Cosmo-nationalism: American, French and German Philosophy

217 Pages·2018·1.69 MB·English

by  Oisín Keohane

Series editors:
John Armitage Cosmo-nationalism
Ryan Bishop
Joanne Roberts
American, French and German Philosophy
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‘Ashley Woodward’s bright analysis rests upon a deep understanding of the m
whole corpus of Lyotard’s writings, from the earliest to the posthumous, and is o
contextualised by a confrontation with the philosophies of Bergson, Deleuze, -n
Stiegler, Virilio, Habermas, Heidegger, Luhmann, Merleau-Ponty and others. a
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His book outlines with great clarity the complexity of Lyotard’s view of the i
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“inhuman condition”, and particularly his fascination of the “artistic event”.’
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Herman Parret, University of Leuven a
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An incisive argument for the contemporary m
importance of Lyotard in light of posthuman trends
Jean-François Lyotard was one of the leading French philosophers of his
generation, whose wide-ranging and highly original contributions to
thought were overshadowed by his brief, unfortunate association with
‘postmodernism’.
This book demonstrates that Lyotard’s work is incisive and essential for current
debates in the humanities, especially those concerning the arts, as well as
confrontations between humanist traditions and cutting-edge sciences and
technologies that today go under the name of the posthuman.
Ashley Woodward presents a series of studies to explain Lyotard’s specific
interventions in information theory, new media arts and the changing nature
of the human. He assesses their relevance and impact in relation to a number
of important contemporary thinkers including Bernard Stiegler, Luciano
Floridi, Quentin Meillassoux and Paul Virilio.
Ashley Woodward is a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Dundee.
O
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Oisín Keohane
Cover image: courtesy of the artist Yang Yongliang, Heavenly City – Skyscraper,
, 2008, photography
Cover design: Stuart Dalziel
1313 eup Keohane_PPC.indd 1 10/07/2017 19:04
Cosmo-nationalism
Cosmopolitanism did not merely sink to the ground, pale and exhausted;
and the new national idea did not then spring up in its place, unimpeded
and victorious. Cosmopolitanism and nationalism stood side by side in a
close, living relationship for a long time.
Friedrich Meinecke, Cosmopolitanism and the National State
Philosophical vocabulary has taken different turns even in the most
closely related languages, with the result that many distinctions made in
Greek or Latin or German are all but impossible to make in English. In
the case of poetry, such barriers are, at once, a contingent disadvantage
and a symptom of integrity. But so far as philosophy goes, problems of
untranslatability strike at the heart of the whole philosophical enterprise.
As early as the Cratylus and Parmenides, we are made to feel the tension
between aspirations to universality, to a critical fulcrum independent of
temporal, geographic conditions and the relativistic particularities of a
given idiom. How is the particular to express the universal?
George Steiner, After Babel
The idea of national philosophy carries in it a strange contradiction.
In one sense, we are very accustomed to hearing of German, French,
Italian or Anglo-Saxon philosophies; their division seems so inscribed
in philosophical institutions that this idea seems to be completely self-
evident. Authors and philosophical texts would be by differentiating
degrees identified, amongst other criteria, by their adhesion to a ‘national
group.’ Without doubt, the difficulty would be then to know the nature
of this group (cultural, political or other?), and the principles by which
one might become a member of it – the inscription of philosophy in a
determined language, the nationality of the philosopher, dependence on
a tradition. But, as problematic as each of these terms is (culture, nation,
tradition, nationality), the actual existence of national philosophies
would not be called into question.
Marc Crépon, ‘L’Idée de “philosophie nationale”’ (my translation)
Cosmo-nationalism
American, French and German Philosophy
Oisín Keohane
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Contents
Acknowledgements vi
1 Introduction 1
2 The Making of Brothers: Kant the Nationalist, the Internationalist
and the Cosmopolitan 24
3 The Presentation of National Philosophies: Kant on the French and
German National Character 55
4 The Metaphysics of Nationalism: Fichte and the German Language
as a National Philosophical Idiom 92
5 Philosophical Rights-of-Way: Tocqueville and the American
Philosophical Method 116
6 The Transcendental Declaration of Independence: Emerson and
American Philosophy 155
Bibliography 193
Index 207
Acknowledgements
This book is based on doctoral research undertaken at the European Institute,
LSE, a place which shaped me in more ways than one. I would like to thank,
first and foremost, my doctoral supervisors, Prof. Simon Glendinning and Dr
Jennifer Jackson-Preece. Prof. Glendinning often had a better sense of my
idiom, and what I wanted to say in my idiom, than I did. Dr Jackson-Preece,
in turn, ensured that my idiom was always intelligible to others.
I would also like to express my gratitude to the staff at the UC Irvine
Critical Theory Archive, and Professor Peggy Kamuf and Professor Geoffrey
Bennington, who were most accommodating when I viewed the Jacques
Derrida Papers. My trip to this archive as well as my doctoral work were
funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and by the
European Institute. Without their financial support, this book would not have
been possible. I would also like to acknowledge the backing of the following
institutions, which enabled me to complete the manuscript: the Institute
for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh,
the National Research Foundation of South Africa and the Department of
Philosophy at the University of Johannesburg, the Humanities Research
Centre at the National Australian University, and, above all, the Andrew W.
Mellon Foundation and the Jackman Humanities Institute at the University
of Toronto. I would also like to thank more generally the following for their
support and many profitable conversations over the years, which have guided
this work in one form or the other: Prof. John Breuilly, Prof. Alex Broadbent,
Dr Amy Devlin, Prof. Robert Gibbs, Dr Áine Mahon, Prof. Ruth Marshall
and Prof. Jonathan White. I also owe a debt of gratitude to my copyeditor,
Eliza Wright, whose keen eye was invaluable, and the artist Yang Yongliang,
whose image adorns the front cover of this book.
acknowledgements vii
On a more personal note, I wish to thank my family, and in particular, my
grandparents, Michael and Florrie Keohane, who believed in me from the
start, and who introduced me to another world, one I could believe in, and
participate in with the joy they shared from day to day. I would not be on the
path I am today without them. Betty and Donal Geary also deserve my heart-
felt thanks for the warmth and kindness that they have shown in welcoming
me into their family.
Finally, the greatest thanks go to Elizabeth Geary Keohane. One of the
best definitions of marriage I have ever come across derives from John Milton,
who said that the chief and noblest end of marriage is ‘a meet and happy
conversation’.1 I have known Elizabeth for the last decade and a half of my
life, but I confess that my happiest conversations in life have already been with
her. To know that our conversation is not yet ended, and that we have so many
conversations ahead of us about which I know not what, but which I know
promise more future happiness, gives me more hope in the promise of life, and
the worth of living it, than I would have thought possible as a child. I find the
same springs of joy expressed sublimely and yet humbly by J. S. Mill: ‘What
marriage may be in the case of two persons of cultivated faculties, identical in
opinions and purposes, between whom there exists that best kind of equality,
similarity of powers and capacities with reciprocal superiority in them – so that
each can enjoy the luxury of looking up to the other, and can have alternately
the pleasure of leading and of being led in the path of development – I will not
attempt to describe. To those who can conceive it, there is no need; to those
who cannot, it would appear the dream of an enthusiast.’2
Some of the material in this book has been previously published in differ-
ent forms. I would therefore like to acknowledge the editors and publishers
of the following texts: ‘Fichte and the German Idiom: The Metaphysics
of the Addresses to the German Nation’, in vol. 19, issue 2 of Nations and
Nationalism (2013), pp. 317–36; ‘Out of Earshot of the School: Tocqueville
and the “American Philosophical Method”’, book chapter in Stanley Cavell,
Literature and Film: The Idea of America, edited by Áine Kelly and Andrew
Taylor (2013), Routledge, London and New York, pp. 132–57; ‘Tongue-tied
Democracy: The Bind of National Language in Tocqueville and Derrida’, in
vol. 4, issue 2 of Derrida Today (2011), pp. 233–56.
1 Milton 2016: 68.
2 Mill 1989: 211.
For Florrie
cHaPteR 1
Introduction
on tHe PRoBlem oF assigning a nationalitY to
PHilosoPHY
Nationalism has been one of the most significant social and political phe-
nomena of the last two centuries, and it is very likely to remain a feature
of our world for some time to come. Yet, except as a form of irrational and
‘unphilosophical’ prejudice, it has long been ignored as a topic in political phi-
losophy. This is not accidental; philosophy has always, insofar as it understood
itself, pictured itself to be the project of universality, and has wished to present
itself as something that takes place outside or beyond the national as such;
something that is, therefore, ultimately detachable from language, culture and
history. Whilst the ‘birth’ of philosophy may thus be traced to Athens or other
Greek poleis, if not reduced to them – one can recall the enigmatic figure of the
Stranger or the figure from Egypt in Plato’s dialogues – and whilst the Greek
heritage may remain a privileged site or locus for philosophy, something for
it constantly to overcome and to think otherwise, its Greco-European origins
were never intended to limit its scope, its worldwide ambition, its universal
validity. Accordingly, when Plato and Aristotle discussed the Greek concept
of ousia, for example, they did not think its scope would be necessarily limited
due to the fact it was a Greek word – they did not think it was a property
belonging solely to the Greeks or to the Greek language. In short, Plato and
Aristotle did not think they were producing ‘Greek philosophy’ or even
‘Greek Theory’ when they discussed and produced their philosophies, and the
ideas contained in Aristotle’s Politics were not limited to being applied to what
Aristotle called ‘the Hellenic race [genos]’ (Aristotle 1996: 1327b1 30–1).
Philosophy from its inception has thus always acknowledged that while it