Re: Pierre Bourdieu est mort

["Henry C.K. Liu" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Philosopher Robert Nozick dies at 63:
Considered one of century's leading thinkers
By Ken Gewertz
Gazette Staff


Robert Nozick challenged professional thinkers to think harder. (Gazette file
photo)
University Professor Robert Nozick, one of the late 20th century's most
influential thinkers, died on the morning of Jan. 23 at the age of 63. He had
been diagnosed with stomach cancer in 1994.

Nozick, known for his wide-ranging intellect and engaging style as both writer
and teacher, had taught a course on the Russian Revolution during the fall
semester and was planning to teach again in the spring. His last major book,
"Invariances: The Structure of the Objective World," was published by Harvard
University Press in October 2001.

According to Alan Dershowitz, the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law and a
longtime friend, Nozick had been talking with colleagues and critiquing their
work until a week before his death.

"His mind remained brilliant and sharp to the very end," Dershowitz said.

He added that Nozick was "constantly probing, always learning new subjects.
He was a University Professor in the best sense of the term. He taught
everybody in every discipline. He was a wonderful teacher, constantly
rethinking his own views and sharing his new ideas with students and
colleagues. His unique philosophy has influenced generations of readers and
will continue to influence people for generations to come."

Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers said of Nozick's passing, "I was deeply
saddened to learn of the death of Robert Nozick. Harvard and the entire world
of ideas have lost a brilliant and provocative scholar, profoundly influential
within his own field of philosophy and well beyond. All of us will greatly
miss his lively mind and spirited presence, but his ideas and example will
continue to enrich us for years to come."

Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Jeremy R. Knowles said, "Bob Nozick
was a luminous and wide-ranging philosopher who engaged students and
colleagues from across the University and beyond. The loss to philosophy and
to Harvard is grievous."

Philosophy Department Chair Christine Korsgaard described Nozick as "a
brilliant and fearless thinker, very fast on his feet in discussion, and
apparently interested in everything. Both in his teaching and in his
writing, he did not stay within the confines of any traditional field, but
rather followed his interests into many areas of philosophy. His works throw
light on a broad range of philosophical issues, and on their
connection with other disciplines. The courage with which he faced the last
years of illness, and the irrepressible energy with which he continued to
work, made a very deep impression on all of us."

Nozick's controversial and challenging views gained him considerable attention
and influence in the world beyond the academy.

His first book, "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" (1974), transformed him from a
young philosophy professor known only within his profession to the reluctant
theoretician of a national political movement.

He wrote the book as a critique of "Theory of Justice" (1971), by his Harvard
colleague John Rawls, the James Bryant Conant University Professor Emeritus.
Rawls' book provided a philosophical underpinning for the bureaucratic welfare
state, a methodically reasoned argument for why it was right for the state to
redistribute wealth in order to help the poor and disadvantaged.

Nozick's book argued that the rights of the individual are primary and that
nothing more than a minimal state - sufficient to protect against violence and
theft, and to ensure the enforcement of contracts - is justified.
"Anarchy, State, and Utopia" won the National Book Award and was named by The
Times Literary Supplement as one of "The Hundred Most Influential Books Since
the War."

A former member of the radical left who was converted to a libertarian
perspective as a graduate student, largely through his reading of conservative
economists Friedrich Heyek and Milton Friedman, Nozick was never comfortable
with his putative status as an ideologue of the right.

In a 1978 article in The New York Times Magazine he said that "right-wing
people like the pro-free-market argument, but don't like the arguments for
individual liberty in cases like gay rights - although I view them as an
interconnecting whole. ..."

Whether they agreed or disagreed with the political implication of the book,
critics were nearly unanimous in their appreciation for Nozick's lively,
accessible writing style. In a discipline known for arduous
writing, Nozick's approach was hailed as a breath of fresh air.

He explained his approach in the article cited above: "It is as though what
philosophers want is a way of saying something that will leave the person
they're talking to no escape. Well, why should they be bludgeoning people like
that? It's not a nice way to behave."

Despite the notoriety and influence that his first book brought him, Nozick
moved on to explore very different territory in his second book,
"Philosophical Explanations" (1981). This need to be intellectually on the
move at all times characterized his career. He once told an interviewer, "I
didn't want to spend my life writing 'The Son of Anarchy, State, and Utopia.'"

In "Philosophical Explanations," Nozick took on subjects that many academic
philosophers had dismissed as irrelevant or meaningless, such as free will
versus determinism and the nature of subjective experience, and why there is
something rather than nothing. In dealing with these questions, he rejected
the idea of strict philosophical proof, adopting instead a notion of
philosophical pluralism.

"There are various philosophical views, mutually incompatible, which cannot be
dismissed or simply rejected," he wrote in "Philosophical Explanations."
"Philosophy's output is the basketful of these admissible views, all
together." Nozick suggested that this basketful of views could be ordered
according to criteria of coherence and adequacy and that even second- and
third-ranked views might offer valuable truths and insights.

Nozick continued to develop his theory of philosophical pluralism in his next
book, "The Examined Life" (1989), an exploration of the individual's relation
to reality that, once again, emphasized explanation rather than proof.

In his book, "The Nature of Rationality" (1995), Nozick asked what function
principles serve in our daily life and why we don't simply act on whim or out
of self-interest. "Socratic Puzzles" (1997) was a collection of essays,
articles, and reviews, plus several examples of Nozick's philosophical short
fiction.

His next work, "Invariances: The Structure of the Objective World," (2001)
looks at the nature of truth and objectivity and examines the function of
subjective consciousness in an objective world. It also scrutinizes truth in
ethics and discusses whether truth in general is relative to culture and
social factors.

Nozick's teaching followed the same lively, unorthodox, heterogeneous pattern
as his writing. With one exception, he never taught the same course twice. The
exception was "The Best Things in Life," which he presented in 1982 and '83,
attempting to derive from the class discussion a general theory of values. The
course description called it an exploration of "the nature and value of those
things deemed best, such as friendship, love, intellectual understanding,
sexual pleasure, achievement, adventure, play, luxury, fame, power,
enlightenment, and ice cream."

Speaking without notes, Nozick would pace restlessly back and forth, an
ever-present can of Tab in his hand, drawing his students into a  free-ranging
discussion of the topic at hand.

He once defended his "thinking out loud" approach by comparing it with the
more traditional method of giving students finished views of the great
philosophical ideas.

"Presenting a completely polished and worked-out view doesn't give students  a
feel for what it's like to do original work in philosophy and to see it
happen, to catch on to doing it."

He also used his teaching as a way of working out his ideas, often leading  to
views that he would later present in book form. "If somebody wants to  know
what I'm going to do next, what they ought to do is keep an eye on the
Harvard course catalogue," he once told an interviewer.

Nozick, who grew up in Brooklyn and attended public school there, came to
philosophy via a paperback version of Plato's "Republic," which he found
intellectually thrilling. Nozick described the experience in his 1989 book,
"The Examined Life" - "When I was 15 years old, or 16, I carried around on
the streets of Brooklyn a paperback copy of Plato's 'Republic'; front cover
facing outward. I had read only some of it and understood less, but I was
excited by it and knew it was something wonderful."

Nozick obtained an A.B. degree from Columbia College in 1959, and M.A. and
Ph.D. degrees from Princeton in 1961 and 1963, respectively. After stints  at
Princeton and the Rockefeller University, Nozick came to Harvard as a full
professor in 1969, at the age of 30. He became Arthur Kingsley Porter
Professor of Philosophy in 1985 and in 1998 was named the Joseph Pellegrino
University Professor.

Nozick was the recipient of many awards and honors, among them the
Presidential Citation from the American Psychological Association in 1998,
which described him as "one of the most brilliant and original living
philosophers."

Nozick was also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a
member of the Council of Scholars of the Library of Congress, a corresponding
fellow of the British Academy, and a senior fellow of the Society of Fellows
at Harvard. He served as the president of the American Philosophical
Association's Eastern Division from 1997 to 1998, was a  Christensen visiting
fellow at St. Catherine's College, Oxford University,  1997, and a cultural
adviser to the U.S. Delegation to the UNESCO
Conference on World Cultural Policy in 1982.

In the spring of 1997, he delivered the six John Locke Lectures at Oxford
University. He held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the
Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the
Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

He is survived by his wife, Gjertrud Schnackenberg, and his two children,
Emily Sarah Nozick and David Joshua Nozick.

Nozick will be buried in a private ceremony. A memorial service is being
planned for sometime in February.



"J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote:

>      While we are at it, the important libertarian
> philosopher, Robert Nozick, est mort aussi.
> Barkley Rosser
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Henry C.K. Liu" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <pkt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>; <gang8@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>;
> <TheNewForum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2002 10:31 PM
> Subject: Pierre Bourdieu est mort
>
> > Pierre Bourdieu est mort
> >
> > Pierre Bourdieu est mort, mercredi, à 23 heures, à l'hôpital
> > Saint-Antoine de Paris. Atteint d'un cancer, il était âgé de 71 ans.
> > Internationalement reconnue et discutée, son oeuvre a fondé, d'un point
> > de vue académique, une école de sociologie critique de la modernité qui
> > s'est accompagnée, ces dernières années, d'un engagement de plus en plus
> > prononcé en faveur des mouvements sociaux. Directeur d'études à l'Ecole
> > des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), élu au Collège de France
> > en 1981, il réunit autour de lui une école sociologique dont la revue
> > "Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales", fondée en 1975, sera la
> > vitrine. Pour ses disciples, sa théorie du monde social constitue une
> > "révolution symbolique", semblable à celles qu'ont pu connaître d'autres
> > disciplines.
> >
> > The essence of neoliberalism
> >
> > Pierre Bourdieu
> > Professor at the Collège de France
> >
> > Le Monde, December 1998
> > La globalización en La BitBlioteca
> > La nouvelle vulgate planétaire (dans le Monde diplomatique)
> >
> > As the dominant discourse would have it, the economic world is a pure
> > and perfect order, implacably unrolling the logic of its predictable
> > consequences, and prompt to repress all violations by the sanctions that
> > it inflicts, either automatically or - more unusually - through the
> > intermediary of its armed extensions, the International Monetary Fund
> > (IMF) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
> > (OECD) and the policies they impose: reducing labour costs, reducing
> > public expenditures and making work more flexible. Is the dominant
> > discourse right? What if, in reality, this economic order were no more
> > than the implementation of a utopia - the utopia of neoliberalism - thus
> > converted into a political problem? One that, with the aid of the
> > economic theory that it proclaims, succeeds in conceiving of itself as
> > the scientific description of reality?
> >
> > This tutelary theory is a pure mathematical fiction. From the start it
> > has been founded on a formidable abstraction. For, in the name of a
> > narrow and strict conception of rationality as individual rationality,
> > it brackets the economic and social conditions of rational orientations
> > and the economic and social structures that are the condition of their
> > application.
> >
> > To give the measure of this omission, it is enough to think just of the
> > educational system. Education is never taken account of as such at a
> > time when it plays a determining role in the production of goods and
> > services as in the production of the producers themselves. From this
> > sort of original sin, inscribed in the
> > Walrasian myth (1) of "pure theory", flow all of the deficiencies and
> > faults of the discipline of economics and the fatal obstinacy with which
> > it attaches itself to the arbitrary opposition which it induces, through
> > its mere existence, between a properly economic logic, based on
> > competition and efficiency, and social logic, which is subject to the
> > rule of fairness.
> >
> > That said, this "theory" that is desocialised and dehistoricised at its
> > roots has, today more than ever, the means of making itself true and
> > empirically verifiable. In effect, neoliberal discourse is not just one
> > discourse among many. Rather, it is a "strong discourse" - the way
> > psychiatric discourse is in an asylum, in Erving Goffman's analysis (2).
> > It is so strong and so hard to combat only because it has on its side
> > all of the forces of a world of relations of forces, a world that it
> > contributes to making what it is. It does this most notably by orienting
> > the economic choices of those who dominate economic relationships. It
> > thus adds its own symbolic force to these relations of forces. In the
> > name of this scientific programme, converted into a plan of political
> > action, an immense political project is underway, although its status as
> > such  is denied because it appears to be purely negative. This project
> > aims to create the conditions under which the "theory" can be realised
> > and can function: a programme of the methodical destruction of
> > collectives.
> >
> > The movement toward the neoliberal utopia of a pure and perfect market
> > is made possible by the politics of financial deregulation.  And it is
> > achieved through the transformative and, it must be said, destructive
> > action of all of the political measures (of which the most recent is the
> > Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI),  designed to protect foreign
> > corporations and their investments from national states) that aim to
> > call into question any and all collective structures that could serve as
> > an obstacle to the logic of
> > the pure market: the nation, whose space to manoeuvre continually
> > decreases; work groups, for example through the individualisation of
> > salaries and of careers as a function of individual competences, with
> > the consequent atomisation of workers; collectives for the defence of
> > the rights of workers, unions, associations, cooperatives; even the
> > family, which loses part of its control over consumption through the
> > constitution of markets by age groups.
> >
> > The neoliberal programme draws its social power from the political and
> > economic power of those whose interests it expresses: stockholders,
> > financial operators, industrialists, conservative or social-democratic
> > politicians who have been converted to the reassuring layoffs of
> > laisser-faire, high-level financial officials eager to impose policies
> > advocating their own extinction because, unlike the managers of firms,
> > they run no risk of having eventually to pay the consequences.
> > Neoliberalism tends on the whole to favour severing the economy from
> > social realities and thereby constructing, in reality, an economic
> > system conforming to its description in pure theory, that is a sort of
> > logical machine that presents itself as a chain of constraints
> > regulating economic agents.
> >
> > The globalisation of financial markets, when joined with the progress of
> > information technology, ensures an unprecedented mobility of capital. It
> > gives investors concerned with the short-term profitability of their
> > investments the possibility of permanently comparing the profitability
> > of the largest corporations and, in consequence, penalising these firms'
> > relative setbacks.  Subjected to this permanent threat, the corporations
> > themselves have to adjust more and more rapidly to the exigencies of the
> > markets, under penalty of "losing the market's confidence", as they say,
> > as well as the support of their stockholders. The latter, anxious to
> > obtain short-term profits, are more and more able to impose their will
> > on managers, using financial directorates to establish the rules under
> > which managers operate and to shape their policies regarding hiring,
> > employment, and wages.
> >
> > Thus the absolute reign of flexibility is established, with employees
> > being hiring on fixed-term contracts or on a temporary basis and
> > repeated corporate restructurings and, within the firm itself,
> > competition among autonomous divisions as well as among teams forced to
> > perform multiple functions. Finally, this competition is extended to
> > individuals themselves, through the individualisation of the wage
> > relationship: establishment of individual performance objectives,
> > individual performance evaluations, permanent evaluation, individual
> > salary increases or granting of bonuses as a function of competence and
> > of individual merit; individualised career paths; strategies of
> > "delegating responsibility" tending to ensure the self-exploitation of
> > staff who, simple wage labourers in relations of strong hierarchical
> > dependence, are at the same time held responsible for their sales, their
> > products, their branch, their store, etc. as though they were
> > independent contractors. This pressure toward "self-control" extends
> > workers' "involvement" according to the techniques of  "participative
> > management" considerably beyond management level. All of these are
> > techniques of rational domination that impose over-involvement in work
> > (and not only among
> > management) and work under emergency or high-stress conditions. And they
> > converge to weaken or abolish collective standards or solidarities (3).
> >
> > In this way, a Darwinian world emerges - it is the struggle of all
> > against all at all levels of the hierarchy, which finds support  through
> > everyone clinging to their job and organisation under conditions of
> > insecurity, suffering, and stress. Without a doubt, the practical
> > establishment of this world of struggle would not succeed so completely
> > without the complicity of all of the precarious arrangements that
> > produce insecurity and of the existence of a reserve army of employees
> > rendered docile by these social processes that make their situations
> > precarious, as well as by the permanent threat of unemployment. This
> > reserve army exists at all levels of the hierarchy, even at the higher
> > levels, especially among managers. The ultimate foundation of this
> > entire economic order placed under the sign of freedom is in effect the
> > structural violence of unemployment, of the insecurity of job tenure and
> > the menace of layoff that it implies. The condition of the "harmonious"
> > functioning of the individualist micro-economic model is a mass
> > phenomenon, the existence of a reserve army of the unemployed.
> >
> > This structural violence also weighs on what is called the labour
> > contract (wisely rationalised and rendered unreal by the "theory of
> > contracts"). organisational discourse has never talked as much of trust,
> > co-operation, loyalty, and organisational culture as in an era when
> > adherence to the organisation is obtained at each moment by eliminating
> > all temporal guarantees of employment (three-quarters of hires are for
> > fixed duration, the proportion of temporary employees keeps rising,
> > employment "at will" and the
> > right to fire an individual tend to be freed from any restriction).
> >
> > Thus we see how the neoliberal utopia tends to embody itself in the
> > reality of a kind of infernal machine, whose necessity imposes itself
> > even upon the rulers. Like the Marxism of an earlier time, with which,
> > in this regard, it has much in common, this utopia evokes powerful
> > belief - the free trade faith - not only among those who live off it,
> > such as financiers, the owners and managers of large corporations, etc.,
> > but also among those, such as high-level government officials and
> > politicians, who derive their justification for existing from it. For
> > they sanctify the power of markets in the name of economic efficiency,
> > which requires the elimination of administrative or political barriers
> > capable of inconveniencing the owners of capital in their individual
> > quest for the maximisation of individual profit, which has been turned
> > into a model of rationality. They want independent central banks. And
> > they preach the subordination of nation-states to the requirements of
> > economic freedom for the masters of the economy, with the suppression of
> > any regulation of any market, beginning with the labour market, the
> > prohibition of deficits and inflation, the general privatisation of
> > public services, and the reduction of public and social expenses.
> >
> > Economists may not necessarily share the economic and social interests
> > of the true believers and may have a variety of individual psychic
> > states regarding the economic and social effects of the utopia which
> > they cloak with mathematical reason. Nevertheless, they have enough
> > specific interests in the field of economic science to contribute
> > decisively to the production and reproduction of belief in the
> > neoliberal utopia. Separated from the realities of the economic and
> > social world by their existence and above all by their intellectual
> > formation, which is most frequently purely abstract, bookish, and
> > theoretical, they are particularly inclined to confuse the things of
> > logic with the logic of things.
> >
> > These economists trust models that they almost never have occasion to
> > submit to the test of experimental verification and are led to look down
> > upon the results of the other historical sciences, in which they do not
> > recognise the purity and crystalline transparency of their mathematical
> > games, whose true necessity
> > and profound complexity they are often incapable of understanding. They
> > participate and collaborate in a formidable economic and social change.
> > Even if some of its consequences horrify them (they can join the
> > socialist party and give learned counsel to its representatives in the
> > power structure), it cannot displease them because, at the risk of a few
> > failures, imputable to what they sometimes call "speculative bubbles",
> > it tends to give reality to the ultra-logical utopia (ultra-logical like
> > certain forms of insanity) to which they consecrate their lives.
> >
> > And yet the world is there, with the immediately visible effects of the
> > implementation of the great neoliberal utopia: not only the poverty of
> > an increasingly large segment of the most economically advanced
> > societies, the extraordinary growth in income differences, the
> > progressive disappearance of autonomous universes of cultural
> > production, such as film, publishing, etc., through the intrusive
> > imposition of commercial values, but also and above all two major
> > trends. First is the destruction of all the
> > collective institutions capable of counteracting the effects of the
> > infernal machine, primarily those of the state, repository of all of the
> > universal values associated with the idea of the public realm.  Second
> > is the imposition everywhere, in the upper spheres of the economy and
> > the state as at the heart of corporations, of that sort of moral
> > Darwinism that, with the cult of the winner, schooled in higher
> > mathematics and bungee jumping, institutes the struggle of all against
> > all and cynicism as the norm of all action and
> > behaviour.
> >
> > Can it be expected that the extraordinary mass of suffering produced by
> > this sort of political-economic regime will one day serve as the
> > starting point of a movement capable of stopping the race to the abyss?
> > Indeed, we are faced here with an extraordinary paradox. The obstacles
> > encountered on the way to
> > realising the new order of the lone, but free individual are held today
> > to be imputable to rigidities and vestiges. All direct and conscious
> > intervention of whatever kind, at least when it comes from the state, is
> > discredited in advance and thus condemned to efface itself for the
> > benefit of a pure and anonymous mechanism, the market, whose nature as a
> > site where interests are exercised is forgotten. But in reality, what
> > keeps the social order from dissolving into chaos, despite the growing
> > volume of the endangered population, is the continuity or survival of
> > those very institutions and representatives of the old order that is in
> > the process of being dismantled, and all the work of all of the
> > categories of social workers, as well as all the forms of social
> > solidarity, familial or otherwise.
> >
> > The transition to "liberalism" takes place in an imperceptible manner,
> > like continental drift, thus hiding its effects from view. Its most
> > terrible consequences are those of the long term. These effects
> > themselves are concealed, paradoxically, by the resistance to which this
> > transition is currently giving rise among those who defend the old order
> > by drawing on the resources it contained, on old solidarities, on
> > reserves of social capital that protect an entire portion of the present
> > social order from falling into anomie. This
> > social capital is fated to wither away - although not in the short run -
> > if it is not renewed and reproduced.
> >
> > But these same forces of "conservation", which it is too easy to treat
> > as conservative, are also, from another point of view, forces of
> > resistance to the establishment of the new order and can become
> > subversive forces. If there is still cause for some hope, it is that
> > forces still exist, both in state institutions and in the orientations
> > of social actors (notably individuals and groups most attached to these
> > institutions, those with a tradition of civil and public service) that,
> > under the appearance of simply defending an
> > order that has disappeared and its corresponding "privileges" (which is
> > what they will immediately be accused of), will be able to resist the
> > challenge only by working to invent and construct a new social order.
> > One that will not have as its only law the pursuit of egoistic interests
> > and the individual passion for profit and that will make room for
> > collectives oriented toward the rational pursuit of ends collectively
> > arrived at and collectively ratified.
> >
> > How could we not make a special place among these collectives,
> > associations, unions, and parties for the state: the nation-state, or
> > better yet the supranational state - a European state on the way toward
> > a world state - capable of effectively controlling and taxing the
> > profits earned in the financial markets and, above of all, of
> > counteracting the destructive impact that the latter have on the labour
> > market. This could be done with the aid of labour unions by organising
> > the elaboration and defence of the public interest.
> > Like it or not, the public interest will never emerge, even at the cost
> > of a few mathematical errors, from the vision of accountants (in an
> > earlier period one would have said of "shopkeepers") that the new belief
> > system presents as the supreme form of human accomplishment.
> >
> >
> >
> > (1) Auguste Walras (1800-66), French economist, author of De la nature
> > de la richesse et de l'origine de la valeur ("On the Nature of Wealth
> > and on the Origin of Value") (1848). He was one of the first to attempt
> > to apply mathematics to economic inquiry.
> >
> > (2) Erving Goffman. 1961. Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of
> > Mental Patients and Other Inmates. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
> >
> > (3) See the two journal issues devoted to "Nouvelles formes de
> > domination dans le travail" ("New forms of domination in work"),  Actes
> > de la recherche en sciences sociales, nos. 114, September 1996, and 115,
> > December 1996, especially the introduction by Gabrielle Balazs and
> > Michel Pialoux, "Crise du travail et crise du politique" [Work crisis
> > and political crisis], no. 114: p.3-4.
> >
> > Translated by Jeremy J. Shapiro La globalización en La BitBlioteca La
> > nouvelle vulgate planétaire (dans le Monde diplomatique)
> >
> >