Assessing Gellner

Introduction: “An Intellectual Rebel with a Cause,” by Mark Haugaard and Sinisa Malesevic

As the title of the introduction indicates, Gellner’s philosophy is considered rebellious and hence as is the case with rebels, draws forth an effort to rebuff it. Written eloquently and comprehensively, the introduction is a general critical analysis of Gellner’s work. Written by the editors of the volume, Sinisa Malesevic and Marc Haugaard, the introduction reviews Gellner’s work coupled with backhanded harsh criticism of his theories on the development of modernity and his rationalist method—the building blocks of his work. The editors acknowledge that they have tried to be nice to Gellner and warn us that the essays following are more skeptical and destructively critical of his work. “none (of the contributions) is oblivious to the ontological, epistemological or socio-historical imperfections of Gellner’s arguments” (p. 7).

Chapter 1: “Ernest Gellner on Liberty and Modernity,” by Alan Macfarlane

At first, Macfarlane critically summarizes three conditions of liberty that according to him, were set by Gellner; namely, the separation of spheres and institutions, the balancing of economy and politics, and a tripartite (plough, sword, book) evolutionary stage model. Macfarlane finds these conditions to be simplistic, distorted, and afflicted with a disease he calls “modernistic examination” of social processes.

Macfarlane discusses three further themes that, according to him, were examined by Gellner but were, to a great extent, neither acceptable nor elaborated enough. In particular, Macfarlane wonders why Gellner did not investigate the roots of civil society in Europe and how come he did not stumble on Maitland’s examination of the formation of trusts as the roots of civil society. As much as Maitland’s examination of trusts as the roots of civil society is interesting and enriching, Gellner also had his version for the roots of civil society: that the roots of civil society were laid in the Reformation and the religious zeal with which Protestants turned to economic activities, some of which eventually provided the grounds for the formation of civil society.

According to Gellner, the willingness of a people ready to reject the repression of totalitarianism and face the anxiety of freedom and liberalism was crucial for the development of civil society, and this role was carried out by Reformation spirituality in the sixteenth century and by modern society in the twentieth. Gellner insists that nongovernmental institutions should have the ability to counterbalance the power of the state with the power of the people. Gellner suggests that Civil Society entails political accountability, frequent rotation with minimal rewards for those crowding the political apparatus, and economic pluralism.

Macfarlane writes,

I think if he had seen what has happened since 1995, and particularly since 9/11, he would have stressed the dangers more. In order to remind us of these dangers, which require far greater treatment than I can give here, let me allude to just one thinker whom I find most insightful on this, Alexis de Tocqueville. What he showed was that liberty and the open society almost always collapse in the face of war, fear and terror. (p. 36)

I find this comment to be unfair to Gellner.

To think that Gellner was unaware or not fully aware of the dangers that war, fear, and terror posed to liberalism and to the open society is unrealistic. Gellner defended liberalism, open society, and democracy not because they brought safety to individuals and to society from threats but because they allowed a better management and a better administration of threats than illiberal, closed, and undemocratic regimes. As an aside, I think that to suggest, as Macfarlane does, that Gellner had not read Tocqueville is insulting. One may disagree with Tocqueville or any other well-versed historian; after all, nobody holds a monopoly of the truth, not even Tocqueville.

The aim of the volume, Ernest Gellner and Contemporary Social Thought, moreover, is to examine the extent that Gellner’s research fares in contemporary social thought, not to speculate about the extent that this research would be different in light of new developments, which his untimely death prevented him from assessing, as does Macfarlane. Such speculation does not take Gellner’s research seriously.

Chapter 2: “Predation and Production in European Imperialism,” by Michael Mann

After first certifying that his membership card in the Gellner fan club remains valid, Mann accuses him of overlooking the militarism of Europe, the colonialization of vast regions, the exploitation and exclusion of the native masses, the predation on the weak, and the coercion of the workers well into the twentieth century. A quick look at the index of Gellner’s Anthropology and Politics (1995) reveals that he discusses colonialism and examines it in relation to anthropology and the social options of our affluent and disenchanted condition.

Our predicament is—to work out the social options of our affluent and disenchanted condition. We have no choice on this matter. To pretend otherwise, to claim that the problem does not even arise, but has been replaced by the Permanent Carnival, is absurd. The fin de millenaire should have its fireworks, but let it not deprive us of our sense of reality” (Gellner 1995, 252).

Gellner often reminds us of the existence of militarism, colonialism, exploitation, etcetera, those states of affairs that Mann blames him for overlooking, calling us to action in order to reduce their impact as much as possible, instead of excluding the other. In fact, Gellner’s hostility to militarism, colonialism, exploitation, and fascism is expressed in all his works. Moreover, when discussing militarism and exploitation, Mann does not make a broad point about fascism in Europe whereas Gellner does. According to Mann, however, Gellner is the European liberal who ignored the winds of fascism in his discussions on the transformation of Europe as a liberal continent.

The extent of the colonialism of many nations in Western Europe gradually faded as their coercive policies became more moderate with time partly because, similar to the liberals in Nazi Germany and maybe more vociferously, the liberals in those countries and Gellner among them expressed their strong dislike of colonialism (see Kurlander [2009]).

You can do in Rome as the Romans do, if you know, more or less, what the boundaries of Rome are. But our world is not remotely like that: it consists of overlapping cultural units in rapid change, frequently undergoing fission or fusion. The choice is not between the rites of Rome and those of some other city, but rather between opponents in an internal dispute within Rome. (Gellner 1995, 245)

Chapter 3: “Power, Modernity, and Liberal Democracy,” by Mark Haugaard

As he writes in the opening sentence of his essay, Haugaard, “explore[s] the social conditions which made liberal democracy possible, arguing that Gellner’s account is incomplete because his view of power was too narrow” (p. 75). In a vivid examination of power in time, Haugaard compares the use of power during feudalism with that of democracies and finds that the suffering inflicted by the use of power by democratic governments in the twentieth century is greater than that inflicted by feudal lords. Though Haugaard moderately describes different views, he is very loyal to Foucault’s views on power, reiterating the ease with which democratic leaders give orders for mass murder as against earlier periods where the use of power was more individual. Haugaard forgot to mention two points. First, he overlooked the fact that nowhere do we have evidence of what feudal lords would have done had they access to weapons of mass murder. Second, toward the end of his essay, he pays a faint lip service to democracies, noting that in democracies violent leaders can be replaced by nonviolent means while violent feudal lords had to be replaced by more violence. “Functionality presupposes precisely the fact that there is counterintuitive elective affinity between the characteristics that make possible the replacement of elites without violence and the ability to wage war on a massive industrial scale” (p. 101).

Yet, Haugaard has a breathtaking style and the essay makes great reading. It develops like a play with a climax and an anticlimax. I had to be very careful not to be carried away by his style and adopt his well-knitted arguments. He also rightly draws our attention to the efforts that democratic governments sometimes make to quietly subdue their citizens. The further development of civil societies and of high culture, which Gellner repeatedly discusses in his books, may be a way to render such efforts ineffective.

Chapter 4: “Gellner versus Marxism: A Major Concern or a Fleeting Affair?” by Peter Skalnik

In the last essay of the part entitled “Civil Society, Coercion, and Liberty,” we are exposed to Gellner’s love/hate relationship with Marxism. The arguments are immediate and compelling without resorting to unnecessary pathos. Skalnik quotes Gellner, “[I] always knew that those beliefs were rubbish” but treated them with respect “as one generally does with regard to the religion of others” (Gellner 1993, 141) (p. 103).

Also, I find it interesting to note that Skalnik is the only author among the four authors in this part to refer to Popper and his influence on Gellner. Popper and his critical rationalist methodology had an immense influence on Gellner’s work in general and on his examination of civil societies, coercion, and liberty—the themes of this first part. According to Skalnik, Gellner wanted to paraphrase and improve on Popper. He says that similar to Popper, Gellner “championed open (civil, liberal) society and politico-liberal pluralism” (p. 110). Different from Popper’s piecemeal approach, Skalnik writes that Gellner admitted that violent revolution is sometimes necessary. Popper would not have disagreed with Gellner on that. Skalnik’s comparison of Gellner’s philosophy with that of Popper’s philosophy goes beyond Popper’s emphasis on piecemeal reform. According to him, Gellner was more skeptical about democracy than Popper since, writes Skalnik, “Gellner was rather skeptical about democracy as it seemed to him an impossibility when institutions and culture shape people” (p. 110). Popper would have disagreed with that yet notwithstanding the problems that democracy raised, both suggested that there was no viable substitute for democracy.

By the same token, Skalnik makes a broad point about Gellner’s idea of Marxism and its shortcomings; in particular, its claims on historical determinism and class struggle as part of an absolute social process or a determining force of history. Being both a socialist and a democrat at heart, Gellner was quite eclectic in his attitudes toward Marxism. To arrive at indisputable conclusions regarding Gellner’s views on Marxism may not be fair to Gellner. For example, Skalnik observes that Gellner views Marxism as a world religion in which the terminal stage is what “will be free both of coercive institutions and of private property” (Gellner 1988, 143) (p. 107). While examining Gellner’s views on the philosophy of Popper and on Marxism, Skalnik discusses Gellner’s research on civil society and how it fared with modernism and Marxism. The discussion throws light on the role of civil society in relation to politics and economics. “Gellner discovered that civil or liberal society in the West [is] a result . . . of industrial capitalism which requires independence from the state” (p. 110). In addition to that, Skalnik points out that Gellner, though a modernist at heart, was not a dedicated defender of modernism as is often claimed by his critics. Gellner was excited by the passage to modernity in Europe, explored it broadly, and even assisted in its further development but he was not its absolute advocate. Skalnik then concludes that Gellner sees an interesting overlap of Marxism with the contemporary Western idealism, which appears under names such as hermeneutics, semantics, and, one should hasten to add, postmodernism (p. 106). Interesting as it may be, this does not mean that Gellner was at ease with the overlap.

Chapter 5: “Nationalism: Restructuring Gellner’s Theory,” by Nicos Mouzelis

Mouzelis proposes an ad hoc modification to Gellner’s theory on modernity. According to Mouzelis, the shift from agraria to industria was possible because the political dominated over the economic as he showed to be the case for the Greeks moving away from Ottoman rule toward self-rule.

In his essay, Mouzelis reviews Gellner’s research on the industrialization process of Western society, suggesting that “if one replaces Gellner’s concept of industria with that of modernity, it is easier to identify mechanisms that non-teleologically link the structural conditions of modernity with the development of nationalism” (p. 125). Modernity, according to Gellner, rests on industria and produces the predominant modern structure, nationalism. So it is not clear why one has to go to the trouble of replacing one concept with another upon which it is based. The first section of the essay is quite loaded without dislodging much in Gellner’s theory of nationalism. The second section describes, first, the struggles among Greeks on their way to freedom and then the coercion they go through by the new state when moving from agraria to industria. In the third section, we are introduced to functionalist explanations of nationalism, which do not have any strong kinship to Gellner’s assessment of nationalism. In other words, here too the question is, do the missing components in Gellner’s theory invite a modification of his theory or did Gellner mean to rule them out because he did not think they were relevant to his theory?

Chapter 6: “Between the Book and the New Sword: Gellner, Violence, and Ideology,” by Sinisa Malesevic

Malesevic is one of the co-editors of the volume under review and his essay is the epitome of those that come earlier. It repeats over and over again what the earlier essays discussed at length, that coercion and hypocrisy in modernity is fiercer than in premodernity. Accordingly, what makes this coercion and this downright violence possible is modernity’s subtle ideology and the modern states’ monopoly over violence. Proposing to go back to tribalism or predation, Malesovic writes, “the modern age needs much more than Socrates’ sophisticated lies: it requires logical, coherent, scientifically embedded rationalizations, that is, ideological doctrines” (p. 165).

One wonders, when reading the essay, why did we have to go through this terrible period called Enlightenment and develop Locke’s principles of the separation of powers, civil society, tolerance, and reason for the institution of democracy? All was perfect in the good old days of tribalism and eventually monarchy. All we had to do is change the Ancien Regime for the technocrat king . . . nevertheless, Malesevic praises Gellner for providing, “a masterful diagnosis of the unique character and unprecedented magnitude of this structural change” (p. 164). The structural changes of the premodern world are described as the industrialization of production and consumption and the development and mass application of science and technology.

Malesevic writes, “as our world has lost certainties of extended kinship networks and the familiarity of the ‘village green,’ we are forced to look for, and find, collective warmth and affection in ‘imagined communities’” (p. 163). I chose to be part of Facebook in order to find fellow members who also share with me some common interests. I did not know that I was forced into it in order to find collective warmth and affection. Let it be.

Chapter 7: “Ernest Gellner and the Multicultural Mess,” by Thomas Hylland Eriksen

In this essay, Eriksen explores “to what extent the various elements of Gellner’s theory of nationalism can shed light on contemporary European minority-majority relations” (p. 169). He finds that Gellner’s theory of nationalism is one-sided and focuses mainly on economic and material factors when dealing with problems of assimilation versus entropy resistance of immigrants. He also gives contemporary examples in order to show that “things are more complicated than Gellner’s theory of cultural homogenisation and entropy-resistance would suggest” (p. 176).

Gellner examines cultural differences with a macroscopic lens in order to shed light on the social, economic, and political transformations in modernity while Eriksen uses a microscopic lens in order to shed light on contemporary (probably post-9/11) European minority–majority relations. Incidentally, Eriksen acknowledges that Gellner uses a macroscopic lens in his examination. He elegantly terms it “cavalier treatment” (p. 177). More to the point, Eriksen remarks that transnationalism—“an active exploitation of opportunities, a dynamic and shifting identity, a creative and selective integration into the country of residence, and a continuous maintenance of links with the country of origin—or with transnationals of the same origin in other countries” (p. 178) has a greater appeal in contemporary intellectual life immersed in global changes than diaspora populations in relation to nationalism. This remark is more of a critique of globalization and cosmopolitanism than it is of Gellner’s theory of nationalism.

It is interesting to note that Eriksen’s discussion of transnationalism with remarkable and fascinating differences, to some extent historicizes Gellner’s theory of nationalism.

Chapter 8: “Islam, Modernity, and Science,” by Michael Lessnoff

Lessnoff rejects Gellner’s analogy of Islam with the European agrarian culture, which he divides into high and low culture. Lessnoff examines in detail both high Islam (ulemas) and folk Islam (eventually sufis) and concludes that contrary to Gellner’s arguments the “ulemas” did not provide an alternative lane of entry into modernism. According to him, it was the Mutazilites—a school of theologians (eighth to eleventh century)—with the influence of Greek philosophy and with their rationalism that offered Islam a chance to develop aspects of modernity and science in their community. They were, however, writes Lessnoff, prevented by the more conservative theological school of orthodox Sunni Islam from the eleventh century—the Asharites—from developing their rationalism further.

In addition to that, argues Lessnoff, the Islamic mysticism or Sufism, which was folk Islam and which Gellner called “non-protestant” Islam, “was for centuries a nurturer of science—of a science whose important achievements, in its medieval heyday, made Islamic civilization the world leader in such disciplines as optics, astronomy, mathematics and medicine” (p. 191). Nevertheless, contrary to Gellner, Lessnoff concludes that Islam could not develop into a scientific society in modernity because Islamic science “was embedded in a potent blend of Aristotle and mysticism, which it did not transcend” (p. 224).

Lessnoff’s essay is well knitted. It develops like a great manual of Islam, especially in relation to the low and high cultures. Is there a need for such a detailed historiography, however enriching, in order to get to the point? Nevertheless, Gellner’s examination of Islam is the perfect trigger for Lessnoff to share his views with the reader on the analogy between Islam and modernity.

Chapter 9: “Truth, Reason, and the Spectre of Contingency,” by Kevin Ryan

Reading the introduction of Ryan’s essay, I was curious to find out how Ryan would fare in his almost unimaginable goal of showing that, “it is at least possible to imagine a fruitful dialogue between Popper and Foucault” (p. 227) in order “to further our understanding of the relation between modern and postmodern social thought” (p. 228). As a matter of fact, one can always synthesize different ideas; the questions are, is it worth the effort, and what do we give up on the way?

The effort is both brave and well documented with an almost dreamlike conclusion of peace between incommensurable views and with attempts at closing of differences between unbridgeable methods. Ryan suggests that a fruitful dialogue between Foucault and Popper or Gellner on criticism—the method of deconstruction engaged in a “permanent critique of ourselves” of the former versus the rationalism of Popper and Gellner engaged in dialogue—is possible.

By the light that Ryan sheds early in this essay, Foucault may be, to some extent, not totally rejected by rationalists such as Popper and Gellner. However, one finds other lights that Ryan eventually cautiously merges in his essay and that would be totally unacceptable both to Popper and to Gellner—the tender light on regress by problem-driven deconstruction, the light that illuminates expert ideas of those that know better, the light on a closed society that is opposed to the light of problem solving on progress, of institutions on public procedures and of democracy and liberalism on an open society.

Chapter 10: “Gellner’s Metaphysic,” by John A. Hall

The last essay of this volume and the intellectual biography of Ernest Gellner that is discussed in the next part are both written by John Hall, Gellner’s student and colleague. In this last essay of the first volume, Hall critically discusses Gellner’s underlying metaphysics. Hall’s aim is to discover Gellner’s metaphysics by digging into Gellner’s biography and legacy and the corpus of knowledge he left us.

“Gellner’s Metaphysic” is an orderly and well-woven critical essay that goes beyond Gellner’s writings into his basic principles, his biography, his methodology, and their impact not only on his philosophy and his sociology but also on how these principles fare with globalization and cosmopolitanism. Hall points that, on the one hand, globalization and cosmopolitanism challenge the basic pillars of modernity, nationalism, and with them, the emphasis Gellner put on homogeneity. They underscore the differences of allegiance to different Gods, nations, and communities as well. Yet, Hall concludes that Gellner’s social and moral problems remain on the agenda of contemporary thinkers who look for solutions to the new problems that globalization creates and that explore the solutions that cosmopolitism offers. He makes his points in reference to contemporary social transformations.

Hall meticulously dissects Gellner’s methodology. He then cautiously assesses Gellner’s claims “moving from approval and endorsement to questioning, with the very final points being those in which the critique offered is the least certain” (p. 265). In his assessment and the conclusion that follows, we are exposed to Hall’s philosophy, which outgrows his master’s philosophy both epistemologically and contextually.

In dissecting Gellner’s methodology, first we meet Gellner as “a negative critique” of the bases of morality and of the rationality assumption of classical rationalism. In particular, Hall discusses Gellner’s argument that defies the assumption that individuals act rationally on the whole and they are reasonable. This assumption is the basis not only of classical rationalism but also of utilitarianism and of the free market. According to Gellner, however, “reason is good when dealing with small and discrete issues, when an ego can choose and will retain its identity whatever choice is made. But really large decisions change one’s identity, making genuinely rational calculations impossible” (p. 255). This argument is psychological and the point of the argument is that utilitarianism cannot help in periods of personal and social transitions. This argument, also, reduces the personal “to some publicly available model or mechanism” (p. 258). Thus the argument becomes part and parcel of social philosophy.

Second, we meet Gellner as a positive social philosopher who, according to Hall, “contends that a social order is and ought to be justified if it provides a decent standard of living and allows for rule by those co-cultural with other members of the society” (p. 259). For example, a modernist social order may be justified by the passage to an industrial and scientific age and then it ought to be justified by “the demand that the principle of nationalism be accepted. It is worth underscoring the fact that the claims are at once sociological and moral” (p.259).

Yet, says Hall, though as a negative critique, Gellner refused to ground morality at the same time he expressed the need for universal standards as guiding posts by means of which to live our lives and eventually change the standards in line with the speed of social change. Hall skillfully explains to us the sociological and ethical claim being put forward by Gellner in his positive philosophy.

The sociological and ethical claim being put forward is specific rather than general, a neo-episodic view of evolution rather than a new version of some world growth story capable of solving all intellectual problems and of providing general meaning to our lives. (p. 261-2).

Third, just as Gellner undertakes the role of a detective trying to figure out what philosophers rule out when studying a philosopher, Hall points to two exclusions in Gellner’s philosophy when he discusses industrialism and nationalism. The first is, according to Hall, received opinions or ideology to which Gellner was reluctant to allow much independent power. Gellner, nevertheless, acknowledged that Islamic fundamentalism was influenced by the ideology of Zionism, which led to the formation of the state of Israel. The second is the concept of liberty, which is not on Gellner’s agenda for social and economic development because, says Hall, “Gellner did not feel that political liberty would necessarily and easily spread throughout the world”; yet Hall goes on, (this) “should not be interpreted as meaning that he himself did not have the utmost commitment to this form of polity” (p. 264).

In the conclusion, Hall criticizes Gellner for suggesting that societies that did not access modernity may achieve modernity by adopting the technical means without adopting liberalism and accessing political liberty. Lessnoff made a similar point regarding Islamic society in chapter 8 of the volume under review here.

The assessment that Hall offers first summarizes and praises Gellner’s arguments about the philosophy of the social sciences and then criticizes Gellner for being somewhat of an intellectualist in his demand to disenchant modernity that is to make it cold and morally unfulfilling. Hall cautiously asks us, “Is there perhaps not something to be said for the notion that the current era is the most enchanted known in human history—less exciting perhaps, filled with trivia too, but comfortable nonetheless?” (p. 265). I am not sure that a comfortable era is necessarily an enchanted one—warm, secure, and easygoing.

1. “Malign Fates”

The first chapter, adroitly named “Malign Fates,” is almost completely dedicated to the task that Hall undertook, namely to explore the extent that Gellner went to find out what happened to the dream of the Jewish intellectuals at the turn of the last century: to make a country for the Jews where they will be fully fledged nationals of the country they belonged to together with all the other citizens and where religion would be the nonpolitical business of the different communities in the region.

In “Malign Fates,” the reader discovers Hall wearing the hat of an experienced historical “romancier,” bringing to life the central events of the Gellner family with special emphasis on their historical and social aspects. While Hall describes some major events that were occurring in Gellner’s family at the turn of the last century and in its aftermath, the reader gets a clear idea of the social and historical framework of the epoch in Prague and Vienna. Hall states his intention in writing “Malign Fates,” “to put his (Gellner’s) theory to one side in order to describe a social world as it appeared to him (Gellner) in his early years” (p. 2).

Hall also introduces the reader to the subtle influence of Karl Popper on Gellner and to the some of the areas where they split apart in spite of the mutual reverence of the two for one another. For example, Hall states that Gellner deployed Popper’s criticism of historicism. Hall also shares with us his interpretations on the dialogue between the two and the extent of loyalty of each to the open society and liberalism when the times became harsh as during and in the aftermath of World War II. Gellner’s relationship with Popper naturally takes us to the intricacies of Gellner’s perspective on nationalism and modernity. Popper was less impressed by modernity than Gellner. Gellner not only studied modernity but also helped it to develop into a way of life, a cultural heritage that the next generation of neo-modernist philosophers received and offered ways to mold into it the technological and institutional breakthroughs of the turn of the twenty first century.

Eventually, Hall observes in “Malign Fates,” “Certainly Gellner would not have been the person he became without experiencing his traumatic childhood” (p. 30). As such, Hall concludes that Gellner’s experiences as a child in prewar Prague where he was born and later in England to which he emigrated with his family contributed significantly to his understanding of the transition to modernity better than many of his future contemporaries to become the philosopher of this transition to modernity.

2. “A New Start”

In this chapter the reader is introduced to Gellner’s mature life, and more important for the fans of Gellner’s philosophy, to the origins of his ideas on philosophy and anthropology with emphasis on the origins of his ideas on nationalism, African anthropology, and Popper’s liberalism and ameliorism. The reader also gets a clear glimpse at the tensions emerging in Gellner’s philosophy and at how he starts working on them and courageously confronts these tensions—all this made easy by Hall.

Yet the discussion in this chapter, however interesting and helpful in getting acquainted with Gellner’s corpus, is not critical. Thus the reading of the chapter is somewhat difficult for those used to approaching discussions critically. True, it is only the second chapter out of eleven and Hall exhibits a spectacular understanding of the origins of his mentor’s sociological theories and of how his mind functioned in arriving at the conclusions he did but I thought I would like more! Not that Hall gives uncritical endorsement to Gellner’s thought, but still . . .

The question that Hall undertakes to answer in this chapter is, “what sort of identity would be provided to Gellner by his adopted country, England?” Hall discusses Gellner’s criticism of Logical Positivism as well. Gellner, writes Hall, suggests in a paper, “Analysis and Ontology”, that, contrary to the assumptions of classical empiricism upon which Logical Positivism depended, contentious “background presuppositions can be found in any philosophy, and that it is only within pre-established terms that philosophy makes sense” (p. 47).

3. “Moving into Position”

In “Moving into Position,” Hall explores the way that his mentor adopted his new country, England. He is armed with a firsthand acquaintance with Gellner, the restless Englishman, with his aphoristic writing somehow collected in “The Notes” and with a possibility to make ample comparisons both with his more “complacent” colleagues such as Isaiah Berlin, Michael Oakeshott, and Ludwig Wittgenstein and, of course, with his most challenging peer, Karl Popper. The reading of the chapter is a unique experience not only for the meticulous and deft choice of aphorisms, quotations, and their assessment but also for the wit and a teasing capacity that Hall exhibits and that would not shame his mentor, himself a great chutzpah, a master of wit and tease.

In addition to the discussions around Gellner’s philosophy in comparison with other philosophies of his time, Hall goes back to discussing Gellner’s suspected Jewish self-hatred. He dwells on the possibility that this self-hatred is in part a generational affair: “Kafka’s generation,” writes Hall, “seems prone to this feeling because their situation was so stark, blaming their fathers for making them either too Jewish or too cosmopolitan.” Hall then describes the resentment that was symptomatic of Gellner’s generation, emphasizing that, “in Gellner’s case resentment did not lead to a desire to escape or deny his identity, but rather to a sense of resignation” (p. 93) Hall, then, concludes with the fluency and precision that the reader already became used to, that Gellner was at ease in the different environments that he found himself in by choice and by circumstances on grounds of his intellectual honesty and curiosity that accompanied him wherever he went. Hall then wonders if this was due to Gellner’s being a Jew or a cosmopolitan—a rootless man of the world:

What is striking is his lack of roots. He dipped into various social worlds, and was marvelously adept at characterizing them, but did not choose to completely immerse himself in any. His absolute insistence on rigorous intellectual honesty follows directly from this. No comfort could be found in social life, only in unvarnished allegiance to the truth. Perhaps this last stance does reflect his Jewish background, in a way—and a particularly honest and striking approach to it. (p. 94)

Indeed, as Hall makes it very clear, Gellner was a Jew of high blend that spread his wings beyond his immediate milieu. There are very few of his kind, both among Jews and non-Jews.

4. “Concepts and Society”

The title of chapter 4 is “Concepts and Society.” Hall borrows the title from the title of a chapter in Cause and Meaning in the Social Sciences, which is, according to Hall, the most important intellectually of all his works. “At its heart,” says Hall, “is a philosophically adept demonstration that our theories can dictate what we perceive in external reality. . . . A key purpose of Gellner’s analysis was to highlight the resemblance between Wittgensteinianism and such functionalists: both see links between use and meaning” (p. 119).

Chapter 4 makes a sharp turn: from a seamless discussion on the life, work, and social context that made the man, the philosopher, the anthropologist Ernest Gellner, into a challenging discussion of Gellner’s criticism of the different shades of logical positivism and linguistic philosophy and functionalist anthropology. The discussion dwells on arguments of Gellner’s philosophy as reflected in his major publications such as Words and Things: A critical Account of Linguistic Philosophy and a Study in Ideology, Cause and Meaning in the Social Sciences, and in the “steady stream of papers” Gellner was publishing by late 1950s, attacking various arguments of linguistic philosophy and its proponents.

In addition to that, in this loaded chapter, Hall introduces the reader both to Max Weber’s influence on Gellner as is found in Words and Things and to his reverential but not complacent relationship with Bertrand Russell. In trying to describe the character of a belief system, Gellner makes use of Weber’s “ideal types” that propose to highlight and draw together the different elements of a system. Gellner’s relationship with Russell was somewhat controversial. Gellner dedicated his first book, Thought and Change, to Russell, who supported him at a time that his career as a serious philosopher was budding and wrote an elegant incendiary preface to one of his early publications. However, later when Russell asked Gellner to join his campaign for nuclear disarmament, Gellner refused to attack England’s attitude to disarmament on grounds that England is the country to which he emigrated. I wonder if another motive for his refusal could have been his nonconformism and/or his favorable attitude to national pluralism. Russell together with Albert Einstein issued a manifesto in 1955 warning against nuclear threat and calling for joint world action. This manifesto does not, in particular, favor national pluralism. Instead it would encourage cosmopolitanism, cooperation, and an attempt at blurring differences among nations.

Hall also describes Gellner’s controversial relationship with the linguistic philosophers such as Ayer from whom he admitted to have learned a lot by attending his seminars in the 1950s. Linguistic usage, according to Gellner, is one aspect of social problems and the examination of linguistic usage may be woven into social problems. Hall describes, nevertheless, the methodological benefits that Gellner gained from his encounter with linguistic philosophy and its different proponents. “What mattered was,” writes Hall, “the notion that a society was held together by its concepts, a view which had profound implications for social scientific method” (p. 115).

5. “Gellner’s Philosophy”

Hall first extends in front of the reader Gellner’s political philosophy as it appears, mainly, in Thought and Change, which he finds to be “an extremely ambitious book aiming at nothing less than to provide a social philosophy for modern times” (p. 131). In the second half of the chapter we witness Hall’s transformation from Gellner’s brilliant student discussing the life and work of his mentor into a contemporary philosopher standing aloof and firmly criticizing the philosophy.

In addition to that, Hall discusses Gellner’s view, according to which, the greater the number of nations, the easier political liberalism is allowed to survive and the better world democracy is served. Otherwise, says Gellner, the threat of a tyrannical world government becomes more likely. ² Isn’t Gellner the harbinger of the era of globalization and the winds of cosmopolitanism with all the new problems they create and the ethical questions they give rise to?

Gellner’s political philosophy, or rather his philosophy of life, is deftly stretched in front of the reader like an ornamented Japanese fan. The reader slowly realizes that the architecture is not simple. It is both dualist and fractal with ample tension at almost every joint. Democracy, liberalism, national pluralism, science, modernity, choice, open and closed worlds, development, utilitarianism are the building blocks of this architecture.

6. “Components of a Career”

Following the challenging chapter on Gellner’s philosophy and its criticism, a historiography of his career during his forties and fifties comes as a relief for readers, whether they are members of Gellner’s fan club or not.

The chapter begins by considering Gellner’s involvement with the London School of Economics until 1984. It then turns first to his intellectual milieu, engagements, and world-trotting agendas, and second to his political engagement, namely the logic of his liberalism, or as Hall puts it, “the liberal limit to the recognition of necessity.” Toward the end of the discussion of Gellner’s career, Hall recounts the empowering spirit in which this flamboyant career was conducted. “Gellner clearly loved controversy, and adored making forceful arguments. This was particularly true of his conference appearances, where he spoke in the most direct and challenging way—sometimes causing a furore, occasionally dominating the proceedings, always providing a talking point” (p. 190).

7. “Knowledge and Illusion”

The general framework of this chapter, writes Hall, “was already present in Thought and Change, in the insistence that science undermines received morals as it brings technological innovation” (p. 207).

The aim of the chapter is to underline the dilemma Gellner had regarding the philosophical groundings for modern science (knowledge) as opposed to the values (illusion) tradition offers. Gellner maintained that since technological changes that are generally the outcome of scientific work had an impact on morals then, to some extent, science affected morals arbitrarily, and this posed a serious problem for him. Gellner, according to Hall, though affected by a monistic urge, looked for philosophical bases for modern science to compete with conservative values that tradition offers. “Gellner defends his monistic urge as critical and limited, claiming that it seeks a minimum of intellectual orientation and is bereft of any desire to abolish social pluralism or to impose monism in political affairs” (p. 209).

All in all, Hall discusses the core of Gellner’s philosophy of science as found in Legitimation of Belief, which was begun during Gellner’s 1968 sabbatical in California and published in 1974. In particular, writes Hall, “The book is a mapping of modern epistemology, primarily a sociological analysis of how cognition actually functions” (p. 208).

In this chapter, Hall undertook to portray Gellner’s inner combat not to fall prey to relativism, questioning the roots of science and of competing traditional beliefs. Often, faith in continuous criticism—conjectures and refutations—as exhibited by Popper was not enough for Gellner as the only moving anchor of science. Gellner asked for more and suggested that an examination of the philosophy of history may reveal the foundation he was looking for.

8. “The Shape of History”

In this chapter, Hall discusses the monograph, Plough, Sword, and Book, which he finds it to be “less than successful.” Hall emphasizes the Weberian influence on Gellner, in particular on the new elements that Gellner discusses in his book. First, writes Hall,

He insists that there are three stages of human history—pre-agrarian, agrarian and industrial—and that their workings are best understood in reference to the three sources of social power—economic, political and ideological—whose autonomous character had been recognized and elucidated by Weber. (p. 245)

Hall supports his argument by referring the reader to the first chapter of Plough, Sword, and Book.

Second, Hall goes on, “His [Gellner’s] account of the transition from agrarian to industrial society stresses its accidental, fortuitous nature. What needs explaining is the fact that a transition was possible at all” (p. 245). According to Gellner then, the important thing is to explain how the transition from an agrarian society to an industrial society is possible. To explain the causes of this transition is not important since the transition is teleological, suggests Gellner. In other words, according to Gellner, the reason and the ideology that may have backed the transition are irrelevant since the main point is that there was a transition from the agrarian to the industrial society and that this transition would have happened no matter what were the reason and the ideology behind the transition.

9. “The Sociology of Islam”

In this chapter Hall discusses not only the sociology of Islam as maintained by Gellner and his critiques, but also Gellner’s reply to his critics and his (Hall’s) assessment of all. Put differently, readers get involved in a vibrant drama that unfolds gradually in front of them. It is not easy to remain dispassionate to this drama. In addition to that, with his assessment and further speculations on the future of the Middle East, Hall contributes to the contemporary discussions on the possible geopolitical developments of the region.

10. “A General Theory of Nationalism”

In this chapter Hall discusses in particular Gellner’s most widely acknowledged work, Nations and Nationalism, published in 1983 and declared by the Times Literary Supplement on December 2008 to be one of the hundred most influential books since the war. According to Hall, beyond offering a general theory of the nationalist movement, the book offers an examination of the revival of the nationalist movements in the world, most obviously following the collapse of the Soviet hegemony.

In Nations and Nationalism, Gellner reassesses the argument he made in Thought and Change, that the national principle meant rule by one’s co-culturals. In other words, Gellner says that homogeneity is a prerequisite for the success of society, but he makes clear that he does not mean that nationalism imposes homogeneity for the preservation of a culture. Instead, as Hall quotes Gellner from Nations and Nationalism, “it is the objective need for homogeneity which is reflected in nationalism” (p. 311). Hall then interprets this quote, “nationalism, properly understood, is not about the expression of prior national identities but rather the actual creation of these very identities” (p. 311).

The last part of this chapter, “Assessment,” shares with the reader Hall’s assessment of Gellner’s general theory of nationalism. It starts with a criticism of the theory on three major points. The first point is the lack of the political environment and geopolitical conflicts in the model of nationalism developed by Gellner. The second point is Gellner’s one-sided approach to nationalism, namely that it centers on secession and disregards the unifying actions of the French, German, and American states. The third point concerns Gellner’s definition of nationalism according to which every nation seeks its own state. Hall proposes to define nationalism as “the desire for the national group to prosper.” Both definitions have nonnegligible truth-content and the reader can only rejoice in this intellectual pluralism.

On the same note, Hall questions whether national homogeneity is necessary to the smooth workings of a modern industrial society as maintained by Gellner. He then suggests that homogeneity may be better at mimicry and not at innovation which may matter more within modern political economy since it may achieve a higher standard of living in a society. Nevertheless Hall concludes that Gellner’s analysis of nationalism may eventually come in handy as nationalism undergoes further changes linked to religious fundamentalism.

11. “Cambridge and Prague”

This is the last chapter and it has the same brisk rhythm as the first chapter, but instead of accompanying Gellner blindfolded from his childhood to his manhood here we are fully aware that Gellner is on his way to leave us. Nevertheless, Gellner still manages to surprise us with his discussions of the tensions between civil society and nationalism, between passion and reason, and on the dual loyalty of the citizens to the economy and the political. We want to hold on to him a little longer and ask him about all those questions that worried him and about the controversial but skillful, provocative, and tentative answers that he proposed.

12. Epilogue

In the epilogue Hall shortly dwells on Gellner’s main areas of concern:

Hall then moves to his grand finale and provides a brilliant exposition of the way in which, according to him, Gellner came to terms with his own Jewish background. I wanted to protest and ask Hall why this is so important. After all the transparency of Gellner’s thought, his philosophy and his cold intellectual honesty are more important than the way in which he came to terms with his own Jewish identity. But in a few short lines, Hall’s relentless appreciation of Gellner does not leave anything unsaid about Gellner the man, the philosopher, the prolific thinker:

The distinctiveness of Gellner is that he was brave enough to do without any complete and guaranteed identity, precisely because every belonging had become questionable to him—though his Czech upbringing had given him a real sense of the nature of belonging. Accordingly, Gellner’s world is austere. But therein lies its attraction. Not much real comfort for our woes is offered; the consolation services peddled in the market are indeed worthless. What Gellner offered was something more mature and demanding: cold intellectual honesty. (p. 382)

Where does all this take us: to Andralamoussia or to a more robust democracy where procedures and institutions are more in tune with the demands of current social transformations? Gellner laid the grounds for understanding the origins and development of these procedures. We may enhance them further by binding our critical rationality to these procedures focusing on changing problems. Thus we may establish an architecture that merges spheres of learning, beliefs and communications and enhances our freedom. The sword, the plough, and the book created a mosaic of nations in Europe. Most of Gellner’s critics found the creation a threat to enchantment; Hall found it disenchanting and cold, yet an illuminating way to reach solutions to our contemporary problems. The communication revolution, our institutions, and the book are exerting pressure on the mosaic and transforming it into an imagined seamless community of people.

Gellner underscored the division of spheres in modernity. His critics both praised and condemned him for that. Contemporary social transformations seem to call for an overlap of the spheres, in particular of the political and the economic with our human rationality that accommodates only a touch of reenchantment.