New Silicon Graffiti Video: Weimar? Because We Reich You
Similarly, as the late Alan Bloom wrote in 1987’s The Closing of the American Mind, by the middle of the 20th century, American universities as a whole – not just their architecture departments –had essentially become enclaves of German philosophy. Bloom wrote:
This popularization of German philosophy in the United States is of peculiar interest to me because I have watched it occur during my own intellectual lifetime, and I feel a little like someone who knew Napoleon when he was six. I have seen value relativism and its concomitants grow greater in the land than anyone imagined. Who in 1920 would have believed that Max Weber’s technical sociological terminology would someday be the everyday language of the United States, the land of the Philistines, itself in the meantime become the most powerful nation in the world? The self-understanding of hippies, yippies, yuppies, panthers, prelates and presidents has unconsciously been formed by German thought of a half-century earlier; Herbert Marcuse’s accent has been turned into a Middle Western twang; the echt Deutsch label has been replaced by a Made in America label; and the new American life-style has become a Disneyland version of the Weimar Republic for the whole family.
Which isn’t to say that German influences on America were all bad, or that this was some sort of sinister plot. Sigmund Freud’s efforts have been left in the dust by modern neuroscience, but research into the hidden caverns of the human brain had to start to somewhere. Albert Einstein’s theories led to the splitting of the atom, which both won World War II and provided the basis of nuclear power, which has been remarkably safe in America and Europe. After the war, America’s jet aviation – first the Air Force, then commercial airlines – benefitted enormously from brilliant German engineering work even as America was, thankfully, destroying Nazi Germany’s ability to implement these designs. Similarly, America landed a man on the moon thanks to the efforts of Werner Von Braun, and other German émigrés.
Since Germans are the largest ethnic group in America, why should the Germanification of American universities come as any surprise?
I don’t know if ethnicity plays a big role, as I think there was a huge gap between German emigres who arrived in large numbers in the 19th and early 20th centuries (including my ancestors on my mom’s side of the family), and the importation of the German philosophy that was orbiting around the Weimar-era, such as Nietzsche’s offshoots, the Bauhaus, and the Frankurt School. Not to mention how smoothly these memes were absorbed into every-day American life.
Interesting analysis, but I’m not sure what conclusion to draw. Hasn’t Wiemar thinking won its marketshare “honestly” in the free marketplace of ideas?
What response are you hoping for to this?
Ed – Germans starting arriving early 1700s – Palatine Germans. But your point remains valid: they were peasants, not academics.
Ed
You are a genius. I am really glad you are on our side. Keep it up.
You do realize that all the true “geniuses”, as opposed to overcredentialed morons, are on our side, don’t you?
Indeed, there is much genius wandering around and through PJM, not to diminish Ed in any way at all.
Freud was Austrian, not German. Arguably, Freudian thinking is closer to the anti-rationalism of continental philosophy than to the clearer thinking style of the Vienna Circle (which had its own problems), Karl Popper, and the Austrian school of economics. (Though Hayek did his best to write like a Hegelian.) Anyway I thought that the distinction is worth making.
And btw Edward Teller was Hungarian. (Not sure whether German or Hungarian was his first language.)
Obviously Germany has influenced America’s intellectual life, but that’s not exactly a surprise give the vast contributions of Germany’s scientists and scholars through the last three centuries or so. But surely one could write the same article about the “Frenchification” of America via Derrida, Foucault and Sartre.
In reality, American intellectuals picked the German and the French intellectual tendencies who fit their own perception of what is “trendy” or “exciting” which says more about themselves than the Germans or the French. The vast bodies of German and French culture remained mostly unexplored even as some of their thinkers and their ideas became popularized in America.
“American intellectuals picked the German and the French intellectual tendencies who fit their own perception of what is “trendy” or “exciting” which says more about themselves than the Germans or the French.”
That’s a good point, but I would phrase it more cynically: American statist “intellectuals” picked those German and French ideas that made it easy for them to argue for bigger government.
I fear that now we are seeing the reverse: European “intellectuals” are picking up American ideas useful for preserving the welfare state, and expanding the power of the ruling classes.
For an in-depth examination of German philosophy’s impact on America, read Leonard Peikoff’s ‘The Ominous Parallels.’ It is as appropriate as “Atlas Shrugged’ is to the catastrophe we are facing.
Blessed are not the ignorant, even if they produce humorous videos as Mr. Ignoramus Ed Driscoll has done. Even comical ignorance, when used as a sweeping means of denigration, is dangerous. One might be totally surprised how “comical” anti-Jewish humor could be in the Weimar Republik (and still is on certain streets in Rouen, France). For what it is worth, I, an American with German immigrant grandparents, returned to the old “Heimat” 35 years ago having in my pocket a Ph.D in literature under the tutelage of German immigrants (my favorite being an “Andernacher Jude”), all of whom fled the Weimar Republik. I received a “classical” German education that is not possible today. Relativism was absent, Goethe’s love of “Humanität” present along with Schiller’s often moralistic idealism. Eventually I studied in Germany, where, oh woe, American/British positivism or its offshoots, often dominate, not classical German philosophy. An old fashioned Kantian (and that means HIGH respect for morality) took me under his wings and I eventually earned a Dr. phil. Later in Spain (oh yes, a “Doctorado” was earned under the direction of a most unusual Spanish philosopher (promoted in Germany) – a member of the “Real Acadamia de Ciencias, …”)I continued my studies. Philosophy is Spain can evince a type of civil war, the German side with classical values vs. the American influenced relativists, sickly children of anglo/american logical positivism. Wow, the samething repeated itself in Belgium where another title was almost earned (except that the “weaker sex” distracted my “Germanized” intellectuality for things far more mundane — Freund could have explained it to me). But there too the relativism came from American philosophy (whose shinning star is Richard Rorty) and not from German “classical” philosophy. During my years as a prof. at an American university I stumbled on more relativists (or something similiar) in the American tradition than those under any nefarious German influence. The “bad” Germanic influence stemmed from the left-wing loosers in the Weimar Republik, often with Marxistic inclinations. But, relativists they were not, just dangerously wrong.
Why do I relate my “Germanized” philosophical and literary history? Could it be narcissism? Perhaps a bit (I am so Germanically weak). But the real reason is that I want to establish my credentials, i.e., I suspect that I know (and from the inside) what I am talking about much more profoundly than Mr. Driscoll. Hopefully my “Germanic” pursuits of humanistic studies (and the universalist Dilthey was an inspiration to seek more and more knowledge) will render credibility to my critique of Driscoll. At any rate, once having established my “exalted” status, I feel innocent making the “sweepingly” assertion that Mr. Driscoll is dangerously ignorant!!! I doubt he knows what is going on in contemporary philosophy, let alone that in 18th and 19th Century Germany. I hold that it is more dangerous if the Greeks become today Americans rather than Germans (particularly relative to fiscal policies). Having spent decades trying to understand how the land of my grandparents could evolve into a land sowing mass murder, I have become quite sensitive to “sweeping” generalizations (particularly uninformed and misleading), even if they are humorously presented as exemplified by Mr. Driscoll. (Oh there were plenty of anti-Jewish graffiti written on the walls in the Weimar Republik. Graffiti can become, alas, not only lethal of reputations, but, well, we all know what happened with the collapse of the Weimar Republik, i.e. “das Dritte Reich” (and that lacks all humor). I hope I am not overreacting to a video. I have my beefs with German philosophy, particularly Americanized. But ignorance of the complexity of German philosophies and their influence in America, not to speak of in Germany, Spain and Belgium, however entertaining it may be, does not further founded judgments. Amen! Prof. Dr. Dr. Dr. L. Wessell