Scholem on Frege (J. Stanley)

From Gershom Scholem, Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship:

Philosophy in Jena was rather annoying to me. I despised Rudolf Eucken, who looked unbelievably formal and spoke that way as well....Bruno Bauch's lectures, on the other hand, were mandatory, and to the extent they dealt with Kant, of interest to me, for I read a great deal on Kant that half-year....in the course of the semester I became acquainted with the polemic against Cohen, initiated by a lady, in the journal Kant-Studien, which betokened a nationalistic and mild but unmistakable anti-Semitic orientation on the part of certain neo-Kantians. On the positive side, I was drawn to two very dissimilar teachers. One of these was Paul F. Linke, an unorthodox pupil of Husserl, who induced me to study a major portion of Husserl's Logische Untersuchungen, about which Benjamin had only an indistinct impression from his Munich period. The other was Gottlob Frege, whose Grundlagen der Arithmetik I was reading along with related writings by Bachmann and Louis Couturat  (Die philosophischen Prinzipien der Mathematik). I attended Frege's one-hour lectures on "Begriffsschrift". At that time I was greatly interested in mathematical logic -- ever since I had discovered Schroeder's Vorlesungen ueber die Algebra der Logik in a second-hand bookshop in Berlin. These and similar attempts to attain a pure language of thought greatly fired my imagination. The logic of Hermann Lotze, which we read in Bauch's major seminar, left me cold. For my seminar paper I wrote a defense of mathematical logic against Lotze and Bauch; the latter listened to it in silence. The linguistic-philosophical element of a conceptual language wholly purged of mysticism, as well as the limits of the latter, seemed clear to me. I reported to Benjamin about this, and he asked me to send him my seminar paper. In those days I fluctuated between two poles of mathematical and mystical symbolism -- much more so than Benjamin, whose mathematical talent was slight; he was then and for a long time to come an adherent of mystical views of language.

As for Frege, who was almost as old as Eucken and like him wore a white beard, I enjoyed his unpompous manner, which so agreeably contrasted with Euken's. But in Jena hardly anyone took Frege seriously.

There is a lot to say about the significance of this passage of Scholem, from a memoir about his relationship with Benjamin (even ignoring the tragic irony that Frege was himself an anti-semite, though perhaps, as these pages suggest, a closeted one). Of course Scholem's own work on the Kabbalah led him to be interested in all sorts of attempts to devise universal languages, even ones of the non-mystical variety. But I also think it shows the great gap between the European humanist tradition and current American humanism. It is scarcely conceivable today that an American historian (or cultural anthropologist, or literary theorist), even of Scholem's stature, would write that groundbreaking work on mathematical logic "fired her imagination" as an undergraduate, much less evince such startlingly acute judgment about what philosophical work was likely to bear future fruit (indeed, it is unlikely that the typical contemporary American humanist has even been exposed to mathematical logic as part of his undergraduate education). This accords with my suspicion that the uniquely American attitude in the humanities towards philosophy has much more to do with the very different conception of the humanities prevailing now in the United States than it does with the putatively changing nature of philosophical inquiry.

Comments

[Jonathan]

A good number of theologians have engaged with Gdel's ontological proof, and I personally wish I could read Gabelsberger shorthand so that I could more easily delve into the Nachlass, which, by all accounts, are catholic and fascinating.

I also own a copy of Quine's Mathematical Logic, though sadly it hasn't influenced any of my own work.

[Patrick S. O'Donnell]

Yet how many philosophers read Gershom Scholem? Indeed, how many philosophers are conversant in Jewish mysticism, or Jewish philosophy for that matter (which would require an intimate knowledge of Islamic philosophy)?

[Jason Stanley]

Patrick,

I don't find acquaintance with Scholem's works any rarer among philosophers than I find it among literary theorists -- indeed quite the opposite. As to your question of "how many philosophers are conversant in Jewish philosophy"? Well, I don't know the answer to that one; I don't know enough about who reads what in their spare time. But within the small circle of philosophers of language whose work I professionally engage with regularly, I can think of a few who might be. For example, Josef Stern, the distinguished philosopher of language and author of *Metaphor in Context* (which uses the resources of contemporary semantics and philosophical logic to argue that metaphorical meaning is part of semantic content proper) is also the author of *Problems and Parables of Law: Maimonides and Nahmanides on Reasons for the Commandments*, and has a forthcoming book called *The Matter and Form of Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed *. Maybe he knows something about Jewish philosophy? I'm seeing him at a semantics conference in September, so I'll make sure to ask.

[David Hyder]

I’m not convinced that this tells us too much about the difference between “European” and “American” humanism. It does tell us something about the difference between turn-of-the-century German intellectual culture and our current one – in which I would include Germany.

The difference is roughly this: Hermann von Helmholtz gave lectures on Goethe, his student, Heinrich Hertz, learned Sanskrit and was a passionate reader of Kant. I could go on with such a list indefinitely. To paraphrase: “It is scarcely conceivable today that an American scientist (or mathematician, or chemist), even of Hertz’s stature, would write that Indian poetry "fired his imagination” as an undergraduate."

Now of course there are exceptions, among humanists and scientists, to the above rule(s). But on the whole, I think they are valid for most of us. And this is not due to a difference between Europe and North America. It’s principally the result of the insane specialisation that characterises academia everywhere today, a specialisation that would seem unavoidable. Helmholtz, for instance, published in all domains of physics after completing a distinguished career as a professor of physiology. Who can do that today?

As has been discussed before on these pages, American philosophers have scarcely been better than their humanist colleagues in bridging disciplinary gaps. I remained unconvinced that philosophers in America or otherwise are being marginalised – or, if they are, it’s mostly their own fault. After all, to follow up on the science side: I’ve had conversations with working scientists (e.g. my father) in which they were incredible dismissive of analytic philosophers.

So, Jason, do you think we’d be getting more grants approved if Richard Feynman (“Philosophers say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for science, and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and probably wrong.”) were sitting on the committee? I don’t think so.

[Jason Stanley]

David,

You write:

"As has been discussed before on these pages, American philosophers have scarcely been better than their humanist colleagues in bridging disciplinary gaps."

I strongly disagree with this claim; it seems obviously false. There is an Orwellian use of the term "interdisciplinary" in the humanities, whereby being interdisciplinary means studying Deleuze and Guattari and a small group of other (mostly French) theorists, and applying it to various facets of contemporary culture or literature surrounding topics of identity. In this sense, philosophers aren't very "interdisciplinary". But that's an absurd sense of the term. In the sense of *bridging disciplinary gaps* between distinct disciplines, philosophy are clearly the most interdisciplinary of the humanities. I'm in three different departments (philosophy, lingiustics, and cognitive science), and can chair dissertations in all of them. In that regard, I'm not unusual for a contemporary philosopher. Philosophers are regularly jointly appointed, or are associated faculty, in many different departments or schools, such as classics, linguistics, psychology, mathematics, computer science, engineering, law, medicine, political science, statistics, and so on. I've had colleagues or teachers in philosophy that were so interdisciplinary that they served terms as *chairs* of other departments (e.g. Josh Cohen chaired the political science department at MIT, P.J. Ivanhoe was head of Korean Studies at Michigan). It is true that philosophers are less likely to be part of the discipline that is called "interdisciplinarity" in American humanities today. But in the sense of "interdisciplinary" where it means "knowing and applying the contemporary literature of multiple distinct disciplines in one's work", philosophers are very successful at being interdisciplinary.

[David Hyder]

Jason,

Of all the points I made, this was by far the least important – I was more concerned (1) to call into doubt the conclusions you drew from the Scholem piece; and (2) to point out that we are not really going to get much more sympathy from other disciplines than we do from the humanities – with the possible exception of Linguistics and Computer Science (more on this below). And I’m not sure why you suggest that I am using Orwellian language – I’m not much interested in the trendy stuff you refer to.

Having said that, it seems to me that the sense of “interdisciplinary” that you do endorse - "knowing and applying the contemporary literature of multiple distinct disciplines in one's work" – is not the sense that’ll get us more grants. It ought to read: “producing work which is known and applied in multiple distinct disciplines”.

Now, there are plenty of people who do this, but we’ve had this discussion before: many of them are precisely those whose work is contemned by people in “core” areas – you know, “What you’re doing is interesting, but it’s not really philosophy.” Wish I’d had a dime for every time I’d heard that phrase.

On a closing note, I’m even skeptical how much value people in formal disciplines close to analytic philosophy place on philosophers’ work. A friend who is a prominent logician has told me repeatedly – usually after a beer or two – that he considers most of “core analytic” to be a waste of time. I don’t agree with him, but again, be careful what you wish for…

[Jason Stanley]

David,

You write that what matters should be:

“producing work which is known and applied in multiple distinct disciplines”, and you add "there are plenty of people who do this, but we’ve had this discussion before: many of them are precisely those whose work is condemned by people in “core” areas."

I'm sympathetic to your complaints. But I think that plenty of philosophy in 'core' areas has turned out to be work that is known and applied in multiple distinct disciplines. One example I repeatedly use is Lewis's work on causation, which has made it into computer science and economics. John MacFarlane's defenses of relativism about truth have affected linguistics already. Kripke and Putnam's work on natural kinds and essentialism has had a second life in cognitive psychology, thanks to psychologists such as Frank Keil and Susan Gelman. And so on.

As to your closing note -- if I had a dime for everyone who lacked interest, talent or knowledge in an area who told me that area was a waste of time, I'd be a millionare. The problem with the humanities in the United States (as opposed to Canada, for example, or for that matter any other country) is that grant allocations are being decided by people who either have no interest or talent in philosophy, or knowledge about it.

[David Hyder]

Jason,

I agree with you that there is "trickle-down" from good philosophical work. If I didn't, I'd lose faith completely.

And I was forced to recognise, while thinking about this on the way home, that my cavalier attitude is almost certainly due to differences between the NEH and SSHRC. Firstly, SSHRC includes the social sciences, but, more importantly, the committees are run pretty much like tenure committees. Everything is externally reviewed, the committee itself is quite limited in the criteria they can bring to bear on the applications (though some of these are set by SSHRC, and do include notions of "social relevance" etc.). In other words, the committee members are not supposed to rule so much on the project as on the candidate's track record.

Of course there are constant accusations of disciplinary bias; however, in the recent past, it's been the social scientists who've borne the brunt of the criticisms levelled by philosophers (social relevance again). In fact we do tend, as a group, to do pretty well.

[Kosta Calfas]

Jason, You write:

"It is scarcely conceivable today that an American historian...would write that groundbreaking work on mathematical logic "fired her imagination" as an undergraduate, much less evince such startlingly acute judgment about what philosophical work was likely to bear future fruit..."

Is the complaint here that american intellectuals are imprescient about which philosophical works are going to "bear future fruit"? If so, on what basis do you (can you) make this assertion?

If we're going to go by current intellectuals in a pertinent field, say cognitive science, Antonio Damasio has written two books with philosophical topics, one called 'Descartes Error' and the other 'Looking for Spinoza.' Bernard Baars is quite fond of Martin Buber's 'I and Thou' and V.S. Ramachandran and a host of other consciousness studies people are quite keen on William James (even though they're inconsistent readers of his work and often ignore the philosophical contents.)

What I'm getting at is that the complaint seems to be that American intellectuals (in the sciences) aren't finding alot of contemporary American philosophers particularly portentous of "future fruit." A plethora of explanations can be given why. There is always the odd exception, for example, Niels Jerne's nobel lecture was entitled "The Generative Grammar of the Immune System."

As for the American historian or literary theorist, they can often be heard mentioning Rorty, Derrida, and occasionally Habermas; were you to mention Kaplan, Quine, Lewis or Kripke to elicit a response the silence would be deafening. But Jason, in all candor, you can't tell people what they should and shouldn't like.

Scholem didn't like Frege because of his potential for fame amongst other philosophers, intellectuals or the "future fruit" he would bear for them. He was interested in Frege because he was "there" when Frege was teaching and it just so happened Frege was the best of the available alternatives. I don't think there's a way of planning and concentrating philosophical talent and novel ideas. The history of philosophy shows the emergence of intellectual centres is as much due to fortune as the best laid plans (Afterall, who would have gone to study in Konigsberg before Kant?). So fortunately, and unfortunately for you Jason two things happen to be true:

1. Grants which measure the estimation of a philosopher by their peers in other disciplines in the academy is not a good predictor of philosophical talents.

2. Neither can philosophical talent always be gauged by other philosophers (if it could we'd all be impressed at how prescient Frege's epithets against Husserl's psychologism were or Isaiah Berlin's buttering his toast with that "slenderest of bread knives" HLA Hart.)

[Gary Ostertag]

Fascinating passage. I actually heard about this from Kripke. At the dinner after his lecture at Rutgers last year, I had a chance to chat with him. We got to talking about the fact that Carnap had studied with Frege and Kripke told me that Scholem, too, had taken a course with Frege.