Ruse of Reason

I've put in so many professors that it will keep the enigmas and puzzles busy for centuries meaning things for them to argue over.

Panting After Panofsky - Pt. 8

(Here’s another picture of Wolfgang, in a nice Christmas sweater.)

We are now getting to the "science" part promised by Panofsky's subtitle ("Towards the Possibility of a Fundamental System of Concepts for a Science of Art"): “Insofar as art history as a pure science of things wants to understand the style of a work of art in stylistic analyses and even in pictorial descriptions it must assume a basis in the fundamental and individual artistic problems. Therefore the fundamental and individual art-theoretical problems are assumed to be already established, even in cases where the practicing scholar could not give an account of these problems and concepts themselves and might even deny their existence.” In other words, the fundamental conceptual problems are what the empirical, practicing scholar is responding to in the work of art, whether she knows it or not. In this respect, it’s like natural science: one geologist who looks at a rock with a certain set of concepts and another geologist who has another set are looking at the same rock, with the same properties, they’re just describing it differently.

“But as art history is only a pure science of things up to the point where it navigates on the basis of the problems as ascertained art theoretically and not when it reflects on them. In instances when this should happen, when the results of art-theoretical investigation do not govern the choice of observation and the construction of concepts within research from the outside but rather directly infiltrate art-historical thinking, art history would move from denoting and interpreting a set of facts in the material world to denoting and interpreting an abstract relation between the formulation of a problem and its solution. At this point art history would cease to be a pure science of things and a restricted historical discipline and would change into what might be described as a transcendental art-theoretical discipline or, more modestly and perhaps more accurately, as a fully interpretive enterprise” (63)

The distinction here is not between a good and a bad kind of art history (which, for Panofsky, would be an art history with and an art history without theoretical guidance, respectively). It’s between two modes of the good kind of art history: on the one hand, empirical observation informed by theory, which EP calls a “pure science of things”; and on the other, a kind of metadiscourse undertaken by theorists (or by the researcher wearing her theorist hat) which, while staying with the object, shuffles the middle-range (not the fundamental) concepts around, and is thus “fully interpretive.” (Interesting how Panofsky makes the big Kantian claim — to be “transcendental,” to be trafficking in the realm of pure metaphysical ideas rather than physical objects — and then backs away from it at once. Lorenz and Elsner, in their introduction, note that this essay is heavily Kantian in a way that Panofsky’s later, American work is not. So maybe that’s what’s going on here.)

This latter, interpretive theorizing is what Panofsky wants to have the right to do, but he, crucially, doesn’t think that everyone should have the right to do it.

“Researchers need not accept this change of states as long as they are content with a solely stylistic morphology, but they must be ready for it the moment they want to move from an understanding of stylistic symptoms (of style in its external sense) to an understanding of the stylistic nature of art — that is, an understanding of style in the internal sense or Kunstwollen” (63). Staying in the first mode, then, of the “pure science of things,” researchers can do plenty of things with artworks: they can do the kind of morphology, for instance, that was getting underway in Russia around that time and culminated in the work of Vladimir Propp (and is currently being revived by Franco Moretti): they can see what looks like what, and how a certain form might transform into another. But, invoking a comparison with medicine, Panofsky insists that these forms are only “symptoms.” (Among the many, many tempting detours I’m avoiding going down here is this pre-Lacanian/Althusserian/Žižekian use of “symptom.” Partly because I’m not convinced that I’d ever come back.) They are the outward signs of the will to make art, the Kunstwollen, but no matter how closely we examine them we aren’t going to fully understand why or how the artist did what she did.

“Because the principles of design in a work of art are nothing other than the artist’s comments, executed in this way or that, on the fundamental and individual artistic problems and because the underlying stylistic principle is nothing but the artist’s comment, executed in this way or that, on the artistic ur-problem, the principles of design and the underlying stylistic principle itself can only be understood if the understanding is based on an explicit confrontation with the problems” (63-64). So this is a funny kind of biographical criticism: one that wants to know what the artist thinks she’s doing, her intention, but that also views everything she does as nothing more than “comments” on pre-existing artistic problems, both fundamental (haptic vs. optic) and individual (how do I differentiate this column from the wall, or whatever). (“Comment” is a very weird word; I wonder what the German is.) But Panofsky’s opponent here is not Romantic, producer-centered theories of artistic creation (as Barthes’ and Foucault’s would later be) but hardcore empiricist art historians who think all one needs to do is collect objects and describe them: his point is you need to know the basic problems, which have been answered (or “commented on”) throughout art history, in order to know what the artist thinks she’s doing.

“Therefore art history as a pure science of things, because it only navigates according to the artistic problems but does not reflect on them, is capable of understanding stylistic criteria and their aggregates but not principles of design and their unity.” This is clear enough: art history without theory (or even a-h that excepts fundamental theoretical concepts, but doesn’t work with a theorist to refine and relate the second-order concepts to research findings) can draw up “criteria,” say what counts as art based on all previous known examples, but they can’t get a handle on the “principles of design” that determine artworks (principles which exist in the minds of artists). (Cf. Wittgenstein/Austin/Cavell on criteria. Or don’t.)

“This deeper understanding is reserved only for that form of study that is familiar with those problems that art history in the strict sense only assumes as known and that, by reflecting on them with the help of an art-theoretically constructed fundamental and specialist conceptual system, is capable of systematically dissecting the relations between the formulation of a problem and the solution of a problem.” The repeated key word here is “reflection,” an activity that follows upon fundamental theory and practical empirical research and reconciles them. (It seems to me that Panofsky owes more of a description of what reflection would actually look like, aside from some super-smart theorist ringing changes on a data set. But maybe it can be reconstructed from an account of his actual practice. I guess this would be a good first place to look.)

Then Panofsky does some algebra — which I hope I will be forgiven for leaving out because I don’t think it’ll make things any clearer (at least, for me) — the gist of which is: “In this way and only in this way can scientific study grasp style in its internal sense or Kunstwollen, which can be understood neither as the sum of sensible qualities nor as an aggregate of stylistic criteria but exclusively as unity within and above the principles of design, which not only requires a tacit relation to the results of art theory but a direct collaboration” (64-65). Collaboration between research and theory alone has a hope of getting a handle on Kunstwollen — that is, achieving a rough scholarly approximation of what it’s actually like to make art. (Value judgment mine.)

Panofsky’s final move, in section B, is a really interesting, ambitious one. It’s one that opens up the heretofore uncharted territory of comparativism, or the relation of the findings of art historical research (once it has passed through the refining process of theoretical reflection) to other disciplines within the faculty of the humanities: “If this Kunstwollen can reveal the immanent sense of the manifestation in question then there is no barrier to comparing this sense as articulated in visual-artistic phenomena with the sense of musical, poetic, and even extra-artistic phenomena. Absolutely all philosophical and religious doctrines as well as juridical statues and linguistic systems must be understood as solutions of philosophical, religious, juridical, and linguistic problems.” After having carefully limited himself to the discipline of art history throughout, Panofsky is all of a sudden advocating the application of his “fundamental problem” approach to the humanities as a whole. But even this is not all. “This is why all humanities disciplines are related to a science of art. Just as a science of art attests that within a certain artistic manifestation all artistic problems are solved in one and the same way, so the humanities in general can attempt to show that within a certain culture (which must itself be determined as regards epoch, region, and the persons involved) all intellectual problems, including the artistic, are solved in one and the same sense.”

Wait a second… “all intellectual problems … are solved in one and the same sense”? What would that even mean, practically? Also, how are we to define “a certain culture” — where does one stop and the next begin? (Cf. Wittgenstein on towns and concepts, or don’t.) It seems as though Panofsky’s made a quick turn from neo-Kantian to way way Hegelian, from Kunstwollen to Kulturwollen, a jump that seems to make EP himself a little nervous — witness the very tentative end of the paragraph: “Though one cannot ignore the dangers inherent in the practical application of this process of comparison, today perhaps practiced all too often (the will to unveil analogies can easily lead to interpreting the phenomenon in question in capricious and even brutal ways), one cannot deny on purely theoretical grounds that it is undoubtedly possible and justifiable” (65). I think he’s almost definitely gesturing at Marxism here, and perhaps other hasty totalizations of the social world — but here Panofsky seems to think that the risk of such theoretical abuses is a small price to pay for the promise of such a grand rationale for the humanities.

Panting After Panofsky - Pt. 4

At the beginning of this section (A4) Panofsky is still formulating, still more strictly, the difference between art theory and art history, now using the Kantian language of “duty”:

The duty of art theory is to define and develop the absolute antithesis of the fundamental concepts — the concepts that formulate artistic problems. Art theory does not incorporate an absolute antithesis of style-defining concepts equal to those with which art history operates. The fundamental concepts, far from separating the world of artistic manifestations into two hostile camps between which there would be no space for a considerable number of phenomena, simply describe the polarity of two regions of value that face each other beyond the world of manifestations and that are contrasted within the work of art in varied ways. (52)

Again, he insists on a strict separation between the concepts and terminology of history and that of theory. (Interesting that he uses the political/military metaphor of “hostile camps” — it would be interesting to know more about what he’s reacting against.) Thus far Panofsky has mostly talked in roughly spatial terms about history and theory — speaking of separation, distance, difference, etc. — but now he starts to talk more in terms of time (perhaps this attends a turn from the ontological to the methodological): “The contents of the world of historical reality must be grasped not with the fundamental concepts but starting from them. The fundamental concepts do not dare, as a form of grammaire générale et raisonnée, to classify the manifestations of art; their duty is rather … to offer an a priori legitimated catalyst from which a discussion of the manifestation may be constructed” (52-53) (I wonder if this would work as an anticipatory objection to structuralism? In some of its versions, anyway. Or it may just be the sudden French that makes me think this.) So what does EP mean exactly by “a priori legitimated catalyst”? I think this should be read along with “starting from them”: Panofsky is making a claim about methodological priority. The catalyst comes first, and sets us off on our adventure. “They [the fundamental concepts] shape only the formulation of artistic problems, not the potential solutions; they determine only those questions that we direct to objects, not the individual and unpredictable answers that these objects can offer us” (52-53).

It seems to me like Panofsky is trying to formalize aesthetic looking, without predetermining the final product of aesthetic encounter with an object too much. That is: we start with these very basic, fundamental problems (how does the artist solve the haptic/optic problem, and the surface/depth problem? etc.) which quickly become much more specific when we start actually examining an artwork, and trying to figure out what it’s doing. The fundamental problems will not be used, as terms, in our final analysis of the work, but if we don’t start with them, then what we’re doing is not really “aesthetic looking” at all. He wants to draw a line somewhere, and he decides to do it at the earliest possible moment, before the particular features of the work make matters more confusing.

(There’s a footnote on this page which baffles me a little but is definitely relevant to the question of what is or isn’t “really” aesthetics. Right after “they determine only those questions that we direct to objects, not the individual and unpredictable answers that these objects can offer us,” Panofsky adds: “This describes the principal difference between art theory, as I understand it, and so-called aesthetics and art psychology. By addressing fundamental problems, art theory does not ask the questions of philosophical aesthetics, which seeks to determine the prerequisites and conditions that have made the artwork possible a priori, and even less those of normative aesthetics, which claims to formulate the laws that works of art must follow; art psychology on the other hand enquires into the conditions in which the work of art, or the impression of the work of art, becomes real” (53). This position-taking is very helpful in understanding what he thinks his project is all about. For Panofsky, traditional philosophical aesthetics (everything in the line of Aristotle?) is too literal, effecting that short circuit from the concept to the artwork that he warns against everywhere in this essay: its implict presumption is, if we think hard enough, apply enough philosophy to this object, we will get clear about it. Panofsky says no way. “Art psychology,” on the other hand, would seem to be a more subject-centered (psychoanalytic? or phenomenological?) approach, making what the artwork does to the viewer the ground of philosophical discourse, rather than the problems the artist is trying to solve. This is also no good. We can’t discover what artworks really want to be doing — their Kunstwollen — by reasoning about them with traditional philosophical concepts, or by looking more intently about what they are already doing to us. If it helps, we could identify the first approach with Kant and Hegel, the second with Freud and Heidegger. NEITHER OF THESE WAYS OF THINKING GETS US ANYWHERE, WITH REGARD TO WHAT IS REALLY GOING ON IN THE ARTWORK.)

By this point Panofsky has pretty well made his claim for art theory’s autonomy: that it must formulate general questions, with which we begin, and which we cannot give up if we want to continue doing aesthetic looking. But now he turns to the specific tasks it takes on in relation to empirical research: “besides the fundamental artistic problems, with which all works of art have to deal, there are without doubt also individual artistic problems, which are solved only in a specific group of artworks, perhaps only in a single monument … [A]rt theory then must provide specialist concepts so as to support fundamental art-theoretical concepts and order them systematically; the individual artistic problems should be shaped to formulae and related to the fundamental problems” (53). This is where art theory has a role in a continuing discourse: after having laid down the inalienable system of concepts adumbrated earlier, it looks at what the art historian has actually come up with, the individual artistic problems, and comes up with new concepts to describe them which link up with the unassailable fundamental problems. It’s a little space for pragmatism, and thus for argument, within a larger scientific foundationalism. (Parenthetically, I think this is similar to how Adorno conceived social theory’s relation to sociology. Might be an interesting paper in here, about Master Theorists and their administrative genesis.)

Then Panofsky’s argument takes kind of a weird sociological turn, making a claim not just about how art history (the discipline) should operate but about how the history of art actually functions:

“The individual artistic problems emerge, almost as if following a Hegelian scheme, from the fact that all solutions of the fundamental artistic problems in the course of historical development become themselves the poles of a specific individual artistic problem. Further, the solutions of this individual problem again form the poles of another, even more specialist second-order problem, and so forth ad infinitum” (53)

The example he uses to illustrate this is a column: “if, under specific historical circumstances … the situation occurs in which wall and column join into an organic connection within one building, then a new artistic problem arises, which in relation to the fundamental problem has to be regarded as an individual problem. Such an individual problem can produce further specialized individual problems, in that its varied solutions … are themselves in dialogue with each other. In the same way, two different solutions of the fundamental artistic problems … can come to face each other as poles of a new contrast, which itself can be split into indefinite subproblems” (53-54)
What Panofsky wants to give us here, I guess, is an account of the genesis of styles. Everything kicked off, long ago, with the fundamental conceptual problems of haptic versus optic et al., and every time a satisfying solution is found that achievement forms the basis for a newer, more specific problem. So the problem becomes not simply to manifest some sort of art, but to make a column; then to make a Doric column; then to solve some specific problem within the Doric column, and so on, as he says, ad infinitum. What keeps this from being totally teleological or progressivist or whatever (Art just gets Better and Better!)* is that there can be multiple problem chains going on at the same time, and even interacting with each other: Doric columns don’t have to give way to Ionic, there can be both at any one time, and they can draw on each other’s solutions in order to help with their own specific problem, etc. (* Just how Hegelian is this? Not sure right now: the popular image of Hegel is of a pretty monolithic forward movement of history, but you never know.) And presumably chains can also come to an end, or get lost, through accidents of history as well.

This is all leading up to a very grand theory of art indeed. If we accept Panofsky’s scheme, then ultimately “ all individual artistic problems can be systematically linked with each other and finally — however particular and specialized (even singular) they may be — referred back to fundamental problems, and so from the table of art-theoretical fundamental concepts a coherently connected art-theoretical conceptual system emerges, which can branch out even into the finest specialist concepts” (54). We can keep our specialist, historicist, close reading/looking procedures, refine them however we need to in order to make use of them: as long as they can ultimately “refer back” to the fundamental problems, we can tie them in with every other artwork. But not, I think, by short circuit: by slow, careful relation of one style to another, back through the history of art, which can all in principle be made to form one coherent story.

How would this work, exactly? “How this conceptual system might be designed and used in practice is not possible to demonstrate here,” but all he’s concerned with here, he says, is refuting Dorner’s objection to “the possibility of finding fundamental art-historical concepts”; what Panofsky wants to insist is that, in theory, fundamental concepts are possible. There would still be a tremendous amount of work to do to show how, or that, they’re useful to art historians. So really his argument here doesn’t depend on the particular concepts he’s given (although he presumably does think they’re right), but on the very idea of a fundamental conceptual system. Therefore, he ends the section with three reasons that he thinks his concepts can “rightly be described as fundamental”:

(a) they are valid a priori and are therefore suitable and necessary for understanding all artistic phenomena;
(b) they do not refer to anything nonmanifest but to manifest objects;
c) they build a systematic connection with those specialist concepts that form their subordinates.

So, against a common sense objection that any fundamental conceptual system will be too abstract to apply to all artworks, Panofsky says: (a) as long as we get the concepts logically right before we move into the empirical arena, we'll have room to maneuver later; (b) my concepts are good because they refer to real visual experience; and (c) they are useful because they allow us to connect up seemingly disparate works and compare them.

(It seems like there might be a contradiction between “a priori” and “manifest” — doesn’t “a priori” mean “prior to experience,” and thus to manifestation? If not, I think Panofsky owes a fuller definition of manifestation.)

(There’s also an interesting footnote at the end here about form and content, but it has to do with Dorner, so maybe I’ll save it for the end and the excursus on Dorner.)

Panting After Panofsky - Part 2

Picking up where we left off: in between sections A1 and A2 Panofsky includes a little table, which lays out the antitheses I described yesterday (“general antithesis within the ontological sphere: volume versus form,” “general antithesis within the methodological sphere: time versus space”) in two columns. Between those two, there’s a third column, itself divided into three, which lists the “specific contrasts within the phenomenal and, especially, within the visual sphere.” So we’re getting more specific, closer to actual artworks. The three specific contrasts Panofsky lists are:

1. contrast of elementary values: optical values (empty space) versus haptic values (body)
2. contrast of figural values: values of depth versus values of surface
3. contrast of compositional values: values of fusing versus values of splitting

The rest of section A2 (which has five parts — sigh) is basically a reading of this table, which Panofsky calls “the table of a fundamental conceptual system for a science of art” (47).
“The pair of concepts in the first column (optic and haptic values) refers to a region of the experiential that we may call the layer of elementary values; it describes those qualities that need to be reconciled to create a visual unit (figure).”

The pair of values in the second column (depth and surface) “refers to a further region of the visual, which we may call the layer of figural values; it describes those qualities through whose conciliation a visual unit (figure) actually comes into being” (47). For another way of talking about this basic contrast, think of Wittgenstein’s remarks in the Philosophical Investigations on Gestalt psychology, or “seeing something as something”: on the level of elementary values we just see some lines, or a totally abstract pattern, not yet understood or processed; on the level of figural values, we begin to see these same lines or pattern as a figure of some kind. (I don’t think this necessarily needs to apply only to representational art — any kind of artwork, or really anything sensible, presents some kind of Gestalt, right? — though I’m not 100% sure about this.)

Finally, the third pair of concepts “refers to the final region of the experiential, which we may call the layer of compositional values; it describes those qualities through whose conciliation a majority of visual units (whether the members of a specific organism, or the parts of a specific group, or the components of a specific artistic entity) are joined together in a unity of a higher order” (47). So there’s a progression from: just stuff; stuff that is something; stuff that is something for some reason. (I may have smuggled in intentionality here, so maybe it would be better to say for the last: something that is organized somehow.)

Panofsky moves on: “The fundamental problem expressed in the first [elementary] pair of concepts is the argument between optical and haptic values, which can be understood as the specifically visual manifestation of the contrast between volume and form. For the realization of a purely optical value would lead to an annihilation of form, that is, to the completely amorphous appearance of light, while conversely the realization of a purely haptic value would lead to a complete annihilation of all sensible volume, that is, to a wholly abstract geometric form” (47-48). This is interesting: thinking of it like an eye, “optic” means totally open, letting light in, putting up no resistance to it, and therefore what you get is just the volume, “an annihilation of form” — a pure ontology. (Of course this is possible only in theory.) “Haptic,” on the other hand, which literally means "relating to touch," is eyes closed, no light getting in at all: since we're talking about the visual, in this case we are just as it were imagining an artwork, rather than actually sensing any volume. (It’s a little confusing that Panofsky says this would be “a wholly abstract geometric form,” because it implies that it would have to look like a Mondrian or something; but if I’m understand him right, it could look like anything, the important thing is that it only exists as form, it hasn’t been manifested as a sensible object that has volume.)

Having done haptic vs. optic, Panofsky skips over to the third (compositional) pair of concepts, “fusing” versus “splitting,” which he calls “the specifically visual manifestation of the contrast between time and space. For a real complete amalgamation of single independent units can only be imagined within the medium of time, which cannot be split, while reciprocally a real and strict isolation of single units from each other is only imaginable in the medium of space, unpenetrated by any movement. The antithesis expressed in the third pair of concepts could thus be described as calmness and movement (being and becoming) if the concept of movement or becoming included not only a sense of the purely temporal but also the idea of a spatiotemporal event” (48).

Ow. Brain ache. So, we’re thinking about “composition” now — the “final region of the experiential” and “a unity of a higher order” — and in order to do this we have to think methodologically, which means thinking about the contrast between time and space. I think we’re trying to think of an artwork that has to be exactly as it is — “a real complete amalgamation of single independent units” — which means we apprehend it all at once as right (or successful, or unified, or whatever other term of praise you want to use). This happens in time, “which cannot be split”: that is, I think, you can’t divide a moment of your experience of a complex artwork and be looking at more than one thing at once: you have to look at each piece one at a time. In other words, you need to effect “a real and strict isolation of single units from each other” — which would presumably be necessary in order to critically examine the artwork, and really see how it all fits together? — can only happen in space, “unpenetrated by any movement” (and Panofsky is usually so symmetrical, I’m surprised he doesn’t say here that space “cannot be fused” — though again I’m not exactly sure what this would mean. What’s the contrast? Can time be fused?). The last sentence is more abstract, but it seems to make things a tiny bit easier: the compositional antithesis is between “calmness” and “movement,” “being” and “becoming,” and movement/becoming means a “spatiotemporal event” (scanning the canvas of a painting, in time). So, maybe all Panofsky is saying here is that the time element comes in at the compositional level? If so, that’s clear enough. Still, I’m not at all sure I’ve got the hang of this part; maybe I’m just not sure what “fusing” and “splitting” actually are. Perhaps I’ll come back to this.

He then doubles back to the middle figural pair of concepts — depth and surface — and says that this contrast “can be understood not only through the contrast between volume and form but also through the contrast between time and space, inasmuch as a specific relationship between depth and surface requires also a specific relation of optical and haptic values and a specific relation of fusing and splitting, movement and calmness” (48). Hmm… so it seems as if here Panofsky is saying that the figural is the synthesis of the elementary and the compositional, or (maybe better) the mediating level: it has to do with (“requires”) both space and time and openness and closedness.

To illustrate this, Panofsky brings in his first example: “The difference between ancient Egyptian and classical Greek reliefs is well known: in ancient Egyptian art an utterly flat or even sometimes a receding execution of the relief and an almost complete relinquishment of foreshortening eliminate any values of depth in favor of values of surface while in classical Greek art a measured depth of the relief and an equally measured foreshortening establish an equilibrium between values of depth and values of surface” (48). Egyptian relief: no depth, all surface:
Greek relief: equilibrium between depth and surface:
(Panofsky, I think it’s safe to infer, likes the Greek relief better; he’s bringing in this contrast because he wants an example of a more successful artwork to illustrate his theory. Again, we will just stipulate this value judgment for didactic purposes.) “In this example, it is clear that these solutions to the surface-depth problem, however they may be executed, are inevitably also linked to a corresponding solution of the problem of optical and haptic values as well as of the problem of the values of fusing (or movement) and splitting (isolation or calmness). In this example, the movement of one individual form and thus also the connection of various individual forms with each other is only possible on the condition that this one individual form is free to move from the second to the third dimension of space” (48). (Note that now Panofsky is suddenly back to talking about "problems" and "solutions." Where does he get this language from, I wonder? Is it Hegelian? Or is he using it in a logical sense?)

Again, just granting him that the Greek relief is better than the Egyptian, what Panofsky emphasizes as a criterion of excellence for art is the simultaneous solution of multiple fundamental problems in a single gesture or feature. “A solution of the surface-depth problem in favor of surface necessarily means also a solution of the contrast between calmness and movement, isolation and amalgamation, in favor of calmness and isolation, and vice versa. Likewise … a solution of the surface-depth problem in favor of surface means necessarily also a solution of the problem of the optical and haptic values in favor of the haptic, and vice versa. So, while the two other fundamental problems [viz., elementary and compositional] can be attributed either to the space-time antithesis or to the volume-form antithesis, the fundamental problem of … depth and … surface can actually be understood from both sides” (48-49).

I’m still not sure I’m getting what putting the figural in between the elementary and the compositional values does for Panofsky — but it’s clear enough what he’s positing as success in art: “It is this mediating role of the second fundamental problem that helps us to understand that within any one specific style all three fundamental problems can and have to be solved in one and the same sense” (49). That is, simultaneous solution is what he likes the best — and with this doctrine we may be within reach of Robert Graves, I.A. Richards, William Empson, and thus the New Criticism. But I’m going to stop there, on the verge of A3.3, and hope the foregoing gets clarified a little as I go along.

1978: The Year Philosophy Broke

Lately I've been relaxing in the evenings (or, more commonly, waking up in the very early mornings) with episodes of the 1978 BBC TV series Men of Ideas. These are charmingly stilted dialogues between host Bryan Magee and then- (and, mostly, still-) contemporary Anglo-American philosophers (yes, all men, except for Martha Nussbaum and Iris Murdoch) on major philosophers of the past. (Magee seems like a pretty interesting character in his own right: Cockney boy turned Labour MP turned BBC presenter and popularizer of philosophy. Only in England.) They're pitched for a non-specialist audience, and I'm sure there's much in the views presented that have been superseded since the late seventies,* but they're still pretty good general introductions as well as fascinating artifacts of a bygone TV era. My favorites so far: Hubert Dreyfus on Heidegger, Hilary Putnam on the philosophy of science, and Peter Singer on Hegel and Marx. But there are plenty more, mostly skewed toward the analytic tradition: episodes on Kant, Hume, Frege, pragmatism, Wittgenstein, et al. Not to mention a wide variety of amusing late 1970s academic hairstyles. Enjoy!

* For a more contemporary, but overall less satisfying, pop philosophy fix, see the podcast series Philosophy Bites. The best one I've heard is Raymond Geuss on political philosophy.

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s favorite philosopher was Hegel.