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July 19, 2006
A Moralist of the Mind
The billboard shows a sleek new automobile, the price tag no doubt considerable, though nowhere in sight. Instead, the agency that created the ad has run a single line of text with the image. It isn’t just a catchphrase; it’s a grab at profundity. “A strong want,” the new Lexus motto proclaims, “is a justifiable need.”
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The first time I saw the ad, my jaw dropped. Now it just clenches in disgust. (If absolute moral stupidity ever required a slogan, then “A strong want is a justifiable need” would do the trick.) And once the irritation is past, there is the realization that Philip Rieff was probably right when he speculated that a new character had arrived on the scene in Western culture: “psychological man.”
Rieff, who died on July 1, was for decades a somewhat legendary professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. To echo a point made elsewhere, I think the power of his influence greatly exceeded the reach of his reputation. Rieff didn’t want a large readership. He wrote in knotty apothegms — developing a set of terms that resembled sociological jargon less than it does the private language of some brilliant but eccentric rabbi. With his later texts (including My Life Among the Deathworks, just published by the University of Virginia Press) you do not so much read Rieff as sit at his feet.
But in his first book, Freud: The Mind of the Moralist (1959) — his dissertation from the University of Chicago, as rewritten with the help of his first wife, Susan Sontag — the knack for aphorisms had not yet hardened into a tic. He was still addressing a broad audience of educated readers, not disciples. And it was in the final pages of that volume that he sketched the concept of “psychological man.”
According to Rieff’s careful reading, the founder of psychoanalysis was no subversive champion of the id against bourgeois society. Rather, his Freud comes to resemble other Victorian sages who tried to create inner order as the established patterns of authority were dissolving. But along the way, Freud also helped foster a new system of values – one toward which Rieff would show deep and growing ambivalence.
The new “character ideal” that Rieff saw emerging in Freud’s wake was no longer inspired by religious faith, or a strong sense of civic responsibility. Psychological man would not even need to cultivate the sort of self-interested self control practiced by his immediate ancestor, homo economicus. (Think of Benjamin Franklin, making himself wealthy and wise by careful planning.) Psychological man need not fret over material security – being, after all, reasonably comfortable in an affluent society. His energies would turn inward, toward the care and maintenance of the self.
Rieff returned to the future of psychological man in his second book, The Triumph of the Therapeutic. Its final sentence verges on a prophetic statement, then carefully backs away:
“That a sense of well-being has become the end, rather than the by-product of striving after some communal end,” wrote Rieff, “announces a fundamental change in the entire cast of our culture – toward a human condition about which there will be nothing further to say in terms of the old style of hope and despair.”
It can be strange to read some of the earliest discussions of Rieff’s work, for there was occasionally a tendency to regard him as cheerleading “the triumph of the therapeutic.” This was wide of the mark. Eventually Rieff did find things to say about this cultural transformation “in the old style of despair.”
He became a cultural reactionary. I mean that term as a description, rather than a denunciation. He saw culture as a system of restraints (what he termed “interdicts”) that prevented the individual from being swamped by the excessive range of potential human desires and behaviors. Thrown into “the abyss of possibility,” man “becomes not human but demonic.” So Rieff put it in reviewing Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism.
As the historian Christopher Lasch once put it, Rieff belonged to “the party of the superego.” (Lasch translated many of Rieff’s insights about psychological man into a neo-Marxist analysis of the “culture of narcissism” emerging in advanced capitalist society.) And it was the duty of any teacher worthy of the name to play the role of superego to the hilt. “Authority untaught,” Rieff declared in the early 1970s, “is the condition in which a culture commits suicide.”
His later writings are, in effect, a series of coroner’s reports. “We professionals of the reading discipline,” he stated in My Life Among the Deathworks, “we are the real police. As teaching agents of sacred order, and inescapably within it, the moral demands we must teach, if we are teachers, are those eternal truths by which all social orders endure.” And Rieff made it pretty clear that he did not think this was happening.
There are plenty of conservative publicists in America now. There are not many conservative thinkers, proper, worthy of the name. Rieff, for all his crotchety obliqueness, was one of them.(By the way, the ratio of philosophers to propagandists is hardly any better on the left.)
In scrutinizing the logic of contemporary culture, Rieff indirectly revealed some of the dark secrets of U.S. politics — which has been dominated by the right wing for at least a quarter century now. The therapeutic has triumphed in the red states as well as the blue. Any reference to how Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush proved themselves as great leaders by “helping America feel good about itself” confirms that psychological man is often happy to vote Republican.
But more than that, Rieff is of lasting interest for upholding an exorbitant standard of seriousness. The Feeling Intellect, a collection of his essays published by the University of Chicago Press in 1990, is rather awe-inspiring in the range and intensity of its erudition – though you do have to look past the strangely cultish introduction by one of the author’s devotees, Jonathan B. Imber, a professor of sociology at Wellesley College.
And his early polemic in the culture wars, Fellow Teachers, is some kind of cranky masterpiece. (It is now out of print.) One passage in particular has left a strong impression, lingering in my mind like the voice of a testy grandfather telling me to get off the Internet.
“Our sacred world must remain the book,” he says. “No, not the book: the page.... To get inside a page of Haydn, of Freud, of Weber, of James: only so can our students be possessed by an idea of what it means to study.... Then, at least, they may acquire a becoming modesty about becoming ‘problem-solvers,’ dictating reality. Such disciplines would teach us, as teachers, that it would be better to spend three days imprisoned by a sentence than any length of time handing over ready-made ideas.”
Reading this again, I feel guilty of a thousand sins. Which is, of course, the intent. There are qualities and opinions in Rieff’s work it is difficult to admire. But studying him has at least one good effect. It teaches you to think about the difference between a strong want and a justifiable need — and to keep a safe distance from anything tending to blur that distinction.
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Comments
Spot on
Yeah right, because Scott doesn’t read much. Good point.
Great piece in the Globe, Scott.
Ophelia Benson, Editor at Butterflies and Wheels, at 7:30 am EDT on July 19, 2006
Ophelia
“Yeah right, because Scott doesn’t read much.”
If you are addressing me, you misread my comment. I do not doubt that he reads, but if he is actually claiming that there are no conservative thinkers, the scope of his reading is obviously quite limited.
JBM, at 8:00 am EDT on July 19, 2006
Thinkers...
I think that the mark of a thinker would be the careful examination of the evidence, reasonable formation of hypotheses and assumptions, and a determination to observe logical rigor in argumentation and explanation.
A thinker, in other words, is attempting to push the bounds of knowledge rather than to convince other people of a proposition through whatever means possible.
The post, for example, that asserts that the author ’should read more conservatives’ fails this test, proceeding as it does on the unjustified assumption that the author has not read many conservative writers, and drawing as it does the unsupported conclusion that the author is therefore wrong.
My own observation, based on the reading of more conservative writers than I care to reflect upon, is that the author is correct. I would in addition echo his point that the quality of argumentation is similarly weak on the left. There is a need for more solid foundations for a philosophy of compassion, openness and sharing (odd that this would be the case, but such is the world we now live in).
The propagandists are carrying the day, and have, I would say, since the advent of mass media. With some luck, the disintermediation offered by the internet may portend a reversal of that tide.
Stephen Downes, at 8:30 am EDT on July 19, 2006
Uninformed animus?
JBM: How about some examples to back up your attack? Name five great conservative thinkers. Or at least one.
Seriously.
Christian Anderson, Penn State, at 8:30 am EDT on July 19, 2006
Examples
Frederick Hayak. Ayn Rand. Milton Friedman (or any of his fellow Nobel/economics winners). George Will. Pope John II.
Need more? Just ask.
A.D., at 9:20 am EDT on July 19, 2006
I would also add the late Russell Kirk, Richard Weaver and Peter Viereck.
Ted Underhill, at 9:55 am EDT on July 19, 2006
Ayn Rand is a conservative? She was an athiest and fought for abortion...she even made it known that she wasn’t a ‘conservative,’ but rather a radical. I’m so tired of the media and people on both sides (blue and red) claiming people ‘as our own.’ If we weren’t so focused on defining ourselves as blue/red we might have a chance of actually hearing each other.
But yes, let’s attack this post about how you think Ayn really was conservative and continue picking our teams on the playground. I hope we have enough time before recess is over.
John, at 9:55 am EDT on July 19, 2006
McLemee was speaking of America...
...and neither Hayek nor John Paul II were American. And is George F. Will really a thinker on a Hayek-Rieff-Leo Strauss level, or just an unusually polite & well-established pundit?
BGN, at 10:35 am EDT on July 19, 2006
Poor John
It is hard to pick any thinker from more than a few decades ago and label them liberal or conservative. Today’s liberals are little more than machine politians, hustling for their own causes. You also confuse the abortion argument, one which is actually closer to the slavery argument of a couple of centuries ago than it is to any civil or privacy rights concerns of today (the fetus as a woman’s property right and a third trimester human is what? Three-fifths human?). Time to leave the comfort of your belief system, John. Time to start thinking.
GoFigure, at 10:35 am EDT on July 19, 2006
“A strong want jusifies needs” This explains every thing in life nowadays.Why we need faster cars, more horsepower, satalite radio, more cd changers. Maybe it should be part of the constitution or the 11th comandant.
Jack Collins, Geologist at Envirotech, at 11:45 am EDT on July 19, 2006
” .. And is George F. Will really a thinker on a Hayek-Rieff-Leo Strauss level ..”
Dunno. PhD from Princeton. Must mean somethin’.
A.D., at 11:45 am EDT on July 19, 2006
JBM quotes McLemee as saying:
“America has lots of conservative pundits. But thinkers? Not so much.”
And then JBM says:
“You should do some reading then.”
Dear JBM:
You also ought to do some reading—perhaps start with this article, in which McLemee usees words that match only approximately what you have quoted, which is from the emailed “Daily Update” of Inside Higher Ed. That quote does not get McLemee’s words right, nor does it pay attention to their context. True scholarship does both of these things, even if the meanings are only slightly different once the analysis has been made. The only point I want to make here is this one: you, JBM, have betrayed by your quotation that you did not even read McLemee’s article. Let’s try to get beyond knee-jerk responses and do the work required for understanding—everyone, left, right, and ambidextrous.
Yavo, Adventurer, at 2:55 pm EDT on July 19, 2006
Not so much lots does not mean no
JBM, yes, I was at least answering your comment, though not addressing you in particular.
“I do not doubt that he reads, but if he is actually claiming that there are no conservative thinkers, the scope of his reading is obviously quite limited.”
But of course he is not claiming that, is he, because that’s not what he said. What did he say? It’s right there in your quote: ““America has lots of conservative pundits. But thinkers? Not so much.”
That doesn’t mean America has no conservative thinkers, does it, it means it doesn’t have lots. There’s a difference.
Ophelia Benson, Editor at Butterflies and Wheels, at 2:55 pm EDT on July 19, 2006
Read the Directions Carefully
This is funny stuff. Scott said there aren’t (so much) lots of conservative thinkers in America, others said yes there are too so, others asked for examples, so we get — “Frederick Hayak. Ayn Rand. Milton Friedman (or any of his fellow Nobel/economics winners). George Will. Pope John II.”
That’s not just funny, that’s hilarious. Five names, only two of which are of Americans. And then there’s the missing Scott’s main point problem — what did he say? “There are plenty of conservative publicists in America now. There are not many conservative thinkers, proper, worthy of the name.” Rand and Will are spiffy entrants for the conservative publicist category, but thinkers, proper, worthy of the name? Uh — no. So out of that batch we’re left with (perhaps) one. Now that’s what I call careful reading.
Then there’s this. “I would also add the late Russell Kirk, Richard Weaver and Peter Viereck.” But since what is being disputed is whether there are conservative thinkers in America NOW it doesn’t do much good to cite late people, does it! Which, of course, also disqualifies the already disqualified Hayek, Rand, and Pope. I mean, why mess around, why not offer Aquinas and Plutarch as good examples of current American thinkers?
Ophelia Benson, at 2:55 pm EDT on July 19, 2006
Echo
Hey, snap, Yavo — and posted at the same moment, too. It’s a relief to see that some people can actually read!
Ophelia Benson, at 4:05 pm EDT on July 19, 2006
Define “American”
” .. why not offer Aquinas and Plutarch as good examples of current American thinkers?”
One of the most amusing facets of IHE is when some ninth-year doctoral student asks “define [term].”
Well, in that vein — what is an American? If we are working with the foundations of psychology — was Freud an American? What about the others? Any immediate parents, just off the boat from Ellis Island?
Only one way to settle this — a national conference that will eventually not resolve anything. I’m smelling grant dollars ..
A.D., at 4:05 pm EDT on July 19, 2006
Name 5? How About 7?
Thomas Sowell. Walter Williams. Bruce Bartlett. William F. Buckley. Dinesh D’Souza. Dennis Prager. Marvin Olasky.
MediaDoc, Associate Professor at East Carolina Univ., at 4:05 pm EDT on July 19, 2006
MediaDoc,
Sowell is probably a “conservative [thinker], proper, worthy of the name.” But those others...come on!
Read the article again my friend, it distinguishes between conservative publicists and conservative thinkers. Something you seem to have missed noting in preparing your list. Indeed they are conservatives (given the libertarians among them do not object to that label) but thinkers? Hardly.
GW, at 5:00 pm EDT on July 19, 2006
Just off the top of my head...
Harvey Mansfield Stephen Thernstrom Robert George Richard Posner Milton Friedman Peter Robinson Roger Kimball Charles Krauthammer Tamar Jacoby Steven Hayward Timothy Ash Victor Davis Hanson Shelby Steele Thomas Sowell Walter Williams Gabriel SchoenfeldLinda Chavez
These are just the ones who leap immediately to mind while typing on the spot...
JBM, at 6:30 pm EDT on July 19, 2006
Right...
Good save, A.D. For examples of conservative thinkers (as opposed to publicists) in America now you come up with “Frederick Hayak. Ayn Rand. Milton Friedman (or any of his fellow Nobel/economics winners). George Will. Pope John II.” So when readers point out (gently or roughly as the case may be) that nearly all your examples are 1. dead 2. not American 3. publicists but not thinkers — you pretend that’s doctoral-type pedantry.
A.D. stand for attention deficit does it?
Ophelia Benson, at 6:30 pm EDT on July 19, 2006
Time to refresh our close reading skills
JBM, no no no no no, don’t type off the top of your head. That’s what you did last time — that’s how you inaccurately paraphrased Scott’s remark when you should have quoted it directly by pasting it in. Slow down, take a deep breath, and read what Scott actually wrote. Then think. Only then bother to type anything.
Ophelia Benson, at 6:45 pm EDT on July 19, 2006
Conservative Thinkers
Ophelia Benson,
One of the challenges stated above was to name five American conservatives writing today who generate something more elevated than newspaper commentary. That JBM has done. Intellectuals that might be characterized as right-of-center are a disparate lot and include mainline Republicans, traditionalists, old whigs, orthodox Catholics, and miscellaneous critics of prevailing historiography and attitudes toward social policy. Among them:
1. Claes Ryn 2. Paul Gottfried 3. George Panchias 4. Robert Kraynak 5. Thomas Woods 6. Phillip Jenkins 7. Jennifer Roback Morse 8. James V. Schall 9. Russell Hittenger 10. Ralph McInerney 11. Peter Kreeft 12. Dermot Quinn 13. Peter Augustine Lawler 14. Anthony Esolen 15. Lawrence Mead 16. Stanley Rothman 17. Elizabeth Fox Genovese 18. Lino Graglia 19. Peter Berger20. Gertrude Himmelfarb
Marvin Olasky was mentioned dismissively by one of the previous participants. However, in addition to being a magazine editor and a professor of journalism, he is a serious student of the history of social policy, on which he has published two books.
Art Deco, garden gnome at Whatsamatta U., at 4:25 am EDT on July 20, 2006
Priceless!
A.D.’s gaffe is so funny, I have been chuckling about it all evening. I’m tempted to think he’s a very smart person’s parody of the right-wing ignoramus trolling the web in search for things to be indignant about, and seizing upon a topic of indignation with such zeal that he doesn’t even understand the damned topic. And then to respond, “what is an American"! It’s priceless.
James, at 4:30 am EDT on July 20, 2006
” .. Only then bother to type anything.”
Madame — it is two Prozac daily — not four.
A.D. — Always Dumbfounded by the “brilliance” of self-annointed academics.
A.D., at 6:25 am EDT on July 20, 2006
What a great debate. If you don’t like them, they are pundents, if you do they are thinkers.
The next question is whether or not ‘liberals’ can provide a similiar list.
The problem in either case is not finding names, its defining them as ‘thinkers’ (whatever that is). The media as so crept into our life that published professors of any color are dragged (or jump) in front of CNN or FOX and become ‘pundits’.
The biggest problem I feel though, is that anyone who is truely a ‘thinker’ avoids being labeled either conservative or liberal.
stm60, at 8:25 am EDT on July 20, 2006
Jaw-dropping indeed
Yes, my jaw dropped too when I read this:
“America has lots of conservative pundits. But thinkers? Not so much.”
I sometimes cannot believe remarks that are made on this site, including many of the comments in this thread. The above statement just doesn’t withstand logical scrutiny, or even basic facts in the world. Beyond the dozens of thinkers already mentioned, here are another good dozen:
Peter Brookes, Daniel Pipes, Gary Becker (why just Posner, JBM?), Peter Berkowitz, Robert Conquest, David Gelernter, Reuel Gerecht, Frederick Kagan, Joshua Muravchik, Abigail Thernstrom (do not forget the ladies!), Ruth Wisse, and Midge Decter.
Are we still indulging the myth on this site that there is no anti-conservative bias in the academy?
Belle, at 8:45 am EDT on July 20, 2006
Editor’s prerogative
We at IHE don’t usually weigh in on these discussions, but I need to do so in this case to clarify something that has been misunderstood and argued about above — what Scott said (or didn’t) about the dearth of conservative thinkers. Different commenters have cited two different things.
To clarify, the body of the article contains this: “There are plenty of conservative publicists in America now. There are not many conservative thinkers, proper, worthy of the name.” You can agree or not. But most of you
The teaser (which appears with the headline on the IHE home page and in our daily e-mail) has a shorthand (for the sake of necessary brevity) version: “America has lots of conservative pundits. But thinkers? Not so much.”
Again, that’s just to clarify, to keep the focus on substance rather than bickering about whether things were paraphrased right.
Doug Lederman, Editor at Inside Higher Ed, at 2:25 pm EDT on July 20, 2006
Conservative Thinkers.
Scott — thanks first for noting Rieff as you have, particularly via the opening shot at Lexus which I myself issued last month at Postmodern Conservative. Did you glimpse this? Ophelia — keep up the good work, and if you’re asking after conservative thinkers “now” I would suggest off the top of my head Jonathan Imber, a Rieffist, and Peter Lawler, who’s done some writing of interest on postmodern conservatism. It’s hard to find titans these days because titans take time, and only now is the Reagan era far enough away that conservatives might not gravitate toward overtly political or activist careers from a very early age. “Inactivism” was one of Rieff’s prescriptions: yet to be mastered, or even attempted, by conservatives among others. And yes I bet this is meant to mean something other than never publishing, never engaging the culture.
James G. Poulos, Postmodern Conservative., at 11:15 am EDT on July 23, 2006
Philip Rieff
I had the good fortune to take a class at UC Berkeley in 1959, taught by Philip Rieff. It was the most unforgettable experience of my life. Philip Rieff was unlike any person I’ve ever met. The greatest of the man was incredible. When in his presence one felt in awe, as if in touch with something transcendent. He had somehow managed to free himself from even the slightest trace of anxiety and his charisma projected this “ataraxia” to those in his presence. Being around him I could understand how “great” people such as Plato and Aristotle could have inspired their students, or even more, how a person like Jesus could have projected the greatness of his being upon his followers. I’m 70 years old now and mourn Rieff’s death at age 83. I’ve never met anyone like him or even close to him in my lifetime.
Frank Bunyard, at 4:40 am EST on December 21, 2006
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Uninformed animus
“America has lots of conservative pundits. But thinkers? Not so much.”
You should do some reading then.
Seriously.
Your animus is groundless, as is your statement, but at least you are honest about your prejudice.
JBM, at 6:20 am EDT on July 19, 2006