Height is a issue that many leave unsolved mainly because of lack of knowledge about the subject. It is come to my attention however that height does not need to be a issue anymore as it seems that there are now methods to increase your height.
How?
Shoe lifts can give the wearer a boost in height and confidence, these insoles have been hitting the markets by storm and are the latest trend because they can offer something that was once thought impossible and they do it risk free and with results that are actually noticeable.
Well shoe lifts work simply by giving the wearer of them much taller heels, if that wasn't enough they can also be adjusted in height with stacks and are comfortable to wear all day and unnoticeable to others something high heels cannot do on both those two things.
Well there isn't that much information concerning shoe lifts online but what i have found out is that they are quite similar to heel lifts that are used for people with leg length discrepancy's. Anyone can wear a pair whether you are already tall, male or female...
Height increasing insoles can make you feel taller and more confident in yourself.
I bought a pair... and i can tell you that i have been trying for months to improve my posture and height through stretching exercises with no success these shoe lifts however instantly gave me the height I wanted.
Thursday, 14 March 2013
Biotech-Bashing: Is It Justified? (Part II)
In my last post, I began a broad discussion of the biotech industry and some of the concerns that have been raised regarding its ‘commitment’ to improving health care for the world’s population. I left it at a point where I had pointed out some evidence for change in the ways in which biotech companies perform research. Therefore, it is quite likely that the so-called chronic over-spending on R&D by biotech companies will start to bear fruit in the near future. This will come to pass as processes are streamlined, resources re-allocated, and, most importantly, biotech companies and big pharma begin to share expertise in a concerted manner in order to bring innovative therapeutics to market.
The state of the art in biological knowledge is now so advanced that most are in agreement regarding the vast and untapped potential for development of novel and effective drugs to treat hitherto incurable diseases. I, for one, am convinced that we need to look elsewhere for ways to enhance the efficiency of the biotech sector. The science is fine – it’s managing its utilization that is the problem. In many ways, this boils down to the standard question of ethics vs. profit. Worldwide, investors now have access to information of a quality and quantity never heretofore seen. Generally, large investors and the companies advising them have become accustomed to getting their returns – and lots of them – as regularly as clockwork, especially from high-tech industrial sectors such as telecommunications, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals and, of course, biotechnology. Companies involved in health care have largely been unsuccessful in convincing investors to be patient – an issue I mentioned earlier.
The key is the fact that most companies in the biotech sector tend to react to, rather than anticipate, the expectations of society. This, as any switched-on business professional will tell you, is a recipe for disaster. Corporate conduct becomes hypocritical and untrustworthy, as companies feel the pinch of investor worries as well as customer dissatisfaction, and seek to at least carve out some security for themselves in the shark-infested waters of the global marketplace. A notable example of the consequences of pursuing the reactive, rather than pro-active stance was recently provided in the form of Novartis. The Swiss drug-maker is an active player in biotechnology, and its R&D programs had developed a small molecule drug, Glivec, that was amazingly active in treating a wide range of cancers – in particular chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML), a devastating blood-based form of cancer. Novartis purported to have instituted a program to ensure free access to Glivec for the extremely ill patients who couldn’t pay the normal price. In particular, the company’s philanthropic efforts were declared to be directed at patients in developing countries, such as India. However as the New York Times pointed out, Novartis was not entirely altruistic in its efforts. Firstly, the company was unable to (or unwilling to) find established charitable organizations with well-structured distribution systems to get Glivec to patients, instead going with a small group that eventually was shown to be woefully unsuited to the task. Second, in the case of India, Novartis imposed conditions, stating that it would supply the drug free of charge only as long as Indian companies promised not to develop and market generic versions of the compound. As soon as Novartis received word that the Indian drug-makers were willfully (and probably cheerfully) ignoring its edict, the company stopped its free distribution program.
Finally, and perhaps most ignominiously, Novartis dropped the ball completely in South Korea. This country was not classified as belonging to the developing world by the Novartis initiative. But terminally ill people are terminally ill people, right? The South Korean government refused to foot the bill for Glivec – the cost of which comes to several thousand dollars a month (nearly $20 per pill) – in order to treat a group of extremely sick people. These individuals then petitioned the South Korean Supreme Court to be granted the right to purchase cheaper generic Glivec from – ironically – India, under the compulsory licensing agreement issuing from the World Trade Organization. Initially, the Court ruled in favor of the patients. However, Novartis appealed and managed to overturn the ruling. In the meantime, the company had stopped all delivery of its drug to South Korea, citing the breakdown of negotiations with the government over pricing. When the patients – serious CML sufferers who had been declared refractory (unresponsive) to all other treatments – decided to go ahead and buy the generic Indian Glivec anyway, Novartis hired muscle to prevent the shipment from ever reaching the people it was designed to save.
Clearly, the motivation behind Novartis’s strong-arm tactics and the overall stance of big pharma is fear – pathological, all-consuming fear of loss of profit. However, time and again, history has shown that social concerns such as ‘life before profit’ are capable of having negative impacts on shareholders that no amount of blockbuster drug selling can overturn. Certainly, image is everything in the pharmaceutical industry for good reason.
So, what is the way forward? Does it even exist? Clearly, biotech-pharma partnerships should be broadened, since this maximizes the potential benefits for drug development. But what should not be ignored is the tremendous resources available in labs of the Third World. Researchers in Cuba, for example, have with almost no resources successfully created a meningitis B vaccine. This last was recently partnered with GlaxoSmithKline, a leading pharmaceutical company, for marketing and development. All the more inspiring, considering that Cuban chambermaids earn more per month, on average, than Cuban biotech scientists…
On a more macro scale, given the examples of corporate skullduggery that I have taken such pains to highlight, it is obvious that more attention needs to be given to the issue of embedding corporate accountability in global health care governance systems. Pharma and biotech companies need to transform their business ethics methodology and philosophy with respect to performance and quality assurance, making these pro-active instead of reactive. The public also needs to see more efforts made by the industry to clarify issues arising from the development and use of innovative genomics-based technologies. Finally, and perhaps most essentially, the biotech sector should find ways to address the health disparity that is growing seemingly inexorably between rich and poor countries. Global thinking is needed to combat the prevalence of the “me-first” mind-set.
Biotech-Bashing: Is It Justified? (Part I)
It has been a matter of some concern for several years that the promise so loudly trumpeted by advocates of the biotech industry, namely, that the quantum leap in comprehension of biological systems and processes would lead to a new era in medicine, seems to have volatilized into thin air. Being, first and foremost, an ardent supporter of scientific and technological advancement in the biotech field, and secondly a researcher working in this domain, I feel it incumbent upon me to attempt to clarify some of the issues that have arisen concerning the biotech industry’s inability to develop novel drugs. I believe this clarification to be necessary for two reasons: First, the critics of the biotech industry (while no doubt well-intentioned) have often chosen to aim at the most visible – and therefore vulnerable – target in this field, i.e. research and development. While it is clear that R&D in biotech is prohibitively expensive, I feel that there is much evidence to support the case that expenses associated with R&D are by no means the sole, nor even the primary, cause of biotech’s alleged inefficiency in producing solutions to unmet medical needs. Perhaps it is time to pinpoint a bottleneck elsewhere. Second, I think that recent organizational changes within the industry itself have gone a long way towards addressing the typically raised peeves of the not-so-silent “majority”.
Where to begin? I shall seem perfunctory in my approach to most of the subjects I touch upon, as there is little scope to discuss them fully. However, I would like to state at the outset that I intend to take a more philosophical tack, with the aim of trying to elucidate some fundamental issues that continue to affect biotech’s growth into a fully developed and therefore respected industry. In general, biotech still suffers greatly from the fallout of the bursting of the dot-com bubble in early 2000. The specter of biotech’s past (the ultra-volatility of the mid-1990s) has raised its ugly head, and young biotechs that had been created on the basis of so-called “platform technologies” and had never intended to enter the drug development business per se have recently been suddenly confronted with a very altered philosophy coming from venture capitalists. These last, rather than continuing to wax ecstatic about high-content screening technologies and the like, began to insist volubly that everything be bottom-lined. Rather than expecting to land lucrative partnerships with the big pharmaceutical companies, the money men argued, young biotechs should begin thinking about developing drugs on their own. Larger firms would not be willing, they said, to shell out millions and millions of dollars simply to get a license to databases containing terabytes of “potentially valuable” information. Rather, they had begun to want to see products with potential.
But even those large companies that made bets on comparatively late-stage products got burned. A notable example was Bristol-Myers Squibb, which literally lost its shirt on the debâcle surrounding Erbitux, a novel antibody therapeutic aimed at curing cancer. When Bristol-Myers’s partner on the project, a then-promising biotech firm called Imclone, suffered the ignominy of having its New Drug Application (NDA) thrown out of the window by the Food and Drug Administration, it seemed as if things were already pretty awful. Then came the harrowing tale of insider trading, investor bamboozling and the like, supposedly masterminded by Imclone’s CEO, Samuel Waksal, and his brother Harlan. The scandal snared even the hitherto unsinkable, the Queen of Home Improvement herself, Martha Stewart. However, in a nutshell, the case simply proved that large companies seeking to bet on late-stage products in the hope that this would place them nearer the finish line (with a marketable drug) might well be shooting themselves in the foot. Surely, it might be advisable to get involved at the start with a small biotech, getting to know its research and the quality of its people (particularly its management) before choosing to develop its product as a drug? Sometimes the short-term view can be disastrous. The typical product life cycle in the biotech industry is 8-10 years; with protein therapeutics, today all but immune to the threat of generic competition, it can be even longer. Obviously, patience counts for much.
This brings me to another basic point – the lack of patience in today’s society. It is clear that we look to advances in medicine more and more in order to address the enormous demographic shift currently taking place in most developed countries, namely the advent of a rapidly aging population in which a significant proportion of people are over the age of 65. However, the concern over this and its implications – in particular the potential loss of productivity and the “drag” that supporting retirees will place on social security structures – has seemingly begun to border on mass hysteria. Billions are being poured into research to identify cures for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other neurodegenerative diseases, as before we visualize dropping dead from a heart attack or being hit by a car, we begin to fear lying in a nursing home unable to comprehend quite what is going on. Here in the developed world, more or less sheltered from the scourge of AIDS or malaria or cholera, we fear most the advent of a time when, bereft of our minds, we still are not bereft of life itself. The lack of patience, fueled by the mass media, has a trickle-down effect. It has given rise to an amazing sense of expectation and pressure on researchers within the biotech industry. Tools have not become exponentially better, because the small companies that were developing them have been suffocated by a lack of funds – since they were not ostensibly involved in developing drugs directly. Yet, the expectations have gotten higher. Biotech researchers have, some belatedly, awoken to the fact that they are being asked every day to do more with less. Additionally, there is an insistence on in vivo data – meaning experiments to be done on animals – to maximize the chances of identifying products that will succeed in the clinic. While this may be viewed as a clarification of objectives, it is also necessary to remember that a mouse is not a man.
It is, of course, necessary to note that problems do abound within the biotech industry itself. As with many other areas in which corporate structures exist, bureaucracy and administrative inefficiency contribute greatly to an overall incapacity to function reliably with respect to information dissemination and prompt responsive action. Tremendous emphasis is placed on gaining the advantage with regard to intellectual property, but this has come at the expense of considering what might be best as a therapeutic for the patient. I am not of the opinion that generic drugs are necessarily the greatest alternative, but sometimes the patient has no choice. Also, the unwillingness to promote dialogue over the realistic prospects for generic drugs within and outside the biotech industry has led to some alarming tendencies. India, for example, does not have the wherewithal to combat either rampant patent infringement or widespread propensities of doctors to yield to company pressure by illegally prescribing toxic anti-cancer drugs as infertility treatments. This damages both the credibility of the health care system and discourages local as well as foreign investment into medical research with the aim of developing novel therapeutics. Biotech companies are also extremely wary of disappointing investors. The dot-coms were made to pay dearly for not having basic things like a sustainable business model or a defined product line. Now, biotech companies are continually made aware of the fact that investors are asking them the same sorts of questions. Biotech investors are more likely these days to have medical or scientific backgrounds, and are more than eager to put their investment targets’ chief scientific officers on the spot with detailed and probing queries about their companies’ pipelines. Within some companies, it is rumored that scientists often spend more time boning up for investor road shows than working in the lab directing and coordinating their enterprises’ scientific endeavors.
Investment in R&D by biotech companies typically far exceeds the approximately 18% of sales normally spent by even the most profligate of pharmaceutical companies. Here, of course, it is important to note that by biotech companies I mean what are generally comparatively small organizations (even if they are making money, which is often not the case) engaged in developing products based on what we know about the human genome. Pharmaceutical companies, on the other hand, are massive corporations (the biggest, Pfizer, is currently the 6th largest company in the world) and have far more diverse ranges of operations. They may rely entirely on developing drugs to fight diseases, but can also (which is becoming more and more the norm) concentrate their efforts on so-called “lifestyle drugs”, such as Viagra and Cialis (developed to treat the euphemistically termed ‘erectile dysfunction’), or Lipitor (an anti-cholesterol compound or ‘clot-buster’). The massive amounts spent by biotech companies often raise the question of the inefficiency of their research programs. Yet, it is amazing how little time is spent discussing how this so-called inefficiency should be addressed. A close look at the most productive programs indicates how beneficial the synergy between biotech and large pharma can be. Even better, the bigger biotech companies tend to operate like super-efficient pharma companies. At the management level, they have a clear understanding of the requirements for getting a drug approved. However, in the labs, a corroborative and focused approach is taken and there is no sign anywhere of the large-scale screening campaigns that pretty much embodied the practice of ‘slinging stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks.’ The combination of entrepreneurial thinking and the culture of the possible with cold realism and solid clinical expertise make for an excellent drug development paradigm. The successes of partnerships such as that of Novartis with Vertex Pharmaceuticals beautifully illustrate the effectiveness of melding scientific expertise with business knowledge. Selling drugs is still hard work, no matter what unmet medical need they are meant to address.
Aggression and the threat of nuclear terrorism
Graham Allison, author of the seminal Essence of Decision, has an article on nuclear proliferation in the current issue of Foreign Affairs that is as ambitious as it is flawed.
His argument goes like this. The availability of fissile material is the key to nuclear proliferation. If persons with terrorist intent could not get a hold of such material, there would be no terrorist nuclear threat. To bring about this end, Allison argues that the Bush administration must follow an aggressive three-pronged policy:
1. It must work, in cooperation with other legitimate nuclear states, to secure all existing stocks of nuclear weapons and materials, and do this transparently, so that all participating states can be sure of each other’s compliance.
2. The United States must ensure that countries with presumed nuclear ambitions do not have access to fissile material.
3. Consonant with the signing of the Nonproliferation Treaty, the international community must dedicate itself to preventing the emergence of new nuclear states.
The notion that the availability of fissile material should be the focus of preventing nuclear terror is a crude empirical simplification. It is true but trivial. And we should notice that Allison refrains from following the thought to its logical conclusion, namely that an even surer way of preventing such access would be to get rid of nuclear weapons (and possibly nuclear energy) altogether. Both statements are equally unrealistic.
The charge that Allison refuses to factor practicability into his prescriptive analysis is valid across the board. For example, he suggests that a new “International Security Standard” should be developed by the United States and Russia to guarantee that their nuclear stocks be insusceptible to terrorist pilfering. Presumably, this would entail U.S. inspectors having free access of inspection to the Russian nuclear inventory. But how plausible is it to assume that American politicians, not to mention the American public, would welcome the prospect of Russian inspectors regularly visiting the numerous nuclear holy of holies dotted throughout the Midwest? What international legal provisions would be put in place to guard against perceived breaches in security? The United States, notoriously protective of its sovereignty in domestic affairs, would be unlikely to subscribe to an initiative allowing Russians to judge its self-defined standards once they were in place.
A similar argument can be made against his proposed “Global Cleanout Campaign.” Here, the idea is that a coalition of nuclear states (those, presumably, that are signatories to the International Security Standard) use all means necessary to halt the worldwide production of fissile material. Allison holds that if diplomatic persuasion or economic sanctions fail in this regard, the use of force is a legitimate option. With a good portion of the U.S. military still bogged down in Iraq, and with their continued presence there over the next few years a certainty, I’m not sure why Allison thinks going to war with Iran, North Korea, and possibly Pakistan is even possible, or for that matter legitimate.
An analogous strategy is elaborated for preventing new nuclear states. If sanctions and diplomacy fail, the U.S. is compelled to use its military might in order to quell the possibility for these nations to become vendors of nuclear weapons selling to parties hostile to the America and the West. Given the recalcitrance of proud states and even prouder leaders to change their ways in the face of unilateral aggression (even when this is masked as a “coalition of the willing”), there is good reason to expect that force will eventually become a part of this endeavor. Thus, Allison shockingly remarks:
“Horrific as the consequence of a preemptive attack on North Korean nuclear facilities would be, the prospect of a nuclear North Korea willing to sell its weapons to al Qaeda and other terrorists would be worse.”
According to Philip Saunders of the Monterey Institute of International Studies, the consequences of a preemptive strike on North Korea’s nuclear facilities could be disastrous. Although Pyongyang has limited air defense capabilities, it is reasonably certain that it has between 500 to 600 Scud missiles that could be deployed within minutes against targets throughout South Korea. Furthermore, the North Koreans also have 100 Rodong missiles capable of reaching targets in Japan. Add to this the fact that 70% of the North Korean military are stationed in close proximity to the demilitarized zone, and the truly horrific possibility of one or two fully operational nukes, and it is difficult to share Allison’s assuredness that preemption is better than a nonviolent alternative.
Clearly, this is a worst case scenario. However, in deciding whether to attack North Korea, American officials must weigh the probability of counterattack against the long-term danger of Kim Jong Il peddling his nuclear wares to our enemies. As a moral digression, we should also note that Allison’s argument is strongly consequentialist, asserting that it is better to kill one man so that the lives of ten can be spared. Such a calculation could only be made hypothetically, and the decision to strike North Korea, Iran, or another nation would ultimately derive its justification from the predictions of arm-chair analysts betting on an opaque future. Conversely, a principled foreign policy flatly claims that killing is wrong, and an act of war can never be sanctioned by analyzing the numbers of estimated casualties. Remember that at the height of the Cold War, similar reasons were given in order to justify a preemptory nuclear release of U.S. armaments against the Soviet Union. It goes without saying that this logic was as wrongheaded then as it is now.
To put my cards on the table, I am of the opinion that military means are never an attractive way to resolve an international crisis, though the use of force is sometimes unavoidable. But the contemplation of military action is ill-considered in the clearly laudable effort to limit nuclear terrorism.
The heart of the matter is not, as Allison contends, the presence of easily accessible and poorly controlled stores of fissile material. Rather, it is the willingness of clandestine groups and individuals to use them in the pursuit of nefarious and destructive ends targeting the citizens of any nation. The horror of a nuclear attack on the United States is unthinkable, but so is an attack using commercial airliners against innocents working in the steel and glass symbols of American capitalism. How can these incidents be ranked according to the macabre metric of comparative death tolls?
The real task before us, one that President Bush has rightly presented in word if not in deed, is the War on Terrorism, not the war on nuclear weapons. And this war, if “war” is the right term for it, must be carried out by the international community as a whole. In fact, it is not hard to see that lacking international cooperation, preemptive action is liable to court the ignominious shadow of preemptive failure. The war on terror is a war on the micro-motives of highly dispersed fugitives cultivating a murderous yen for theocratic revolution and willing the triumph of disembodied traditions generally unrecognized by their native cultures. The Muslim world is no more bent on jihad than Christian nations are on another crusade.
Rooting out individual terrorists and bringing them to justice inherently calls on the efforts of an enormous array of transnational and decentralized resources. The willingness of local police throughout the Arab world to go in search of terror-minded criminals is just as important as the work of financial experts tracing the sinuous routes of international cash flows. Similarly, the power to define the scope of anti-terrorist activities must be vested as much in the hands of national governments and regional territories as it is in the all too visible political gigantism of the United States. No rational person would deny that all persons living in today’s global community have a stake in bringing the latest and most insidious wave of terrorism to an end. But realizing this goal depends on recognizing that the world is not as global as theorists of international relations would have us believe, that the relevant individuals and communities must be given an autonomy and respect commensurate with the gravity of their task.
Allison concludes his article with the following:
“Of course, this new principle [the ‘Bush Doctrine’] has yet to be enshrined in international law. It has, nonetheless, already become a de facto rule of international relations.”
Although I am extremely uncertain that the Bush Doctrine does possess this de facto status, the implication that legitimacy will eventually issue from a state of affairs that weaker nations are powerless to change is demeaning and incorrect. Indeed, such logic is a demonstrated recipe for the rise of anti-American sentiment, rather than a comforting fact presaging an inevitable confluence of national will with international mandate. Indeed, a recent opinion poll of 11 nations suggests that more than 60% of those questioned bore a markedly unfavorable attitude toward George W. Bush. Allison’s ironic program of aggression as the preferred means of combating the nuclear ambitions of terrorists promises to increase, not reduce, this figure, while at the same time driving a stake of distrust and animosity through the still strongly beating heart of international cooperation.
It is tempting to think that having isolated a problem, further ratiocination will discover its solution right around the corner. Allison has managed to do neither. Curbing the potential for hostile militants to acquire nuclear weapons is but one particularly frightening tentacle sprouting from the Medusa of international terrorism. And, like Hercules, we must calculate our blow to take off the head. In the just enactment of this myth in the contemporary world, we need to ensure that our Hercules is invested with the collective strength of nations, and that his sword is sharpened by the principled action of naturally willing communities.
Heidegger and abortion
This article from World Magazine about Wesley Clark’s stance on abortion (pro-choice) predictably gets nearly everything about existentialism wrong. Only God knows why they would attempt to critique a philosophy they hardly understand in order to advocate a position that in its public guise is wholly untenable.
In World Magazine’s (hereafter WM) rendering of existentialist thought, there is cast of exactly two: Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger. Never mind that Heidegger never considered himself an existentialist, and that much of Sartre’s “anger” at bourgeois practices such as marriage, church-going, and the rule of law was a result of his Marxist convictions. WM states that: “For Heidegger, the masses, lacking a true will of their own, can only become authentic by becoming one with the will of someone greater.”
This is presumably a reference to Heidegger’s notion of das Man, and is simply incorrect. In Being and Time, he says: “Das Wer ist nicht dieser und nicht jener, nicht man selbst und nicht einige und nicht die Summe Aller. Das ‘Wer’ is das Neutrum, das Man (S&Z, 126).” Heidegger’s point (and it can certainly be disputed) is that there is no such thing, ever, as private thought or private conscience. Our choices, preferences, and life hopes are always already present in a public structure. That is, our decisions, our means for self-actuation, are made available to us by the society of which we are a part. For instance, a tribal dweller in Papua New Guinea does not have the option of becoming, say, a plastic surgeon. Nor can he even begin to contemplate such a path. Conversely, a citizen of any advanced industrial democracy does generally not have the option of becoming a shaman, or engaging in polygamy. In both cases, it is clear that our lives are pervasively and profoundly shaped by our respective societies, to such an extent that we cannot opt out of them.
The lesson WM draws from its cursory analysis of this idea is that, since the majority of human beings are inauthentic (i.e. they are defined by das Man), they are easier to kill! Indeed, the article implies that this would be a legitimate course of action for a Heideggerian existentialist, and cites his support of Nazism as proof. It then goes on to attribute a similar view to Gen. Clark.
I am not especially familiar with the intricacies of Clark’s position. WM suggests that, for Clark and all the other pro-deathers, life begins with a mother’s decision. This is a needless obfuscation. Heidegger, a former Catholic seminarian who retained a sense of piety throughout his long life, would probably be against abortion. However, a view consistent with his version of existentialism would simply remark that abortion is inextricably incorporated into the cultural fabric of democratic states for whom individual autonomy is a critical value. A woman’s reproductive autonomy is less a choice than a fact of public existence in this period of Western modernity. It is ethically or morally legitimate then, only because it happens to be available.
Clearly, this is not a good argument for either side of the abortion debate. But I believe it is a fairly accurate guess at what someone like Heidegger might say. This just goes to emphasize the patent unsuitability of the whipping boy resurrected by WM to show up the alleged horrors of Clark’s beliefs.
Theory
The publication of Terry Eagleton’s After Theory appears to have sparked a debate that has been brewing in the wings of Academe for a long time. After more than three decades of autonomous theory, often a strange admixture of structuralism, Marxism, and psychoanalysis, intellectuals are now ready to join a new and dynamic vanguard of anti-theorists.
In the heyday of postmodernism (I’m thinking of the mid-1980’s), everything was a subject, an obscure self shackled by the bonds of a dark and oppressive inheritance—and theory was the great emancipator. James Clifford, for example, in his 1986 work The Predicament of Culture, attempted to overturn the anthropological fascination with the other by emphasizing that we too, were autochthons dreaming in an imagined present. Objectivity, truth, and progress could only be hegemonic terms, authentic only in the eyes of the observer, and so impossibly limited. Whatever was said, was said as ad hoc qualification. The legacy of postmodernism is that of an extended and ignominious apologia for truth, with fear or laziness barring critical minds from access to the real.
While theory crept into every area of academic reflection, it is fair to say that its staunchest advocates dwelt in English departments across the Western world. In some cases, of course, these departments splintered into semi-autonomous centers and institutes, and in their joyous nativity spawned gender studies, post-colonialism, and Marxist critiques of just about everything. It is interesting to note that, unlike the group of analytical Marxists (e.g. Erik Olin Wright, Jon Elster, G.A. Cohen, Phillipe van Parijs, etc), the “Non-Bullshit Marxists,” theorists branding themselves with hammer, sickle, and class consciousness took mostly from the French tradition stemming from Alexandre Kojeve’s famous lectures on Hegel during the 1930’s. The lineage continues, with Hyppolite, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Barthes, Althusser, and countless others. Particularly in Althusser’s bizarre formulation, the chief characteristic of this Marxism was an almost theistic faith in the omnipotence of superstructure, a disembodied field of laws and symbols that invisibly determined the course of human events. Concrete studies of class, economic redistribution, and the rampant inequalities emergent in societies lurching into an ugly and often misunderstood phase of modernity were relegated to curiosa, the trivial vestiges of a theoretical revolution of which only the theorists themselves were cognizant.
And now to the anti-theorists, and a few predictions. First, it seems clear that any anti-theoretical movement is destined for the heights of abstraction. After all, a true anti-theory would simply dismiss the idea of theoretical description altogether, and get on with the real work of understanding society, politics, or literature empirically. They would swap ratiocination for statistical analysis, and interviews for deliberation with their fellow academics. And this is not going to happen, nor is there any compelling reason why it should. Anti-theory, I think, will probably turn out to be some revival of pragmatism, recanonizing American thinkers like James, Dewey, Peirce, and Holmes. Indeed, this anticipated course has already been taken by Judge Posner, in his recent book outlining a pragmatic theory of law and democracy. The idea is an attractive one, particularly because it appeals to the natural aggressiveness of academics for whom postmodernism provided only an oblique outlet. Second, anti-theory will push for a return to things in themselves (Ding an sich), and probably pick up a good dose of phenomenology along the way. The focus, I believe, will be on how to make theory relevant to contemporary problems—and this is hardly a revelatory thought, as much self-justification as scholarly zeal. In any case, we are looking at a change in theory, not an abandonment. And the results will be no more significant for that.
To close, I think it is important to be clear that in all this, normative thinking, about politics, society, and much else, still has a place, and should be largely insensitive to the squabbles of a self-proclaimed theoretical elite. Social and political theory, in its normative guise, has always set out to limn the contours of a possible future, and so only indirectly laments the follies of the present. It is crucial to ponder the basis of a just society, of fairness in the market and in government. To take only the most obvious example, we should realize that Rawls’s fact of pluralism, the empirical observation that there exists a multiplicity of complete and largely irreconcilable worldviews, poses a constant challenge to governments aspiring to greater levels of freedom and democracy, as ours surely does. Theories of politics are of use here, for though they are unlikely to predict our future actions, they can lend our thought and practice a considered consistency often precluded by the frenetic debacles so characteristic of normal democracy at work. They do not make claims so much as suggestions, and these are backed up with that most universal of human abilities, the use of common sense and reason.
The end of theory, were it a real possibility, would be welcome. Though this won’t happen, nothing prevents us from inquiring into the actual possibilities of abstract reflection. As I have argued, these are essentially prescriptive, and this defines both how they should be presented, and more importantly, how they should be put into practice.
Psychoanalysis in France
Psychoanalysis has always been animated by mysticism. This is particularly true in France, where a proclivity for verve in expression and design has long been taken as a sign of intellectual achievement, over and above the muddy and generally mundane world of fact—a little evidence goes a long way. What’s more, French psychoanalysis has evolved (devolved is perhaps better) a truly annoying proteanism, and become a rarified confection often sprinkled over philosophy, sociology, or literary studies, in order to make those pursuits more relevant. Of course, the result is often the inverse.
Jacques Lacan, peddling his synthesis of Freud and Saussure at the College de France and other public venues over decades, is the main culprit. Looking back at the heyday of French theory, including figures such as Satre, Merleau-Ponty, Levi-Strauss, Barthes, Althusser, and Foucault, we find in all cases a strong dose of psychobabble masquerading as ontological insight. In a world composed of signs, the data painstakingly drawn together in the cognitive acts of social scientists becomes simply an afterthought. After all, does one really need to give reasons for the ad hoc associations that we make on a near constant basis? One thing follows another, just because it does, and its ostensible randomness is proof positive that beneath the dross of the quotidian lurks a deeper level of mind and symbol, the ineffable and unknowable. They should have read Wittgenstein, and remembered his famous closing of the Tractatus:
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen.
The worst thing, in my opinion, is that this trend has not abated. Derrida, after a series of highly intelligent commentaries on Husserl, set himself to worrying about Hegel’s schoolboy diaries and the evanescence of the Western tradition. At its most extreme, we have Deleuze and Guattari. I remember reading (trying to read) a Deleuze book on Leibniz, where he made the claim that ‘Alice (in Wonderland) clearly has teeth.’ Of course she does, and, for that matter, so do I.
It comes as a relief then, that the French government is attempting to set a new standard for regulating this culturally institutionalized form of witchcraft. Not, unfortunately, to the quiet opprobrium of practicing psychoanalysts. Here is a typical defense of their position, from Bernard-Henri Levy, a generic writer-philosopher-psychoanalyst-sage who enjoys tremendous popularity in France:
"When they speak of 'professionalizing' people whose business is human misery; when they speak of 'evaluating' needs and results; when they try to appoint 'super-prefects' of the soul, grand inquisitors of human sadness - it is to hard not to agree that psychoanalysis is in the firing line."
It is indeed on, if not yet in, the firing line, and if the French government is willing to assume the admirable role of intellectual executioner, we should urge these professors and pundits of the liminal soul to take just one more step forward.