Tyler Cowen: commitment

Transcript context

…Again, it’s a mega difficult question. Just to explain to you what she, Rebecca Comay . . . incidentally, here I’m a sincere, not politically correct feminist. I’m organizing next October in New York a big Hegel conference. The majority will be women, and I already brutally apologize to people. “No, no, I’m not politically correct feminist. It’s simply that the best Hegelian stuff is come from women today.” So okay, Hölderlin paradigm — you know this passage from Hölderlin, Patmos, all the time quoted by Heidegger: “Wo aber Gefahr ist, wächst / Das Rettende auch. Where the danger is the greatest, the point of salvation is also near,” and so on. And this is a model for the usual revolutionary thinking, even in Marx — proletariat, zero-level exploitation, poverty. But there is a chance that you turn around into salvation. I’m here Hegelian, if you ask me. I much more believe — and I will not go into it now; it’s another half an hour — how do I apply this to what I was telling about catastrophes, apocalypses, and so on. The post-apocalyptic vision — Hegel’s problem is exactly the opposite one. The big attempt at liberation happened — French Revolution, and for Hegel — I don’t totally agree with him, but nonetheless — it turned wrong, Jacobin terror, and so on. So what went wrong? Hegel is not a crazy optimist: “As bad as things are, you should see a chance for the better.” No! Hegel’s basic insight is exactly the opposite one. No matter how good an idea or a project is, we can be sure that it will turn wrong somehow. And I think what Hegel did to French Revolution, we should do to 20th-century Communism. First, we have to still — we disagree here maybe — I still see some tremendous utopian emancipatory potential, but it went terribly wrong with Stalinism and so on. And we shouldn’t play these cheap games — just corrupted Stalin or even . . . Did you notice how Marxists are often even racist here? They put the blame on Russia is too close to Asia, so it’s Asiatic barbarism which is responsible for it. No! If things went wrong, and we have to begin thinking from this, what’s then the solution? Simply return to more modest previous model of society — this is my vision today. Yes, we are approaching a crisis, but we cannot simply revitalize the 20th-century Communism. We should rethink it radically. I’m again a Hegelian pessimist here. Hegel is, for me, a thinker of deep distrust. Hegelian dogma is everything turns wrong. This whole delicate Hegelian theory of repetition — only the second time to do it again. You have to do it again. Maybe you have a chance the second time if you learn the lessons of the first time. And, I think that’s what we need today — this much more modest spirit. Don’t wait for a big revolution. It already happened, and it got screwed up. We now take questions from the floor. I will call on you, and please wait for the mic. This way you can be captured on YouTube. I love you. You are deeply a good Stalinist.…

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