by RICHARD RORTY
a review of the book
The Seduction of Unreason: The Intellectual Romance With Fascism From Nietzsche to Postmodernism by Richard Wolin
The Nation [from the June 14, 2004 issue]
Philosophers get attention only when they appear to be doing something sinister--corrupting the youth, undermining the foundations of civilization, sneering at all we hold dear. The rest of the time everybody assumes that they are hard at work somewhere down in the sub-basement, keeping those foundations in good repair. Nobody much cares what brand of intellectual duct tape is being used.
The public becomes incensed, however, when rogue philosophers come upstairs, buttonhole the tenants and tell them that there really are no foundations--that their industrious colleagues are just providing "bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct" (F.H. Bradley's description of metaphysics). Every anti- foundationalist movement within philosophy produces a spate of books by nonphilosophers denouncing "the treason of the intellectuals" (the title of Julien Benda's 1927 attack on the pernicious influence of thinkers such as Henri Bergson and William James).
[snip