Thrown Under Buses
What can we learn about the two radically different camps that came out of the last three years by considering Giorgio Agamben and his translator?
“Eichmann never failed to reiterate - apparently in good faith - that he did what he did according to his conscience, in order to obey what he believed were the precepts of Kantian morals. A norm which affirms that we must renounce the good to save the good is as false and contradictory as that which, in order to protect freedom, imposes the renunciation of freedom.” - Giorgio Agamben, “A Question”
The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben was far from the only thinker to be hurriedly thrown under the intellectual bus in the moralistic panic that took overran every continent in the last few years. I was saddened to learn that his long-time translator, Adam Kotsko, broke with Agamben over his outspoken views concerning the global response to a respiratory virus about which everyone presumes they are fully aware.
‘Awareness’ here, however, means little more than alignment with one of two utterly divergent perspectives - perfectly represented by Agamben and Kotsko. Everyone reading likely belongs to one of these camps and neither side seems likely to withdraw from the battle lines any time soon. So if we wish for either democracy, peace, or both, it is vital that we acknowledge this dispute. Here lies another example like gender metaphysics or abortion where a division appears irreconcilable because our moral horror in the face of an alien world existing alongside our own makes our neighbours seem abominable.
Whatever the merits of these two rival positions, there is a peculiar pathology to certain arguments emerging from Kotsko’s camp. Any attempt to liken the events of the past few years to Nazi Germany is proclaimed anti-Semitic, and an insult to those Jews who were killed. As Kotsko explained: part of Agamben’s offence was his failure to see the evident distinction between the Nazi’s intention to exterminate life, and interventions that were aimed at saving lives. Similar accusations were aimed at British MP Andrew Brigden when he was ejected from his party. Two radically different people thrown under the bus with parallel justifications.
Those who take up Agamben’s position see all too clearly why it might make sense to evoke a parallel with the Holocaust. The fact that there are Jewish people (including some Holocaust survivors) among the most vocal proponents of this analogy is something we are not permitted to discuss... Brigden, for instance, was expelled from his party for quoting Dr Josh Guetzkow, a Jewish academic in Jerusalem. These details do not matter, because as usual each camp can see only the worst aspects of their opponents and the best aspects of themselves.
Agamben, in the opening quote, manifests Kotsko’s accusation: he observes that Adolf Eichmann, infamous exemplar of ‘the banality of evil’, defended his participation in the extermination of innocents by claiming he followed Kant’s ethics. Agamben is only half right here, for Eichmann claimed in his trial that he had violated Kant’s principles, but that he was obligated to do so as a small cog in a great machine - he was ‘only following orders’. Yet Agamben’s wider point remains salient: you cannot defend the good by renouncing what is good, nor can you defend freedom by curtailing freedom.
Our warring camps differ about which principles are paramount, yet the casting of blame around the flag of anti-Semitism distracts from what matters to either side. For while it is certainly possible to dishonour the memory of the dead, it is equally possible to dishonour those killed in the Holocaust (Jews but not only Jews) by refusing to learn from their tragic history. We dishonour everyone who died in World War II, whether from genocide or from warfare, if we brandish their deaths as excuses to avoid thinking about why they died or whether anything similar could indeed come about…
If we are ever to raise a flag of truce between Kotsko and Agamben’s camps, we must learn to appreciate their different motivations. It is a fine principle to seek to ‘save lives’, although what that means is quite nebulous. Yet if we elevate this goal above everything else, we walk down that dangerous path Agamben spent his career warning us about. When ‘bare life’ is elevated above everything that gives meaning to being alive, we have inverted the reasons so many fought and died in the second World War. For at that time, freedom was resolutely placed above merely staying alive. Whenever we risk doing otherwise, we have thrown everyone who died in that terrible conflict under the bus.
I think I’m sympathetic to some of the ethical principles you guys are alluding to, but your mental constructions of covid government policy and execution is foreign to me. Similarly for LGBTQ civil rights. I’m guessing that you are constructing your views from sources different from the ones I use. I wonder if you might give me a few references?
Well stated. No doubt many were taken in by the "saving lives" perspective. But something smelled off following the "two weeks to flatten the curve." I'm reading Robert Cialdini's book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, and the tactics laid out there fit a little too well with how the lockdowns came about and led to the massive sale of experimental and dangerous pseudo-mRNA interventions. No doubt there are two camps, but I fear in designating them equally legitimate, we risk sanctioning a group of scoundrels who deployed psychological manipulation to gain all manner of compliance and power... and not just as a one-off, but as ongoing "new normal."
I like that you attempt to present the alien worlds in a manner that might open us up toward those who live in alien worlds. I see a lot of potential in that sort of thinking. But I am concerned that such a perspective might be misplaced. When someone is in the act of taking something from you or of forcing something upon you, or of punishing you for refusing to have certain things taken from or forced upon you, I'm not sure trying to see things from their perspective will prove valuable.
No doubt during pride month, plenty of folks are horrified to think about what their neighbours get up to in the privacy of their bedrooms and certain night clubs. But what's stoking the pushback isn't any of the horror at these alien worlds. It's that the aliens have landed and have raised their flag over every business, municipal building and school. It's that whether those of the traditional world want it or not, they are being compelled to accept things, change their habits, and moreover to like it.
Unlike the counter-culture days of the beatniks and the dirty hippies, this cultural revolution is a product of institutions (state and corporate). No one forced folks to become beatniks. People left their suits and fedoras behind to join that counter-culture. It was about individuation. What's different now is how this whole thing is being engineered using well researched marketing and compliance principles. This new counter-culture is the reverse of the 1950s and 60s. It's about following and doing what you're told because only stupid people ask questions.