just as continental philosophy can sometimes be guilty of obscurantism, analytic philosophy can as often be accused of scientism. Nevertheless, there are important differences in how they approach both philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. Furthermore, since they are closely related to both Chomsky’s linguistics and his politics, it is therefore critical to point to some of the main ones here.
Not surprisingly, Chomsky situates himself in the analytic tradition. Moreover, Chomsky has dismissed and accused some of the leading figures of the 20th century of a kind of obscurantism including Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, referring to them as a "postmodernist cult". In the mid nineties Chomsky was being asked about them and as a response he posted a final statement saying why he sees them that way. There he said about deconstruction that he could not really comment "because most of it seems to me gibberish". That "Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Julia Kristeva, etc. --- even Foucault, whom I knew and liked, and who was somewhat different from the rest --- write things that I also don't understand..." In the same vein, in an interview Chomsky declared: "I don’t know this literature very well, and to tell you the truth, the reason I don’t know it is that I don’t find it interesting. I try to read it now and then but just don’t find it very interesting." Chomsky does not find anything interesting in this literature and concedes that maybe he does not understand it. Further, he asked on several occasions that someone explain to him in plain language what it is really about and what is new about it. As far as he can see there is nothing theoretically worthwhile there, partly because such literature does not appeal to scientific reason. In fact in many ways it wants to challenge reason and uses quite a few neologisms as a way to interrogate the way reason appears in a variety of ways in language. In this way it may be fair to say that Chomsky thus finds such thought even dangerous in the sense that, according to him, by unnecessarily complicating things without proving anything in the traditional sense, it may contribute to the kind of manufactured thought he is forcefully against both in his linguistic and political work. Yet Chomsky’s position is unexpected in a way because Derrida et al.’s work clearly situates itself as part of a kind of critical thought.
More telling still of the philosophical difference, in 1971 Chomsky was invited to debate the French thinker Michel Foucault on Dutch television for The International Philosophers Project. It gave rise to a fascinating debate, which has been published several times since then, most recently as The Chomsky-Foucault Debate: On Human Nature (2006). Chomsky argued for the concept of human nature as a political guide for activism. Indeed, Chomsky believes human nature to be something that is largely definable, and even as he concedes that we may never get to a perfect definition, he wants to act with the best definition we have. While Foucault on the other hand sees no human nature except for the concept of it, which is inevitably ridden with power. He argued that any notions of human nature cannot escape such influence and must therefore first be critiqued as such, which he considers to be an urgent task.
To a large extent, the different ways in which analytical and continental philosophy diverge emerge from the argument that experience and knowledge are mediated by conditions that, while they need to be critiqued, are not directly accessible to an empirical and thus scientific examination. This was first argued it is generally accepted by 18th century continental philosopher, Immanuel Kant, and it has had several important incarnations in continental philosophy since then. While on the other hand, as a a self-declared Cartesian, Chomsky (Cartesian Linguistics, 1966) clearly embraces the interpretation of the Cartesian cogito in Descartes’ famous dictum "I think therefore I am" (cogito ergo sum) as the solid foundation for knowledge. In contrast with for example the interpretation of the influential continental philosopher Slavoj Zizek, who teaches at the European Graduate School, who on the one hand defends the Cartesian subject, and on the other together with Kant and Lacan refuses the possibility of the cogito to be a substantial object - a subject whose conditions for seeing can simply be transparent. It is important to note the Cartesian cogito has been the source of major debates in the history of philosophy too big to go into here. Christopher Wises’ 2011 book Chomsky and Deconstruction: The Politics of Unconscious Knowledge argues inter alia that it is not just that continental philosophers write "gibberish," but that they they critique many of Chomsky’s central theoretical givens. Interestingly, Wise does this by exploring the historical constructions of Chomsky’s linguistics. He tries to show that the very Cartesian foundation of Chomsky’s thought makes his claims to of being free of the old problems of metaphysics untenable. Indeed the book attempts to draw the necessary links between Chomsky’s linguistics and his political views by making clear the philosophical points they have in common.

Today, continental philosophers reject what they deem to often be scientism because they work with the assumption that science itself is filled with interpretations as much as other discourses. Here language is typically associated with logic in the old Greek sense of the word, discourse or reason, and thus seeks to interrogate it. And not as the mathematical reasoning meaning of the word logic that is central to analytic philosophy. Which means that for critical philosophy language is seen as being historically constructed. So while for analytic philosophy, problems of philosophical nature can be analyzed apart from their historical background, continental philosophy instead cautions that philosophical arguments themselves cannot be considered as separated from the contextual conditions of what is deemed to be a historical origin. This means that unlike analytical philosophy, continental philosophy see theory and practice as being inseparable, thus making the work of philosophy itself very much a part of personal and political transformation. Indeed, it is somewhat ironic that the very link that Chomsky wants to find between his analytic philosophy and his politics seems more easily found in continental critical thought.
On a practical level, in analytical philosophy language is studied as a separate discipline, whereas in continental philosophy language is studied within its many branches, say from existentialism to deconstruction and beyond. If we consider how the two approach philosophy of mind, it is important to note that continental philosophy instead of putting much of the emphasis on logical analysis, it opens up the exploration to other forms of understanding of the human condition. Concepts of thought and perceptual experience are thus not treated only with analyses of linguistic forms, but include for example, the very content of experience beyond that of thinking logic, thus including historical logic as well.
Chomsky would direct the theoretical attack that made him famous against both behaviorism (B.F. Skinner), which had been the most prominent theory of mind in analytic philosophy for the first half of the 20th century, and against structural linguistics (Ferdinand de Saussure), which would become extremely influential to the second half of 20th century continental philosophy. While behaviorism had become incredibly popular by seeking to understand behavior and language as a function of environmental histories, on the other hand structural linguistics examined language not in terms of its use but focused instead on its universal underlying system independent of empirical, contingent features of language, looking at how its elements relate to one another today (synchronically) rather than over time (diachronically).
In further contrast to behaviorism, while Chomsky recognized that structural linguistics was useful for the analysis of finite and thus collectable number of units of language (phonology; morphology), he nevertheless attacked structural linguistics and said of it in 1972: "impoverished and thoroughly inadequate conception of language." Chomsky's key argument on structural linguistics is to show its inadequacy in explaining complex or ambiguous sentences. He demonstrated such analysis was insufficient for syntax, which is what Chomsky’s original research was focusing on, arguing that since an endless number of sentences can be uttered, it makes the collection of all of them impossible.
With generative grammar Chomsky suggested instead it is the linguist’s role is to create a small set of rules that can correctly generate all the combinations of words possible to form all the grammatical sentences of a language. He did that using an algorithm to predict all grammatically correct sentences. In particular contrast with behaviorism, Chomskyan revolutionary theory rests on the demonstrated assumption that many of the properties of language are in fact innate as well as the universality of its deep structures.
In addition to Chomsky’s classification of formal languages by their generative power (designated today as "Chomskyan Hierarchy"), he has authored several seminal texts in this field, including Syntactic Structures (1957), Aspects of Theory of Syntax (1965), Cartesian Linguistics (1966), Language and Mind (1968), The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory (1975) and many more articles on both this topic and his politics, publishing practically a book or more a year since 1968. His most recent linguistic work deals with the "minimalist program" in cognitive science.
On October 20th 2008, just before the November 4th historical election of Barack Obama as President of the United States, in an important interview Chomsky was asked who to vote for in swing states. Chomsky suggested that people vote for Obama, the "lesser of the two evils", without illusions. Arguably, Chomsky’s analysis is being proven right by history:
Well, I would suggest voting against McCain, which means voting for Obama without illusions, because all the elevated rhetoric about change and hope and so on will dissolve into standard centrist Democratic policies if he takes office. However, there is a difference, and it's been studied quite closely by political scientists. There's a strong difference over time. You don't see it in any particular moment, but over time the general population, the large majority of the population other than the very wealthy, tends to do considerably better under Democratic than under Republican administrations. And the reason is sort of what you said: they reflect different elite constituencies, and the differences are quite striking and very noticeable. So if that's what matters to you, you know, that's usually a pretty good guy if you're voting. It's not that the Democrats represent public opinion. They don't. In fact, like the Republicans, they're pretty relatively right of public opinion on a host of major issues, including those of most importance to the public. In fact, what's happening now, it's interesting it's not being discussed. It's very striking; it tells you a lot about American democracy. For years, decades, in fact, one of the leading concerns, if not the top concern of the public, has been the health care system, which is understandable. It's a total catastrophe.

Several documentaries have been devoted to Chomsky including, most famously the 1992 Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media. His books, conferences and various articles on the United States, capitalism, the media, or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have made him a controversial figure and have earned him at times the condemnation of both liberal and conservative circles. This is perhaps especially true in France where the Jewish intelligentsia media leads a permanent campaign of vilification against him, accusing him of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial and preventing any debate about its work. This perhaps stemmed partly from the "Faurisson Affair" in which one of Chomsky's short texts was arguably misused. Indeed, former professor of literature at the University of Lyons in France, Robert Faurisson was suspended from his duties in the late 1970s and prosecuted because he had, inter alia, denied the existence of gas chambers during World War II. A petition to defend freedom of expression was then signed by more than five hundred people, including Chomsky. In response to reactions to his signing the petition, Chomsky wrote a short text in which he explained that defending the right of a person to express their views does not mean one shares them. Chomsky gave his text to then friend, Serge Thion, allowing him to use it at will. However Thion used it as an opinion piece at the very beginning of Faurisson’s 1980 book, making it look like Chomsky defended him and thus what he stood for. Chomsky repeatedly pointed out that he never intended to have that text be published in that way but that when he found out and tried to prevent it it was too late.
Noam Chomsky, who has often defined himself as an "socialist anarchist" has been since the 60s one of the most active and most famous American intellectuals of the Left. As a pacifist he was one of the main opponents to the Vietnam War in the late 60s and today to the American-Israeli policy in the Middle East. As a supporter of the international anarcho-syndicalist movement and as a member of the Industrial Workers of the World union (IWW), he has published numerous books critical of imperialism and the United States’ foreign policy as well as the role of the media in Western democratic societies.
As mentioned above, in those fields too he is the author of countless articles and books. Some of them include: The Responsibility of Intellectuals (1967). "Human Rights" and American Foreign Policy (1978). Pirates and Emperors: International Terrorism and the Real World (1986). Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988). Terrorizing the Neighborhood: American Foreign Policy in the post-Cold War Era (1991). Democracy in a Neoliberal Order: Doctrines and Reality (1997). Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda (1997). Propaganda and the Public Mind (2001). Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky (2002). Power and Terror: Post-9/11 Talks and Interviews (2003). Perilous Power: The Middle East and US Foreign Policy: Dialogues on Terror, Democracy, War, and Justice (2006). Hopes and Prospects (2010). Making the Future: The Unipolar Imperial Moment (2010). Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel’s War Against the Palestinians (2010).

Political Theory

Political Theory - Department of Politics at Princeton University

Political theory is the study of the concepts and principles that people use to describe, explain, and evaluate political events and institutions. Traditionally, the discipline of political theory has approached this study from two different perspectives: the history of political thought, and contemporary political philosophy. Princeton ’s political theory faculty has strength in both of these areas of the discipline, and indeed a number of faculty members actively work in both.

Major areas of research bringing together clusters of Princeton political theorists include democratic theory, international political theory, and aspects of the history of political thought. Princeton ’s theorists share a strong commitment to interdisciplinary research. Graduate students routinely take seminars in the Departments of Philosophy, Classics, Religion and History, and participate in activities at the University Center for Human Values. A number of Politics faculty enjoy affiliate status in these units, and Politics extends the same status to several outside faculty with strong profiles in political theory. The theorists also work closely with empiricists in other subfields of the department.

The Program in Political Philosophy offers graduate students the chance to do interdisciplinary work. It also sponsors colloquia that bring political philosophers to Princeton every two or three weeks throughout the academic year, enabling graduate students to meet scholars from across the field.

The University Center for Human Values offers a year-long lineup of speakers on themes of interest to political theorists, sponsors graduate prize fellowships that support advanced research by graduate students, and supports a post-doctoral research program that brings several political theorists to Princeton each year for one-year visits.

View a list of members of the Princeton political theory community.

Social and Political Thought

Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies --- Department of Social Science -- Social and Political Thought

Introduction to the Program
The Programme in Social and Political Thought (SPT) is concerned with the interdisciplinary study of human community-its nature, history and foreseeable futures. It is open to students in the disciplines of Anthropology, English, History, Humanities, Political Science, Philosophy, Sociology, Women's Studies, or another approved discipline.
It is intended for those students whose breadth of focus is such that they would like to view the social and political situation of contemporary societies, both substantively and theoretically, from a plurality of social science and humanistic perspectives. The programme includes a wide range of courses in areas of Social and Political Thought such as -History of Social and Political Thought, Political Economy, The Foundations of Social and Political Theory, Literature and Art and Society.
In addition to stimulating an interest in interdisciplinary studies, the programme seeks to equip its students with the analytical and problem-solving skills required to pursue graduate studies, or to find employment in fields such as journalism, education, public service and other professions in affiliated departments and other related disciplines.



Political science - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Political science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government, and politics. 

Political Science and Activism


Political Theorists and Activists.


Machiavelli (1469-1527).
"We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do."

Rousseau, Jean Jacques (1712-88):
"Rousseau undertook the defence of social nudity. He called upon his world, which prided itself so much upon its elegance, to divest the body politic of all its robes. He declared that while Nature has made man happy and virtuous, it is society that renders him miserable and depraved ..."



Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679).
Hobbes' interest in science, particularly that of Euclidian geometry, led him to conclude that it should be possible "to extend such deductive certainty to a comprehensive science of man and society." Hobbes carried out "greatest, perhaps the sole, masterpiece of political philosophy in the English language."



Locke, John (1632-1704).
Locke set forth the rational reason for the existence of a limited government: "The great and chief end, therefore, of men's uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property." And, that people could generally regulate themselves without extensive and detailed governmental intervention: "Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature: these are the spur and reins whereby all mankind are set on work, and guided."



Noam Chomsky - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Avram Noam Chomsky (/ˈnoʊm ˈtʃɒmski/; born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher,[8][9] cognitive scientist, logician,[10][11] historian, political critic, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years.[12] In addition to his work in linguistics, he has written on war, politics, and mass media, and is the author of over 100 books.[13] According to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index in 1992, Chomsky was cited as a source more often than any other living scholar from 1980 to 1992, and was the eighth most cited source overall.[14][15][16][17] He has been described as a prominent cultural figure, and he was voted the "world's top public intellectual" in a 2005 poll.[18][19]