On a Personal Note

Ngl, I put together today’s edition in a bit of a rush. I’m coming off a pretty exhausting trip to the Leipzig Book Fair—where I was hosting two panels on our book Die Radikale Mitte back-to-back. I still find it fascinating that it is always me who has to moderate and talk about his own ideas at the same time. I guess that’s the caveat of also doing facilitation from time to time…

(And yes, I know that some of you have already reached out regarding an English version of my chapter. All I can say is that we’re working on it)

BTW, I’ll drop a bigger announcement later this week, so take this as your reminder to finally (!!) follow me on insta. But one thing I can already share. The showdown you’ve all been waiting for is actually happening. Yours truly, on stage with the prime nemesis of this newsletter: Patrick Deneen. I laughed out loud when I saw the announcement because obviously, only one of us deserved the title “philosopher” lmao

My Time with Jürgen Habermas, Europe’s ‘Last Intellectual’

Alex Karp, co-founder and CEO of Palantir, wrote a short postscript on Habermas. While some claim that it has been a myth after all that somebody as evil as Karp did his PhD under him, this self-proclaimed mythbusting has become a myth itself. Because Karp certainly was indeed one of his students.

In any case, I’m linking to this because I’ve read quite a few obituaries from former students and colleagues of Habermas over the past week; yet, this one stood out. Mainly because it avoids the all-too-sentimental grandeur and idealization that still colors the German discourse. Especially with figures like Habermas, whose theories must be viewed critically, I much prefer the more genuine (or in the case of Derek Parfit quirky) obituaries.

Sure, Karp may not have had the most access to Habermas. Still, he extracts from those interactions surprisingly poignant insights about the Being, Gestalt, and habitus of ‘the German professor.’ Moreover, he captures this ‘transatlantic hesitation’ wonderfully when Germans and Americans interact. I very much feel that too.

And of course, there is a very obvious Straussian reading here.

One that, I suspect, is actually correct.

Read the whole thing. It’s actually quite well written.

When I arrived at Habermas’s office, there were at least two dozen students and aspiring students milling about and standing in the hallway, all of whom were waiting for an audience with the professor. Every so often, the wait was punctuated by someone emerging from his office, often in a state of not-so-thinly veiled distress. A few had tears in their eyes.

After an hour or so, the door opened and his all-powerful assistant beckoned me; she sat in a sort of antechamber through which one had to pass in order to enter his private office. The assistant had warned me to speak English; my German was insufficient at the time.

When I entered, he was surrounded by smoke and books. It was clear that the box of cigarillos on his desk, possibly neatly wrapped Montecristos, were routinely replenished.

Our first conversation that summer afternoon was substantive yet fairly brief. […] Habermas had little patience for what he routinely and unsparingly derided as “idiots” and “half-idiots” on either the right or the left; he was unforgivingly critical of both sides in a way that would almost feel unnatural today among what passes for public intellectuals. It would indeed be jarring for many among our current commentariat to be exposed to such an even-handed capacity and instinct for identifying inconsistent thought and a lack of intellectual rigor, no matter where it emerged on the political spectrum.

[…]

My impression of Habermas that would develop over the years, through dozens of meetings in the 1990s to discuss my research and evolving dissertation, was that he had a certain reverence, perhaps undisclosed to or at least shielded from subsets of his colleagues, for the American project — our quite radical experiment in this new republic building a nation in which belonging did not hinge on either blood or soil.

[…]

On August 10, 2000, I received a three-page typed letter from him, forwarded by Karola Brede via fax, critiquing various aspects of the draft in detail but also declining to continue on as my adviser. He disagreed with my approach to the literature. […] “You simply cannot compete with literary critics and theorists [who have recently weighed in on this subject],” he wrote.

His rejection, in the end, was unequivocal. I had spent several years in his colloquium at the Institute for Social Research and even longer refining my understanding of the language. His decision came as an utter shock and was wounding. The sting would linger for years.

And yet it was his very willingness to be so productively unsparing that reminds me of what we have lost as a culture.

How Long It Really Takes to Get Over an Ex

Okay, the official title of the paper is: The Long-Term Stability of Affective Bonds After Romantic Separation: Do Attachments Simply Fade Away?. But you will forgive me for going with the pop-science version this time haha

So it turns out the average person takes (God-forsaken) eight years to get over a relationship that only lasted five. I mean, I get it, unfortunately: but c’mon, that’s a bit much/pathetic x.x

BTW, the key predictor of whether people stay emotionally attached is pretty obvious, namely whether they keep in contact with their ex. So, yeah, don’t do that. That’s some straight-up life advice from yours truly. I don’t talk to any of my exes. And I sincerely hope they don’t read this newsletter either—I’m always quite confident that it didn’t take them eight years and they are all doing much better now :P

Abstract

What happens to attachment bonds when relationships end? One common assumption is that such bonds partly endure, such that former partners continue to fulfill attachment-related needs partially. Another perspective holds that former attachment bonds are relinquished such that there is eventually no residual tie. The present study (N = 320) adjudicates between these alternatives. Results indicate that, for the average person, attachment bonds are gradually (4.18 years as a mid-point) relinquished after relationship termination: People’s former partners simply become someone they used to know. Results also indicate that the persistence of these bonds is moderated by several factors, including attachment orientations and continued contact with exes. Thus, even if the typical person does eventually “get over” their former partner, for some people, remnants of those bonds continue and never fully fade away.

“On Liberty” Now Officially Has Two Authors

This is great news. On Liberty is by far Mill’s best work—and Harriet Taylor Mill might have a lot to do with that. Because The Enfranchisement of Women is excellent and is usually cited as the work in which she actually took the lead.

She remains underrated, even (or maybe especially) amongst liberals.

And BTW, this might be yet another reminder that it is high time to buy that print version of On Liberty. One of my TOP5 books of all time.

Many know that John Stuart Mill said that his wife, Harriet Taylor Mill, “was the inspirer, and in part the author, of all that is best in my writings […]. Like all that I have written for many years, it [On Liberty] belongs as much to her as to me.” In his Autobiography, he says

With regard to the thoughts [expressed in the book], it is difficult to identify any particular part or element as being more hers than all the rest. The whole mode of thinking of which the book was the expression, was emphatically hers. But I also was so thoroughly imbued with it that the same thoughts naturally occurred to us both.

Yet when Mill published the book in 1859, he did so under his name only, and every version published over the years, until this one, listed only him as the work’s official author.

[…]

So why the change now?

In a 2022 article in Utilitas (on which part of the introduction to the new On Liberty is based), Schmidt-Petri, Schefczyk, and Osburg lay out one reason: “stylometric analyses” provide some strong (though not on their own decisive) evidence to “say with some degree of confidence that JSM did not write On Liberty all by himself and that HTM played a part in putting parts of the text into words.” And what are stylometric analyses? “Stylometry extracts the writing style of a person from his or her texts and then compares this ‘stylome’ to the stylome of texts the author of which is yet to be identified.”

Dictionary of Foreign Policy

Throughout this process of geopolitical realignment, there is obviously a lot of talk about multipolarity and the emergence of new middle powers (e.g., Saudi Arabia, India, and so on). Even in the simulations I play with the most diverse audiences, India almost always comes out as one of the winners. The hype is real. I mean, it’s probably just a matter of time until The Economist puts India on the cover again, you get the idea.

In these cases, it helps to actually look at how these countries see themselves.

So I stumbled across this scathing (and in that sense quintessentially Indian) piece online. Maybe Modi & Co. aren’t playing some 4D chess the way Western analysts like to project onto the Indian elephant (is that even the right animal, Indian friends?).

In a truly dialectical fashion, the truth is probably somewhere in between.

India’s foreign policy can be confusing if your IQ is below 299. So, for the benefit of newcomers suddenly forced to take an interest in it because of the LPG cylinder situation, I’ve put together a lexicon of key terms.

[…]

Multi-alignment: The art of buying your groceries (and weapons) from different countries at the same time. So we will buy air defence from Russia, soybean oil from America, and everything else from China. The biggest benefit of multi-alignment is that you are everyone’s friend but no one is your friend. For example, Iran was India’s good friend, but due to India’s multi-alignment, India became Israel’s best friend, which is Iran’s worst enemy. As a result, we must stand in line for LPG.

[…]

Managing optics: Also known as the ‘philosopher’s stone’ of India’s foreign policy, it refers to the strategic use of hugs, medals, photo-ops, audio-less videos and ‘sapna-sapna’ to transmute every diplomatic disaster into a global validation of India’s standing as an emerging superpower and undisputed leader of the Global South.

[…]

Global South: Opposite of the Global North.
Global North: People we take orders from.

[…]

Pragmatic realism: Keeping Donald Trump happy.

[…]

Rules-based international order: LOL

Peace,
SG