Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR REPORTING VIETNAM It is interesting that in response to an attack upon the low level journalists covering the war in Vietnam- ("Press Failure in Vietnam," S.L.A. Marshall, NL, October...
...But let us get to his three major objections to my review: 1. When Mazlish says "whether we call this philosophy of history or by some other name does not matter," he gives his case away...
...American officials have stated (Generals Westmoreland and Paul D. Harkins) that the struggle in South Vietnam is indigenous...
...On one side, the injunction thrown out by thinkers like Locke, Hume, and Con-dorcet, concerning the need to resolve the ambiguity of words, has been caught up by our contemporary local analysts...
...would make itself co-responsible for the slaughter of the Vietnamese who are opposed to the attempt of the Vietcong and Ho Chi Minh to take over the country...
...The question remains whether obscurantist arguments should be given a prominent display in a serious publication like The New Leader in order to provoke a rejoinder...
...As Vico and Joyce both knew, language is the prism by which we perceive the world...
...It is true that the offensive phrase which I quoted, "The Development of Joseph Conrad," refers to Conrad's supposed concern in the wake of his popular success with the novel Chance in 1912, but I do not see that such a concern can be narrowly limited to a single year of Conrad's life and not cast a shadow on his motivations as a public figure not only during the War years which followed but for the rest of his life until his death in 1924...
...The practices closest to the genocidal behavior of the Nazis have been the extermination by Ho Chi Minn's regime of members of socially dangerous classes, and the wanton slaughter, by the Vietcong, of men, women and children in South Vietnamese villages refusing to support them...
...We do not start from Descartes' nonhistorical, abstractly thinking self, nor from Locke or Hume's blank tablet, bombarded by sense impressions to which we then attach words...
...And without, as you say in conclusion, trying to "refine" their ideas so that "anthropology, sociology, economics and psychology" can take over...
...The introduction of techniques like linguistic analysis will change the content, as well as the form, of speculative philosophy of history...
...Levitas brought to his task is extraordinary...
...This is certainly a subtle pejorative statement, particularly in the use of "sober...
...Most of those he has selected as colleagues for Russell have already condemned the United States...
...The trouble is that the working out of the logical implications of language by philosophers really does not even come close to the heart of the historian's concerns...
...My last instance involves Levitas' belief that my "treatment of the concept of alienation in Marx does not escape the by now trite juxtaposition of the 'young Marx' with the 'later Marx,' tendentiously pitting the later 'Marxist' against the early Left Hegelian...
...Though most American newsmen seem to be full of guts and curiosity, many seem to lack a historic background in which to evaluate the events they cover...
...His projection upon me of "a twisted mind" and aspects of his own political past is a part of the syndrome...
...Let me cite three instances...
...He says, believing himself to be quoting me, that Conrad's concern during the war became concentrated on his-Conrad's-own public persona...
...Said's contribution in his book...
...Medawar's book to which you refer so affirmatively, occupies a firm place on my own shelves...
...government guilty before going through even the motions of an investigation...
...London, England Ralph Schoenman Sidney Hook replies: That Schoenman can compare the presence of American troops in South Vietnam to the Nazi treatment of the Warsaw Jews is evidence that he has left the world of reality on whose periphery he has been hovering for years...
...This is what makes the reports of Indochina veterans as Chaflord and Lacouture so much more credible than those of the U.S...
...When these more restricted studies reach a certain range and complexity of materials, efforts will once again be made to perceive large-scale regularities of behavior coursing through the development of man and society in time...
...Said uses here may be a suitable style with which Mary McCarthy can ironically describe an intellectually inferior character, but it seems condescending when applied to Conrad...
...New York City Edward W. Said Milton Hindus replies: I learned long ago, from an essay by Brander Matthews, not to use a book I was reviewing as a mere springboard for writing an essay of my own on the same subject...
...Were the American forces now aiding South Vietnam to withdraw without some negotiated settlement, the U.S...
...Said's interpretation...
...On the contrary, it is Schoenman who has disregarded all the points of substance in my criticisms of the "Tribunal" and resorted to abuse and slander, not argument...
...It is dropping four million pounds of bombs daily on a small agrarian people...
...article, but that seems an odd reason for publishing what was so aptly described by Malcolm W. Browne as a "disgusting polemic...
...How else understand a description of a bloody but victorious battle only to discover that months later another bloody and victorious battle is being fought over the identical area...
...press corps...
...Marshall, NL, October 10), the best of the Vietnam press corps comes to their defense ("Reporting Vietnam," NL, November 21...
...Mazlish, please believe me when I say I enjoyed your book...
...Whether we call this philosophy of history or by some other name will not matter...
...These appear in the book on pages 68, 69, 78, 79 and 75, and I give them here in the order in which they appear, unidentified, in Hindus' review...
...Marshall's "Perhaps I will find out when I return to Vietnam later this month," I suggest he stay there and learn his trade...
...The main drift of my article was to establish the fact the Russell's violent anti-American prejudices and passions made him unfit to serve as judge and juror in this case or any similar one...
...History is still the "queen" of its own area...
...In my conclusion, I state specifically: "I have already stated my reservations about the work of both Spengler and Toynbee...
...Said's book even where I did not directly mention him, and that I was attempting to substantiate my observation that I had found him thought-provoking, I do not know what would have done so...
...If we call it "sociology of knowledge" even if based on historical principles, it is not philosophy of history...
...Hindus then proceeds in the last half of his review to quote-without acknowledgment- a whole series of letters and interpretations of them from my book...
...How else explain reporting which tells us that the bombing of the North helps cut off supplies and infiltration of troops only to learn that supplies and infiltration increase almost in direct ratio to the acceleration of the bombing...
...This has always struck me as odd...
...Our language is not an Archimedian point, standing outside our own world of historical experience...
...It must be left for the reader of my review to determine whether or not I have sufficiently acknowledged Mr...
...There is a difficulty here, however...
...There is no such thing as a scientific mind or the scientific method...
...Such is well evident from Ky' advice, "Do not believe anything we Vietnamese say, but look at what we do...
...I would hate to see it go where philosophy went when it abdicated this crown...
...Under the circumstances, it is not ad hominem argument to cite evidence impunging the credibility of witnesses or exposing the parti pris of the judges...
...On the other hand, good reportage on this "different kind of war" does not come from those with a "Bang-Bang mentality" who like General Marshall feel that news is made only by those at the front...
...Further, I would claim that the primary responsibility for the critical look at their own linguistic tools is theirs...
...By actual count, I find that of the 12 paragraphs in my review, eight mentioned Mr...
...This is an error based on a misreading of page 65 in my book, where I say that Conrad's public persona was very close to being his exclusive interest in 1912, two years before the War began...
...At that point I offer support and then conclude, "Here, Marx has linked his concept of alienation with Adam Smith's 'invisible hand.'" It would not be helpful to offer further instances or to belabor my point...
...There is an overwhelming prima facie case which can be found in the Western press itself, documenting a record of crime against the people of Vietnam which challenges the conscience of all who are capable of human feeling...
...It seems relevant, therefore, to know something about the man behind the scenes directing all the moves in the name of Russell...
...I could have asked him whether the use of the term "inquiry" by the English and "critique" by the Germans did not have more linguistic or epistemological implications...
...Surely in that kind of world there must be room, even a little corner, for those who want to speculate on the course of human events without being told that they are not "scientific...
...I forgo discussing Schoenman's dealings with the North Vietnamese regime or his own political history...
...In fact, instead of posing the young Marx against the later Marx, although I do hope I have allowed for some development in the man, I say, after discussing Marx's treatment of alienation in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, "by the time of writing The German Ideology, Marx was ready to substitute a more sober economic content for his metaphysical vision...
...As for what he calls my misreading of page 65 of his book, I have now reread it without being able to bring myself to agree with Mr...
...Schoenman is obviously in a state of permanent hysteria...
...Down deep in my heart, I too, want speculative philosophy of history to continue, because of the Utopian elements to which I referred in my review...
...Lazaro Cardenas, Stokely Carmichael, Vladimir Dedijer, Dave Dellinger, Isaac Deutscher, Amado Hernandez, Mahmud Ali Kasuri, Kinju Morikawa, Shoichi Sakata and Laurent Schwartz...
...Rather, I would like merely to suggest that the real problem in this area concerns the actual technical vocabulary and concepts used by historians...
...A not often considered evaluation of this corps is that of the Vietnamese themselves...
...But the use of the techniques he suggests would make speculative philosophy of history a branch of analytic philosophy...
...Bruce Mazlish Professor of History Massachusetts Institute of Technology Irving Levitas replies: It is difficult to answer Dr...
...HISTORY'S RIDDLE I should like to suggest, for any of your readers who might be interested in my book The Riddle of History, that any resemblance between the book as I wrote it and the book as Irving Levitas reviewed it ("Ending Speculation," NL, October 24) is purely coincidental...
...CONRAD Whatever the accuracy of judgment in Milton Hindus's review of my Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography in the November 21 New Leader, there is at least one serious inaccuracy of fact that deserves mention...
...I could have asked him to explain what he meant when he indicated that the uses of words with "religious conceptions" like providence, progress and theodicy led the speculative school, in its "secularization" of such terms, to a "logical and scientific" view of the world...
...I can only ask your readers to make their own judgment as to whether your reviewer was dealing with my book, as written, or some other book which he fancied I had written...
...The second relates to his misinterpretation about what I have to say concerning the use of linguistic analysis...
...It does matter...
...From conversations and correspondence with Vietnamese on many sides of Saigon politics, I conclude that many American newsmen are regarded as a sorrowful stupid lot, always gullible enough to serve as propaganda amplifiers for their twisted versions of reality...
...He thinks that I want to turn philosophy of history over to logical analysists in the same way that students of esthetics and ethics seem to have done...
...Even in the quotation in his letter he subtly elaborates this dichotomy when he states "Marx was ready to substitute a more sober economic content for his metaphysical vision...
...For Hook to suggest that the indigenous struggle of the National Liberation Front is external aggression only betrays his disregard for the elementary truth, and his bankruptcy both intellectually and morally...
...Nor do I wish to deny the very real contribution of analytic philosophers in calling our renewed attention to language and in cutting away masses of useless verbiage...
...Have you ever tried to tell an orthodox believer that Marxism is a religion because of its emotional impact upon people...
...Hook regards ad hominem argument as the heart of intellectual exchange...
...I make it quite clear, and I quote now from page 68, that "Conrad accordingly seized upon the purgatorial character of the War and translated it into a metaphysical rite of passage to which the world was submitting...
...second, my review, except for one or two points of disagreement, was an extension, not a repudiation, of his thesis as I read it...
...It is sufficient to cite only his denunciation in the London Tribune of October 28, 1966 of the strongly anti-American play US, for not being anti-American enough, and which concludes with the revealing words: "One is moved to wish harm to those [the team of writers and actors] responsible...
...New York City Joseph Clark After reading "Reporting Vietnam" which ends with S.L.A...
...It is now obvious that Schoenman is the wire-puller of the Russell puppet show...
...As most of the correspondents indicate, too much of the reporting from Vietnam does exactly what Marshall suggests and that's why we get such a distorted picture of the war...
...New York City Daniel E. Teodoru Your hope may have been that there would be strong protests aroused by the S.L.A...
...The capitalized mode of description which Mr...
...In the last analysis, it is the merit of a given position which must be discussed...
...Hook does not examine the record of crime of the United States, nor the real mandate of the Tribunal, because he is so mindless a supporter of the cold war mythology that he regards the Vietnamese as aggressors and the Americans as innocent defenders against this aggression...
...Most of his journalism consists of character assassination and shoddy insinuation regarding past and personal associations...
...I still maintain that Mazlish's references to Marx are either ambiguous or, at least in the beginning of the section in question, part of the "youthful-mature" syndrome...
...Hindus notes that the pages in the book on the effect of World War I on Conrad are "thought provoking," but then he goes on to claim that I misinterpret the evidence I present...
...These atrocities are to be ignored by the self-styled "Tribunal" which has already pronounced the leaders of the U.S...
...Cambridge, Mass...
...The United States is a vast industrial power...
...Nothing is more revealing than the insistent introduction of irrelevant questions, because it is the certain proof that the party guilty of such practice fears to discuss the real issues...
...Mazlish's letter directly for two reasons: First, I thoroughly enjoyed reading his book, and, contrary to his assumption, annotated my copy copiously...
...On the other side, the concern manifested by Vico about philology and the meaning of words, and more recently by Marx and Freud, has not found much of an echo among either philosophers or historians...
...God knows (can I bring God in...
...Dallas, Texas Jack W. Still LORD RUSSELL'S 'TRIBUNAL' Sidney Hook's article "Lord Russell and the War Crimes Trial," (NL, October 24), is ill-informed...
...Better grounded in empirical data, more demanding as to verification of more sophisticated hypotheses, these inquiries will be headed (though with a more accurate compass) in the same direction as are the pioneering efforts at philosophy of history of the speculators whom we have been observing and analyzing...
...The members of the International War Crimes Tribunal are: Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, Gunther Anders, Mehmet Ali Aybar, Lelio Basso, Simone de Beauvoir...
...Here, I would only add that their grandiose efforts ought to inspire and not to deter others from doing more limited and rigorous work in the field of comparative studies, whether anthropological or historical...
...But because he didn't come out and say so, I chose to simply file these arguments away for future reference...
...Hook's article studiously ignores the factual content and documentation of the "Appeal to the American Conscience" and deals instead with the purported past views of Bertrand Russell...
...2. When Mazlish further counsels speculative philosophers of history that they should be concerned with analytic philosophy themselves, rather than have the analytic philosophers do it for them, what he is saying, in effect, is "Correct your manners before someone else forces you to do so...
...There should be better ways of eliciting controversy and above all clarity about the coverage of the Vietnam war...
...He fails to grasp that Bertrand Russell regards the struggle of the people of Vietnam in the same light as he did the Partisans of Yugoslavia or the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto in relation to their oppressors...
...that we need what forces we can muster to challenge any pseudo-scientific world view that denudes us of our capacity to envision a better world...
...The amount of misunderstanding that Mr...
...My second statement about philosophy of history today relates to its critical aspect...
...I do believe however, that this kind of "washing its linen in public" by American journalism is the best thing that ever happened to its declining prestige among scholars of Vietnam...
...3. I have re-read the entire book and enjoyed it again...
...there are only people thinking and acting, each in his own way, with their own logic...
...Once again, may I quote, even if at some length, from my conclusion...
...If this context did not indicate to the alert reader that I was alluding to Mr...
...I shall not be surprised to learn that he is sticking pins in the effigies of those who disagree with him...
...The first concerns Levitas' belief that I am opposed to speculative philosophy of history...
...Historical terms and concepts have meaning only within historical life per se...
...Said's name, and of the seven paragraphs preceding the section to which he takes exception, six mentioned him...
...I could have elaborated on my disagreement with Dr...
...Everything has been sewed up and arranged in advance-beginning with the judgment...
...Of all people, Sidney Hook, who has passed from Stalinism to Trotskyism to renegaderie and cheap journalism, has forfeited the right to lecture others about the consistency, or lack of consistency, of their opinions...
...A mind so twisted can hardly be expected to illuminate for others...
...It may be said, without exaggeration, that they have contributed more to our civilization and demonstrated their integrity sufficiently to withstand the personal venom of less adequate, if better paid, men...
...I am now convinced that although it has been the voice of Russell we have heard urging the establishment of a "Tribunal" to try those steadily declared guilty, the words and the hands and-the pity of it!-in the mind behind the voice are those of Ralph Schoenman...
...Language itself is historical, and is merely a means by which we seek to get at reality itself...
...Are the terms "religious" and "logical-scientific" juxtaposed...
...I do not want to belabor this thesis as an abstract philosophical issue...
...As I see it, the useful and promising area in critical philosophy of history pertains to linguistic analysis: the careful, critical analysis of terms and concepts used in historical explanation...
...Mazlish on the use of other terms, all of which would have been further proof that I found his book stimulating...
...How Levitas manages to dig this out of my treatment of Marx is a marvel of ingenuity...
...Hindus is entitled to any opinions he chooses to have, but when in the first half of his review he asserts that my book does not give a new view of its subject, and in the second half he demonstrates by direct unacknowledged quotation that it has given him a new view without his being aware of it, one may doubt whether Hindus is in this case entirely sure of the difference between an old and a new view...
Vol. 49 • December 1966 • No. 25
