News Flash
Psychology without Freud, economics without Marx, philosophy without Hegel: For disciplinary cheerleaders, this confirms intellectual progress. The cloudy old thinkers have made way for new scientific researchers. But at what cost? The past innovators shared a fealty to history. “We are what we are through history,” stated Hegel; and Freud, for all his biological determinism, believed that one must master the past to master the present. Yet today we lack the patience to dig too far, or perhaps we lack the patience to unravel the implications of discoveries into the past. We want to find the exact pill or the exact gene that provides an instant solution. Psychology transmutes into biology. To the degree that a chemical imbalance results in depression, or a gene gives rise to obesity, the effort to restore health by drugs or surgery cannot be faulted. Yet an individual’s own history may play a decisive role in those disharmonies. We triumphantly treat the effect as the cause. As a practical measure, that approach can be justified, but it avoids a deeper search. — Russell Jacoby, CHE
True, that. Trouble is, the ‘deeper search’ is moving out of the boring, expensive, slow, and private realm of scientific investigation and into the titillating, cheap, quick, and public realm of artistic exhibition. Freud could do nothing to stop Jung from setting up his buffet line of polytheist archetypes; Marx was bought out (like Gorby); Hegel’s grand abstractions became Foucauldian practicalities.
I’m glad Jacoby’s on board when it comes to the Pill State, but it might not matter anymore. Not until people put down the meds for their own reasons will the madness start to wane. Complicated, of course, by the actual usefulness of the things in crisis situations. But then we’re growing increasingly accustomed to looking at life as one protracted crisis.
And another thing: as smart as those three smart cookies were, they’re all Germans. European philosophy has some very interesting things to tell Americans about what’s up, but they’re hardly the final word, and in many cases they’re actively befuddling and distracting about what traps and pitfalls of Western civilization we Americans have providentially avoided, and often need not concern ourselves with.