An Invitation Ruffles Philosophical Feathers

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

At 8:43 AM -0400 6/29/02, Jim Farmelant wrote:
>An Invitation Ruffles Philosophical Feathers
>
>June 29, 2002
>By EMILY EAKIN
<snip>
>An hour later, however, Mr. Diggins called back to say that
>he planned to participate in the conference after all.
>"This whole thing has become utterly unfortunate," he said,
>adding that he hoped all those who had withdrawn would
>reconsider. "I hope the conference continues with Professor
>West," he said. "After all, he is a public figure. To have
>him speaking on Sidney Hook is a significant event in
>American culture." Mr. Kristol, Ms. Himmelfarb and Mr.
>Kramer declined to comment. (Last week, Mr. Kramer told The
>Chronicle of Higher Education that when he learned Mr. West
>would be at the conference, he decided his own attendance
>"wouldn't be appropriate.")
>
>The boycott came as a shock to other conference
>participants, who quickly condemned it. Acknowledging that
>some of Mr. West's scholarly activities have been the
>object of fierce debate, scholars say his participation at
>the conference, which is sponsored by the graduate school's
>Center for the Humanities, should not be a source of
>contention. Not only is Mr. West an academic philosopher
>schooled in Sidney Hook's brand of philosophical
>pragmatism, they point out, but his book "The American
>Evasion of Philosophy" (University of Wisconsin Press,
>1989) contains a significant - and sympathetic - assessment
>of Hook's thought.
>
>"I consider West's work on Hook to be first rate," said
>Christopher Phelps, an assistant professor of history at
>Ohio State University at Mansfield who helped secure Mr.
>West's participation. "Whatever other controversies have
>swirled around him, it seems to me that to claim he does
>not have equal place at this conference is intellectually
>indefensible."
>
>Timed to the centennial of Hook's birth, the conference
>would be the first major posthumous assessment of the
>philosopher, whose intellectual contributions have been
>overshadowed by his controversial politics. A protégé of
>John Dewey who distinguished himself early in his career
>with an important study of Karl Marx, Hook became
>increasingly disenchanted with the left, emerging after
>World War II as an ardent anti-Stalinist and hard-line cold
>warrior. Hook's reputation as a turncoat was cemented in
>1985, four years before he died, when Ronald Reagan awarded
>him the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential
>Medal of Freedom.
>
>An enthusiastic polemicist, Hook rarely turned down an
>opportunity to debate an opponent, an irony not lost on the
>boycott's critics. Robert Talisse, an assistant professor
>of philosophy at Vanderbilt University in Nashville who
>helped organize the conference, quoted one of the 10 rules
>for intellectual debate Hook laid out in a famous 1954
>essay, "The Ethics of Controversy": "The cardinal sin, when
>we are looking for truth of fact or wisdom of policy, is
>refusal to discuss, or action which blocks discussion."
>
>For his part, Mr. West seemed strangely unaffected by the
>furor. Reached by telephone on Thursday, he said he had no
>memory of being invited to the conference and learned of
>the boycott only when a reporter contacted him last week.
>Still, he said he was eager to attend. "I have learned much
>from the art criticism of Kramer, the fine historiography
>of Himmelfarb, the intellectual history of Diggins and some
>of the essays of Kristol," he said serenely. "I just see
>through their nonsense."

It seems the Cornel West boycott is backfiring on neo-cons.  Three 
cheers for Christopher Phelps!
-- 
Yoshie

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