Work in Progress

Philosophy had been reborn. But even then, we kept quiet. Kept low. Cicero was clear: there was to be no triumphalism about the rebirth of philosophy. We were very humble. Made no great claims.

The other departments were very curious. They sent their spies to see what they were doing. Infiltrated our Open Days. Strolled around our accommodation! Our old philosophy offices! Peered into our project room! Appreciated the design features, the attention to detail in our suite of offices!

Real design! Attention to detail! Not the usual generic crap! All the touches, which Cicero oversaw herself.

And the Philosophy website: cool. Simple. Elegant. And the Philosophy brochures. Uncluttered. With none of the usual identikit photos.

They were looking at us with envy, all the other departments. Cicero knew that. Cicero was aware. She took it into account. So she played it extra-humble. It was nothing really … a teaching initiative … An experiment … an indulgence in her later years … A chance to fool around before she retired …

She assembled a college of friendly senior staff to help us. To watch over us. To lend us legitimacy. Members of the Senate. Lofty names. Professors, all. Experts in every field. Our protectors. A surrounding band of angels. Who came to our socials. Who came to our Christmas dos, sipping wine.

Old allies of Cicero’s. Cicero-respectors. Who were impressed at what Cicero had done. Supporters of philosophy. Old Europeans, almost all. Foreigners, for the most part. Appreciators of European-style philosophy. Of Continental philosophy, with which they were all familiar.

And Cicero started a European department. What daring! Who would do such a thing!

*Cicero could always sweep all before her at university meetings. She could politic better than anyone. She knew how to get what she wanted. It was effortless. That’s what a communist upbringing teaches you.

How had she done it: open a philosophy department when the university had closed one so emphatically only a few years earlier? How had she created an entirely new philosophy programme of study when the university had declared itself utterly allergic to philosophy not so long ago?

How had she done it, when the higher ups couldn’t even speak about the trauma of closing the old philosophy department? When the memories of the old philosophy clearly made upper and lower management cringe? How had he pulled it off, even as older staff still remembered the farewell speech of the head of the old philosophy department?

But Cicero did it. Cicero outmanouevrered the enemy. Cicero boxed very clever. Cicero went the back door route. Cicero drew upon old allies. Secret connections. She called in some favours. She’d done things for people, and now she wanted things done in return.

How was it possible? But it was possible. A philosophy department. Philosophy, born again at Newcastle! Philosophy, alive again oh! Philosophy, rising, phoenix-like. Blazing into the sky.

Cicero had favourites, it’s true. Cicero could be moody. Cicero could even sulk.

Cicero wasn’t immune from the usual pettinesses. She wasn’t superhuman. She could be short. She could play favourites. She could monologue. She could be changeable, even moody.

Cicero wasn’t always able to maintain front of house. That wasn’t Cicero’s thing: front of house. And it was even a kind of privilege for us to see Cicero’s bad moods. It meant Cicero could let her guard down in front of us.

It meant a kind of confiding in us. It meant Cicero was willing to be who she was in front of us. It meant that she could just be, with us. That we were people she felt comfortable with. Could let her guard down in the company of.

So to see her short-tempered, to see bared teeth, visibly frustrated, was a privilege. A sign of special closeness.

 

To see all the sides of Cicero. To see her from all the angles. That was our privilege. To see all the way into the inner workings of Cicero. To see Cicero’s fallibilities. Her weakness. Her fallenness: why not call it that?

Cicero knew the people she wanted around her. She knew she was getting older. That she couldn’t go on forever. She knew it was a question of assembling a team. Of bringing together a cadre. Of constituting one. People who would Understand.

 

Cicero liked our humility. We were people who’d be happy to remain in the provinces. We didn’t have Lofty Ambitions. We weren’t all Cambridged and Oxforded up. We came from lesser universities. From low league-table universities.

Which were, of course, the only places where you could study European European philosophy. Not Anglicised European philosophy. Not Analytic-style European philosophy. But European European philosophy.

Cicero liked the fact that we were drawn to it, European European philosophy. As she was, back in the day. As Cicero herself was, back behind the iron curtain.

Why did Cicero hand things over to us? Why, in the first place, did she give us jobs? Why did she pluck us out of obscurity?

The fact that we were working class. The fact that we came from the crappier universities. The fact that we had no expectations. That we weren’t careerists. The fact that we weren’t academic mountaineers. We weren’t ascenders. The fact that we weren’t looking for careers in management.

We were low-born: that’s what she like. We saw things from a low point of view. From a rat’s point of view. We looked for corners to hide. For cracks in which to disappear. For strategic retreat.

We didn’t trust the world, that was the thing. We had a natural working class scepticism. We knew something of the enemy. Of ruses. Techniques. We understood something of evil. How evil operated. What evil wanted.

No coincidence that the move happened after Cicero left. After she took extended leave or retired or whatever. Only then, only in the wake of Cicero would they dare to make this move.

Because Cicero knew, and they knew Cicero knew. Because Cicero understood the Great Game – they could see that. Cicero could play strategically. She understood realpolitik.

Cicero had the cunning of old Europe – they could see that. Of the Eastern bloc. Of European culture. Cicero knew their wiles. Their stratagem. Cicero understood the apparatchik logic. The Party mentality. Cicero had a long Mitteleuropean memory …

Didn’t they know who they were dealing with? We’ve read the philosophical books! We’ve tried to think philosophical thoughts. We’re inheritors of philosophy, in our own way. God knows, we’re even guardians of it, philosophy.

Oh maybe crappy ones. Unscholarly ones. Even idiotic ones. But nevertheless. There’s a direct apostolic line from Socrates to us! From the guys in the Upanishads to us! From Confucius to us!

We stand in the tradition! We’re legatees of philosophy! Guardians of it.

Who did they think they were dealing with? Who did they think we were? They had no idea, obviously. And perhaps they didn’t know. Perhaps only the higher-ups know, and perhaps not even them. The higher ups’ higher ups: that’s the level. Up there in the Control Room. That’s where they sit: high above everything.

 

Perhaps that’s our secret weapon: that they underestimate us. That they don’t know who we are. What we are! That they don’t know philosophy and its history. Its martyrs.

The Plan! That only the most discerning can grasp. The spiritually discerning. The spiritually awake. As we are! For all our shortcomings, there’s that! We’re awake! We See. We Hear.

It’s the brazenness that’s offensive. The effrontery. The obviousness of their moves. Their very overtness. It’s the fact that it’s all in plain view. That it’s happening before us. In front of us. That they think they could pull the wool over our eyes. That they think we couldn’t see.

They know what they’re doing – oh, not the organisational managers so much as the higher-ups. The Bigs. Organisational Management are being steered, just as we are.

Yeah, but we know it! We’re alert to it! We’re awake, as they are not!

You know how they work. It’s all compartmentalised. They don’t want the Organisational Managers to know. Just as the higher-ups probably don’t know the real agenda – the higher agenda. It’s compartmentalisation all the way up. Until you reach the Control Room, right. The people with the Plan.

The destruction of philosophy plan? Of all rational thought in the university plan?

That’s only part of it. It’s bigger than that.

They’ll want us to teach Organisational Management ethics, you realise that, don’t you? That’s the only way they can conceive philosophy: as ethics. They have no idea about the other branches of philosophy. Of aesthetics! Of metaphysics! Of ontology! Of logic!

They have no idea about the history of philosophy! Of course not! Or our specialisms. Our so-called research interests. Which do not include anything to do with Organisational Management. Which are notable for their lack of relevance to Organisational Management. What’s clear: that we are not and cannot be, by any stretch of the imagination, Organisational Managers. What’s clear: Philosophy is, like, a war-machine against Organisational Management.  

And they’re much bigger than we are, that’s the thing. They have the numbers. And we have … very little.

Yeah, but we’ve got attitude! Rebelliousness! Avant-gardism!

They scoff at our attitude! Come on! This whole thing is a pacification technique. It’s a neutralisation move. They’re clamping down on thought, right? They’re closing down the possibility of thought.