From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Wed Apr 19 2006 - 13:53:30 EDT
Usually we remember important philosophers because they - rightly or wrongly - pioneered insights into the human condition which are of enduring value - why not admit many people have a "Kierkegaardian moment" at some point in their lives? Usually when WSWS writes off a thinker, I'm inclined to think it's worth having a closer look at that thinker, since the critique usually amounts to not much more than the idea that the thinker failed to be a Marxist (yawn) - whereas a much more important concern for historical materialists is to explain how a thinker arrived at his ideas, and why they may still have a current resonance in public affairs. Can't say I am much of a fan of either Heidegger, Nietzsche or Kierkegaard, but there's no denying that they extended philosophical thought about the human condition in novel ways, and if they're still read today, this implies they offered some insights into human experience which still "strike a chord". And it's important to know why. Whatever you might say about Kierkegaard's more reactionary ideas (e.g. his distrust of the mass action - highlighted, of course, by WSWS), he was at least a pretty radical, independent thinker rising above dull conformism, and engaging with the ruling ideas of his time, including battles with Hans Christian Andersen. It may be comforting to believe that, as WSWS claims, "It was Lenin who aptly observed that the two camps into which philosophy resolved after Hegel were not only philosophical camps, but ideological and political camps as well-that the two opposing theoretical perspectives reflected the ongoing war between two opposed classes." But in the real world, most times things are not so clearcut, and to the great frustration of the sectarian, there are a plurality of "camps" which cannot easily be reduced or polarised into a neat chessboard opposition, without forcing caricatures and amalgams of positions that in reality reflect a variety of different concerns (think, for example, of GW Bush's crude political theory about the "axis of evil"). The "two camps" theory equates class conflicts with class struggles, but that is a big analytical mistake. Maybe even my favourite "Kierkegaardism" might shed some light on the famous "transformation problem": "Life must be understood backwards; but... it must be lived forward." Which is not altogether unlike Hegel's reference to the "owl of Minerva". Jurriaan
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