>I haven't read Sokal, & I'm not sure I'm going to, but Doug is
>developing tunnel vision here.
I have read Sokal, and I think Doug is developing Tunnel Vision. I can only say that Alan Sokal shows a far greater understanding of the writers he tackles than they do of themselves. The only basis on which to denounce Sokal's ignorance is his own modesty, which, by comparison to both his targets and his critics is unjustified.
>* For Jim Farmelant. I was curious what Cassirer missed and went
>looking around for references to Carlyle. The only one I found was a
>little obscure and occurs in an essay on race that compares Carlyle
>to Gobineau ("The Theory of the Totalitarian Race", from _The Myth of
>State_). Since I don't know anything about Carlyle I would like to
>hear more about where Carlyle stood on this business and why Cassirer
>missed the point. Seriously.
>
One way that Cassirer misses the point is in failing to understand that Carlyle's book Sartor Restartus is a parody, criticising it as though it were Carlyle's considered opinion, rather than a view that he was seeking to ridicule. The element in Carlyle's thinking that was often taken to be a pre-cursor of fascism was his stress on the importance of heroes in history, and upon the pre-rational elements of political identification.
Carlyle was a big influence on the early Marxists, too, by the way. He is quoted in the Communist Manifesto, and much of Engels Condition of the English working Classes is indebted to Carlyle's 'Essay on Chartism'. He was a romantic Conservative critic of the free market, couterposing an organic community to the individuating influence of the the de-humanised 'cash nexus' of exchange. -- Jim heartfield