Everything below seems like hysterical ranting now. Not exactly ready, yet, to delete it all. But I’m trying to bury this and I’ve de-activated some of the links below.
My name is August Baker. I’m the author of all the content on this website. This website contains the fall-out, as it were, of an interaction with Prof. Richard Moran. Essentially, he agreed to let me interview him for my podcast, philosophypodcasts.org. I spent a couple weeks investigating two of his articles. The one relevant here is “Swann’s Medical Philosophy” (SMP).
When I host people for my podcast, I want to be a good host, but I also want to ask them challenging questions. It seems that academics just agree with each other so much. This is the downside of the professionalization of the academy. Professionals are appropriate, positive, unemotional. Philosophers today seem to just pat each other on the back.
Since I want to be a good host, but I also want to ask tough questions, my practice has been to send potential guests my contentious questions ahead of time. I’ve prepared for 79 interviews and conducted 75. The reason for the slippage is that 4 of the 79 dropped out after receiving my contentious questions. Moran is the the fourth of those 4.
For the other three, I just tried to stomach it. I tried to reason with myself that I probably didn’t want to talk to them anyway, if they aren’t willing to face tough questions. In addition, the other three claimed that the reason they were dropping out was unrelated to my tough questioning. One had to go take car of their ill parent. Another forgot to tell me about a conference they were attending that day. A third just stopped responding to emails.
But Moran was different. He specifically said that he didn’t want to do the podcast, and his reasoning was, explicitly, that I wasn’t being professional. I said things like “I adamantly disagree.” And he attempted to shame me for being too emotional. He also said what he was doing was all standard in academe, and all the “people he talks to” agree with what he is doing.
This infuriated me. It first deeply hurt me. Then I decided the ole’ “I’m not going to take it anymore!”
SMP is mainly about Proust, but it also has a few pages about Freud. I originally wanted to talk about Proust, and I wanted to skip Freud. But Moran protested that if we weren’t going to talk about Freud, we might as well not do the podcast. So I then, following Moran’s preference, started to investigate his discussion of Freud. The first time I read the article, my eyes glazed over on the Freud part. So I decided to look at it.
In this website, I want to show what I found. My experience of Moran was based on reading—indeed reading twice—Authority and estrangement. That book is extremely careful and rigorous. And clear. It is a difficult book, but it is crystal clear. I also enjoyed the Proust part of SMP. The content was great, and the writing is electric.
But when I investigated the Freud part, I found it to be tendentious and confused. The writing was obscure. The ideas muddled. While I was studying it, I would send Moran my criticisms as they came up. I didn’t hear from him, and then suddenly, after spending an entire long weekend on his work, he canceled me.
On this website, I have posted my emails with my critical comments. I have also posted the email in which he canceled me.
The other thing I would like to do is go through SMP and lay out from the start, the problems with his discussion of Freud in SMP.
SMP is included in an edited volume published by OUP. It is also available, free, on Moran’s website. (BTW, I do not see on his website any statement indicating that he has permission from OUP to publish the articles on his website). Moran’s chutzpah towards me—canceling me and shaming me at once—has made me see him with mud colored glasses. I now see his publishing these papers on his website, for free, as perhaps indicating an arrogance. Isn’t it disrespectful to OUP, to the editors of the volume, and to his co-authors in the volume, to skirt the usual rules? With my mud glasses, I wonder, does Moran think that his genius transcends the economic rules everyone else plays by? Does he think supply and demand are for philistines?
I assumed that papers written for edited volumes were not peer reviewed. I nevertheless wrote to the editor of the volume, Prof Katherine Elkins, and also the series editor Prof. Richard Eldridge, to express my dismay at being canceled by Moran. Prof. Elkins replied to my email kindly. She also told me that, in fact, the articles in the volume (Proust’s In Search of Lost Time: Philosophical Perspectives) were actually peer reviewed.
I decided to write my critique of the SMH Freud section as a letter to the editor (as a letter to Prof. Elkins and Prof. Eldridge). I’m not expecting them to read these emails, but I write them this way because I find it to be a convenient format. It’s casual, yet also feels official. It feels like I am writing to someone who actually has some power. Moran has canceled me. It would be insanity on my part to think that he will actually read these comments, much less take them seriously. And I have no idea whether anyone out there in the world would care. This way I have at least an imagined audience that cares. Elkins and Eldridge can proceed as they will.
1st (of 3) letters to the editor.
Dear Professor Elkins,
This is the first of 3 emails regarding "Swann's Medical Philosophy," an article in your Proust's In Search of Lost Time: Philosophical Perspectives.
1) Does your agreement with OUP allow Moran to put this article on his website, completely free of charge? See:
https://www.richard-moran.com/s/Swanns-Medical-Philosophy.pdf
Basically, does Moran have "permission" from OUP to put the article there? If not, it signals a basic arrogance and a dismissiveness towards the work of other people: specifically the work of the staff of OUP, the work of you the editors, and the work of the other contributors to this volume. I am surprised that OUP allows this, and Moran's website does not indicate that he has permission to reprint the article there.
2) Article is missing a citation to Laplanche and Pontalis. It is quite a strong claim to to assert (p. 147) that the "principle of constancy" aka "the Nirvana principle" is a fundamental principle of Freud's metapsychology. It was a surprising claim to me. In particular, it wasn't clear to me in what sense it is "fundamental." Fundamental as in basic or primitive? Or fundamental in the sense of crucial: a lot of Freudian theory depends on it. In other words, it is a statement which needs a citation. The reader wants to know where Moran is getting this claim that the principle of constancy is "fundamental."
The answer is that he is getting it from The language of psychoanalysis, by Laplanche and Pontalis ("L&P"). The paragraph beginning "One of the fundamental principles" is in fact a paraphrase of the "principle of constancy" entry in L&P. Why did Moran not cite L&P? I found out that that was his source, but only because I was in conversation with him. If I had not been in conversation with him, I would have been highly confused about this. I wish his peer reviewer had asked him what his source was, and to include a citation for the benefit of the reader.
Moran may reply that L&P is a standard reference. He doesn't need to cite it just as you wouldn't cite a dictionary. But is that valid? Did he have that conversation with the peer reviewer? L&P is indeed an extremely valuable resource for studying Freud. I have a copy, and I find that I consult it whenever I read Freud.
However, it is more of a helpful readers guide. It is not an authoritative source. I look at L&P, but I never take it for granted. That said, I think it would be fine for Moran to paraphrase it, but I think he should have cited it.
Moran may also reply that it is common knowledge that the principle of constancy is fundamental. I would dispute that. I was so confused about this claim--the claim that "constancy" is fundamental--that I looked for where it is mentioned in the Standard Edition. (I've read a lot of Freud, and I had never heard of it until this article). When I looked, I located only two occasions--in all of the Standard Edition--in which Freud mentioned "principle of constancy" in a published work: once in Beyond the pleasure principle and once in The Ego and the id. In the second of these, Freud refers to it as Fechner's principle of constancy.
A third possibility is that Moran could say that he knows that this principle is fundamental because he is an expert on Freud. For example, if Jonathan Lear had said this principle was fundamental, I would not have needed a citation. I was not aware that Moran is in fact an expert on Freudian theory. To my knowledge, he does not claim to be. For that reason, it is even more important that he should have cited L&P. (I can see that it might be embarrassing to have to cite L&P. As I said, it is the sort of text one looks to to start, but one never takes as gospel. However, if we think about the reader--not whether Moran is embarrassed to cite something--he should have cited it IMO).
One thing that to my understanding is common knowledge (see for example Lear's Freud) about Freud is that whereas Freud wrote to a lay audience--in simple German prose--Strachey for the SE converted the simple German prose into an English with many apparently "scientific" or "technical" terms. One of the reasons I was surprised to hear that this principle was so fundamental is that I wouldn't expect Freud to use a term like "principle of constancy." Indeed, that is why Freud only mentions it twice. And it is why although Freud mentions it only twice, Strachey himself mentions it many, many times in footnotes.
3) Even if Moran had included a cite to L&P, his statement is wrong. Moran says that the principle of constancy is "a fundamental principle of Freud's metapsychology." That is not what L&P say. What L&P say and I agree with them on this, is that the principle of constancy is a "cornerstone of Freud's economic theory." To say that something is a foundational in Freud's economic theory is far from saying it is a foundational part of his metapsychology.
Freud's metapsychology has, according to Freud, three parts: topological (think of the mind as an apparatus), dynamic (think of behavior as determined by multiple forces interacting with each other, and, finally and most speculatively economic (try to measure the forces referred to in the dynamic part.
To say that the principle of constancy is fundamental to metapsychology is outrageous IMO because it neglects the fact that a much more important piece of Freud's metapsychology is dynamic.
This gets at the crux of the issue of why I was confused about the idea that "constancy" was foundational to Freud. When you think of Freud, you think of a dynamic model. You think of powerful forces surging up and attempts to control those forces, and sexual drives and sublimation. It is the opposite static or constant. Here we see the shortcut Moran takes to get this counterintuitive result. L&P say it is foundation to only the economic part of the metapsychology. It is foundational to Freud's tentative attempts to measure the sizes of the various forces so as to understand which force wins out. Indeed, if your model is dynamic, then when you try to measure those conflicting underlying forces, you will implicitly need to appeal to a concept like homeostasis. So what what the principle of constancy is foundational for is the attempt to measure the conflicting powerful forces.
It is extremely disingenuous to say that constancy is fundamental to Freud's metapsychology, when what it really is is foundational to the attempts to measure the pieces of a dynamic model.
4) Disingenuous use of "Project for a scientific psychology" ("Project"). Project is not a reliable source for determining the foundations of Freudian theory. On p. 147, Moran begins to discuss the Project. This is a highly dubious source to use for a discussion of the "fundamentals" of Freudian theory. All that Moran says about it is that it is "unpublished." This is disingenuous of him. I think the peer reviewer should have pushed back on Moran. The reviewer should have asked Moran, "isn't that a very contested source? Didn't Freud himself disavow it?" Or at least, "You are talking about the fundamentals of Freud, but your initial source is to something unpublished. Can you find something Freud actually published instead? Wouldn't that be a better source?"
When I read this, I thought to myself, "Isn't there something fishy about that Project paper? Isn't there some story about some authors not being willing to use it?" I looked it up, and here is the story:
The Project that we have was a document Freud sketched on a train after a visit with Fleiss, and then back filled. It was sent to Fleiss in 1896 and then, evidently, Freud forgot about it. (There is no mention of it in Freud's papers after 1896). After Fleiss's death, Fleiss's wife--who was hostile towards Freud and vice versa--sold it to a book dealer on the condition that it not be sold to Freud (knowing he would destroy it). The dealer sold it to Mari Bonaparte. When she told Freud she had acquired the Fleiss papers, Freud was "indignant about the story of the sale and characteristically gave his advice in the form of a Jewish anecdote. It was the one about how to cook a peacock. 'You first bury it in the earth for a week and then dig it up again.' 'And then?' 'Then you throw it away!' He offered to recompense Mme. Bonaparte [and] ... insisted that [the documents] should be destroyed." (Jones biography. Volume 1, Chapter 7.)
I think there can be no doubt that it is highly dubious to use the Project in a discussion of the foundations of Freud's theory. When I asked Moran about this, his reply was essentially that "everyone cites it." I don't think that is an acceptable answer. Even if "everyone does it" (and I am not admitting that is true, by the way. I think I have seen that some people refer to use it) Even if "everyone does it," this is where peer review should stand up for what's right.
It is in fact unconscionable to use a document with that provenance--a document which is not only unpublished but which we have good reason to know the author repeated disavowed--to discuss the fundamentals of Freudian theory. At the very least, I think the reviewer should have suggested that Moran replace "unpublished" with "unpublished and disavowed".
Moran's use of this source is disingenuous as well. He says (p. 147)
"In his unpublished ‘Project for a Scientific Psychology’ (1895), under the influence of Fechner and Helmholtz, he refers to the “principle of neuronal inertia”, according to which a mental system is “a contrivance for counteracting the reception of quantity (Q~) by getting rid of it.”
It is clear what Moran is doing here. He is dissing Freud for trying to be too scientific. He is quoting things that make Freud seem overly technical, overly jargon-filled. Again, this is patently false. You can just take Lear's textbook, but if you want more cites, I can provide them. Freud wrote some technical papers early in his career, but after he became a clinician, and in all his famous works, he wrote in plain German for a lay audience. How can Moran shade Freud in this way--using a cite that Freud repeatedly disavowed? Did the reviewer have a conversation with Moran about this?
Note that when I raised this with Moran, he attempted to shame me (in addition to canceling me) by saying he really touched a nerve" as though I was too emotional about this. Yes I am emotional about this. (Personally, I don't think showing emotions is something to be ashamed of, and people shouldn't cancel each other because of emotional display, but that's another issue). This is emotional because it is so patently ideological.
People have been emotional about Freud (and, e.g., Marx) from the throughout the 20th century. It is well known that these are sensitive issues, ideologically-loaded and emotionally loaded writings. I think that it was incumbent on Moran's reviewer to ensure that when Moran started talking about the foundations of Freud, that Moran did so with particular care. The reviewer should have at least pushed back on Moran to say, these quotations, like " “a contrivance for counteracting the reception of quantity (Q~) by getting rid of it.” That certainly makes Freud look bad. How representative of Freud's writings is that however? Wasn't Freud a popular author? Is that sort of thing an outlier for Freud? Or does that capture his method?
Moran canceled me for showing emotion, but I would push back on him. You don't make an author look that bad--unfairly--unless you yourself have a particular axe to grind. What is it about Freud that triggers Moran? Why does Moran, such a usually careful author, become so polemical suddenly when he writes about Freud? These sentences about Freud are tendentious. To the extent your volume is used as a university textbook, I consider it outrageous that Moran uses his status to write in such a prejudiced way about an author who has been mis-characterized as much as Freud. Academic, scholarly volumes such as yours should be committed not to misrepresent authors as Moran is doing to Freud here.
5) Regarding the sentence beginning "In later works ..."
"In later works such as ‘Instincts and Their Vicissitudes’ (1915) ["Vicissitudes"], he refers to the ‘principle of constancy’ or the ‘pleasure principle’, and returns to this theme later in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) ["PP"], under the name of the Nirvana Principle, the return to a state of zero excitation."
A) He seems to be saying that the "principle of constancy" can also be called the "pleasure principle." That is patently false. Again, you can look at any textbook, and see what the pleasure principle is. (Unlike the "principle of constancy", it really is a foundational Freudian concept.) In my fantasy, a reviewer says to Moran,
Is this a typo? Why do you say 'or the pleasure principle. Are those the same? You are saying that the "Principle of Constancy" is the same as the "Pleasure Principle" which is also the same as the Nirvana Principle"? It doesn't seem they are the same, does it? You seem to be suggesting that Freud engages in jargon proliferation. I can see how "constancy" and "nirvana" are related in that they are both neutral. But clearly "pleasure" is not neutral. How could these three be the same. Also, if they are the same, why not use the pleasure principle since that is so widely known as a basic Freudian concept. The principle of constancy is only mentioned twice in published works by Freud. The principle of nirvana is only mentioned in two publications. But the pleasure principle is mentioned everywhere. What is the point of using "principle of constancy." I realize it fits your thesis better, but is it really defensible? It feels more like rhetoric than philosophical reasoning.
B) In the sentence under consideration, Moran is saying that in Vicissitudes, the reader will find the term "principle of constancy".
That is factually false. There is no mention of "principle of constancy" in Vicissitudes. I couldn't find one, and Moran doesn't provide a page number.
6) Moran is usually such a precise and careful writer. It is therefore surprising to see the sentences in this Freud section, many of which feel like they are first drafts. Even the syntax is is undecipherable. For example:
"The Narrator’s relation to these aspirations is not as the instrumental means to assuage or eliminate some internal condition." (p. 151).
As we get into the theory section of Moran's discussion of Freud, we will see that because of the unclear writing, it is especially difficult to determine what he is saying. Truth be told, when I spoke to Moran about interviewing him about this article, I read the Freud discussion, and my eyes glazed over. It seemed strange to me that "constancy" was said to be foundational for Freud, but once we got into the content of these pages, it is, ultimately, wrong. I will show you that in the coming pages, but here I just want to point out that it will be difficult to try to tease out even what Moran is saying. It takes some effort to see that he is wrong. And he is. He is wrong. His claims in the section are nonsense, and I will show you this.
But I also want to point out that for this article, Moran does not view the Freud section as a sideline. He believes that this is the most important part of the article. (When I suggested we skip the discussion of Freud and just talk about Proust [which was my preference], he replied that the Freud part was the important part, and if we weren't going to talk about Freud, we might as well not do the podcast. That is why I ended up taking the time to analyze this section, even though my eyes glazed over when I read it, and I much preferred talking about Proust. But my point is that, if you think editorial standards are loosened when someone is discussing some intellectual history as background, that may be true, but that is not the way Moran views these paragraphs. He believes they are of the essence of his thesis in this article, not just descriptive background.
Let's return now to the sentence I selected. ("The Narrator’s relation to these aspirations is not as the instrumental means to assuage or eliminate some internal condition.") He is comparing here aspirations to thirst. He is saying they are different. So I wanted to see if you could substitute "thirst" in for aspirations, and see if it was correct or not. But it is impossible to figure out what that would mean because the sentence is so badly written.
I thought to myself Okay the subject of the sentence is the Narrators "relation to his thirst." What on earth could be meant by a "relation" to one's thirst? Okay this relation to one's thirst is different than one's relation to one's aspirations. And the difference is that, for thirst (unlike aspirations) the "relation to one's thirst" is "the instrumental means to assuage or eliminate some internal condition." I get it that "assuage or eliminate some internal condition" probably means to "slake" one's thirst. So he is saying that for thirst, the "relation to one's thirst" is "the instrumental means" to slake one's thirst. What could that mean? Eventually, for many of these sentences, one just has to give up.
As we head into the theory section (in the next two emails), I want to say that these are not obscure concepts. Freud wrote popular pieces (he sold a lot of books!) to a lay audience. Everything he explains is simple and jargon free. There is no reason, in Freud, for Moran to have a difficult time making sensible sentences. And I would caution that lack of clarity is no excuse for muddled thinking. Searles said that if the sentence doesn't make sense, we should conclude that the author doesn't understand what he is saying. Williamson advises philosophers to have the courage to be clear. Clarity requires courage because it makes it easy for one's opponents to criticize your work. I hope we recognize that the fact that the next paragraphs are difficult to understand, that should not be a defense for Moran. It should be considered as further evidence for the fact that the claims he will be making are wrong.
7) Bersani footnote. I asked Moran if the Bersani footnote (footnote 20) was correctly placed. The Bersani footnote comes after a sentence about Proust, not Freud, yet Bersani's book is about Proust. Moran did not answer me. It was at this point that he canceled me, said he wouldn't talk to me. But my Ideal Reviewer would have asked Moran, "Is that Bersani footnote in the right place?" The sentences around there (top of p. 149) are some of the most important for understanding why Moran is so wrong.
As an aside, in my experience, Bersani himself is an extremely Unreliable Footnoter. I recall once trying to track down a footnote of his, and, in the end, let's just say his paraphrase was lyrical if not accurate. So when I saw Bersani's name, I thought to myself, "Perhaps it is Bersani who is leading Moran wrong." And I wanted to investigate the Bersani source. But it didn't seem to make sense where it was placed. That is why I asked Moran.
I know these are long emails. In my experience, people don't read long emails. It would be easier for you to just try to find a reason to dismiss what I am saying. But the reason these emails are so long (and why this is only the first of three such emails) is that this section of Moran's article is so badly written, badly reasoned, and badly sourced. In short, it isn't my fault that it takes so long to explain how wrong this section is.
Sincerely,
August Baker
site map
Letters 2 and 3 are here and here.
The background—which would be a waste of your time to read IMO—is here. But before you read it, I ask that you consult Peter Brooks’ book <cite> which warns us of our over-emphasis on narrative. It’s not the story that’s important. Choose substance over story. The substance is in the letters above.
The emails I sent to Moran (which contain the contentious questions) are here.
The email where Moran canceled me is here.
The paper I wrote a few years ago on A&E here.
Before I settled on the letter-to-the-editors approach, I started with a different format. I was going to structure it as a paper, an article. I pretty soon rejected this approach, it didn’t feel right. But, on the other hand, it reflects my thoughts when I was even more emotional than I am now. Emotional: sad and mad, hurt and enraged. The two basics emotions which so often go together. So I don’t want to throw away the thoughts of myself when my mood was more emotional. And if I read them, I would probably reject them. (Because I too share the bias that Truth = what appears to be true to us when we are in the depressive stance). So I will just leave that aborted attempt at an article … oh I don’t know. Let’s put it right over … here.
Likewise, I started but then abandoned a rebuttal to the email where Moran canceled me. voila. I really don’t think you should read that one either. It’s really ticky-tacky. His email is written from the paranoid position, and I bet mine is too. I don’t even want to look.
Before Moran insisted that the Freud part was an essential part of his article, and I spent three days trying to figure it out (and lamely fantasizing about how thrilled he would be to be corrected ugggh, I had pre-Freud-disaster comments about SMP in several emails: I haven’t looked at them since, but eccolo.
BTW you probably think there’s no way someone like Moran is going to read all those emails. I’m aware of that I promise. I throw them out there. Most people just ignore them, and that’s fine. Peter E. Gordon, for example, just ignored them. Agnes Collard responded more than most. For the really, really big names (like Martha Nussbaum), I didn’t even send anything because I knew she wouldn’t be phased no matter how contentious my emails. Rarely someone actually starts a conversation with me. Owen Flanagan for example.
I also had comments about another article we were going to talk about. Amherst lecture on self-love. My prelapsarian emails about that self-love paper by Moran: Aqui.
If you want to listen to any of my podcasts, the website is ta-da.
What the hey: another anecdote on the obnoxiousness of professional philosophers: alsjeblieft.
Talk about emotionality, my last two emails to Moran. I’m embarrassed about these. I remember being so heartbroken when I sent the first one. And I think I said something to the effect of “But I’m your biggest fanboy!” uggh uggh uggh smh smh smh. That one I asked him—well, I begged him prolly more like it—to reconsider. Then I spent a day realizing I really was canceled and wouldn’t hear from him. Dejection started turning to rage when I wrote the second one. Probably really inappropriate. I was getting ready to burn bridges. The title of tha second one was “last email.” And that is indeed the last email I will ever send him. Funny but that’s what the good part of the SMH was about. What I am basically saying is that the python of reasonableness will not take ME down. The last two emails (after he sent me the cancel email) are here.
Here’s an email I sent to “letters@bostonreview”. Right here. They didn’t print it. I used to send a lot of letters to the editor. But eventually I got so many rejections, I gave up. But a funny thing happened. I wrote a letter to the International Journal of Psychoanalysis (or something like that), and they wrote back and said, “sure we’ll print it!”. I am grateful to them.
Finally, below are some entrails remaining from my first draft of this homepage. Again, I leave them out of respect for the naked and the dead.
entrails
In the case of Moran, I initially proposed to him that we
ince I want to be a good
, that I personally encountered Prof. Moran. (I had previously encountered—and admired—him as a reader of his books). This website arose out of my anger and indignation at his canceling me in an email less than 48 hours before our scheduled interview.
I had just spent a summer weekend furiously and manically trying to figure out what was wrong with 4 paragraphs of his article “Swann’s medical philosophy.” It is a peer-reviewed published article. It is part of the volume Proust’s In Search of Lost Time: Philosophical Perspectives, ed. Katherine Elkins, OUP 2023. It is also available on Moran’s personal website. [I was surprised that OUP allows this].