University of Chicago political theorist Jacob Levy, over at the Volokh Conspiracy, takes exception to my remarks about Kolakowski (Chicago folks are impressively loyal to each other!). In reply:
(1) I pointed out that Kolakowski was a politically motivated choice for the award, pandering to the right. Levy responds with a non-sequitur: "one might have expected both someone who is better known to the conservative Republican semi-academic Washington crowd and someone whose affiliation with the right is a bit less 'loose.'" Yes, if there were no other criteria this is what one would have expected , but there were other "official" criteria for the award: "outstanding" peer reputation, impact on other fields and on the public. Levy lists more clearly conservative figures like "Jacques Barzun, Paul Johnson, Bernard Lewis, Harvey Mansfield, Jean Elshtain, Robert Conquest." Elshtain is too young for a lifetime achievement award, Johnson doesn't have any claim to the relevant academic status, and Barzun, Lewis, Mansfield, and Conquest (whose age I don't know) haven't had as much cross-disciplinary and/or public impact as Kolakowski (the citation mentions his role in the Solidarity movement). (Lewis comes closest.) But look: if they had given it, say, to Harvey Mansfield, then even Jacob Levy, I hope, would find political pandering a plausible charge.
(2) Levy points out the ways in which Kolakowski is not as right-wing as some others, but of course what I said--as Levy himself quotes--is that Kolakowski is conservative in some "loose" sense; I didn't say he was the "most right-wing academic" the Library of Congress could find. Let me be more precise: Kolakowski is a staunch anti-communist, and has been feted for that by conservatives (why are we debating this? surely Levy knows this--take a look, e.g., at Jefferson Lecturers at the NEH under Lynne Cheney, of whom Kolakowski was one [Levy notes this without realizing that it proves the point!]. Rawls had to wait for Bill Clinton to get comparable recognition.). Some relevant excerpts from Kolakowski's argument that you can be a conservative/liberal/socialist are here (for "liberal" read: "classical liberal"). Readers may decide how far to the left this moves him. I agree with Levy he's not as conservative as some of the others Levy mentions.
(3) It wasn't quite "Leiter's charge that the selection panel ignored in-discipline standing and went for the right-wing political pander," it was Leiter's charge that the Library of Congress identified criteria for the award ("preeminent scholars...whose work was recognized as outstanding by their peers, and also spoke to people in other fields and in public life"), and then chose someone whose work is NOT "recognized as outstanding" by his peers in philosophy (the field with which he is identified by the Library of Congress and in the media). They didn't ignore in-discipline standing--otherwise, they could have given the award to Lynne Cheney--but they did ignore the stated requirement of being "outstanding" in the eyes of peers.
(4) Leiter said that Kolakowski's major work, Main Currents of Marxism,
"is a useful reference work" and that "it is comprehensive" and "detailed." Levy quotes Jon Elster (ruthless, sometimes brilliant, Marx critic, now dubbed "a man of the left" by Levy) saying that Kolakowski's work "will remain a basic work of reference on Marxism for a long time to come." Gee, I thought I'd said basically that too (I'll even add I agree with "for a long time to come": the book is very comprehensive and detailed). Nothing Elster says in the passage Levy quotes contradicts my claim that Kolakowski's monumental work is "philosophically superficial," which it is. Of course, to render that judgment, it helps to actually know something about philosophy and about the philosophical literature on Marx and Marxism. Examples of philosophical works on Marx and Marxism that are not superficial and are highly critical are Elster's own work, as well as, more recently, Michael Rosen, On Voluntary Servitude: False Consciousness and the Theory of Ideology (Harvard University Press, 1996). Anyone who has read Elster, Rosen, and Kolakowski will find my comments on this subject banal, which they are.
(5) Levy says: "Whether Kolakowski's writings on the philosophy of religion, on modernity and enlightenment, and on myth are of the highest quality I cannot judge. [Side note: this might have given Professor Levy pause before entering this fray.] But as far as I can tell none of these is a topic of interest or expertise for Leiter, and Kolakowski is obviously not an Anglo-American analytic philosopher of the sort who Leiter thinks make all important intellectual contributions-- so the fact that these works are little read by or known to Leiter doesn't itself stand as much of an indictment." Goodness! How did Levy conclude that I think "Anglo-American analytic philosopher[s]...make all important intellectual contributions." I've published on Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and Heidegger and taught, at the graduate level, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and Foucault. I've written and taught them all because they've made very important intellectual contributions (though I have reservations, to be sure, about Heidegger and, to a lesser extent, Hegel). But putting aside the mistaken ad hominem, my only claim was that Kolakowski's work on, e.g., Husserl and Hume, has had no impact on philosophical scholarship on Husserl and Hume. Which is also true, as someone who knew something about philosophical scholarship on these two figures would know. (But as Levy admits at the start: "I'm not a philosopher myself and I'm really not in a position to evaluate Kolakowski's work." A curious way to start...)
(6) Having finished with a display of disingenousness and ignorance, Levy now turns to smear: "If one were to try to make the argument that the Kluge Prize ought not to be handed out on the basis of political affiliations, including Noam Chomsky, Eric Hobsbawm, and Edward Said on one's top-seven list doesn't seem the most persuasive way to do it. Each meets the prize's criteria (except that Said does not meet the 'living' criterion), but I cannot help but be struck by who sprang to Leiter's mind." It wasn't my top 7 list--read Jacob!--it was who sprang to my mind, with the explicit caveat that no doubt those who thought about it systematically would come up with more and perhaps better. But do think about it for a moment: if the criteria are:
outstanding reputation among disciplinary peers
speaks to those in other fields
speaks to the public
then it's hard to come up with a long list. When I posed, as a riddle to Jonathan Wolff from UCL (himself author of a wonderful introductory, and often quite critical, book on Marx--as well as a very good book on Nozick), the question who the award went to given these criteria, his first response was: "Noam Chomsky, of course." Only if you were to treat "speaks to the public" as "speaks to the American public" would you knock Chomsky off the list. But if we don't do that, then the only mystery here is that Chomsky wasn't the first choice: he's in his early 70s, he basically invented an entire field in its modern form and dominates it as well; his work has had a huge impact on philosophers and psychologists (to a lesser extent literary scholars); and much of his work (not in linguistics) speaks to the public, so much so that he is easily the most internationally recognized academic in America today.
Speaking to the public is also what puts Said on the list--though I'm not much of a fan of Orientalism--and he has very high intra-disciplinary standing and he is read by those outside his discipline. I'm sorry Jacob Levy is bothered by the fact that 3 folks who actually meet the stated criteria are on the left, but that's the way it is, I'm afraid. (I included Said and Wollheim only because they died very recently, and I wouldn't be surprised, given that the nomination process began 2 years ago, if they were on the list at some point as candidates; that's the same reason I left out Rawls. Williams had almost no impact beyond academic philosophy, which is why I did not include him.)
(7) Levy says "the first ten or so who would spring to mind for me, restricting myself to the living and therefore excluding, e.g., Gellner, Rawls and Williams: Skinner, Geertz, Elster, Tzvetan Todorov, Michael Walzer, Bernard Bailyn, Benedict Anderson, Jurgen Habermas, Albert Hirschman, James Scott, Charles Taylor." Wonderful: I mentioned Skinner and Geertz too (Levy and Leiter agree!), and I second all the others, except perhaps Walzer (but I wouldn't protest if he got it). And I don't know James Scott well enough to have any opinion. I note that none of them, except Habermas, have had the same kind of impact on the public as Chomsky or Kolakowski. (I don't think much of Habermas as a philosopher--who does?--but he clearly has the relevant intra-disciplinary standing.)
(8) I'm glad Levy admits that he's not sure "that Kolakowski was the right choice." Kolakowski is, in fact, a "second-rate philosopher." As I said to Jo Wolff earlier today (before I even knew of this tempest in a teapot): "if only they'd called him an intellectual historian." It is depressing to philosophers, and especially to historians of philosophy like me interested in figures like Marx and Nietzsche, when second-rate philosophers are held up to the world at large as the preeminent figures in the field. They aren't.
Minor addendum: Levy calls Kolakowski "Professor of Philosophy and Social Thought" at Chicago, but his primary appointment was in the Committee on Social Thought (that's who hired him), and his secondary appointment was in Philosophy. I will venture, with some confidence, the opinion that the Philosophy Department would not have appointed him, if he were not already at the university in another unit.
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