Ben, thanks for your comments.
With regard to the use of such terms as 'mystery, magical, and luck' when
referring to the rise of Hitler, I consider them all similar in that they
suggest some non-factual or illogical causality to his rise. My point is that
such explanations are, of course, not explanations and that Hitler's rise to
power - as well as that of any demagogue - is explicable. And - it can happen
again and elsewhere.
In Canada, and I imagine in other countries, one does not register to vote, and
need not register for nor belong to any political party. Voting 'registration'
is primarily but not solely via taxation information.
As for the rise of Hitler, as a nationalist fanatic, racist and demagogue, (see
his autobiography written at a young age!) ; i.e., his conversion as a fascist,
one can see in his early education and life (Wm. Shirer The Rise and Fall of
the Third Reich) his personal movement into this ideology. I think the real
focus is on the rise of fascism; it was by no means foreign to the
German/Austrian sentiments of the time. (eg, 1913 in Vienna). ; See W. Shirer
and see also R. Eatwell: Fascism, a History; and R. Evans, The Coming of the
Third Reich; and R. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism. See also a discussion by
Jean B. Elshtain, 'Sovereignty: God, State and Self. ). I'd consider that F.
Hayek's 'The Road to Serfdom', another examination of how and why people move
into a utopian ideology.
How could a majority of a population move into fascism, the utopian ideology of
a perfect volk...with its primordial, pure Will which, as pure to the volk,
must triumph. We see fascism in the preachings of various political leaders of
the current era both here and in other countries. And people listen to and
accept it! The question then becomes - what is the critical threshold when
fascism becomes dominant and drowns out/prevents other discourse and the voice
of established law and ongoing critical reason? We see, in Germany, its rise
due to many 'leaders' - not just Hitler.
And then, we must acknowledge that fascism is not unique to one era and one
man, but, we are all susceptible to a 'Fixation of Belief' by irrational means.
Edwina
----- Original Message -----
From: Ben Novak
To: Edwina Taborsky
Cc: PEIRCE-L
Sent: Friday, July 10, 2015 8:56 AM
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Recently published: Hitler and Abductive Logic
Dear Edwina:
You have made a number of interesting points. Most of them have been
addressed rather well by Ben Udell. But let me add a few points that I think
will be helpful to many others on the list.
First, it is important that one read the book or dissertation, rather than
for summarizing its salient points, for one main reason. The book involves the
application of Peirce's theoretical structure of abduction to facts. Therefore,
the book is not the presentation of a theory, whose salient points can be
summarized and presented in bite-size form for others to critique in
theoretical terms and argue over principles, definitions, and soundness of
syllogisms. Rather, in this case, the "devil is in the details."
In this respect, I think that the work should be of particular interest to
the members of Peirce-L precisely because it involves the messy world of facts,
in other words, it is an experiment of seeing whether certain theories can
actually explain certain facts. It is like the situation when a scientist
claims to have established something by experimental methods; one must
meticulously go over each step of the experiments to see whether the result
holds.
In this respect, Eco and Sebeok's The Sign of Three is very instructive.They
wrote that book because their studies of Peirce had introduced them to several
other scholars who noted the presence of Peirce's adductive logic in the
stories of Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle. They therefore set out to
show how this form of logic pervades the work of these two giants of the
detective story genre. In that case, in order to see if their premise holds,
one must not only read Eco and Sebeok's book, but must also be familiar with
the works of Poe and Doyle. A lot of work.
Second, I don't think that I am making more of a mystery of Hitler than is
warranted. Almost every major historian has shouted out that the facts of
Hitler so far constitute a major mystery. That was the thesis of Ron
Rosenbaum' book, Explaining Hitler, which he boldly states: "Hitler has escaped
explanation."
I set out to deal with one part of the Hitler mystery, specifically, what
there was about him that enabled him to succeed. It seemed that simply to say
he was lucky is not an explanation. First because he was the most unlikely of
people to have any success in politics. He was a high school dropout, a denizen
of the poor houses of Vienna, had shown no signs of leadership through four
years of war in which any sign of leadership was sought to replace the high
mortality of line officers. More importantly, however, one must keep in mind
that he was not a citizen, and could neither vote nor hold office.
Finally, he built up his political movement from scratch not once, but
twice.He took the tiny DAP from a stammtisch organization and built it into the
largest force in Bavaria in four years. Then came the Putsch, and he was
imprisoned, the party declared illegal and all its assets seized, and he was
convicted of treason. No one believed that he could be any further trouble. But
he said he could be back on top in a few years, and within five years after he
was released, he was the leader of the second largest party in Germany. To say
it was luck alone is to believe that lightning strikes twice in the same
place....
This brings up another fact that is disconcerting. Many people believe that
Hitler succeeded because of his oratory. But he built up his party the second
time under a complete ban on public speaking, effectively from November 1923
till spring of 1927 in Bavaria, and until 1928 throughout the rest of
Germany,during which he gave only one public speech in February 1925, which is
the speech that got him banned again from public speaking. Yet his party grew
by leaps and bounds during this period from a party of one, to 49,000
dues-paying members in 1927, and to 78,000 members and almost 3 percent of the
vote in 1928. This calls out for explanation.
(Understand that in Germany at this time, one did not register for a party as
we do in the US when one registers to vote. Every German was automatically
registered, but one had to actually go to Party headquarters to join, and that
meant paying dues and being required to perform organizing services. So,
building an army of 49,000 dues-paying, hard working election organizers in two
years was no small thing. My point it that this was done when Hitler was
forbidden to give public speeches, so it cannot be because of his oratory.)
Well, my point is that this process has not been explained. My book offers to
provide at least one part of an explanation.
Again, I agree with you that this is different from the usual discussion on
Pierce-L where abstract issues can be discussed. My original announcement was
simply that there was now a book trying to apply Peirce's theory of abduction
to an historical event, with the idea that people on the list might be
interested to know that. Of course, I hoped that someone would actually read
it and critique it. But if you choose not to read it, that is a fair choice.
Thanks for responding,
Ben
Ben Novak
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"All art is mortal, not merely the individual artifacts, but the arts
themselves. One day the last portrait of Rembrandt and the last bar of Mozart
will have ceased to be — though possibly a colored canvas and a sheet of notes
may remain — because the last eye and the last ear accessible to their message
will have gone." Oswald Spengler
On Thu, Jul 9, 2015 at 11:36 PM, Benjamin Udell <bud...@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
Tom, yes, this is the kind of thing where I speak of rephrasing. Fresh from
a first reading of 3/4 of the thesis, my impression was that Ben N. was
attributing more originality to Hitler than seems established. Still I think
Ben N. is on to something. Mainstream German politicians were offering
practical programs, while Hitler was offering a Big Explanation of Everything
and avoiding proposing solutions to particular problems.
Best, Ben U.
On 7/9/2015 11:15 PM, Ozzie wrote:
Ben ~
Thanks for your helpful summary ("Ben N. is saying that Hitler was the
first leader to invite the public to follow a pattern of abductive inference
like in a detective story ...")
Both for sport and to attain positions of leadership, Greek orators at
the time of the Peloponnesian Wars invited the general public to form, accept
and act on abducted hypotheses. The logical tales spun by Hitler were based
upon resentment, which places him among the demagogues.
Regards -
Tom Wyrick
On Jul 9, 2015, at 8:37 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:
Edwina, Ben N., list,
I've been reading the online version of Ben N.'s thesis. I found that I
could not save it to my computer without first opening it online, and in order
to save it computer, one has to move one's mouse over some buttons in the upper
right-hand corner of the view pane till a little tool tip says "Download". I'm
convinced that visual design of computer programs these days is largely done by
sadists.
Anyway, I've been reading it, it's two PDFs, and I'm half-way through
the second one. It really is very readable, and that involvement of Hitler does
add a certain electric current to the discussion of abductive inference. It's
not a labor to read, and it's quite interesting. There are a number of
technical errors (as Ben N. warns) evident to a Peirce scholar, but these can
be corrected without damaging the thesis.
In response to Edwina, I'd say that Ben N. does not present Hitler's
rise as having a magical or mystical element, rather a mysterious element that
requires explanation. He makes a case that many scholars think that there are
some very difficult questions as to who Hitler was and how did he get so far.
I'm no historian and hadn't read a book on Hitler since I was a teenager. So
far, I'd say that the case is not made clear enough to the general reader that
Hitler didn't just get lucky in the sense that some party had to come out on
top or, in the classic formulation, "somebody has to be the king of France."
Ben N. outlines some argument that luck wasn't such a big part of it, but it's
not clear to me yet. On the other hand, I don't think that Ben N. is relying on
a "Great Men" theory of history - he says that Hitler might have made very
little difference in other times and circumstances.
Insofar as everybody uses abductive inference, Ben N. perhaps doesn't
bring out clearly enough the difference between Hitler's use of it and others'
use of it, instead he talks about how Hitler was the first leader to use it. I
think I know what Ben N. is getting at, but I'd phrase it more carefully. Ben
N. is saying that Hitler was the first leader to invite the public to follow a
pattern of abductive inference like in a detective story (Who Murdered
Germany?), and that Hitler relied for credibility on the justificatory
plausibility and complex cohesion of an untested hypothesis that would take a
long time to verify. Well, there's more to it, which it would be foolish of me
to try to summarize. I'd ask, is Ben N. so sure that Hitler was the first such
leader? Many other regimes have 'explanations' that they give to their people,
sometimes involving the idea of hidden forces behind events.
Anyway, I'm enjoying reading it. One can certainly say that Ben Novak
has made a serious effort, deserving of more attention than what some rather
pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey stuff has received occasionally on peirce-l.
Best, Ben
On 7/9/2015 7:12 PM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:
Ben, I'm going to disagree with your view that in order to discuss
the basic issue of your book, namely, your attempt to correlate the rise of
Hitler with abductive logic - that it requires that we either buy your book or
read it.
I think that on a Peirce-list, the members ought to have a reasonable
reading knowledge of Peirce's works, but I don't think that a research topic
dealt with by a member requires that members of this list read that member's
work. My view is that it is incumbent on YOU, to provide members with a
reasonably thorough precis of the salient points of your argument.
With regard to the points you have so far provided, my concern is
that you seem to be trying to imbue Hitler's rise to power with some 'magical'
or mystical element.
For example, you claim that when his party took power, German
politics consisted of 28 parties - why was Hitler's dominant? In Canada, at the
federal level, there are 26 political parties - and there is nothing
particularly magical or surprising that only three are dominant. There are
about 30 minor political parties in the US. Only two-three are dominant.
Second, my concern is your method of explaining this history. You
seem to be using what is known as the 'Great Man Theory' of historical
analysis, which examines history by focusing on the charisma or whatever of
some singular causal individual. I consider this a weak analytic frame; I
prefer the 'long duree' framework of the 'Annales' school (eg, Braudel), which
considers infrastructural causality such as the population size, economic mode,
technological capacity, trade relations etc...rather than individuals.
As for fascism, it is an ideology of the mind, i.e., it is not rooted
in pragmatic reality but in a notion of utopian purity of the past, such that
'if only we returned to that pure mode', then, all would be well. It is now
rampant in the Al Qaeda (from the 19th c!) and ISIS of the MENA. There are, I
maintain, population and economic reasons for the refusal of these populations
and governments to deal with the pragmatic problems of the area and the
resultant retreat into fascism.
Same with Germany of the 1930s. And, once an infrastructure is set
up, e,g, National Socialism's Third Reich, it is extremely difficult to move
out of the rhetoric and back down to hard reality. That requires an external
intervention. Certainly, internally, some tried to stop Hitler -
As for Hitler being logical - what??? I think some examples would be
helpful. His behaviour around Stalingrad was hardly logical.
Is the popularity of various cult figures, of wealthy preachers, of
due to their being logical? Or for some other reason(s)?
What is abductive about Hitler's 'reasoning'?
Again, my view - and I say it is my view - is that the onus for
explanation of a topic is not to have readers buy your book or read it online,
but for you to explain key points to us - and then, explain why you align it
with Peircean theory.
Edwina
----- Original Message -----
From: Ben Novak
To: Stephen Jarosek
Cc: Stephen C. Rose ; Peirce List
Sent: Thursday, July 09, 2015 5:12 PM
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Recently published: Hitler and Abductive Logic
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