In the past forty years there have been three philosophers whose work I have read as soon as possible upon publication: the philosopher of art Richard Wollheim, the social and ethical philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, and the learned and wide-ranging Raymond Geuss. Of these three only Geuss is still alive, and as I share MacIntyre’s view that Raymond Geuss is the finest philosophical essayist of our time, the publication of a new book of essays by Geuss is a uniquely important and orienting event in my intellectual life, such as it is. I have already written reviews of four of Geuss’s books in the past twenty years (all on my academia.edu page), so here in this review I’ll only sketch his central points that I’ve treated elsewhere before turning to some consideration of what seems to me the most original contribution of this current collection, reflections seemingly induced by intellectual responses to the recent invasion of Gaza by the Israeli Defense Forces. This new concern seemingly motivates Geuss to give for the first time his sustained philosophical attention to identification and solidarity.
Geuss’s general points, concerns, and style will be familiar to those who have read at least a few of his books published this century. He notes the historical variability and vicissitudes of any concept or phenomena he treats, often beginning his account with consideration of the topic in Ancient Greece or Rome, and then tracing its genealogy through European modernity to the present. He rejects any philosophical attempt to know the complete or final truth about anything, while insisting the historical character of, the ambiguities and inconsistencies within, and the open-ended nature of any phenomenon. On his conception and practice of philosophy (he of course recognizes that there are many such conceptions) the philosopher is an essayist (not a writer of monographs or treatises) who explores any topic whatsoever without aiming to give a definitive account of anything; and the philosopher also does so primarily as an exercise of the imagination, and not reason, in search of new possibilities for experiencing, thinking, and living. Most generally philosophy in all its varieties can be thought of as (conceptually) beginning in either wonder (as Aristotle states at the beginning of the Metaphysics) or in dissatisfaction (p. 102), with Geuss’s plainly among the latter. Such a philosopher will seek out and attempt to confront phenomena that are incommensurable with the dominant conception of the present world, and correlatively to shift the kinds of questions that are customarily considered important (p. 104). The dissatisfied philosopher, having rejected appeals to ultimate stable truths, must start from his or her own concrete historical situation: “we start not from abstract principles or morality and reason, but from where we are, where we happen to find ourselves, with our own beliefs, habits, and involvements and existing relations of mutual aid and support” (p. 155). Philosophical activity properly speaking (on this conception) has nothing to do with giving arguments to imaginary, abstract beings only characterized by their capacity for reasoning. Concretely, the dissatisfied, historically and socially placed philosopher “can reflect on our actions, mode of life, beliefs and forms of engagement with the world [,] . . . try to abstract from our biases and to imagine how we would see the world if we were differently constituted or situated” (p. 156). These points are developed throughout the new book and, as mentioned above, even more so in Geuss’s last half dozen books. One new though not wholly unprecedented emphasis here is on utopian thinking, which Geuss initially considers in Thomas More’s Utopia and Plato’s Republic. After noting standard objections to utopianism as unrealistic or mere irrational wishful thinking (p. 122), Geuss goes on to suggest that there are a number of positive functions of utopian thinking: it helps us “investigate the way in which wishing, hoping, and desiring, on the one hand, interact with knowing, on the other” (p. 123); it might throw “light on connections that otherwise escape notice”, provide “ideal types that can stimulate further thinking”, and serve “as a source of useful hypotheses”. The virtues of utopian thinking do not necessarily provide guidance for immediate action, but rather offer “[f]ertility, suggestiveness, and stimulation” (p. 126).
On the particular topics of solidarity and identification, Geuss begins by noting that while the phenomenon of solidarity must be as old as humanity itself, the term itself is recent, emerging no earlier than “the Early Modern period” (p. 144). Geuss proposes that the term ‘solidarity’ arises only after the French Revolution, whose agents coined and popularized the slogan ‘liberté, égalité, fraternité’. But while the liberty “has had extremely good innings during the past two hundred years”, and equality “has a recognized place in general discussions”, fraternity has largely dropped out of political discussions, perhaps because the suggestion that I treat everyone as brothers and sisters would be “intolerably claustrophobic”, as it seems to imply that I ought to treat every human being’s concerns, no matter how trivial, as my own (p. 148). The waning of the concept of fraternité leaves an empty conceptual place for something that marks and recognizes the virtues associated with long-term cooperation and mutual aid (p. 146). The conceptual need for such virtues can be seen in imagining a society that fulfills to the highest degree the demands of liberty and equality, and only those; in such a society people would be like the Homo economicus envisioned by economists, whose interest in others would be exhausted by the possibilities of using them for their own benefit (pp. 144-45). The concept of solidarity comes to fill this place with slightly weaker demands than those of universal fraternity; you need not be my brother, but rather only commit yourself to joining with me in some long-term enterprises (p. 149). Solidarity is not primarily psychological, but rather an objective network of joint action and shared interest (p. 152); and there is no reason to think that it is universal--I might feel and/or have solidarity with the workers against the capitalists--and I might partially or wholly withdraw solidarity for any reason (pp. 153-4), especially in light of evidence of ethically unsavory facts associated with that organization with which I have identified.
These analytical remarks about solidarity and identification set the stage for the stunning essay ‘Don’t say that--you’re frightening me’, which is offered as a contribution to political philosophy. The topic of fear in political philosophy is of course an old one, and Geuss does not fail to cite Machiavelli “explaining that if a Prince must choose, it is better to be hated and feared than loved” (p. 128). He offers a typology of four kinds of fear-inspiring speech in light of different objects fear. The first kind is straightforward: one might be threatened (“I am going to stab you”). Second, one might fear reputational damage to some project I share in, such as the revelation that the president of the art school I teach at is a perjurer. Third, one might fear ‘a serious and radical attack’ upon one’s core beliefs and values through the emergence of some facts, because if I were to take account of the attack, I might experience a serious disturbance of my psychic equilibrium. In response to this sense of an inner threat to my psyche, one has four possible responses: accepting the facts and trying to assimilate them into my current beliefs; accepting the facts and beginning the painful process of changing myself; ignoring or even suppressing and trying to destroy the evidence; and finally (and most astonishingly) making oneself so stupid that one cannot see the incompatibility between one’s commitments and the facts (Geuss cites George Orwell on British upper-class’s unwillingness and/or inability to see themselves as heirs and beneficiaries of empire). (pp. 130-34)
Geuss adds a fourth kind of fear that he says “does not easily fit into the categories that have just been developed”, which is the fear, familiar to those who read anthropology, of breaking a taboo. He summarizes a fascinating example by Hegel from his essay ‘Who Thinks Abstractly?’ (I quote Hegel here): “A murder is led to the place of execution. For the common populace he is nothing but a murderer. Ladies perhaps remark that he is a strong, handsome, interesting man. The populace finds this remark terrible: What? A murderer handsome? How can one think so wickedly and call a murderer handsome; no doubt, you yourselves are something not much better!” Geuss comments that according to Hegel the crowd ‘thinks abstractly’, simplifying reality by refusing take account of any history or context. This is, Geuss says, “a kind of limitation on the moral imagination” that “makes us less able to deal reasonably with the world (and with ourselves) than we would otherwise be” (pp. 134-35). Surprisingly, Geuss does not explicitly say what kind of fear the fear of breaking a taboo is, but at the very least breaking a taboo is a profound violation of social custom, decency, and decorum, and one which leads to serious social sanctions (denial of privileges, punishment, expulsion from the group, and so forth).
Before turning to the fearful reactions to intellectual speech about the IDF’s attack on Gaza, Geuss surveys (in an unusually positive manner for him on Kant) some of Immanuel Kant’s late writings on the French Revolution. Kant suggests that, despite the Revolution’s bloodiness and its ultimate failure to realize its egalitarian aims, “the widespread enthusiasm for the Revolution is a sign that humanity can progress morally” (p. 139). The discussion culminates with reflection on the suspension of Jodi Dean, a professor at Hobart and William Smith College, on the alleged ground that her statement that the “images of October 7 of paragliders evading Israeli air defences were for many of us exhilarating” (Dean quoted on p. 136) resulted in a situation (according to the College’s president) that “there may now be students on our campus who may feel threatened in or out of the classroom” (quoted on p. 139). Geuss plainly likens this response to the populace’s in Hegel’s example of thinking abstractly in response to taboo-breaking, as it implies that “Any public statement by a person of authority which contains anything beyond an unqualified, vociferous denunciation of the people who organize and executed the events of 7 October 2023” can be construed as a threat that “disturbs the appearance of public consensus among all reasonable people that those who participated in these events are ‘terrorists’.” (p. 140) Beyond from this taboo-breaking fear, Geuss additionally recognizes that the students at Hobart and William Smith College might well reasonably feel the third kind of fear: in light of exposure to the public positions of respected and knowledgeable people (like Jodi Dean), they might well “lose faith in their own worldview and recognize the need to reconstruct their identity radically” (p. 142). Geuss ends the essay with a simple assertion: “While it is a reasonable political goal to avoid imposing on others gratuitous external threats, helping people to avoid internal threats to their identity or their belief-system by suppressing relevant truths is not” (p. 143).
Although it seems to me that most of the essays here offer elaborations of points, arguments, and analyses stated more fully in Geuss’s other writings, the essay on fear, along with the appreciation of Alasdair MacIntyre’s work, offer more than enough to justify reading the book, even for those unfortunates who have not already learned from Geuss’s thought and works.
Bibiliography:
Aristotle, Metaphysics
Raymond Geuss, Tracks in Chaos: Philosophical Orientation and Political Reflection (2026)
G. W. F. Hegel, ‘Who Thinks Abstractly?’ (c. 1808)
Alasdair MacIntyre, Review of Raymond Geuss’s Outside Ethics, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (2006)