Dilip Simeon's blog

German hostility to the Enlightenment - Let us consider the intellectual contribution to general culture made by the Germans of the first half of this century, and let us take first the German philosophers: they retreated to the first and oldest stage of speculation, for, like the thinkers of dreamy ages, they were content with concepts instead of explanations - they brought to life again a pre-scientific species of philosophy. Secondly, the German historians and romantics: their general endeavour was to bring into honour older, primitive sensibilities and especially Christianity, the folk-soul, folk-lore, folkspeech, the medieval world, oriental asceticism, the world of India. Thirdly, the natural scientists: they fought against the spirit of Newton and Voltaire and, like Goethe and Schopenhauer, sought to restore the idea of a divine or diabolical nature suffused with ethical and symbolic significance. The whole great tendency of the Germans was against the Enlightenment and against...

In the medieval era, when a thinker successfully claimed divine revelation, he placed his words beyond dispute. Only the hopelessly benighted or demonically inspired could doubt him. In recent decades, the claim of “science” achieves a similar result. Politicians maintain they “just follow the science” while supportive mass media platforms banish questioners as enemies of science. Pseudoscience never had it so good. There is another way to silence opponents today: Claim an issue is one of “moral clarity,” a phrase that signals the question is “settled” and allows for no further discussion. In such cases, facts don’t give rise to a narrative, the narrative determines the facts. When an issue is declared “morally clear” in this way, the implication is that only the immoral could entertain the slightest doubt. The world divides neatly into good and evil. There can be no conscientious skeptics. And when people are unqualifiedly evil, anything one says about them or does to them becomes j...

NB : Well, if 'humanities' is defined restrictively to English language academia... DS At 12:55 p.m. on a Thursday in early January, the double doors of Salon K at the Marriott Marquis in downtown Washington hung open like an unwanted hug. The space within had been optimistically set up for an audience of maybe three dozen: six rows of chairs in neat ranks with an aisle down the middle, facing a black-draped table with space for four participants. The panel in progress  “Lessing and the Intersectionality of Gender and Cultural Diversity” - had another 20 minutes to go, just enough time for questions. But no hands were raised, and no one was holding forth. In fact, the room was free of any sign of life. The seats were empty, the table uncluttered by notes or napkins. Even the hotel corridor outside, lined with rooms hosting other sessions, was silent. This was the first day of the Modern Language Association’s annual conference - arguably the most important, and most heavily tra...

Russia’s war in Ukraine, like the USA’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, should be understood as barbaric mass slaughter. For all their mutual hostility, the Kremlin and the White House are willing to rely on similar precepts: Might makes right. International law is what you extol when you aren’t violating it. And at home, rev up the nationalism to go with the militarism. While the world desperately needs adherence to a single standard of nonaggression and human rights, some convoluted rationales are always available in a quest to justify the unjustifiable. Ideologies get more twisted than pretzels when some people can’t resist the temptation to choose up sides between rival forces of terrible violence. In the United States, with elected officials and mass media intensely condemning Russia’s killing spree, the hypocrisy can stick in the craw of people mindful that the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions started massive protracted carnage. But U.S. hypocrisy in no way excuses the murderous ra...

On 27 February, three days after Russian tanks rolled into his homeland, the Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa resigned from the European Film Academy. Loznitsa, an ebulliently professorial figure who moved with his family to Berlin in 2001, was furious that the EFA had issued a statement of solidarity with  Ukraine   that he saw as too “neutral, toothless and conformist in relation to Russian aggression”.  Then, on 19 March, Loznitsa announced he had been expelled from the Ukrainian Film Academy (UFA) for being a “cosmopolite”. He immediately understood the resonance of its slur. In an open letter published in Screen Daily, he wrote: “In the era of late Stalinism, this word acquired a negative connotation in Soviet propaganda.” Loznitsa said he was really ousted from the UFA for opposing “the boycott of those of my colleagues, Russian [film-makers] who oppose the crimes of the Putin regime”. He also slammed the UFA for advocating that “when Ukraine is struggling to de...

The governments now sanctioning Russian oligarchs forget to mention that it was the free-market policies of the ’90s that created them. In order to regain the initiative after misreading Russia’s aggression, the Left needs to point out how the war for democracy in Ukraine is part of its own struggle for global justice in the 21st century. We really didn’t see this coming. Even when Russia’s mobilisation on Ukraine’s border had reached a level that made military invasion look inevitable, many of us didn’t actually  believe  it. Putin’s decision to invade still seems like a gross strategic misstep. Yet it has also been a reality check to us all. In the weeks prior to the invasion, there was an eagerness in the West to take a ‘contrarian’ stance and consider Putin’s manoeuvres as a legitimate reaction to western security policies. Some of his apologists were motivated by pragmatic concerns, others were ideological. Many leftists stuck to the script that the US and NATO were the...

Even as Ukraine faces extraordinary devastation, a new world disorder is becoming apparent. The United States has to do the balancing act of providing a strong response to Russia. But it is also hemmed in by the fact that it is dealing with an armed nuclear power and needs to avoid direct confrontation. Whether this balancing act can be pulled off remains to be seen. Europe is now caught between its desire to send a strong message to Russia and sanctimonious moralising. But its credibility is impugned because it is simply not willing to pay even the minimal economic price for a strong stand. Russia in the meantime has made a classic mistake. It is one of the great mysteries of international politics that despite their terrible record at winning asymmetric wars, powerful countries continue to think they can win. Post World War II history is full of examples of conflict between a seemingly strong power and a weaker adversary resulting in immense losses for the former, if not f...