The Human Condition<\/em>, written in the damp cold of 1958. Of course, I grabbed my copy off my shelf and am now reading the chapter on \u201cLabor,\u201d after stumbling through too many references to ancient philosophy (in Greek and Latin no less!).<\/p>\nFunny stuff aside, I soon realized that Harcourt is obsessed with praxis, or doing. Down deep, he believes that critical philosophy has chosen the contemplative over the active life. Rather desperate, haunted by the dark world closing in around us, he has corralled quite a few thinkers together to see if they can help him answer Lenin\u2019s famous question, \u201cWhat is to be done?\u201d His mountainous text is a repetitive tool-box of notes and thoughts from his seminar series and own readings. Like lightning, brilliant ideas flash across the pages.<\/p>\n
But his arguments do not always cohere. For instance, he rejects all truth-claims, but offers us a framework to understand American society in its current nightmare state. He makes ethical claims without any way to justify them. And one is sometimes not certain if he rejects or accepts certain ideas or rebellious projects. One moment, one thinks he approves of the Yellow Vest protests. On another, he expresses some doubts regarding participant\u2019s anti-immigrant ideas and the presence of masked violent actors. He refuses to wear a yellow vest.<\/p>\n
He draws in a little Habermas (and a few Habermasian scholars like Honneth, Benhabib and Jean Cohen to present at the seminars). But he has little patience for a careful and sustained reading of Habermas\u2019s philosophy of communicative action. His bibliography is very partial; and the neglect of the seminal text Theory and Practice<\/em> (1973) renders his discussion of the role that critical theory can play in the organization of enlightenment incomplete, thin gruel. But there aren\u2019t any references to Knowledge and Human Interests<\/em> (1971) or The Theory of Communicative Action<\/em> (1984, 1987), either. These texts do not appear to touch his spirit or fire his gifted imagination.<\/p>\nHarcourt rejects Habermas because he clings to notions of universality, truth and consensus. However, instead of careful analysis of Habermas\u2019s actual views on these fundamental concepts of reason\u2014such as is evident in Martin Jay\u2019s chapter, \u201cHabermas and the communicative turn,\u201d pp. 114-144 in Reason After Its Eclipse<\/em> (2016) or savoring the subtleties of his debates with Rawls and Foucault (see Beatrice Hansen\u2019s essay, \u201cCritical theory and poststructuralism: Habermas and Foucault,\u201d in The Cambridge Companion to Critical theory<\/em> [2004] ), Harcourt offers us potted theory. We end up reading more pages on the dreadful Invisible Committee, Michael Hardt and Tony Negri\u2019s impenetrable Assemblies<\/em> (2017) and Zizek\u2019s endless ramblings than on Habermas\u2019s delicately profound post-metaphysical understanding of reason. This is simply astounding.<\/p>\nWhy shut the door on Habermas like this? The primary reason, as far as I can see, is that the deliberative democracy paradigm that frames Habermas\u2019s critical project and orientation to praxis, is rejected outright because it has, allegedly, accommodated itself to liberal democracy. Harcourt disagrees with Harvard political theorist Archon Fung\u2019s claim that: \u201cDeliberative democracy is a revolutionary political ideal. It calls for fundamental changes in the bases of political decision-making, scope of those included in decision-making processes, institutions that have these processes, and thus the very character of politics itself.\u201d However, Harcourt thinks that Habermas\u2019s work has nothing of urgent significance to say to our apocalyptic end time. A Foucault scholar of some acclaim, Harcourt embraces Foucault\u2019s anguished understanding of the fusion of knowledge and power. Power swallows truth. We are in a mad power struggle and we must seize power from those who are dominating us. As Lenin once quipped, \u201cThere is no time for discussion groups.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet, ironically, what would we call the learned seminars at Columbia? Looks to me like the commentators are searching for the \u201cbest argument.\u201d Or Foucault\u2019s work with prisoners where he asked \u201chimself about his own critical praxis\u201d which led to an \u201centirely different practice, in which the GIP tried to create a space where those men who were most affected by prisons could speak and be heard\u201d (p. 439). Foucault is creating a \u201clearning space\u201d for dialogical speech. No penal systems are being shaken to the ground. The men are simply listened-to. This \u201creflective space\u201d gestures to the study club movements in Canada in the early decades of the twentieth century (exemplified in the Nova Scotian Antigonish Movement) and to Freirian pedagogy that selects \u201cthemes\u201d for deliberation amongst the oppressed peasants\u2014to move people out of their \u201ccultures of silence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harcourt\u2019s viewpoint, over-simplified, is fueled by his deeply held (and moving) spiritual commitment to working with men on death row. He has been incredibly active in their service. Some of the most moving passages in his book share his commitment to the condemned as well as his passionate avowal of overthrowing the American penal system. In fact, Harcourt\u2019s agony and feverish activism, is also reinforced in his book, The counterrevolution,<\/em> where he argues, not totally convincingly, that contemporary American society is now ruled by counterinsurgency warfare learned in the wars to suppress anti-colonial struggles.<\/p>\nBasically\u2014the book is a shocking and startling read\u2014Harcourt argues that President Trump knew exactly what he was doing: he applied counterinsurgency\u2019s core approach (massive intelligence collection, relentless targeting of minorities and pacifying propaganda) to govern the people. It is not difficult to see Foucault\u2019s ghost hovering over this depressing text. It is a \u201ccounterrevolution without revolution, waged against phantom enemies and targeting every one of us\u201d (Quoted from the book jacket). Still, for me, the argument is too neat and tidy to grasp what is happening in the daily lives of all Americans, or in the society at large.<\/p>\n
Harcourt is a haunted man. In passage after passage throughout Critique and Praxis<\/em>, Harcourt asserts that our lives can never rest, our struggle is endless without any utopian end-point, we cannot know what truth is because truth is always used to dominate us, there are no universals, all is contingency. These sensibilities lead him, in the end, to such a despairing point that he must ask \u201cWhat more am I to do?\u201d rather than \u201cWhat is to be done?\u201d Lenin exemplified an idea that Bernard hates: that critical theory can tell us what to do.<\/p>\nHarcourt confesses to us that he must not tell anyone what to do. He can only make his own decisions of what must be done. He must do that. But this man who loves equality, justice and compassion for others has seemingly thrown away the primary task of critical theory to enlighten its subjects through democratic organization of enlightenment learning processes and cautious reflection with actors about what forms of action are contextually and considerately appropriate.<\/p>\n
As Herbert Marcuse said in an early 1970s speech, \u201cThe movement in a new era of repression: an assessment,\u201d \u201cIt is difficult for me to engage in such a theoretical analysis [of the radical situation today] when the things that are happening all around seem to cry for action\u2014no matter what action\u2014so that we don\u2019t suffocate.\u201d Fifty years later, like Marcuse, Bernard Harcourt\u2019s work testifies to similar impatience with theoretical contemplation. Into the streets! Occupy public squares! Scream out against the furies destroying humanity! Be a killjoy and peel away your boss\u2019s racism! Defend the men on death row! Join the marches for racial justice!<\/p>\n
I leave the reader with this touching confessional statement from Bernard Harcourt. \u201cIn the end, on my part, critical praxis remains today an ethical matter: an ethical decision en situation<\/em> about the irreducibility and fragility of life\u2014about human frailty. Instinctively, I too have always placed myself in the shoes of the subjugated, of the young refugee fleeing, of the accused, the internal enemy. How could I not? How else could I live life than by helping others? How else? Especially, as I have the privilege and the ability, the honor, to stand before justice for those in need. How else could I lead life? And more important, what more must I now do?\u201d (p. 503).<\/p>\n\nThis post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Critique and Praxis (2020) is Bernard Harcourt\u2019s recent mountainous book. Entering, one climbs hills, descends into valleys, crosses some rough, boulder-strewn rivers, ducks into mysterious caves and traverses\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":213,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1687"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1687"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1688,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1687\/revisions\/1688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}