Almost seven years ago, I concluded “When George Novack was an ‘entranced disciple’ of Whitehead” with “If you [visitors to this site] can shed any light on Novack’s life and times, please do so in the combox. Thanks.”
Well, yesterday, Michael Zimmerman, a diligent student of Novack’s writings, took the time to correct misapprehensions I was laboring under. He granted permission to publish our brief correspondence, all dated today, which I include below in full with gratitude.
A general, “metaphilosophical” answer to Novack and other philosophers may be inferred from my Philosophy after Christ. — A.G.F.
Here is Mr. Zimmerman’s first message:
I recently came across your blog post dated November 6th, 2019 titled “When George Novack was an ‘entranced disciple’ of Whitehead.” It caught the attention of my search engine while I was doing some research on the life of Novack. What immediately stood out is that you have mistakenly labeled a picture of novelist James T. Farrell as being that of George Novack. Farrell’s picture carries the caption “George Novack, 1905-1992. Circa early 1930s.”[I have corrected this. — A.G.F.]
You ended that entry with an open request for comments from anyone who can shed light on Novack’s life and times. As a student of his, I thought I would offer some insights into what his work has to say on the positions you have attributed to Novack.
Firstly, Marxism-Leninism became a term of self-reference for the petty-bourgeois Stalinist caste and its loyalists in the nationalist communist parties in order to conflate their counterrevolutionary movement with the workers and peasants revolution of the early 20th century. To my knowledge, Novack never called himself a Marxist-Leninist, but firmly aligned himself with the Trotskyist movement, having personally worked with Leon Trotsky politically and philosophically, and having given his life’s work in service of a Trotskyist party. This is an important clarification because search engines and large language models (such as ChatGPT and Gemini) are using your website to justify claims about Novack as a Marxist-Leninist, a title which cannot apply to Novack given the trajectory of his political life. Continue reading “More on George Novack, Trotskyist philosopher, from a visitor”