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willow
not the first time i’ve noted my affinity with sidney
willowMar 21, 2025
raymond geuss, who needs a world view, pg 34 As I said above, I lost contact with Krigler when he moved so far west as to be outside my ken. One might think that, in parallel to that, I lost touch with Sidney, because I moved so far east (to Cambridge) that our worlds could no longer intersect. That, however, would not be the whole truth. If one thinks that it is a central part of pragmatism to value actions, deeds, real changes, rather than mere words, Sidney had always been a rather odd kind of pragmatist, in that for him the spoken word was everything. He could (and did) talk about anything; argue one side of an issue, then change and argue the other, reversing positions immediately, elegantly, and at will; assimilate any new perspective; counter, deflect, or rebut any objection, or accept it and suggest revisions of the original position that had been criticised. He was an absolute master of all of this. It was his
raymond geuss, who needs a world view, pg 35 way of keeping the world at a safe distance. You could say anything to him and it was all grist for his mill. However, although spoken words were everything, also, in an odd way, they were nothing. They weren’t real, but part of an autonomous realm of discourse, and did not necessarily lead to deeds or consequences. One could also, when talking with him, sometimes get the sense of being caught in a web of words: one could say anything precisely because the words did not really count; they were mere speech. Sidney and I eventually had a terminal falling out, ostensibly about the appointment of a new member to the academic department of which we were both members. He supported the appointment and I opposed it. After a very long and very acrimonious series of debates, interviews, and discussions in the department and the university, the decision was taken to make the appointment. This was disappointing, but it was the sort of thing that happens in human life and which one must deal with as best one can. The fact that Sidney and I were on opposite sides of what I took to be an extremely serious matter also did not bother me terribly—we often disagreed; what could be more usual among philosophers? One might even say it was our natural state, as the joke had it: two philosophers, three opinions. However, the day after the final vote, he came up to me and tried to suggest that life would now simply go on as before; this infuriated me. In my view, this had not just been one further turn in the argument, that could be countered or reversed by another dialectical twist, but an actual decision had been made which had consequence that changed reality.
raymond geuss, who needs a world view, pg 36 I made the countersuggestion to him that if he wished things to remain as they had been, he should write to the provost immediately and say that we, the members of the department, had not really intended to make a decision and needed more time for further discussion; then life could continue as before. When he started explaining evasively and interminably why he was not willing to do this, I lost my temper and took the nuclear option, doing the one thing I knew he would find it difficult to construe as a mere move in a verbal game or which he could make disappear by verbal redescription: I told him I was not going to talk to him anymore. If I had been less angry, I might have responded more positively to his no doubt genuine desire that we stay on good terms. Since I am not, and have never been, a Kantian, I never attribute special value to the consistency of action per se; however, since I was able to arrange an almost immediate change in my affiliation to a dif­ferent academic department, and soon after emigrated to Britain, we never in fact had another conversation. Thus, I don’t know, and never will know, whether he actually took the point I was trying to make to him: that speech sometimes has real consequences.
i think about this anecdote a lot from geuss, and recognize myself quite a bit. one of the reasons i appreciate kasey's familiarity with me is that she's grown accustomed to this and treats my statements with the appropriate amount of distance.