A paradox of taste

One can find it exhibited in Nehamas' new book, and when he came to Stanford to flogtalk about it I even asked him about it, but for naught; anyway, it's also in an essay of Pippin's on Proust in The Persistence of Subjectivity, and I just read that, so, you know, gabba gabba hey. Let's start with a footnote, numbered 38, and coming forth on p 328:

As Walter Benjamin has pointed out, the significance of Proust's snobs extends far beyond French society. They are avatars of that deadly modern type, the consumer, who wants to be flattered for his discriminating taste but whose taste amounts to nothing more than liking what will get him flattered, taking refuge in brand names and high-end merchandise, much as the snob does in supposedly high-end people. A whole society looms where no one is or even wants any more to be "who one is"—another Nietzschean nightmare.

One the one hand, one can read this the same criticism that Aristotle in the Nic Eth makes of those who set honor as the chief good in life: you have to be honored by someone, after all, and so you'll always be haring after whatever it is that they think honorable, even if it's (to take an example from the Gorgias) being a catamite. On the other hand, Benjamin's claim, or anyway Pippin's summary of it, is amusingly applicable to just about any disfavored group; simply replace "the consumer" with, say, "the hipster", "the trixie", &c.; "brand names and high-end merchandise" will have to be mutated as well depending on the interpolated demographic, but the analysis will still basically work. On the third and final hand, though, it's not exactly hard to understand what motivates the snob, and someone sufficiently uncharitable might be inclined to say that the snob's real failing couldn't possibly be what Benjamin and Pippin claim it is, but is rather that everyone does that and the snob just doesn't do it very well.  After all, Pippin is prepared to say something like this (in fact, exactly this):

[T]here are clearly people whose self-image, whose practical identity, has been formed so extensively by the expectations and demands and reactions of others that, while their own self-image does circulate successfully in society, their view of themselves is indeed very well mirrored in how they are regarded and treated; it has to be said that they have become the person whom "they" want one to be, that one does not have one's own identity, has not become who one is. As noted above, this type of slavish conformism has to count as just as much a failure to become who one is as the action of the fantasy-indulging narcissist we just discussed. (p 319)

That "clearly" has got to be doing a lot of work there, because it looks a lot as if Pippin's saying that one can read off someone's inner selflessness (er, in the sense of not having a self, of course, not in the sense of being generous) from their outward conformity to societal convention.  This isn't prima facie true, though; it's perfectly possible that the person "who one is" just happens (unluckily, perhaps!) to be the person whom others would have one be—in fact one could be the only person of whom that was true.  Nehamas actually seems to think that isn't possible, but I don't recall him giving any sort of argument to that effect. Pippin might also think that it isn't possible, but the reasons that I would expect him to give would also push one towards the general structure of consumerism as described supra.  These would take off from the case of the "fantasy-indulging narcissist": "A self-image never realized in social space, never expressed in public action, has to count as more a fantasy than a piece of self-knowledge, even though when expressed in such action, the public deed cannot be said to be exclusively owned by the subject, to have the meaning that the subject insists on … This is, of course, exactly why many people forever postpone such action, never write that book, send off that manuscript, finish that dissertation" (318–9)—such postponers might say "I'm a poet", but if they never actually produce a poem, the claim is going to ring increasingly empty and self-deceived.

But if being what one is (to say nothing of becoming what one is) is the sort of thing that has to be recognizable in the social sphere, then in general it's going to have to be carried out in the terms recognized in the social sphere. That explains why the person who is, in the strong sense, what happens to be utterly conventional gets castigated as not having realized himself: to all observation he's a creature of das Man. But it also explains, and excuses, the tendency to consumerism.  "Becoming who one is" is a game you play in society, and to count as playing that game, you have to make certain moves, and in many cases those are moves you'll be able to learn about through the observation of successful players and mimicry.  Someone who really did have discriminating taste but whose discriminations made no sense to anyone else in society, not even the smallest subgroup, would be just as badly off as the fantasy-indulging narcissist.  At least some of your discriminations will have to compete in the established marketplace. If the claim is merely this, that the consumer is aware that he's playing the game and does so strategically while the true man of discrimination wants only to become who he is and doesn't care a fig for the opinions of others, that both goes against many of Pippin's other points in the article and makes the ideal out to be some kind of social idiot savant.

Comments

[hijk]

coolness--
the evening mountain's
self-creation
(Issa)

[ogged]

That "clearly" has got to be doing a lot of work

I read that "clearly" as a "surely."