"For the Unfallen"?
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"For the Unfallen"?
On the back cover, Richard Rorty (famous as a genially trouble-making philosopher and cultural critic) expresses enthusiastic admiration for Stephen Mulhall's short book. Yet the book, while pervaded by something like an ironic dimension, could not, it seems, be further from Rorty's own version of liberal irony. Hence, both fans and critics of Rorty should be attracted to engaging with Mulhall, as well as reviewing their image of Rorty. Rorty responds to the book as very intelligent and splendidly argued, and rightly so.
Mulhall's three main chapters concern respectively Nietzsche, Heidegger and Wittgenstein. As Mulhall explains, his new thinking on Nietzsche enables him to re-appropriate his previous work on Heidegger and Wittgenstein. The summary of the argument, reproduced in Amazon's initial "review" section above, comes from inside the front cover and is written with a careful balance which readers of Mulhall may find recalls his characteristic thinking and exposition. Yet the brevity, elegance and balance of this approach should not obscure the depth of the argument, which in effect leads us, almost before we realize the way we are turning, to reconsider what we, and others, mean by such words as `secular' and `religious', and `Christian' and `non-christian'. These and other identities come into question here.
As well as revisiting the three big names already mentioned, Mulhall here reconnects with his previous responses to Soren Kierkegaard, Stanley Cavell and René Girard, though without presuming familiarity amongst readers with his own previous extensive work or the work of these significant others. The irony alluded to above is not unlike that which runs through much of Kierkegaard's philosophical writing,while perhaps less laboured, and less mercurial, and more grounded in his explicit argument, than we may sense with Kierkegaard.
Even, or especially, if you believe yourself allergic to any or all of the names dropped above, the clarity and strength of Mulhall's argument should be sufficient to made this book rewarding, enlightening and liberating for wider circles of readers. The phrase `For the Unfallen' comes from the poet and thinker Geoffrey Hill. Mulhall does not, so far as I can tell, allude to Hill, but they share, I suggest, a similar sense of how the words which we are, as we struggle in language with language, may be fallen, and how this fall may be reversed. The `doommood' palindrome of nihilism (Geoffrey Hill) does indeed trap us in double-binds calling for liberation as well as enlightenment. In any case, either way, don't miss this Mulhall; don't cheat yourself of this feast. Why condemn ourselves to go on chewing sand?
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