XIX.
04/22/2024
In 1758, the position of Chair of Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Königsberg became vacant after the death of Professor Johann David Kypke (1692-1758). This coincided with the Seven Years' War (1756-1763; French-Indian War in the American continent). Königsberg fell under Russian control in 1757.
Outstanding young scholars competed for the position. One of the final two was Immanuel Kant. Kant wrote a letter to Empress Elizabeth of Russia in 1758 requesting that she appoint him to the post. But he failed to get an appointment. This time, Friedrich Johann Buck (1722-1786)—his old teacher Professor Martin Knutzen (1713-1751)’s protégé—was the lucky one to take over the position of Kypke. Kant had previously tried unsuccessfully to fill the vacancy created by the death of Professor Knutzen.
As a lecturer with no set salary, Kant had to earn his living from tuition fees, which required him to teach about 22 hours a week. He also worked as a sublibrarian simultaneously for some time. It's no wonder he was relatively unproductive during this time.
It seems that not just any professorship would have satisfied him. He had already turned down the offer of Chair of Poetry at the University of Königsberg as well as invitations from the Universities outside Prussia (Erlangen and Jena).
It wasn't until 1770 that the real opportunity came. The Chair of Mathematics, Professor Christoph Langhansen (1691-1770), died, creating a vacancy. Although Kant was not interested in this particular position, he knew what he could or should do.
Kant wrote to the Berlin authorities and proposed two options: to appoint Professor Carl Andreas Christiani (1707-1780), then Chair of Moral Philosophy, as Chair of Mathematics and to make him Professor of Moral Philosophy; or, to appoint Professor Buck, then Chair of Logic and Metaphysics, as Chair of Mathematics and to make him Chair of Logic and Metaphysics. Professor Buck didn’t agree with the idea at all, but Frederick the Great accepted. Soon, Kant was declared Professore Ordinario der Logic und Metaphysic. He was almost 46 years old.
JK
XVIII.
04/21/2024
Max Weber was born into a wealthy businessman/politician family in Erfurt, Prussia. Thanks to the wealth of his mother and his wife, he had little reason to take up a "profession" to make a living. (His wife, Marianne Schnitger, was the grandchild of his uncle, so the wealth of his wife’s family was also, in a broader sense, the wealth of his father’s family.) In this light, it is interesting that he later gave famous speeches in which he discussed science and politics as "profession." In fact, his career as a professional scholar was very short-lived, though it’s due largely to his health. And he was never a career politician in the true sense of the word, despite his wishes and efforts.
Weber was a brilliant scholar. In 1889, at the age of twenty-five, he earned his doctorate with a law/history dissertation that focused on the trading companies of northern Italy in the Middle Ages, and two years later he wrote his habilitation thesis on Roman agricultural history. While working on that thesis, he wrote a separate project, "The Situation of Agricultural Workers in the East Elbe Region of Prussia," which he published in 1892. This work brought him to widespread academic attention. In 1894, at the age of thirty, he was appointed professor of economics at the University of Freiburg.
In 1897, he moved to the University of Heidelberg, but in June of that year, his relationship with his father went sour, and when his estranged father died suddenly in August, he suffered a nervous breakdown. By 1899, he had to stop teaching altogether, and in 1903 he officially left the university.
JK
XVII.
01/17/2024
Undeniably, one of the greatest events that characterized the 1770s was the American Revolutionary War. It was in 1606 that the Virginia Company was founded in London for the purpose of developing a colony in the New World. At the time, “Virginia” referred to the entire east coast of North America. The following year, in 1607, the company established a settlement on what would become Jamestown, near present-day Williamsburg, Virginia. There had been several attempts before, but Jamestown was the first successful permanent colony founded by the English. It was named Jamestown after James the First, the King of England at the time. He was the same James who inaugurated the Stuart and also ordered a new English translation of the Holy Scripture, leading to the publication of the King James Bible in 1611. Eight years later, a group of English Puritans who had emigrated to the Netherlands obtained a land grant for the colony of America from the Plymouth Company. They were part of the Virginia Company but also an independent organization. In 1620, they crossed the Atlantic aboard the Mayflower and founded a new settlement in what is now Massachusetts.
Since then, English colonies were established on the eastern side of the Americas in the 17th and 18th centuries. Of course, there were other non-British powers in the Americas such as the Dutch, French, and Spanish, but it was the 13 colonies in the Northeast under British rule that formed the United States as we know it today. The British had 27 more colonies in the continent at the time of American independence.
The American Revolutionary war was, of course, a war fought by British subjects in the American colonies against their mother country, Great Britain. But it's important to remember that the Revolutionary War was also a civil war in which the colonists themselves took sides. Those who fought for independence were called the Patriots, while those who wanted to remain British colonies were called the Loyalists. Some of the bloodiest battles during the American Revolutionary War were often fought between these different groups of American colonists. The war sometimes pitted family members against one another.
A prime example is the family of Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790). Though the epitome of a self-made man, Benjamin Franklin was a beneficiary of the British Empire, and he was probably the most famous Englishman in the American colonies. Franklin was more successful than most of the people. Given the fact that most people in any era are not prone to be revolutionaries, especially if they are benefitting greatly from the status quo, Franklin’s decision to join the revolution is quite fascinating.
By his side was his eldest son, William, who worked with him on several projects. William was a bastard in the old-fashioned sense of the word. After completing his studies in England, William rose to prominence under his father's wing. Benjamin Franklin lobbied to the London political establishment for his son. As a result, William was appointed as Governor of the then colony of New Jersey in his early 30s.
There are several different interpretations of exactly when Benjamin Franklin, who always considered himself a proud Englishman and had great affection for England, decided to support the independence of the American colonies. But scholars often point to a single meeting in England in January 1774 as the major turning point. While it's impossible here to enumerate all of the issues at stake at the time, one key incident is that British leaders publicly humiliated Franklin at that meeting, and as a result, Franklin realized that British subjects from the American colonies, like himself, would never be treated as equals to those in Great Britain. When even people like Franklin, who had no reason to support independence in the first place and little incentive to start a revolution, could no longer tolerate British tyranny and supported independence, the American revolutionaries took advantage of such a massive boost.
His son William, however, thought otherwise. He remained loyal to the British King until the end. When the New Jersey Assembly declared independence, wrote a state constitution, and charged all those who were not faithful to the newly formed Union of American Colonies with treason, William, the leader of the New Jersey colony, was suddenly branded a traitor and imprisoned. Later released from prison by way of exchanging prisoners, William moved to New York City, the then Loyalist hotbed, and led a guerrilla force that sided with the British and attacked the rebels.
When the war finally ended with an American victory, many Loyalists were forced to flee to England in exile. William Franklin was one of them. Unfortunately, they weren't exactly welcomed by the British. His father, Benjamin Franklin, went on to become one of the most prominent leaders of the new, victorious nation of the United States. Even during the war, Benjamin Franklin’s most important role was in diplomacy. He was the American ambassador to France. It's no exaggeration to say that gaining French support was the most important aspect of the Revolutionary War efforts. Franklin remained in France until 1785, handling major diplomatic matters, including the peace treaty with Britain. Already an old man, he even considered spending the rest of his life in France.
While in Europe, the Franklins were unable to reconcile with each other. Finally, when Benjamin Franklin decided to return to the United States and crossed the Atlantic via England, William Temple Franklin, his grandson and William's son (who was also illegitimate), was said to push for a meeting to repair the relationship between his father and grandfather, but the two men ultimately failed to reconcile.
JK
XVI.
01/01/2024
One of the historical figures I'm interested in was born on January 1st: Edmund Burke (1729-1797) who was a British politician of Irish descent. I may have a chance to discuss his political pamphlets and philosophical treatises later. For now, I'll just point out a few.
Burke was the representative of the New York Colony in the British Parliament from 1771 until the beginning of the war between Great Britain and the American colonies, which made him well versed in colonial affairs. His general position was to ensure the freedom of the American colonists (who were, in many ways, the same English people) while maintaining the British rule. Some of Burke’s speeches from this period are outstanding.
Earlier I said that Burke was born on January 1st, but there's actually one clarification that needs to be added. Burke was born on January 1st according to the Julian calendar, which was the calendar in use at the time. The British passed the Calendar Act of 1750 and adopted the Gregorian calendar in place of the Julian calendar in 1752, which means that Burke's birthday would be January 12th according to our current calendar system. This is a great reminder that even the most basic conditions of our lives we tend to take for granted, such as how to identify and determine the date, are in fact the product of convention.
Also, when I said that the British adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752, another clarification should be added. Scotland was already on the Gregorian calendar at the time. So it was England, Wales, Ireland, and other British colonies that adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752. Here, a brief insert may be called for. The country we commonly call "Great Britain" is a collection of disparate entities and identities.
In the 16th century, Wales was fully incorporated into England. When Queen Elizabeth I of England died without an heir in 1603, James VI of Scotland was crowned James I of England. After many twists and turns, England and Scotland were fully united in 1707, which led to an official creation of the Kingdom of Great Britain. In 1801, the Kingdom of Ireland was added to the union, resulting in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. By 1922, however, most of Ireland had seceded from this union after a long period of fierce conflict. Eventually, only a small area in the north-east of Ireland remained part of the original union, determining the new border of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. This state continues to this day.
I originally described Burke as a British politician of Irish descent. I would say, as a bit of background, that Burke was from the city of Dublin in the Kingdom of Ireland, which was not yet part of the United Kingdom but rather was a dependency of the Kingdom of Great Britain.
One more thing: Brexit, which made headlines a couple of years ago, should technically be called UK-exit. Of course, nobody wants to call it this way, because … it sounds bad!
JK
XV.
10/14/2023
Hannah Arendt was probably the first political thinker from the past century I took a serious interest in, and I've remained somewhat interested in her after all these years. In fact, when I moved to where I live now, I was a bit amused that my street name reminded me of her birthplace.
It's been a while since the last time I dug into her work seriously, but today might be a good day to pick her up for a number of reasons. However, due to the task at hand, I feel rather obliged to check one of Strauss's lectures today.
Both Arendt and Strauss were Jewish Germans who fled to the States. For some time, they were colleagues at the University of Chicago, and had many mutual acquaintances. But they were said to regard each other with disdain. Below is an exchange of letters between Arendt and Jaspers that gave me long ago a glimpse of their bitter relationship.
Karl Jaspers to Hannah Arendt, 05/14/1954: "Do you know anything about Leo Strauss, who has written about Spinoza...? Is he still alive?"
Arendt to Jaspers, 07/24/1954: "Strauss is ... a convinced orthodox atheist. Very odd. A truly gifted intellect. I don't like him."
JK
XIV.
09/17/2023
From my opening remarks at the 2023 Constitution Day in Towson event:
“The reason we celebrate Constitution Day this week is because it was on September 17, 1787, when the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia signed the Constitution. Or, to be more precise, they signed the final draft of the Constitution. Originally, 12 states had appointed 70 delegates, but only 55 actually attended the Philadelphia Convention. And it is believed that there were never more than 46 in attendance at any one time. More than a dozen delegates dropped out, and of the 42 who stayed until the end, three refused to sign the document. So the day 39 delegates signed the final draft of the Constitution was the day we celebrate as “Constitution Day.”
But it is not September 17, 1787 that we truly commemorate, nor is the message we seek to convey through this sort of celebration an idolization of the so-called Framers who designed and signed the document.
Instead, we remember first and foremost the purposes of the government so created, which the preamble to the Constitution summarizes so well: forming a more perfect union, establishing justice, insuring domestic tranquility, providing for the common defense, promoting the general welfare, and most of all, securing the blessings of liberty not only to ourselves but also to our posterity.
We also want to remember the history of ‘We the People,’ the entity created by the Constitution who has been legitimizing the very Constitution. “We the People” has been expanding itself and its rights over time. In that sense, it is not just the original Constitution of 1787 that we celebrate, but also the Constitution of 1791, which included the Bill of Rights, the Constitution of 1865, which abolished slavery, the Constitution of 1868, which completely redefined the relationship between the federal government and the states, and the Constitutions of 1870, 1920, 1964, and 1971, each of which struck down some of the existing restrictions on the right to vote based on race, sex, wealth, and age.
Now, what, to you and to us, is the Constitution? Do you invoke the Constitution as a shield to defend your basic freedoms and rights that seem to be under attack? If so, what are those freedoms and rights exactly? Do you rather invoke the Constitution as a weapon to attack your political opponents who seek to impose false norms and order on our private and public lives? If so, what norms, which orders? Or do we need the Constitution because it sanctifies your interest? Or is it something you can take to blame when your politics seems hopeless?
Obviously, this is a kind of question that requires a great deal of thought and discussion to answer.
Today, we are fortunate to have two outstanding guest speakers who will be giving talks that will help advance our understanding of constitutional norms, politics, freedoms, and rights. Especially, their respective lectures will give us an opportunity to reflect upon the very expansion and diversity of ‘We the People’.”
JK
XIII.
06/25/2023
Some thoughts on June 25th:
"6. 25" is an unforgettable day for Koreans. Even for me, probably part of the youngest of the older generation (or the oldest of the younger generation) who was born decades after the end of the Korean War, the song "Over and over the bodies of comrades-in-arms, forward and forward" comes naturally to mind at this time of year.
Sometime last year, I read a book review by journalist E. Tammy Kim in the New York Review of Books of The Interrogation Rooms of the Korean War by historian Monica Kim. The book is a great read, and Tammy Kim has written some great essays about Korea in the recent past. However, I found a few misleading statements in Tammy's description of the post-1945 South Korea and the Korean War, particularly in her description of the South Korea's relationship with the United States. And I ended up writing a letter to the NYR editors. I had a brief email exchange with Tammy about this, but I don't recall receiving any response from the editors. There are certainly understandable reasons why Tammy and other progressive Korean-Americans in the U.S. would tend to take the position she took. As someone who was born and raised in South Korea, however, I sometimes can't help but point out the problems arising from such otherwise reasonable view. Below is what I had to say about it.
JK
——————————————————————————————
To the Editors,
In her review essay “A Permanent Battle” (NYR, May 26), E. Tammy Kim encapsulates the postwar division of South and North Koreas, followed by the establishment of their respective governments, in a sweeping sentence: “The Great Powers [the USA and the USSR] installed authoritarian leaders to their liking, giving ordinary people little say.” Describing the outbreak of the Korean War, she states that “troops from Soviet-controlled North Korea crossed into the US-controlled South.” She also portrays the then South Korean President, Syngman Rhee, as “Washington’s man in Seoul.” That the United States bears responsibility for the initial division of South and North Koreas as well as its seeming perpetuation, as Kim seems to emphasize, is undisputedly true. Also true is the fact that Syngman Rhee was backed by the United States to a considerable extent. Those quick renditions of hers mentioned above, however, can be immensely misleading.
For example, the American force south of the 38th parallel between 1945 and 1948 differed from their Russian counterpart north of the line in that the former was incapable of installing anyone to its liking without difficulty. Oftentimes, Americans displayed their inconsistency, indecisiveness, and incompetence in shaping and securing the postwar political order in the southern part of Korean peninsula. The United States Army Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK) suppressed the Communist party and agitators, for sure, but had rather convoluted relationship with Korean rightist leaders including Syngman Rhee. In fact, numerous officials in the USAMGIK, including the Commanding General John Reed Hodge (1893-1963) himself and his political advisor Leonard Bertsch (1910-1976), seldom put their trust in Rhee. On the other hand, the USAMGIK long supported at least a few well-known centrist and leftist leaders, most notably Kiusic Kimm (1881-1950) and Lyuh Woon-Hyung (1886-1947), during the critical period of the South Korean nation-building between 1946 and 1947 in part because they wanted to weaken the influence of Rhee and other rightist factions who often fed on anti-American nationalism. It was the utter failure of the USAMGIK that they ended up losing those two great politicians and were outsmarted by Rhee.
As for the Korean War, it is inaccurate to insinuate that both North and South Koreas were controlled by “the Great Powers” to the same degree at the onset of the War. One of the reasons that Kim Il Sung—the founder of North Korea—decided to invade South Korea in June 1950 was that he sensed a great deal of indifference of the United States toward—i.e., its rather weak control over—South Korea. The tension between Rhee and the United States remained undissolved even during and after the Korean War. It seems quite odd that Kim paints Rhee summarily as “Washington’s man in Seoul” when she is precisely alluding to heated disagreements between him and Washington over the release of those anti-Communist POWs.
Finally, it is worth noting that the South Korean Constitutional Assembly election, held on May 10th, 1948, under the supervision of the UN delegates, was remarkably democratic overall. Virtually everyone at the age of 21 or older was given the right to vote, and over 90% of the eligible citizens cast their ballots. Critics have argued that voter fraud cases were rampant in many places over the course of the election of 1948. So true! But no democratic elections, especially those elections in the early part of any nation’s democratic history, were held without fraud, corruption, and other forms of shortcomings. The question is whether the USAMGIK did really “install” Korean leaders—authoritarian or otherwise—to their liking via this election. To the absolute frustration of the USAMGIK, the party they backed—the Korean Democratic Party (a rightist but less-nationalist party)—secured only 29 out of 200 seats. For many ordinary Korean voters dismissed the Party simply as a club of the wealthy few.
The Korean case, therefore, is a story of American failures as well as successes—both for better or worse. Kim’s otherwise perceptive essay—unfortunately and quite ironically—effectively erases or underestimates a great deal of the agency of Korean people throughout the turbulent years of their nation-building including their own decision and determination to form political coalitions in favor of the division of Korean peninsula. And in so doing, the essay portrays the American powers in Korea as more competent and consistent than they actually were.
Juman Kim
Towson, MD
XII.
04/15/2023
A person who was born elsewhere, but made Illinois his second home;
A lawyer by training who went into politics and had a rather brief legislative career in both the state and federal legislatures before seeking the presidency;
A legislator who defied the common sense of mainstream politicians and voters by advocating for minority rights and courageously pointing out the immorality of a war that was widely supported at the time;
A politician who has been criticized and vilified by the many, sometimes as a spineless centrist, sometimes as a radical progressive;
A candidate who miraculously won a primary race with relatively low odds, eventually becoming president and winning re-election;
A president who chose a more famous and experienced competitor (a U.S. Senator for New York) to be the first Secretary of State after taking office;
And an accomplished public speaker who often moved and uplifted his audiences.
—.—.—.—.—.—.—.—.—.—.—.—.—.—.—.—.—.—.—.—.—
There are actually not one, but two former U.S. presidents who fit the above description. One is Abraham Lincoln, the other is Barack Obama. (I’ll save some interesting similarities and differences between these two men for another time.)
Lincoln, who will always hold a place among Americans' three most revered presidents, died on April 15, 1865, at the age of 56. It was about nine hours after he was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C., on April 14. (Booth was not nobody. His father, Junius Brutus Booth who was coincidentally named after the Roman Senator Junius Brutus, the man who assassinated Julius Caesar, was the internationally acclaimed tragic actor. Both his brother, Edwin—who once saved the life of Lincoln’s son Robert—and himself were also gifted and praised actors.)
Lincoln was assassinated at the end of the Civil War, both as the leader of the Union that won the war and as the man who designed the foundation for the full emancipation of more than four million black slaves. Had Lincoln survived to complete his second term, the postwar reconstruction of the South would have been very different. Andrew Johnson, Lincoln's vice president and his successor, was a Democrat from Tennessee. He put the brakes on the Republican-led Reconstruction of the South, making it much easier for the old white slaveholders to resurrect their power in the South.
But looking at it another way, Lincoln's assassination freed him from the difficult postwar reconstruction process and allowed him to be instantly hailed as a hero and martyr, and to this day, Americans consume him (along with the "Founding Fathers") as a political and cultural touchstone. Lincoln's words have become almost a "bible" of sorts, quoted on demand (often without any indication of authenticity), and the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., has become a "shrine" of its own.
It is common for many Americans to understand the Civil War as a war between the North and the South over slavery. The North fought to free the slaves and the South fought to keep slavery alive. And we remember Lincoln as the Great Emancipator who freed the slaves.
Though this isn't terribly wrong, it's not exactly correct either. While slavery was certainly one of the underlying causes of the Civil War, it was not at all the reason the North first went to war.
Certainly, Lincoln had long viewed slavery as morally wrong. But as a lawyer and politician, he understood that the federal government did not have the power to abolish slavery in the southern states. All it could do was to control the territories that had not yet achieved statehood.
The United States had always had territories that weren't states since its founding. From the territories below the Great Lakes (and east of the Mississippi River and north-west of the Ohio River) as a result of the Treaty of Paris with Great Britain after the Revolutionary War, to "Louisiana" purchased from Napoleon by then-President Jefferson in 1803 (15 states would later be created from this territory), to the territories in the Southwest, including California, gained as a result of the War with Mexico in 1848, all followed a process of first becoming territories and then states after a certain period of development.
Under the Constitution, Congress was responsible for regulating and governing the territories (Art. IV Sec. 3). So abolishing slavery in the territories was always a possibility. That's why, before the Civil War, many Northerners, including Lincoln, wanted to prevent the spread of slavery to the western territories rather than advocate for its abolition.
When the Republican Party came along in the 1850s, it gained traction by establishing "no westward extension of slavery" as a party platform. Of course, the South was fiercely opposed to this, and even moderate Republicans like Lincoln were seen as die-hard abolitionists who threatened Southern property and would launch anti-slavery conspiracies at any moment. They simply could not imagine a Republican government in power. When Lincoln was elected as President in November 1860, therefore, seven southern states seceded from the Union between December of that year and February of the following year, and eventually formed the new Confederacy.
In his March 1861 inaugural address, Lincoln makes it clear that secession is never acceptable, but he also urges the South to join him in restoring the Union, reiterating that he has no power, much less the inclination, to interfere with slavery as it already exists in the South. When the war finally began a short time later, in April, with the attack on Fort Sumter, the purpose of the Northern army remained the same: to put down the insurrection, defend the Constitution, and preserve the Union. Lincoln initially called up 75,000 Union troops for this very purpose.
As with many wars, the Civil War evolved into an all-out war as it dragged on. At the start of the war, no one could have predicted that it would take a total of about 620,000 lives over the next four years. As Lincoln fought the war, he realized that it would only end with the unconditional surrender of the South. This would require a total conquest of the South. That’s where Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation came in.
Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, and issued it as promised on January 1, 1863. Importantly, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was limited in scope to the 11 southern states that had seceded from the Union. In other words, it did not apply to slaves in Maryland, Delaware, Missouri, Kentucky that maintained their systems of slavery but had not seceded from the Union.
Moreover, the Emancipation Proclamation was simply a decree made by the president. For it to be effective, many conditions had to be in place. While black slaves in the defeated Confederate states could experience the thrill of seeing the Emancipation Proclamation become a reality, Lincoln's proclamation had little power in areas where they could not count on Northern military protection. For example, "Juneteenth," a U.S. federal holiday since 2021, has its origins in Galveston, Texas, where Union Army Major General Gordon Granger declared the end of slavery in the area on the 19th of June, based on Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. But that was in 1865, which means that it took nearly two and a half years for Lincoln's proclamation to take effect in that Texas town.
The legal basis for the Emancipation Proclamation's legitimacy was the President's constitutional role as Commander-in-Chief. As Commander-in-Chief, Lincoln used the enemy's property—slaves—for the benefit of the Union. He was able to free slaves in certain areas because, paradoxically, he considered them property. Lincoln constantly emphasized to Northerners, who were not pleased with the Emancipation Proclamation, that his decision was a military one. He explained that his decision nullified the slave status of those slaves serving the enemy and paved the way for them to serve the Union. In fact, by the end of the war, a total of 180,000 black men fought for the Union. About 80 percent of them were freed slaves.
Thus, it was the war itself that made the Civil War a war of emancipation. As the nature of the war changed, so did Lincoln's political calculations and judgment. By the end of the war, there would have been no way to explain the countless sacrifices made up to that point other than to say that the Union Army was fighting for the noble cause of freedom, paying for the sin of slavery.
In any case, Lincoln is probably the greatest president the United States has ever produced. What makes him great is not his moral purity or his consistent policies. Quite the opposite.
W. E. B. Du Bois once had this to say about Lincoln:
“Abraham Lincoln was a Southern poor white, of illegitimate birth, poorly educated and unusually ugly, awkward, ill-dressed. He liked smutty stories and was a politician down to his toes. Aristocrats—Jeff Davis, Seward and their ilk—despised him, and indeed he had little outwardly that compelled respect. But in that curious human way he was big inside. He had reserves and depths and when habit and convention were torn away there was something left to Lincoln—nothing to most of his contemners. There was something left, so that at the crisis he was big enough to be inconsistent—cruel, merciful; peace-loving, a fighter; despising Negroes and letting them fight and vote; protecting slavery and freeing slaves. He was a man—a big, inconsistent, brave man.”
The best way to describe him.
JK
XI.
03/01/2022
We all have those moments in our lives when something strange happens. I am referring to a kind of experience that we find ourselves reading too much into a happenstance. One day more than fifteen years ago, I had one of those moments.
I was serving in the military as a junior faculty member at the Korea Air Force Academy. The academy was located on the outskirts of Cheongju, Chungcheong Province, a city about 60 miles south of Seoul. I rented a room in Cheongju and commuted to work. Born and raised in Seoul, I had no special ties to Chungcheong Province.
One day, my brother came to visit me from Seoul. As I was thinking about where to take him and what to eat, I decided to go to this restaurant famous for Korean BBQ. I had been there once before, enjoying a dinner with my colleagues from work. They had a variety of fresh cuts of beef including tripe, and the price was decent. Growing up, my brother and I used to have a voracious appetite. So I thought that would be a great place to go with him.
The restaurant was located a little deeper into the countryside. I couldn't remember its name, but having been there only a couple of weeks earlier, I thought I knew where it was exactly. When I drove there for the first time, however, there were several confusing intersections. Soon I realized that I had taken a wrong turn at some point because I felt like I was on a totally unfamiliar road since it was taking me too long, far longer than I would have expected. This was before smartphones. It was so frustrating.
As I wandered through the winding mountain roads and entered a small village, a random sign brought me back to reality.
"The Gravesite of Mr. Shin Hong-sik."
Shin Hong-sik? Rev. Shin Hong-sik? This is the grave of Rev. Shin? I was so stunned.
Rev. Shin Hong-sik was one of the 33 national leaders during the March 1st Independence Movement in Colonial Korea back in 1919 who also served as Methodist Superintendent. And he is one of my great-great-grandfathers (or, put differently, my grandmother's grandfather).
So what just happened was: I simply wanted to indulge in fresh beef with my brother who was visiting me from afar, but I stupidly took a wrong turn and got lost on a mountain road, and at the very moment of frustration, I just stumbled upon my great-great-grandfather's grave for the first time in my life.
Since Rev. Shin was one of the leaders of the March 1st Independence Movement, he was soon arrested and imprisoned for more than two years. After his release from prison in November 1921, he returned to Pyongyang, then was sent to Incheon, Wonju, and Gangneung, where he continued his ministry. When Rev. Shin was serving as Methodist Superintendent in Gangneung in the 1930s, he made several visits to the houses of his fellow ministers including Rev. Kang Moon-ho, who was 17 years his junior. Rev. Kang was from Asan, but had pastored in Hoengseong and Hongcheon, not so far away from Gangneung. The two men may have known each other already, since both of them had spent some time in Incheon much earlier. Coincidentally, Rev. Kang's second son, who was only a little child at the time, later married Rev. Shin's granddaughter. They are my maternal grandparents.
Rev. Shin was one of the signers of the Korean Declaration of Independence. This great document, which begins with the phrase “We hereby...”, is widely known to Korean people. But perhaps not many people have actually read the declaration carefully. It was only recently that I read the document with special care. What stands out is the fact that those leaders really had a good grasp of their domestic and international circumstances at the time and proclaimed such bold ideals based on that clear awareness, situating their cause within the broader project of inaugurating a new age of regional and global peace. They were, of course, idealists. But I wonder if their idealistic aspirations resulted from their most realistic diagnosis. Absent power from other means, they could only rely on the power of words and ideals.
Today marks the 103rd anniversary of the March 1st Independence Movement. And it’s Rev. Shin's birthday as well. Happy March 1st!
* English version of the Korean Declaration of Independence is available here.
JK
X.
01/13/2022
Korean Americans recognize and celebrate Korean American Day on January 13th. Why? Because 102 Koreans landed in Honolulu, Hawai'i, back in 1903. They were by no means the Koreans who first came to the United States. But they were certainly the very first large group of Korean workers coming here.
Were they contract workers hired by the Hawaiian sugar planters in Korea? Yes! Was their passage prepaid by the planters? Yes!! Didn’t the planters, then, violate U.S. laws against contract labor (esp. Alien Contract Labor Act of 1885) by doing so? Yes!!!
Who was the mastermind behind this immigration project other than those sugar planters? We must remember the man by the name of Horace Newton Allen (1858-1932) who not only willingly disobeyed the government orders regarding interfering with Korean affairs but also recruited those Korean workers while violating the U.S. law with no scruples.
Allen was a missionary-cum-medical doctor who came to Korea in 1884 via China. As he unexpectedly saved Prince Min Young Ik who got almost killed by the leading figures in the Gapshin Coup, he could manage to gain support from King Gojong, the ruler of Joseon Dynasty.
Allen opened the first western hospital in Korea, 광혜원, which would later become the Severance Hospital. He helped open the Korean Legation in D.C., too. In 1901-05 he served as U.S. Minister to Korea. During this time, Allen helped the migration of 102 Koreans to Hawai'i.
This is how he did. Allen had David Deshler establish a bank in Korea from which those workers could get a "loan" for passage money. The bank's only depositor was the Hawai'ian Sugar Planters' Association. It was a kind of contract between the planters and the workers prohibited by federal law.
Allen wrote a letter to the State Department, admitting that he heard of the news about some Koreans going to Hawai'i while, of course, hiding all the works he had done for the planters and the Koreans. He also said that there would be no influx of large number of Korean immigrants.
Why were those Korean workers willing to travel all the way to the United States in the first place? Well, obviously, like most immigrants, they were seeking better opportunities. And, by then, there were about 100,000 Christians in Korea (more than 1%), thinking extremely highly of the United States and her people.
It was also true that the Hawai'ian planters advertise their working conditions in a somewhat disingenuous way to lure the Korean workers. Disillusioned, a number of those Koreans would later manage to move to California and beyond.
Anyhow, on this day, in 1903, 56 men, 21 women, and 25 children landed in Honolulu all the way from Korea via Japan. Their community grew rapidly, and within two years, the number of Koreans in Hawai'i soared to 7,843.
JK
IX.
08/17/2021
I am saddened to learn from Korean media that Professor Chong-sik Lee passed away this past Tuesday. He taught in the Department of Political Science at Penn for about four decades, and was the originator of Penn’s Korean Studies Program. He retired from Penn in 2000, so I didn’t have an opportunity to study or work with him. But I have some good memories I cherish, which have to do with my first unexpected encounter with him at a restaurant in Korea, a couple of email exchanges, his warm welcome and encouragement, and his sense of humor.
I hope that Penn Political Science, Penn’s Kim Program, Philip Jaisohn Foundation, or many other organizations both in the States and in Korea will hold some events in the future to honor his work as well as to cherish his memory. I can’t find his obituary in English yet, so for those of you who do not know Chong-sik Lee, here’s what I can say about his life and work, for now.
May he rest In peace.
Chong-sik Lee (이정식 李庭植), Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, died on Tuesday, August 17th, 2021. He was 90 years old.
Professor Lee was born in Kaechon—about 50 miles north of Pyongyang—in Korea under Japanese Rule in 1931, but grew in multiple places including Hankou—one of the three old towns merged to become modern day Wuhan, China—where he could attain perfection in Japanese.
At the age of fourteen, he lost his father. As the oldest among five children of his widowed mother, now living in Liaoyang in China, he had to take the role of the breadwinner in his family. He worked at a doctor’s office as an aid, taking care of patients who mostly suffered from syphilis and gonorrhea. He once worked at a cotton factory as well, which required him to practice and develop his Chinese as well as his skills of calculation.
Lee’s family came back to Korea in 1948. At that time, Korea had already been divided into South and North Koreas. He first settled in Pyongyang, not so far from his hometown. He continued to support his family by delivering rice to houses.
When the Korean War broke out, he evaded military service for the North Korean Army. After surviving bombing raids by U. S. Air Force, he fled for the South in early 1951. For South Korea and the U. N. Command, he worked at the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section, an opportunity he was able to seize due largely to his perfect Chinese and Japanese.
Most of Chinese POWs at the time were Northerners, speaking standard Mandarin, whereas most of the American soldiers who were in charge of questioning Chinese POWs were either Japanese Americans who didn’t speak Chinese or Chinese Americans who could only speak Cantonese. They would stage a huge welcome for someone like Lee who was perfectly fluent both in Chinese and Japanese. In turn, he learned English from his colleagues at the ATIS at a tripping pace. No wonder that he called this place later “my English school.”
As the war drew to a close, Lee moved to the States with the aid of American officers and Christian missionaries. Soon, he earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at UCLA. He recalled later that even in those times, his primary concern was always with achieving the means of supporting himself and his family.
It was Robert Scalapino—the famed Asia expert—who first inspired him to become a scholar in general and a scholar of Korea and East Asia in particular. Looking back upon his old days, Lee once said that he had never been interested in—also known nothing about—Korean history prior to his encounter with Scalapino. He finished his PhD at UC Berkeley. His dissertation, directed by Scalapino and submitted in 1962, was entitled The Korean Nationalist Movement, 1905-1945.
Lee joined the faculty as Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania in 1963. He taught at Penn for almost forty years until he retired in 2000. He co-authored and published Communism in Korea in 1973, the same year he got promoted to Full Professor at Penn. With Scalapino, he received the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award from the American Political Science Association for the best book on government, politics, or international affairs in 1974.
Professor Lee wrote numerous books and articles, including his acclaimed biographies of Philip Jaisohn, Syngman Rhee, Kiusic Kimm, Woon Hyung Yuh, and Chung Hee Park.
Last year, he published an autobiography that covers his life up to 1974. He left out the rest of the stories for "next time." In his (arguably) last newspaper interview, Lee expressed his unabated interests in Korean political history—especially in the puzzling question concerning Stalin’s failure (or refusal) to respond to Kim Il Sung that lasted for about five days during the Korean War. He will be remembered as a scholar of highest rigor whose questions will continue to inspire the following generations of students and scholars of Korea/East Asia.
JK
VIII.
07/09/2020
Guilt and shame are important moral emotions that regulate and constrain our behavior. We often understand shame as an embarrassing feeling of being judged by others, and guilt as an inhibiting force that operates deeper within us than shame. Ruth Benedict, author of The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, who in the mid-20th century characterized Japanese society as a “culture of shame" and contrasted it with the "culture of guilt" in the West, played a large role in promoting this analytical framework (despite her own intentions).
The deeper we delve into these moral emotions, however, the more we start to question the validity of that simple distinction. One person who gave me great insight was the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips. He explains the difference between guilt and shame in quite a different way.
According to him, guilt stems from a conflict between the norm and the self. Feeling guilty presupposes that we have already resisted a certain norm. When we "inwardly" don't want a norm that we believe we should follow and embody, and so we break it, the emotion that follows is guilt.
Shame, on the other hand, is caused by a discrepancy between the idealized self we have created and our actual self. At its core, shame is not about breaking norms and conventions. What matters is that the person feeling shame has failed to present the idealized version of himself to others as well as to himself. The emotion of this utter failure is shame.
We often see people who say they have done something wrong, but do not seem to feel ashamed of it, or people who are portraying themselves as morally superior to anyone else, but are actually rather depraved. The former is a shameless man who nonetheless does know his sin, and the latter is a sneaky hypocrite who does not necessarily lack the sense of shame.
Let's say you get into an argument with a friend and assault him. You have broken the norm that you should not assault other people. Hence you now feel guilty, which means that you think and feel that you did something wrong. Or let's say you have an affair with your friend's spouse. This time, you have broken the norm that you should not betray your friend's trust. Hence you feel guilty, too.
Since guilt is based on norms, and norms are based on external coercion, guilt is primarily driven by fear of punishment. However, there is a clear distance between the self and the norm. So even when you feel guilty for resisting the norm, you can also cast doubts on the norm itself. "I did something wrong. But wouldn't anyone want to punch him in the face in that situation?" Or, "I'm so sorry for my friend. I worry that I might get caught. But what's so wrong with having an affair really?”
This state of mind can be understood as "guilty but not ashamed," a state of mind in which one’s ego is not crushed but rather remains strong, even though he is afraid of the consequences of its own misdeeds and misbehavior.
Shame, on the other hand, involves the experience of a shattered ego. Shame can dig deeper to the point that it keeps tormenting the self. To be ashamed, in this sense, is to be paralyzed. If the embarrassment becomes so intense that it overwhelms the person, he may even abandon his body, perhaps profoundly exemplified by a few otherwise venerable South Korean politicians who recently took their own lives.
JK
VII.
06/25/2020
A few thoughts triggered by the 70th anniversary of 6. 25. [The Korean War]:
Both of my paternal grandparents were born and raised in the Northern part of Korean Peninsula. In 1945, not long after the end of World War II, they decided to come down to Seoul.
My grandfather presumably got an offer from Kim Il Sung. Due to his uncooperative stance, he was soon placed under house arrest. Only after his successful aggravation of his lung disease, with some help of luck and wit, he could manage to escape and travel south.
At the time, he was married with two daughters. My grandmother later recalled that when they crossed the 38th parallel, they saw “로스케[Roske]” (I guess it’s Korean dialect of русский) shooting (probably not directly at them) from afar.
His own parents followed suit, but they soon went back to the North due to some personal and family issues. One of his younger brothers still stayed in the North. And a few years later, as we know, the Korean War broke out. They never met after the separation.
But my grandfather never got sentimental when it came to North Korea, even to the issue of family reunion. He’s probably not a typical 실향민, those originally from the North but displaced and separated from family before and during the war.
When South Koreans found a way to get in touch with their family in North Korea via Chinese brokers back in the 1990s, my grandfather wasn’t tempted to find his family. I never asked him why, but long wondered why he was so unwilling to do that.
Only a couple of years ago, when I happened to talk to a North Korean defector who came to a small gathering as a guest speaker like myself, I got a clue about my grandfather’s decision. That’s something I didn’t seek to obtain.
So I had a long conversation with her after the talk, and I shared the story of my grandfather including the fact that for some reason unknown to me, he didn’t try to contact his family in the North.
Nodding softly, she spoke to me that perhaps it was so wise (or even kind) of him not to create any cause of trouble because had he approached a broker for locating and contacting his family in North Korea, they would have been subject to severe government scrutiny and probably something worse.
That comment made me think my grandfather's characteristic cold-hearted indifference or inattention from a totally different perspective. Underneath his rather callousness might have been his determination to withhold any desire for a risky reconnection. That’s probably his own way of coming to terms with the reality he knew all too well.
He was a skeptic par excellence. He’s so anti-political while at once avidly and voraciously acquiring every piece of information about Korean politics, both domestic and international, by subscribing to seven different newspapers.
And one of his favorite pastimes was to give life lessons to his grandchildren, emphasizing, among other things, the importance of a sort of Machiavellian prudence. Unbeknownst to me, my apprenticeship as a political theorist may have already begun then.
JK
VI.
02/20/2020
Parasite has become the first non-English film to win best picture at the Academy Awards.
Here are some of my quick thoughts about the film:
I.
Yes, perhaps it is brilliant to visualize the class distinction between the rich and the poor by juxtaposing a mansion on the hill with a semi-basement tenement house in Seoul. Two decades ago, my college best friend rented a tiny room in such tenement house for one full semester or more. Since I was a regular visitor to his place, I know something about "banjiha."
When it comes to poor neighborhoods in Seoul, however, I tend to think about "dal-dongnae," a number of shanty-towns clung to the flanks of high mountains surrounding Seoul. "Dal-dongnae" (which literally means "moon-town") may sound archaic, but has much richer cultural overtones. In terms of the altitude of their neighborhood, "dal-dongnae" is not so different from those rich villages on the hill. You can imagine two towns on the hills facing each other. Notwithstanding the equal level, their life conditions are drastically different. I once talked to a person growing up in one of those dal-donganes gazing around the nearby rich town. He said to me that he always aspired to move to that rich hilltop, transporting from one hill to another. Even at the moment that I was captivated by the appealing representation of the mansion on the hill vis-a-vis the banjiha house in the film, I kept thinking about "dal-dongnae."
II.
The wealthy need the poor. They need them to run the system seamlessly. The poor are those who minister to the necessities of life. Then, we might be able to say that the poor are placed in a better position to sense human life itself more directly. The life unadulterated from all the formalities and ostentation can be ugly, precarious, and, as Parasite characteristically points out, stinking. But it is also true that there's simple joie de vivre. This type of innocent amusement is a privilege granted to the common people.
In one of my favorite parts of Melville's Moby Dick (which is the very first part), Ishmael describes the privilege of the underprivileged as follows:
“I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the wholesome exercise and pure air of the fore-castle deck. For as in this world, head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect it.”
One outstanding feature of the Kim family in the film, for example, is that they are egalitarian to a very great degree. I fear that non-Korean native speakers might not be able to catch their family dynamics that transcend and transgress the standard cultural norms—regarding gender, age, etc.
III.
And Parasite reminds me of a couple of people I have known. For example, Ki-woo/Kevin's first interview as a tutor made me think of two individuals. One is my former colleague who was quite a successful tutor in his hometown Incheon (and I heard that he now runs a Hagwon). The other is the former CEO of the legendary Mega Study who started his career as a top-ranked tutor. Both of them emphasized that when they were tutoring, they placed special focus on the overall development of their students, not just on their academic performance. They played the role of the motivational speaker, life coach, or pseudo-psychiatrist, talking frankly and being heartlessly demanding to their students. That personal, all-encompassing connection might be something that kids going to a typical Korean Hagwon cannot enjoy.
And yes, "banggongho" (a basement bomb shelter) is real. One of my great-aunties used to live in a mansion in Pyongchang-dong. Her husband was a navy officer-turn-to businessman whose company long supplied seat-belts to Hyundai Motor Group. Their house had what they called "an outhouse," which really was a bomb shelter three to five floors below the ground. I was never allowed to go all the way down there. But some selected guests, my mother included, were welcome to visit the banggongho. No coincidence that my great aunt, like her brother and my grandfather, was originally from the Northern part of Korea (before the two Koreas were officially divided). Watching Parasite, I could not help but think of her greatly.
JK
V.
04/16/2018
It was exactly four years ago when the Sewol (a 6,825-ton car ferry) sank below the waves en route from Incheon to Jeju Island, South Korea.
The first distress call was made at 8:55 AM on April 16th, 2014. The ferry had just begun to tilt. Soon arrived the first Coast Guard squad. Perhaps all looked not too bad up to this point.
The rescue squad glided to the deck first, saving some of the passengers who managed to hang on there. Among them, however, were the ferry’s Captain Lee Jun-Seok and some of his crews. They were just abandoning the ship without issuing an evacuation order. Instead, the last thing they did before exiting the ship was to exhort passengers not to move: “Stay put. You are safer where you are.”
Inside the cabins were more than 300 passengers. Much to their frightening and paralyzing dismay, no proper assistance followed. The coast guard did little to nothing in terms of rescuing those people trapped inside the cabins. The dying passengers screamed and desperately sought help, both human and divine. Their misfortune, which could have been reversed, soon became a real calamity. Around 11:20 AM, the Sewol foundered completely.
The whole nation mourned. People grieved even more after learning that the vast majority of victims were young students from Danwon High School, who had been aboard the Sewol for their long-awaited annual field trip to Jeju Island. Of the 304 people deceased or missing, 250 were those high school students. Those who were blessed with their physical safety at distance suffered from watching those young teenagers being swallowed by the sea real-time as the capsized Sewol gradually disappeared. It was disturbing and disgusting that all the advanced communication technologies (including instant messages and video calls) were used as if they were invented as instruments so useful not to help save those lives but instead to make their deaths more graphic and lively. Whoever saw the tragic scene was seized with an impotent anger.
I've long thought about writing a short piece on the Sewol disaster and the following political turmoils. I may be able to produce a short article by the end of this year. Perhaps not. In the meantime, I'd like to introduce one poem that I happened to read a couple of days ago. The author is E. J. Koh and the poem is from her book, A Lesser Love (Louisiana University Press, 2017).
JK
----------
SOUTH KOREAN FERRY ACCIDENT
276 Dead (232 Students)
28 Missing (Underwater)
1 Rescued Found Dead (Suicide)
Search operation is still ongoing.
Footage is released to the public: the captain
abandoning the ferry in his underwear. Barefoot, he jumps
into another man’s arms. On screen, his face is purple.
He knew the ferry was 300 times over capacity, they say.
He knew the lifeboats were broken, the cargo was tipping.
After the footage, the ferry owner’s son disappears.
The captain is charged with murder. A senior official
of the inspection company SeaTrust is arrested.
I once took the same ferry route between Incheon
and Jeju Island. The decks were green.
The students heard over the speakers: “Do not move
from your present location and stay where you are.”
My parents are crying in the other room. “Why didn’t
the students jump into the water?
Americans would’ve jumped.” My mom is saddest
about the moment of drowning.
They’re 15-year-olds. At that age, I believed in God.
Who says love that is painful is not love?
For the first time, my mom says to me, “Korea was wrong.
My country did wrong.”
The mother of a deceased boy dove into the ocean.
The officers fetched her out, and she appeared on television,
saying, “My son is in that dark and cold water.”
A volunteer committed suicide. The prime minister stepped down.
The South Korean TV stations ban music, variety shows, and games
for 3 weeks. My mom wakes me
in the middle of the night. “If you are on a sinking ship,” she says,
“Don’t trust anybody. Don’t listen to anybody.”
During a memorial service, a pastor who witnessed the cleaning
and shrouding of the bodies said, “How much the students must have
scraped at the walls while trapped in the ferry that their fingernails
have all fallen off.” The chapel broke out in tears.
Another footage from inside the ship is uploaded on YouTube
under the request of parents of the deceased student.
The footage is broadcast. The faces are blurred.
The voices are changed. They are laughing
for a brief second of nervous excitement. “Do you think
we’ll become famous?” someone says, “Like the Titanic?”
IV.
01/14/2018
So time has flown by fast yet again, giving rise to the advent of another new year. Every new year arrives as an intrusion on the familiar, evoking some odd feelings of change, novelty, a little bit of wonder, and some anxiety.
A new year offers a good occasion for multiple acts of commemoration as well. It brings the past back into life again. When the past is present, it suffers considerable idealization, alteration, or re-appropriation. It reminds us that the past has never been fully ossified.
The year 2018 marks the 50th anniversary of Tet Offensive and My Lai Massacre. The Vietnam War may haunt us throughout this year. It is also the 50th anniversary of both MLK’s and RFK’s assassinations. And, of course, the 1968 revolution. We will perhaps be reminded of 1968 quite often this year.
This year is the centennial of the end of WWI and the sesquicentennial of the 14th amendment as well. And, most of all, I'd like to stress that it is the bicentennial of the births of two men, two men who would later die in the exact same year (1818-1883).
Their names are Karl Heinrich Marx and Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev. One was from Trier, Germany, the other from Oryol, Russia. About fifteen years ago, I was a bit fascinated by their life trajectories, which overlapped but not quite crossed. I even thought about writing a short piece on them (fictional or otherwise) but have never executed the plan.
Obviously, Marx and Turgenev held very different views on a variety of issues; nonetheless, there seem to be some commonalities between them. Below are, of course, some excursive thoughts.
Both Marx and Turgenev studied Hegel’s philosophy at the University of Berlin. Marx came to Berlin in 1836, Turgenev in 1838. Marx studied and worked closely with the Young Hegelians including Adolf Rutenberg and Bruno Bauer. Turgenev hang out with some of those Young Hegelians as well, but he loved to talk to G. H. Lewes and Bettina von Arnim (née Brentano). The former was a writer and scholar of vast versatility who would later become the partner of George Eliot, and the latter was the incarnation of romanticism of the time whose Goethes Briefwechsel mit einem Kind [1835] was widely known even among educated young Russians like Turgenev. Franz and Lujo Brentano were Arnim’s nephews, Friedrich Karl von Savigny was her brother-in-law. Savigny reminds me of a few other names who helped shape German jurisprudence in the 19th and 20th centuries, significant part of which I learned from Ellen Kennedy's great book, Constitutional Failure. One is Savigny's student G. F. Puchta, the intellectual father of the Pandektenwissenschaft, or scientific study of the Roman Law. The other is Carl Schmitt who once drew parallels between his stance in the Third Reich and that of Savigny under Friedrich Wilhelm IV.
But, in any case, Turgenev’s closest friend in Berlin was Mikhail Bakunin who once was his roommate. They spent their time together reading Hegel while listening Beethoven in their flat (as boring as it may sound, Beethoven's magnificent music goes probably very well with Hegel's profound prose; both of them, by the way, were born in 1770).
The nasty relationship between Marx and Bakunin is well documented. Marx once said that Bakunin was “a man devoid of all theoretical knowledge,” and Bakunin believed that Marx was “from head to foot, an authoritarian.” Their disputes caused the famous red and black divide, resulting in the disbandment of the First International.
Rudin, the eponymous character of Turgenev's first novel, is in part a portrait of Bakunin. In Rudin, Turgenev satirizes Bakunin or those who like him. His disrespect of Bakunin's political view long remained unabated, although he retained genuine affections for his old friend and didn’t hesitate to help him and his family when necessary. When Rudin came out in 1857, Marx was drafting his Grundrisse. Five years later, Turgenev's best work came out. Another five years later, Marx's magnum opus was published. These are two great achievements in the 1860s: Fathers and Sons (1862) and Capital (1867). If I have to pick one political theorist in the last century who must have read both Marx and Turgenev with greatest care and rigor, I will choose Isaiah Berlin.
Both Marx and Turgenev died in exile, one in London, the other in Bougival near Paris.
JK
III.
12/31/2017
"Political theory might be defined in general terms as a tradition of discourse concerned about the present being and well-being of collectivities. It is primarily a civic and secondarily an academic activity. In my understanding this means that political theory is a critical engagement with collective existence and with the political experiences of power to which it gives rise."
From Sheldon Wolin, The Presence of the Past [1989]
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What John Rawls is to (American) political philosophy in the latter half of the past century, Sheldon Wolin is to (American) political theory. Both Rawls and Wolin received their PhDs in 1950, from Princeton and Harvard, respectively. Wolin's dissertation, like Shklar's, was directed by Carl Friedrich, although he once recalled that his work was not closely supervised by Friedrich. At Harvard, Wolin was highly influenced by many scholars outside the Department of Government such as Werner Jaeger (a classicist from Germany), Henry Aiken (an authority on ethics and aesthetics), and Crane Brinton (a historian of France).
The picture posted above is from a beautiful essay "In Memory of Sheldon Wolin (1922-2015)" published in Boston Review. The author, to whom the photo credit goes as well, is Anne Norton, my advisor and Wolin's former colleague at Princeton. I recall meeting her just one day after his passing. I said "what a great loss," to which she replied "yes, and it was a great life." Below are Anne's own words from the essay:
"[Wolin] gave us courage that does not depend on hope. He taught us to be fearless. Wolin saw the risks to take. He was never the fearful liberal who looked askance at democracy, searching out techniques of governance to compensate for the perceived deficits of popular rule. Never the anxious constitutionalist trying to make the present endure. Wolin had democratic daring. He sought not lasting institutions but a fugitive democracy, not liberal stability but democratic adventure."
Norton's Reflections on Political Identity [1988] and Wolin's The Presence of the Past [1989] are the first two books that inaugurated the Johns Hopkins Series in Constitutional Thought. The series, edited by Sotirios Barber and Jeffrey Tulis, published some good books, though it seems that they practically came to a standstill a few years ago.
Further digressions: quite a number of people have often falsely said that Anne was one of Wolin's students. She wasn't. They taught at Princeton together in the mid 1980s. Some readers of her Reflections on Political Identity, especially those who were not attentive to her careful use of commas and the conjunction ‘and,’ might have misread her own statement. The preface to her second book ends with the following sentence: “In writing this, I have constantly recalled my first teachers, Ralph Lerner and Joseph Cropsey, and Sheldon Wolin.”
Both Lerner and Cropsey were the students of Leo Strauss. Lerner met Strauss at the University of Chicago, under whose supervision he wrote his dissertation on Zionism (about Theodor Herzl as well as Leon Pinsker) in 1953. Cropsey earned his PhD in Economics from Columbia in 1952, writing his dissertation on Adam Smith. His advisor, I believe, was Joseph Dorfman, a Russian émigré specializing in the history of economic thought. When he was still a graduate student at Columbia, Cropsey came to know Strauss who then taught at the New School for Social Research. He attended Strauss's courses at the New School for a couple of years. Later, he explicitly, and with highest respect, mentioned Strauss's influence on his doctoral study in the preface to his book Polity and Economy [1957], which built on his dissertation.
Leo Strauss and Carl Friedrich (the same Friedrich I alluded to above in this posting as well as in the previous posting on "Amy v. Smith") went to the same secondary school in Marburg: Gymnasium Philippinum. Strauss's dissertation, which was on Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, was supervised by Ernst Cassirer, who (like Strauss) later fled the Nazi Germany to the States (in his case via England and Sweden). In 1943, Cassirer published a short essay in Social Research, aiming to (re)introduce the philosophy of Hermann Cohen, his own teacher, who inaugurated the great intellectual movement in the late 19th century commonly described as "Neo-Kantianism." Cassirer learned the name of Cohen at the lecture given by a brilliant privatdozent at the University of Berlin in the early 1890s. This not-so-young privatdozent was Georg Simmel who was quite close to Max Weber.
In 1963, Strauss and Cropsey co-edited History of Political Philosophy, a textbook that has instructed two or more generations of political theorists. It was about three years earlier when Wolin's masterpiece came out. His Politics and Vision has instructed and inspired the same generations of political theorists, perhaps of a different kind.
JK
II.
09/20/2017
Hey K,
Glad you liked my short digression, although the majority of our students perhaps didn't care at all. So, Max Weber was the first son of his parents whose second son was Alfred Weber who was only four years younger than his older brother but lived a lot longer to see the rise and fall of the Third Reich. Alfred Weber, too, was a great sociologist in his own right, but I think his works have received less attention than they deserve at least in the Anglophone academia.
Anyway, when Alfred Weber taught at the University of Heidelberg, one of his students was Carl Friedrich who would soon become a promising political theorist/constitutional scholar at Harvard. As a predominant figure at Harvard, Friedrich was a teacher of many notable students, and one of the best among them was Judith Shklar, the supervisor of Rogers's doctoral dissertation!
Hence Rogers Smith (Harvard, 1980, under Shklar's supervision) - Judith Shklar (Harvard, 1955, under Friedrich's) - Carl Friedrich (Heidelberg, 1930, under Alfred Weber's). The numbers indicate the year each of them received their degree.
I could have gone further to say that Alfred Weber earned his doctoral degree under Gustav von Schmoller, one of the most important figures in the German historical school of economics in the late 19th century, which would have pushed this intellectual genealogy further back, but I chose not to and instead alluded to his brother Max Weber, whose name must have sounded far familiar to everyone. By the way, Max Weber gained wide recognition first by his famous Elbian Report commissioned by the association led by Schmoller (Vereins für Sozialpoltik), and later developed his scholarship in part by criticizing Schmoller.
And as I said, Judith Shklar was Amy Gutmann’s teacher and the reader of her dissertation too. But the supervisor of her dissertation was Michael Walzer who was also a member sitting on the Rogers's dissertation committee. And we can move from Walzer to Samuel Beer, but I do not know much about Beer's educational background. That's why I just briefly dubbed his political activism in the 1960s.
I can probably say a couple of more things which might appeal to my (and your) historian's sensibility, but I guess this should be enough for now. Hope you have a great day and see you next week if not earlier.
Best,
Juman
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* Some footnotes and further digressions:
1. This is from my email correspondence with Kalind Parish, a bright PhD/JD student at Penn, with whom I served as a TA for Rogers Smith's American Constitutional Law course. One day, I had to cover for Rogers as he was away. The cases we had to deal with on that day included Amy v. Smith,1 Litt. 326 (Ky. 1822). Amy was a woman of color who was born to a slave whom William Smith claimed he owned. Having been born in Pennsylvania, where the Act of Gradual Emancipation was effective, Amy claimed that Kentucky should treat her like any other Pennsylvanian citizens, invoking the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Constitution. The Kentucky court thought differently. Amy, argued the court, was not a citizen of Pennsylvania in the first place as she didn't belong to the group of "rights and privileges." Anyway, Rogers made a slide with a portrait of President Gutmann (Amy) and that of himself (Smith) in order to amuse his students. It was this slide that triggered my digression: "Amy versus Smith... Well, their interests are not necessarily antithetical to each other. In fact, they have much in common, for example, ..."
2. Rogers later found "the 25-year intervals" in my story very interesting, and he recalled supervising two award-winning dissertations that came to a completion around 2005. The authors were Sarah Song (UC Berkeley) and Justin Wert (U Oklahoma). And he kindly made a correction to my account of the Gutmann-Walzer relationship. His memory was that Amy Gutmann’s supervisor was Shklar, not Walzer. That must be true, then! I may have to double check with Amy Gutmann someday.
3. I didn’t know about the connection between Friedrich and Alfred Weber until Josh Cherniss, a political theorist at Georgetown, told me about it a few years back. I also learned from Josh some interesting stories about Shklar's tenure as lecturer at Harvard and her promotion from the rank of lecturer directly to the position of full professor. Josh himself is connected to Shklar, Friedrich, and Weber via Nancy Rosenblum, his dissertation supervisor.
4. Much later, I came to know that Samuel Beer contributed an essay to The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions (co-edited by R. A. W. Rhodes, Sarah A. Binder, and Bert A. Rockman). I learned from his essay that he came to Harvard in 1938 and completed his dissertation, entitled The City of Reason, in 1943. The Oxford Handbook came out in 2006, which means that Beer was 95 years old at the time. He died in 2009.
5. Max Weber appears to be one of the most important thinkers to many of my teachers. Anne Norton, the original thinker par excellence, has penned a number of Weber-inspired essays, including Reflections on Political Identity [1988]. When I first met Jeff Green long ago, he drew my attention to one of his teachers: the late Stanley Hoffmann from whom he learned about Raymond Aron (Hoffmann's mentor) who deeply admired Weber. Jeff told me that Aron attended Weber's famous vocational lectures (or one of them) in Munich. If true, how precocious he was! Aron was born in 1905. My Master's thesis advisor, Sung Ho Kim, started his career as a Weber Scholar. He used to give short hand-written comments in the margins of his students' term papers using green inks only, the practice he claimed he learned from Edward Shils. Shils, a widely known scholar and translator of Weber was his teacher. Shils grew up in Philadelphia and went to Penn. His nephew Edward B. Shils was a noted management professor at the Wharton School, holding six degrees all from Penn. Nate Shils, my friend and one of Edward Shils's cousins (twice removed), is now a doctoral student at Penn.
JK
I.
06/02/2017
"Political philosophy cannot be expected to increase our ability to be successful in political activity. It will not help us to distinguish between good and bad political projects; it has no power to guide or direct us in the enterprise of pursuing the intimations of our tradition. But the patient analysis of the general ideas which have come to be connected with political activity—ideas such as nature, artifice, reason, will, law, authority, obligation, etc.—in so far as it succeeds in removing some of the crookedness from our thinking and leads to a more economical use of concepts, is an activity neither to be overrated nor despised. But it must be understood as an explanatory, not a practical, activity, and if we pursue it, we may hope only to be less often cheated by ambiguous statement and irrelevant argument."
From Michael J. Oakeshott, "Political Education" [1951]
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The person who first introduced Michael Oakeshott's political philosophy to me was Chaibong Hahm, my first political theory professor back in college, who I believe must have read Oakeshott under the guidance of the late Richard Flathman at Johns Hopkins. I remember reading part of the quote posted above on the front page of his now-defunct website. And it was no surprise that I later saw the same passage selected as an epigraph for Flathman's The Philosophy and Politics of Freedom [1987].
Oakeshott was the teacher of Ellen Kennedy as well, to whom I am indebted. I can see Oakeshott's enduring influence on her, especially when she seems to display a particular type of skepticism-cum-empiricalism (empiricalism, according to Flathman, is different from empiricism) that does not necessarily defy idealism outright. One of the greatest seminars I attended at Penn was her Ancients and Moderns, for which I read, among others, Oakeshott's Experience and Its Modes [1933] for the first time. I personally enjoyed this somewhat archaic book more than his acclaimed masterpiece, On Human Conduct [1975]. Oakeshott's writings on Hobbes are pleasurable to read as well.
"Political Education" was Oakeshott's inaugural lecture delivered at LSE in 1951 to initiate his tenure there as Chair of Political Science. It was quite a scandalous appointment because the person he succeeded was Harold Laski who, with his predecessor Graham Wallas, embodied the Fabianism. What a replacement! Laski died almost exactly a year prior to the Oakeshott's lecture.
Further digressions: That Oakeshott was Kennedy's dissertation supervisor is perhaps one of the most frequently made false statements about her academic/biographical background. No. Ellen's primary supervisor was Fred Rosen, the Bentham expert. I've read and heard of a couple of more misconceptions about her and made a few corrections to them when possible. For example, 1) Carl Schmitt was not the focus of her scholarly interests during her days at LSE. It was initially Hegel, and she eventually wrote her dissertation on Henri-Louis Bergson: Freedom and the Open Society. And 2) she is not an English. She lived there for a long time, but she's from Knoxville, Tennessee.
JK