First published 1998 by Ashgate Publishing
Reissued 2018 by Routledge
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Copyright R. J. Schindler 1998
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ISBN 13: 978-1-138-34363-4 (hbk)
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Like many other interesting cultural events in an age of transition, Ronald Schindlers impressive book is a contradictory cultural phenomenon. It has obvious practical intentions but, since it cannot rely on any American practical movement, it remains almost purely theoretical. It addresses almost every existing contemporary school of thought, yet it does not belong to any of them and would not be recognized by the epigones of any one of them, since it lacks most of those external signs which demonstrate adherence to the club. The book is exceptional in the present day American philosophical culture and yet it reflects some of its new tendencies.
What prevails in present day American philosophical culture is still a clear-cut division among philosophical trends and disciplines. Analytical philosophy still dominates; the majority of those who oppose it seek a clear identity as phenomenologists, hermeneuticians, Marxists, or pragmatists. Philosophers are still specialized: they teach and write on logic, or philosophy of science, or history of philosophy, or ethics, or metaphysics (whatever it might mean once it was coopted by logicians). Schindlers book defies any classification of that sort. His basic sympathies lie with critical theory, but he is critical of both Marx and Habermas, sympathetic of hermeneutics, and tends to identify his standpoint as one of critical phenomenology. He deals with a variety of topic areas, from methodology and epistemology to critique of science and ideology, ethics, politics, and psychology of education theory.
A remarkable erudition is another exceptional characteristic of Schindlers book. Those hundreds of books listed in the bibliography have been carefully studied by the author, who has never attempted to learn the technique of speed reading. In American culture, strangely enough, erudition is not a highly regarded merit. A virtue has been turned into a vice in order to justify a style of life in which there is not enough time for reading. Universities are being turned into business-corporations in which high paying students require a lot of attention: teaching is more demanding than anywhere else. Intellectuals, socialized into being achievers of power and/or wealth, waste a good deal of their best energy in departmental power struggles. Building true friendships has been replaced by a very extensive socializing which produces fragile, easily perishable human links in exchange for precious time which could have been spent with a book, or in some meaningful social engagement. Even the greatest erudites of our epoch, people like Ernst Cassirer or Ernst Bloch, fared poorly in the New World, and the Frankfurt School itself made no impact on American academia during its time of exile from Nazi Germany and temporary stay in New York. Of course a certain repulsion for erudition is not only a special case of mauvaise foi generated by a special style of academic life but also a consequence of analytical methodology. Vast knowledge is required for a historical approach to problems. It is much less relevant for a mere clarification of concepts, for a play with logical possibilities, no matter how brilliant it could be.
Another idiosyncrasy of Schindlers work is his dialectical language. Fredric Jameson, quoted in the Postface of this book, is right when he says: Nowhere is the hostility of the Anglo-American tradition toward the dialectical more apparent than in the widespread notion that the style of these works is obscure and cumbersome, indigestible, abstract, or, to sum it all up in a convenient catchword, germanic.
An arrogant superficiality tends to condemn all true thinking, all creation of original complex symbols, all openings of new difficult problems, by raising clarity to the level of a supreme criterion of evaluation. This does not mean that an effort to truly communicate to an audience is not a matter of human decency, of respect for other human beings. Obscure, mystifying thought conceals itself behind an obscurantist language. Other conditions being equal, clarity is a legitimate criterion of evaluation. But other conditions are not equal. A conformist thought can rely entirely on a very clear and simple, descriptive terminology. A thought that questions and challenges given institutions and patterns of life must explore the realm of the non-visible, non-behavioral, not immediately testable; it must speak about deep structure, about possibilities which can be tested only under very specific conditions. A radical thought goes beyond the observable, easily conceivable specifics; it examines universal aspects of social life, the totality of human condition; thus it must be more abstract and condensed in its multidimensionality. Since its purpose is not only to inform but also to express preferences and to translate pure theory into practical engagement, it will need many more metaphors and value-laden concepts. With increasing maturity, more complex messages will require more complex symbolic means. And, vice versa, deliberate simplifications and pauperization of language reduces culture to an increasingly infantile level.
While Schindlers book is exceptional in relation to the academic establishment and the dominant positivist tradition, it reflects some new trends in American philosophical culture. There is a growing malaise within analytical philosophy itself. To be sure, analysis of concepts will remain one of the lasting tasks of any good philosophy. But all those specific features which used to characterize philosophical analysis as a particular philosophical school are crumbling. Since Kuhn and Feyerabend, the historical approach to knowledge is no longer neglected. The emotivist approach to values, to ethics and aesthetics, is under attack. Some analytical scholars have become critics of society. Bridges are being built toward European schools of thought: hermeneutics, phenomenology, Marxism, structuralism, existentialism. Students demand courses in continental philosophy; bookstores are full of books on Nietzsche, Marx, Heidegger, even Hegel.
