{"id":554,"date":"2004-10-10T18:17:20","date_gmt":"2004-10-10T18:17:20","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:08:49","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:08:49","slug":"chris_bertram_challenges_paul_berman_on_che","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=554","title":{"rendered":"Chris Bertram Challenges Paul Berman on Che"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Bertram writes disapprovingly<\/a>, suggesting that Berman’s ‘philistine reaction’ misreads the grandeur of Che’s life – a grandeur which cannot, Bertram suggest, be sullied by facts. Literally…<\/p>\n

Lack of success and damaging facts should not necessarily be enough to deprive a hero of heroic status: Achilles was flawed, and Achilles was cruel, and Achilles failed, but we still respond to him.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, but do we respond to Achilles as a hero, or as a kind of glorious monster? <\/p>\n

But this isn’t about Brad Pitt.Go<\/a> read Bertram’s post.<\/p>\n

Then read this old post<\/a> of mine.<\/p>\n

From Isaiah Berlin:<\/p>\n

You would have found common sense, moderation, was very far from their thoughts. You would have found that they believed in the necessity of fighting for your beliefs to the last breath in your body, and you would have found that they believed in the value of martyrdom as such, no matter what the martyrdom was for. You would have found that they believed that minorities were more holy than majorities, that failure was nobler than success, which had something shoddy and vulgar about it.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From me:<\/p>\n

Sound familiar?<\/p>\n

What began to matter wasn’t the endless small adjustments to \u201cobjective\u201d reality or to work with others \u2013 what mattered was your wholehearted willingness to pull down the temple rather than submit, and your ability to project your dreams and ideals \u2013 objectively, your fantasies \u2013 into the world and to try and make the world conform to them, rather than the other way \u2018round.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bertram admires Che because<\/b> of, not in spite<\/b> of, his attachment to the ‘ideals’ as opposed to the mundane: <\/p>\n

…he did turn his back on a comfortable future as a communist bureaucrat to pursue the goal of the revolutionary liberation of humanity.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The attachment of the progressive left to that ideal – to the liberation of humanity that comes through a revolutionary stroke, rather than the endless small acts and hard work that build and nurture real life, real freedom, and exemplify real love for humanity – is the malign center of Bad Philosophy as it exists today. When we can extract it, real progress can begin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Bertram inexplicably lionizes Che for his attachment to ‘the revolutionary liberation of humanity’.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}