Fw: NYTimes.com Article: An Invitation Ruffles Philosophical Feathers

[Jim Farmelant <farmelantj@xxxxxxxx>]

An Invitation Ruffles Philosophical Feathers

June 29, 2002
By EMILY EAKIN 

The black studies scholar Cornel West, who may be best
known for recently cutting a rap album and for feuding with
the president of Harvard University, is also the author of
a well-regarded book on American pragmatism that includes a
section on the philosopher Sidney Hook. So he seemed a
natural choice to invite to a conference on Hook that the
Graduate Center at the City University of New York is
planning to hold in October. 

Yet when a group of prominent conservatives - the political
essayist Irving Kristol, the art critic Hilton Kramer and
the historians Gertrude Himmelfarb and John Patrick Diggins
- who had also been invited heard that Mr. West would be
attending, they abruptly withdrew. 

On Thursday afternoon, Mr. Diggins, a professor at the CUNY
Graduate Center who had been serving as an informal adviser
for the conference, said his objections were scholarly, not
political. "I'm not concerned about Cornel West's political
point of view," he said by telephone from Laguna Beach,
Calif., where he was attending a conference. "I'm concerned
about whether he has any point of view in matters of
philosophy." Mr. West, he explained, did not have a
reputation for coming to conferences prepared: "In order to
comment on Sidney Hook, one would have to read at least 20
of his books. Cornel West is such a celebrity intellectual,
I don't think he'll have time for it." 

An hour later, however, Mr. Diggins called back to say that
he planned to participate in the conference after all.
"This whole thing has become utterly unfortunate," he said,
adding that he hoped all those who had withdrawn would
reconsider. "I hope the conference continues with Professor
West," he said. "After all, he is a public figure. To have
him speaking on Sidney Hook is a significant event in
American culture." Mr. Kristol, Ms. Himmelfarb and Mr.
Kramer declined to comment. (Last week, Mr. Kramer told The
Chronicle of Higher Education that when he learned Mr. West
would be at the conference, he decided his own attendance
"wouldn't be appropriate.") 

The boycott came as a shock to other conference
participants, who quickly condemned it. Acknowledging that
some of Mr. West's scholarly activities have been the
object of fierce debate, scholars say his participation at
the conference, which is sponsored by the graduate school's
Center for the Humanities, should not be a source of
contention. Not only is Mr. West an academic philosopher
schooled in Sidney Hook's brand of philosophical
pragmatism, they point out, but his book "The American
Evasion of Philosophy" (University of Wisconsin Press,
1989) contains a significant - and sympathetic - assessment
of Hook's thought. 

"I consider West's work on Hook to be first rate," said
Christopher Phelps, an assistant professor of history at
Ohio State University at Mansfield who helped secure Mr.
West's participation. "Whatever other controversies have
swirled around him, it seems to me that to claim he does
not have equal place at this conference is intellectually
indefensible." 

Timed to the centennial of Hook's birth, the conference
would be the first major posthumous assessment of the
philosopher, whose intellectual contributions have been
overshadowed by his controversial politics. A protégé of
John Dewey who distinguished himself early in his career
with an important study of Karl Marx, Hook became
increasingly disenchanted with the left, emerging after
World War II as an ardent anti-Stalinist and hard-line cold
warrior. Hook's reputation as a turncoat was cemented in
1985, four years before he died, when Ronald Reagan awarded
him the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential
Medal of Freedom. 

An enthusiastic polemicist, Hook rarely turned down an
opportunity to debate an opponent, an irony not lost on the
boycott's critics. Robert Talisse, an assistant professor
of philosophy at Vanderbilt University in Nashville who
helped organize the conference, quoted one of the 10 rules
for intellectual debate Hook laid out in a famous 1954
essay, "The Ethics of Controversy": "The cardinal sin, when
we are looking for truth of fact or wisdom of policy, is
refusal to discuss, or action which blocks discussion." 

For his part, Mr. West seemed strangely unaffected by the
furor. Reached by telephone on Thursday, he said he had no
memory of being invited to the conference and learned of
the boycott only when a reporter contacted him last week.
Still, he said he was eager to attend. "I have learned much
from the art criticism of Kramer, the fine historiography
of Himmelfarb, the intellectual history of Diggins and some
of the essays of Kristol," he said serenely. "I just see
through their nonsense."

www.nytimes.com/2002/06/29/arts/29HOOK.html?ex=1026354139&ei=1&en=fd33ca3
bb38b1f63


Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company


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