1. Please
refer
to
the
published
version
in
3:AM
Magazine:
http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/reality-­‐and-­‐its-­‐dreams/
Raymond
Geuss,
Reality
and
Its
Dreams
Harvard
University
Press,
Cambridge,
Massachusetts
and
London,
England,
2016.
312
pp.,
£
25.00
hb.
ISBN
9780674504950
Reviewed
by
John
Rapko
Raymond
Geuss’s
latest
collection
of
essays,
Reality
and
Its
Dreams,
discusses
a
range
of
topics
unusually
wide
even
for
Geuss.
Earlier
books
of
his
juxtaposed
discussions
of
ancient
Greek
and
Roman
philosophy
and
poetry
with
sympathetic
reconstructive
accounts
of
German
philosophers,
especially
Marx,
Nietzsche,
and
Adorno,
and
largely
critical
accounts
of
Kant,
John
Rawls,
and
Robert
Nozick.
The
new
book
contains
discussion
of
all
of
these,
but
expands
an
interest
exhibited
in
his
two
prior
collections
in
addressing
contemporary
political
and
artistic
phenomena,
including
some
contemporary
paintings,
a
recent
play
about
a
Holocaust
survivor,
and
the
political
thought
of
the
British
comedian
Russell
Brand.
Geuss
proposes
that
what
unites
these
essays
is
the
concern
to
attack
‘normativism’,
a
philosophical
orientation
that
aims
to
present
an
abstract
and
unified
set
of
criteria
for
evaluating
and
judging
the
legitimacy
of
social
and
political
phenomena
and
practices.
One
of
the
motifs
of
Geuss’s
political
thought
is
that
political
utterances
are
never
merely
statements
of
doctrine,
but
also
actions.
Where
normativism
constructs
political
concepts
and
judgments
prior
to
or
in
abstraction
from
their
concrete
contexts,
Geuss
considers
and
criticizes
normativism
in
light
of
the
actions
it
motivates
and
the
guidance
for
practices
it
provides.
Another
motif
is
that
orientations
and
doctrines
are
variously
and
to
various
degrees
embodied
in
acts,
practices,
and
institutions.
Geuss’s
criticism
of
normativisim
is
accordingly
not
only
a
critical
account
and
rejection
of
certain
philosophical
doctrines,
but
also
a
defense
against
certain
kinds
of
political
speech
that
are
ignored
or
slighted
by
normativist
thinkers,

2. and
a
critique
of
political
institutions
and
practices
to
the
degree
that
they
embody
4normativist
doctrines.
The
central
characteristic
of
normativism
as
a
philosophical
orientation
is
the
assumption
that
there
is
a
‘realm’
consisting
of
principles,
claims,
concepts
et
alia,
that
is
in
conception
distinct
and
underived
from
how
the
world
or,
perhaps
better,
empirical
reality
is.
Normativist
philosophers
disagree
on
the
contents
of
this
realm
and
the
relation
it
bears
to
empirical
reality,
but
they
are
united
in
thinking
that
appeals
to
inquiries
or
results
in
anthropology,
sociology,
psychology,
or
history
play
no
role
in
determining
the
contents
of
this
realm.
Rather,
one
arrives
at
the
contents
through
on
or
another
of
both
of
two
methods:
eliciting
‘intuitions’
and
constructing
thought
experiments.
Say
I’m
a
capable
swimmer,
and
I
see
two
people,
a
child
and
an
adult,
floundering
in
the
ocean.
Who
should
I
attempt
to
save
first,
and
why?
Although
in
the
hands
of
any
particular
philosopher
the
results
of
applying
these
methods
may
be
extremely
intricate,
it
is
further
assumed
by
normativist
philosophers
that
the
resulting
structure
must
be
coherent;
but
what
the
criteria
of
coherence
are
and
what
counts
as
coherent
are
themselves
matters
of
dispute
among
normativists.
Geuss
claims
that
in
political
philosophy
there
has
been
a
kind
of
‘normative
turn’,
analogous
to
the
‘linguistic
turn’
diagnosed
by
the
philosopher
Richard
Rorty
in
the
1970’s.
In
the
‘linguistic
turn’
philosophers
passed
from
treating
philosophical
activity
as
the
analysis
of
concepts
to
one
basically
engaged
in
the
analysis
of
bits
of
language.
In
the
‘normative
turn’
philosophy
passes
from
historically
informed
and
socially
diagnostic
works
such
as
Simone
de
Beauvoir’s
The
Second
Sex,
Herbert
Marcuse’s
One-­Dimensional
Man,
and
Guy
Debord’s
Society
of
the
Spectacle
to
works
aiming
to
analyze
concepts
such
as
‘justice’
or
‘rights’,
but
without
reference
to
their
historical
development
or
social
embodiment
in
practices
and
institutions.
The
paradigmatic
works
of
the
incipient
normative
political
philosophy
of
the
1970’s
are
John
Rawls’s
A
Theory
of
Justice
(1971)
and
Robert
Nozick’s
Anarchy,
State,
and
Utopia
(1974).
In
that
same
decade
one
sees
the
beginnings
of
our
period
of
political
reaction
that
soon
effloresced
under
Margaret
Thatcher
in
the
United
Kingdom
and
Ronald
Reagan
in
the
United
States.
Geuss
sees
an
elective
affinity
between

3. normativism
in
political
philosophy
and
political
reaction
in
the
former’s
attempt
to
draw
attention
away
from
historically
concrete
and
complex
instances
of
oppression,
exploitation,
alienation,
and
above
all
inequality.
Political
reaction
and
normativist
political
philosophy
likewise
treat
politics
as
a
kind
of
applied
morality,
wherein
judgments
are
made
and
actions
motivated
in
terms
of
simple
dichotomies.
Geuss’s
favored
example
is
Tony
Blair’s
attempt
to
justify
the
invasion
of
Iraq
with
the
simple
statement:
‘Saddam
Hussein
is
evil’.
Insofar
as
normativist
political
philosophy
deigns
to
examine
the
world,
it
contents
itself
with
simple
judgments
of
approval
and
disapproval,
issued
without
reflection
upon
historical
and
contextual
considerations.
Geuss
likens
the
claim
to
authority
of
such
judgments
to
that
claimed
by
main
lines
of
Christian
preaching:
the
categorical
framework
is
never
called
into
question,
and
the
very
articulation
and
uttering
of
the
judgment
would
allegedly
convince
any
uncorrupted
person
of
its
rightness.
Geuss
here
and
in
previous
books
presents
an
array
of
arguments
against
the
basic
conceptual
moves
of
normativist
philosophy.
His
core
objections
are
that
its
elaborate
conceptual
structures
are
invariably
based
upon
simplistic
and
naïve
conceptions
of
actual
human
life;
and
further
that
because
of
the
abstractness
of
the
constructions
and
their
great
distance
from
actual
political
problems
and
historically
specific
cultural
diagnoses
results,
in
practice
they
cannot
but
help
function
as
compensatory
phantasies
for
academics,
who
feel
themselves
to
be
clever
in
pondering
and
analyzing
the
intricacies
of
the
structures
and
somehow
in
contact
with
realities
more
profound
than
those
of
everyday
instances
of
power,
oppression,
and
inequality.
As
such,
normativism
never
issues
in
imaginative
projects
aiming
at
fundamental
reforms
or
revolutionary
proposals.
Instead,
normativist
political
philosophy,
when
not
simply
ratifying
and
providing
an
ideological
justification
for
current
conditions,
can
at
most
recommend
small
palliative
measures.
For
there
to
be
some
trickling
down
of
wealth
under
our
ever-­‐
intensifying
global
conditions
of
massive
inequality,
normativists
fret
over
just
how
many
centimeters
the
spigot
should
be
turned.
In
his
thoroughgoing
rejection
of
normativism,
Geuss
is
close
to
the
thought
of
John
Dewey,
particularly
in
how
both
see
the
appeal
of
dualisms,
especially
the

4. distinction
between
the
empirical
and
the
ideal,
as
stemming
from
the
failure
of
imagination
and
a
panicked
reaction
the
supposed
threat
of
relativism.
Geuss
diagnoses
the
appeal
of
normativism
as
stemming
from
the
acceptance
of
a
single
and
spectacularly
bad
argument
dubbed
‘The
Platonist
Blackmail’:
‘if
you
do
not
have
a
guide
to
action
that
is
absolute
[sic]
certain
and
absolute
[sic]
universal,
you
have
nothing
at
all.”
(60)
Against
this
Geuss
asserts,
first,
that
it
is
simply
false
to
say
that
human
beings
require
access
and
adherence
to
some
ultimate
framework
for
routinely
successful
orientation
and
guidance
in
everyday
actions.
His
preferred
example
is
thirst:
if
I’m
thirsty
and
am
told
that
there’s
a
water
fountain
over
there
to
the
left,
I
need
no
systematic
theory
for
action;
when
I
head
off
in
that
direction,
I
am
not
acting
randomly.
Secondly,
and
rapidly
generalizing,
Geuss
further
asserts
that
we
need
no
“single
systematic
theory
that
provides
us,
either
individually
or
collectively,
with
a
certain
way
of
proceeding
in
all
situations.”
Instead
we
should
treat
the
need
for
orientation
as
piecemeal
and
context-­‐specific,
and
accordingly
something
that
may
well
be
satisfied
through
pragmatically
organized
activities
of
“observation,
theorization,
and
rational
argumentation.”
(61)
Another
way
of
putting
this
point
would
be
to
say
that
there
are
no
context-­‐free
needs
for
human
beings
aside
from
whatever
is
required
for
the
sustainability
of
individual
lives
and
collective
life;
a
potentially
fruitful
response
to
an
emergent,
contingent,
and
local
need
for
orientation
is
rightly
understood
as
an
imaginative
response,
one
that
arises
precisely
because
the
existing
state
of
affairs
is
unsatisfactory
and
does
not
obviously
offer
the
resources
for
finding
one’s
way
out.
Normativism
understood
as
an
imaginative
construct
is
a
notably
fruitless
and
impoverishing
way
of
answering
this
need.
The
second
focus
of
the
book
is
an
attack
on
neoliberalism
in
the
forms
of
excavating
and
scrutinizing
into
most
basic
conceptions
and
assumptions.
As
the
dominant
ideology
of
capitalism
in
its
latest
phase,
one
that
emerges
in
the
1970’s
and
works
for
justifying
the
current
period
of
political
reaction
marked
by
the
ascendency
of
Margaret
Thatcher
and
Ronald
Reagan.
As
an
ideology
governing
political
and
economic
activity
in
the
past
forty
years,
neoliberalism
is
marked
by
an
overriding
concern
with
individual
liberty
secured
by
property
rights,
a
rejection
of

5. collective
control
and
public
ownership
of
the
means
and
conditions
of
social
life,
and
the
attempt
to
treat
all
spheres
of
human
life
as
analogous
to,
or
indeed
as
constituted
by,
market
relations.
Neoliberalism
is
“constituted
by
two
theses”:
(a)
“the
good
life
must
be
the
life
of
the
human
individual,
and
its
goodness
is
constituted
by
a
triad
of
three
components:
welfare,
as
measured
by
the
level
of
access
to
goods
and
services,
the
satisfaction
of
desire,
and
freedom”;
(b)
the
theory
of
the
free
market,
wherein
independent
individuals
exchange
goods
and
services
without
thereby
drawing
from
or
developing
further
social
relations
among
themselves.
(154)
A
typical
neoliberal
position
derives
from,
exaggerates,
and
dramatizes
an
inflated
terminology
of
the
anti-­‐paternalist
strain
of
classical
liberalism,
a
strain
that
starts
with
the
insistence
that
in
every
case
an
individual
is
or
should
be
the
final
arbiter
of
what
is
good
for
herself.
The
neoliberal
demands
that
everyone’s
desires
and
preferences
be
taken
at
face
value
and
be
given
equal
weight
in
public
deliberation
and
political
activity.
Additionally,
the
neoliberal
position
treats
the
free
market
as
the
ideal
social
mechanism
for
making
the
good
life
available,
both
for
individuals
qua
individuals,
and
for
individuals
treated
as
parts
of
aggregates.
Geuss
raises
a
range
of
considerations
against
both
these
in
aiming
to
undermine
their
seeming
attractiveness
and/or
inevitability.
With
regard
to
the
model
of
a
free
and
self-­‐regulating
market,
Geuss
concedes
a
degree
of
plausibility
to
neoliberalism
during
its
triumphant
first
phase
from
the
late
1970’s
through
2008.
However,
the
aftermath
of
the
economic
downturn
shows
quite
plainly
that
existing
markets
and
their
mechanisms
are
not
in
any
sense
self-­‐regulating.
The
chapter
‘Economies:
Good,
Bad,
and
Indifferent’
presents
Geuss’s
most
sustained
criticism
of
the
neoliberal
model
of
a
free
market.
He
attacks
the
psychological
and
anthropological
preconceptions
of
the
free
market
model.
In
that
model
buyers
and
sellers
are
first
characterized
by
the
possession
of
a
set
of
desires
and
preferences
considered
in
abstraction
from
how
they
were
acquired,
from
the
advisability
of
satisfying
them,
or
from
the
possibilities
of
transforming
them.
There
is
no
significant
conceptual
distinction
between
desires
and
preferences;
both
are
typically
latent
characteristics
of
consumers
that
are
activated
under
contingent
market

6. circumstances
regarding
the
availability
of
particular
goods
the
promise
of
which
would
prima
facie
satisfy
some
pre-­‐existent
desire.
So
prior
to
the
marketing
of
a
certain
kind
of
car,
one
has
no
overt
desire
for
this
car.
But
once
marketed,
the
car
activates
consumers’
desire
for
it,
perhaps
so
intensely
that
they
think
of
themselves
as
‘needing’
the
car.
Since
the
free
market
model
is
abstracted
from
history,
in
particular
from
the
sorts
of
changes
in
social
possibilities
of
human
development
that
Marx
viewed
as
partially
inducing
the
emergence
of
new
needs,
its
conception
of
human
nature
is
static,
and
it
can
only
conceptualize
emergent
desires
as
the
activation
of
some
prior
disposition.
The
individual’s
set
of
desires
as
such
is
unchanging.
Against
this
narrow
conception
Geuss
brings
three
points:
First,
the
presupposed
conception
of
the
economy
fails
to
include
considerations
of
sustainability.
Second,
the
kinds
of
consideration
addressed
by
a
conception
of
the
economy
that
is
suitably
capacious
to
include
sustainability
cannot
be
restricted
to
(pre-­‐existent)
desires
and
preferences,
but
must
also
include
needs
and
interests.
Needs,
desires,
and
interests
are
irreducible
to
each
other,
and
are
all
subject
to
historical
variation
and
development.
Third,
because
of
its
limitation
to
considerations
motivating
liberal
anti-­‐paternalism,
the
free
market
model
blocks
the
possibility
of
including
considerations
wherein
existing
desires
and
preferences
might
be
subjected
to
criticism,
or
might
become
open
to
learning
and
transformation.
The
free
market
model
is
thus
an
instance
of
‘positivism’
in
Adorno’s
sense,
a
piece
of
social
ideology
that
blocks
criticism
and
discourages
acts
of
collective
deliberation
and
imagination
in
the
service
of
transforming
societies.
A
number
of
previous
reviews
of
Geuss’s
works
have
disapprovingly
noted
a
tone
of
‘bleakness’
there,
and
complained
that
the
battery
of
criticisms
Geuss
brings
against
normativist
philosophers
like
Kant
and
Rawls
or
liberals
like
J.S.Mill
and
Isaiah
Berlin
are
unconstructive,
in
that
Geuss
offers
no
alternative
to
the
views
criticized.
Geuss’s
chief
implicit
response
in
previous
books
and
elaborated
here
is
to
defend
and
elaborate
another
claim
of
Adorno’s,
namely,
that
one
major
form
of
criticism
is
‘internal’.
Such
criticism
is
a
context-­‐specific
activity
prominently
involving
juxtaposing
descriptions
of
practices
with
the
aims
whose
realization

7. might
plausibly
be
thought
to
guide
such
practices.
The
addressee
of
the
criticism
is
left
to
note
the
lack
of
fit
between
the
two.
Internal
criticism,
for
Geuss
as
for
Adorno,
is
not
typically
‘productive’
in
offering
a
solution
for
the
problems
criticized.
But
here
he
also
offers
a
second
implicit
response
to
the
charge
of
bleakness
in
developing
a
philosophical
account
of
‘utopian
thinking’,
an
imaginative
activity
that
addresses
discontents
and
persistent,
unsatisfied
desires
in
the
present.
The
exploration
of
utopian
thinking
in
philosophy
and
the
arts
is
the
third
focus
of
the
book.
Geuss
forcefully
presents
the
surprising
claim
that
Utopianism
is
an
aspect
of
some
of
the
range
of
theoretical
and
practical
positions
grasped
under
the
umbrella
term
‘Realism’.
As
a
theoretical
position,
Realism
is
initially
negatively
characterized
by
its
rejection
of
‘moralism’,
which
Geuss
construes
narrowly
as
views
that
treat
morality
as
an
absolute
and
unchanging
framework
for
evaluation.
Morality
consists
in
principles
and
rules
for
judgment
of
the
goodness
and
badness
or
evil
of
actions.
Moralism
further
insists
that
moral
judgments
are
in
a
sense
self-­‐realizing,
in
that
the
sheer
recognition
and
understanding
of
the
judgment
results
in
the
appropriate
attitude
of
approval
or
disapproval
in
the
mind
of
an
uncorrupted
receiver
of
the
judgment.
The
range
of
Realisms
that
reject
moralism
are
not
as
such
opposed
to
utopian
thinking,
and
Geuss
suggests
(43)
that
some
incorporate
a
‘realistic’
(in
the
colloquial
sense)
recognition
that
in
a
society
the
distinction
between
what
is
socially
and
politically
possible
and
what
is
impossible
is
itself
“to
some
extent
a
social
construct”.
The
Utopianism
that
ensues
is
not
the
classical
sort
exemplified
by
Plato
and
Thomas
More,
one
which
proposes
a
‘perfect’
and
unchanging
society
as
a
counter-­‐image
to
our
corrupt
society,
and
without
specifying
mechanisms
for
passing
from
our
current
state
to
the
perfected
state;
rather,
the
Utopian
that
attends
a
range
of
Realisms
involves
focusing
upon
the
existing
desires
within
a
present
society,
and
offering
proposals
for
changing
society
that
if
enacted
would
more
fully
satisfy
the
desires
than
is
possible
under
current
arrangements.
Some
examples
cited
by
Geuss
are
Russell
Brand’s
suggestions
that
private
debt
be
cancelled,
co-­‐ops
created,
and
the
life
span
of
corporations
be
limited
(78);
Geuss
correlatively
notes
that
the
mainstream
academic
normativist
philosophies
of
John

8. Rawls
and
Robert
Nozick,
as
well
as
the
exemplarily
neoliberal
thought
of
Margaret
Thatcher,
can
offer
little
or
nothing
responsive
to
Utopian
desires.
In
his
previous
book
Geuss
had
suggested
three
means
of
escape
from
his
own
institutional
setting,
something
motivated
by
his
sense
of
the
institutional
world
of
teaching
philosophy
at
a
university
as
“a
penitential
domain
of
reason-­‐mongering”
(Geuss
2014,
p.232).
One
possible
escape
route
is
what
Hegel
and
Heidegger
attempted,
to
turn
ratiocination
against
itself.
A
second
it
to
act
in
such
a
way
that
“the
spider’s
web
of
bogus
rationalizations”
is
destroyed
and
new
ways
of
speaking
and
new
facts
are
created.
Geuss
takes
the
third
route:
to
engage
in
a
kind
of
imaginative
activity
that
invites
people
to
observe
novel
juxtapositions,
such
as
the
images
of
a
Prime
Minister
addressing
the
House
of
Commons
placed
next
to
the
image
of
a
pile
of
corpses.
Along
with
having
written
and
published
a
small
body
of
poetry,
Geuss
here
broadens
and
generalizes
this
route
in
several
places,
especially
in
the
essay
‘What
Time
Is
It?’,
which
juxtaposes
reflections
on
a
commentary
on
Pindar,
a
performance
of
a
play
in
Paris,
and
the
conversations
after
the
performance.
The
key
desire
that
Geuss
discusses,
again
arising
from
the
sense
of
being
trapped
in
a
conformist
and
repressive
verbal
universe,
is
most
clearly
stated
in
the
previous
book
as
‘Anywhere
outside
this
world’.
(ibid)
The
Utopian
method
that
offers
an
alternative
to
Plato
and
More
is
that
of
Gustav
Landauer,
who
in
the
early
twentieth-­‐
century
had
treated
socialism
not
as
a
state
but
as
“a
tendency
of
the
human
will
and
an
insight
into
conditions
and
ways
that
lead
to
its
accomplishment.”
(Landauer,
29)
It
is
characteristic
of
this
thinking
to
treat
the
world
as
‘open’,
that
is,
both
subject
to
transformation
through
action
and
as
rejecting
the
claim
that
it
can
be
surveyed
and
encompassed
from
a
single
viewpoint.
The
imaginative
possibilities
that
arise
from
treating
the
world
as
‘open’
are
explored
most
directly
in
the
essays
on
the
paintings
of
the
Romanian
artist
Adrian
Ghennie
and
on
the
three
under-­‐appreciated
achievements
of
Augustine’s
thought.
Ghennie’s
painting
‘Dada
is
Dead’
shows
a
glowing
wolf
in
what
looks
to
be
the
otherwise
abandoned
and
decrepit
interior
famous
from
Hannah
Höch’s
photograph
of
the
First
International
Dada
Fair
in
Berlin
in
1920.
Geuss
begins
with
an
account
of
Dadaism
that
stresses
its
concern

9. with
the
limits
of
meaning:
“If
one
thinks
of
the
two
major
strands
in
the
philosophy
of
art
as
emphasizing,
respectively,
the
production
of
the
beautiful/harmonious/well
ordered/symmetrical,
and
the
production
of
the
meaningful/significant/worthwhile,
then
Dada
rejected
both
these
strands.”
(230)
He
interprets
Dada
as
an
exploration
of
the
boundaries
of
sense:
“What,
then,
is
inside
and
what
is
outside
any
given
framework
is
always
a
matter
of
importance.”
(231)
Part
of
the
implication
of
holding
that
there
is
a
final
framework
of
meaning
is
that
there
is
likewise
a
final
framework
of
meaninglessness;
the
possibilities
of
offering
different
ways
of
framing
phenomena
and
of
creating
connections
among
them
is
circumscribed.
Geuss
urges
the
thought
that
if
one
drops
the
commitment
to
a
final
framework
of
meaning,
then
the
seeming
meaninglessness
of
non-­‐rational
Dadaist
thought
and
actions
does
not
necessarily
reflect
badly
upon
Dada,
but
rather
might
bring
out
the
ways
in
which
our
life
is
so
rigid
and
conformist
as
to
block
the
imagination
of
a
world
in
which
these
seemingly
non-­‐rational
works
would
make
sense.
(236)
Similarly
the
open
playfulness
of
Ghennie’s
painting,
are
not
necessarily
signs
of
artistic
failure
or
deviancy;
rather,
these
characteristics
reflect
badly
“on
our
life
and
our
conception
of
significance.”
Our
way
of
life
might
be
thought
so
unimaginative
and
conformist
that
we
cannot
find
a
place
for
these
works
within
it,
and
thereby
be
induced
to
develop
a
Landauerian-­‐type
desire
for
something
better.
In
the
essay
“Augustine
on
Love,
Perspective,
and
Human
Nature”
Geuss
finds
a
related
thought
in
the
great
thinker
of
late
Antiquity
among
three
underappreciated
views
advanced
by
Augustine.
These
three
views
are
his
account
of
the
variability
of
human
nature
as
shown
in
the
way
it
changes
as
a
result
of
the
coming
of
Christ;
the
account
of
love
as
the
passion
more
fundamental
than
reason;
and
the
way
in
which
the
extended
account
of
the
two
cities
in
The
City
of
God
provides
a
set
of
paired
alternative
perspectives
on
any
phenomenon
in
human
life.
The
essay
is
strikingly
original
throughout,
and
something
of
Geuss’s
more
general
aims
is
brought
out
in
the
discussion
of
the
latter
two
views.
Human
beings
for
Augustine
are
fundamentally
creatures
of
contingent
relations
of
love
and
desire.
The
objects
of
love
and
desire
are
always
particulars,
and
the
search
animating
human
life
is
to

10. find
objects
worthy
of
love.
Since
the
objects
are
not
given
through
or
as
a
result
of
the
exercise
of
reason,
but
through
contingent
encounters,
we
are
driven
“continually
to
negotiate
the
jagged
edges
of
the
world”
(270)
In
this
context
the
‘jagged
edges’
are
where
contingency
meets
reason;
reason
is
a
retrospective
activity
that
justifies
the
already
encountered
and
already
contingently
loved
object
as
worthy
of
love.
Further,
for
Augustine
this
is
not
only
the
activity
of
individuals,
but
also
has
a
collective
dimension
in
the
establishment
and
maintenance
of
a
church,
a
set
of
institutions
that
sustains
and
fosters
orientation
towards
appropriate
objects
of
love.
(271)
With
regard
to
the
third
view,
the
two-­‐cities
perspectives
are
themselves
products
of
different
conceptions
of
what
merits
love.
Geuss’s
discussion
of
this
is
cryptic,
but
he
insinuates
that
anyone
living
now,
that
is,
under
neoliberalism
and
in
the
face
of
environmental
catastrophe,
needs
access
to
a
multiplicity
of
perspectives
as
an
aid
to
radical
social
criticism.
What
is
the
pressing
need
for
multiple
perspectives
right
now,
for
us
living
in
the
rubble
of
the
collapse
of
neoliberalism?
Geuss
at
two
points
appeals
to
Thomas
Friedman’s
The
World
is
Flat
to
characterize
the
general
features
of
contemporary
life,
that
“of
late
liberal
capitalism
and
its
aesthetic
subdivision—fashion.”
(250)
Normativism
is
the
philosophical
ideology
of
the
present
in
its
insistence
upon
a
single,
overarching,
and
internally
consistent
framework
of
evaluation.
So
the
very
insistence
upon
multiple
perspectives
breaks
the
spell
of
normativism,
and
reduces
its
appeal
to
whatever
it
can
offer
piecemeal
for
context-­‐specific
issues.
Geuss
offers
as
an
alternative
philosophical
vision
a
conception
of
philosophy
as
the
ceaseless
process
of
creation
and
destruction
of
meaning
through
imaginative
proposals
altering
with
ascetic
analyses.
Likewise,
the
insistence
upon
plural
perspectives
undermines
key
features
of
neoliberalism,
in
particular
its
market
fundamentalism
and
reductivist
conception
of
human
beings
as
congeries
of
desires
and
beliefs.
Finally,
the
arts
under
a
pluralist
conception
treat
the
boundary
between
meaning
and
meaninglessness
as
contingent
and
subject
to
alteration.
For
the
normativist,
our
failures
are
fundamentally
our
inability
to
live
up
to
our
reasonable
ideals.
For
Geuss,
our
failures
are
primarily
collective
and,
in
a
number
of
senses
explored
in
this
book,
are
fundamentally
failures
of
imagination.

11.
References:
Thomas
Friedman,
The
World
is
Flat,
Farrar,
Straus
and
Giroux,
2005
Raymond
Geuss,
A
World
without
Why,
Princeton
University
Press,
2014
Gustav
Landauer,
For
Socialism.
Telos
Press,
1978
(1911)