CRASSH

This conference took its origin from the observation that ‘criticism’ plays an important role in a number of apparently very different areas of human endeavour: We criticise, among other things, works of art, political programmes, social institutions, the attitudes and actions of individual human agents. The speakers at the conference addressed two related complexes of issues.  First, is there a single coherent notion of ‘criticism’ at work in all these different areas, and, if so, what is that notion?  If there is no single notion, do the various senses of ‘criticism’ hang together in some other interesting way, that is, are they connected, although not as mere instances of a single general kind of human activity?  Second, people often try to deflect criticism by claiming that it is ‘not constructive’.  Under what circumstances, if any, is this kind of rebuttal legitimate, warranted, reasonable, or justified?  What is ‘constructive criticism’ and what reasons, if any, might one have under what circumstances to prefer it to other kinds of criticism?  Very roughly speaking, most, although not all, the speakers approached these topics either from a philosophical perspective very much influenced by the late Wittgenstein or from one belonging to the tradition of the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School. One important novel point which did emerge from the discussion was put with great clarity by one of the members of the audience who was not himself giving a paper. Once he had made this point, however, it was taken up with great vigor by the rest of the speakers and discutants.  This was the need to see that there are two different functional contexts within which activities of criticism are located. On the one hand, there is a form of ‘criticism’ which is directed at the understanding and appreciation of some phenomenon.  We might think here in the first instance of ‘criticism’ of works of art, but in principle one can subject almost any human action or even a practice or institution to this kind of engaged scrutiny. This form of criticism usually operates by developing an ever richer and subtler vocabulary for describing nuances of meaning.  On the other hand, there is a kind of criticism which is organised around the attempt to come to a definitive, often action-orienting, judgment about something: I criticise your action in order to condemn it and try to get it stopped.  This form of criticism tends to try to reduce semantic nuance in the interests of coming to a final binary decision (‘accept/permit’ or ‘reject/forbid’).  The demand for ‘constructive’ criticism will take a very different form depending on which of these two modes is thought to be paramount. There were very extended discussions of the ways in which actual practices of criticism did or did not fit into the schema provided by one or the other of these two ideal types.  No agreement could be reached on the issue of ‘constructive’ criticism with some participants in the conference continuing to maintain to the end the need for some minimal element of constructiveness in any viable criticism, while others rejected on principle the demand that criticism be constructive on the grounds that it should be assumed prima facie to represent an attempt by potentially responsible agents to render themselves and their action immune by inappropriately assigning the onus probandi to critics, rather than in the first instance accepting it themselves.

Several participants in the conference expressed their satisfaction at the way in which the discussions really did begin to integrate the various papers, and at the way in which themes that originally arose in the discussion began to recur and take on an autonomous life of their own.  Partly this was perhaps the result of the relatively small size of the audience (who could attend only if specifically invited), partly it reflected the great care taken to invite speakers and participants who had a track record of listening (and not just speaking), and partly it derived from the origin of the conference in an established discussion group. This conference arose out of the continuing discussions of the ‘Cambridger Philosophisches Forschungskolloquium’, which consists of six philosophers who have been meeting regularly for the past two years to discuss papers prepared by one or another of the members of the group. The six philosophers in this group had developed over the years a familiarity with one another and a culture of respectful, attentive, engaged discussion (even in the face of extreme disagreement on some basic issues) which set the tone for the sessions. Two of the members of this group, Richard Raatzsch and Raymond Geuss, have now undertaken to try to put together a volume of papers from this CRASSH conference that would be suitable for publication.  In the context of that enterprise they have had several planning meetings, and have organised individual post-Conference discussions with participants to encourage them to rewrite their contributions with an eye to possible publication. It is now planned to have a series of meetings of the ‘Forschungskolloquium’ during the next six months or so at which we will systematically work through (in discussion) the papers presented at the Conference in the interests of improving them and preparing them for publication.  August 2009 is now set as the target date for submission by the participants in the conference of the revised versions of their texts. Raymond Geuss will be on academic leave during MT 2009, and so hopes to be able to devote some time in September to final revision of the typescripts prior to submitting them to a publisher for consideration.