I have noticed, in Anglophone philosophy, a certain way of invoking Marx. The pattern here is-understandably, given the relative scarcity of substantial engagement with Marx outside of (radical) political theory-a rather loose one. But I've spotted it in the work of John McDowell, Michael Thompson, and Mary Midgley. In each of these thinkers, Marx is invoked in the context of an inquiry into human nature: into the question of what (if anything) separates us from the animals. In this paper, I propose to adjudicate a certain debate between these three thinkers-a debate which their shared invocation of Marx allows us to stage. I will argue that this debate between McDowell, Thompson, and Midgley, such as it is, is doomed to remain interminable, unless we clear up a confusion about Marx which all three share. Clearing up this confusion will allow us to get in focus an account of human nature I label "Dialectical Aristotelianism". I am unable to offer a detailed defense of this position here-rather, I offer it as something which might be worked out more comprehensively in other work. 1 The point I wish to make here, and the way I wish to make it, unfortunately demands a structure which might at first glance seem a little obscure. To spell it out: in Section 1, I introduce the perennial philosophical problem of "what separates us from the animals"-working my way toward Midgley's critique of the "single distinguishing factor" conception of what separates human beings from other animals in Beast and Man. Sections 2 and 3 relate an existing debate between McDowell and Thompson, who both incorporate Marx into their attempts to find such a single distinguishing factor. In Section 4, I introduce Midgley's specific criticisms of what she sees as Marx's attempt to identify a "single distinguishing factor" answer to the question of what separates us from the animals-criticisms which would seem to do for McDowell and Thompson as well. In Section 5, I explain why (in my view) Midgley was wrong about Marx-and then proceed to demonstrate that, in The German Ideology, he and Engels (albeit in an incomplete, increasingly disputed text) can be read as providing us with a "single distinguishing factor" answer to the question of what separates us from the animals that does not suffer from the problems Midgley identifies with (usual) attempts to identify such a factor. The result is an account which is, handily, able to incorporate the best of Midgley's, McDowell's, and Thompson's views. This is the position that, in the conclusion, I label "Dialectical Aristotelianism".

In the established landscape of research in the social sciences, populism is seen as a type of politics that chiefly revolves around the distinction between the "people" and the "elite".1 Within this, different forms of populism can be distinguished—ranging from right-wing and authoritarian to liberal-centrist and religious varieties. In the camp of the political left, populism is often cast as essentially a democratic endeavor. Drawing on a conception of inclusive peoplehood, which is not opposed to other vulnerable social groups "below" but solely to the "elite above", many authors emphasize that it is crucial to pursue a populist strategy in order to overcome existing hegemonies, democratic deficits, ossifications, and class-rule (Grattan, 2016; Howse, 2019; Kempf, 2020; McCormick, 2001; Mouffe, 2018). Throughout the past few decades, the landscape of research on left populism has grown considerably. Various studies have investigated the history of anti-establishment popular movements of the 19th century, such as the Narodniki in Russia or the American Populist Party (Canovan, 1981; Kazin, 1995). Further, research has also looked at how, from the 1990s, anti-neoliberal alliances in Latin America had their momentum, entered governmental office, and established a far-reaching renewal of constitutional orders (Linera, 2014; Weyland, 2013). And in particular, in the last decade, the rejuvenation of left politics in Europe and the United States has often relied on populist approaches (Katsambekis & Kioupkiolis, 2019). Taking a more systematic stance, theories of radical democracy have sought to demonstrate that politics in modern societies is structured around the embodiment of the "people" as an empty signifier. From this perspective, it is not by accident that left varieties of populism can be recurrently observed; their persistence reflects that politics is, at its heart, not only concerned with policy-issues but with "constructing the people" (Laclau, 2014). Thus, populism may not be episodic, accidental, or a specific ideology that brings the vital interests of ordinary people to the fore. Rather, it must be seen as a generalizable discursive strategy—in the words of Ernesto Laclau: the "royal road"—when it comes to the strive for political power (Laclau, 2005, p. 67).2 In recent years, a neo-Machiavellian strand of research has emerged that is not so much concerned with the discursive construction of peoplehood, instead focusing on the materiality of social power. Drawing inspiration from the political philosophy of Early Modernity and Niccolò Machiavelli's insights on the exercise of political rule, these approaches assume that societies are constantly split between the "plebian" people and the ruling elites (McCormick, 2001; Vergara, 2020a). Against this backdrop, populism amounts to a plebian politics that "springs from the politicization of wealth inequality in reaction to systemic corruption and the immiseration of the masses, an attempt to balance the scales of social and political power between the ruling elite and the popular sectors" (Vergara, 2020a, p. 238). However, the historical balance sheet of left populisms remains ambivalent. Though recurring attempts to change society through mobilizing the people against the elite can be observed, they have often revealed self-defeating dynamics:3 the collapse into authoritarian government once populism is in power, the inability to account for how complex modern societies actually operate by adhering to an all-too simple people/elite binary distinction; and the arising incapacity to identify reasons for political failure and success apart from stressing that popular mobilizations played a key role (when successful) or were diluted (when unsuccessful). In the current debate on left-populism, however, a broader camp of anti-populist critiques mainly advances objections from a normative angle (Arato, 2016; Cohen, 2019; Urbinati, 2019; Müller, 2014). It is argued that populist forms of politics are, in principle, incompatible with central achievements of liberal democracy, such as pluralism, the separation of powers, or parliamentary representation. They seem to be unavoidably entangled in authoritarian politics and, therefore, in need of being rejected as a course of political action. This article aims to move beyond the rigidified divide between appraisals and rejections of left populism by shifting the field of inquiry: instead of investigating the relation of populism and the political as such or evaluating whether populism is compatible with principles of liberal democracy, it conducts a reconstruction of discussions in the broadly conceived camp of European Social Democracy in the "long 19th century" (Hobsbawm). Thereby, it focuses on how the leading intellectuals of this political current were reflecting on the practical potentials and limitations of a politics that is centered on the popular will. As emphasized by contemporary discourse theoretical approaches to the study of populism, politics in modern societies largely revolves around the role of the people and the conflicts that surround its articulation.4 Therefore, a wide range of people-centered politics can be identified—popular, populist or folky. While the article echoes the definition of populism as people-centered politics that opposes the elites, it stresses not only its inevitability but also its limitations. It scrutinizes populism's internal pitfalls and how it reacts to the contradictions and problems inherent to the structure of the given societal order. Thereby, the article aims at circumventing a transhistorical per se perspective and at a closer examination of the respective social circumstances. The ambition is not to provide an encompassing investigation of the whole theoretical landscape of social democracy, but to look for how some of the leading intellectuals grappled with the problems of a people-centered politics in the light of practical experiences in political struggle. It will be argued that we can identify an intellectual trajectory that dealt with the question of whether a politics that is centered on the popular will as opposed to the elites is able to incite social transformation and collective learning processes or, to the contrary, thwarts them. Admittedly, one should not overlook that there are severe differences between the social democratic mass parties of the 19th century and the contemporary disorganized party landscape. However, the article encourages an investigation that overcomes the juxtaposition of left populisms and other variants of progressive politics such as social movement politics (Arato & Cohen, 2021) or class-politics (Seferiades, 2019). Drawing on the recent work of the historian Christina Morina, European Social Democracy is understood in the following as a broader social movement that extended from the mid-19th century to the First World War (Morina, 2022).5 It was characterized by the advent of new forms of political organization, most notably trade unions and social democratic mass parties. Despite severe internal conflicts, it was driven by a shared approach to history and society that was drawn from the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The defining feature of European Social Democracy was located in a specific mode of social inquiry. As stressed by Morina, activists and intellectuals may have engaged in controversies around a whole set of issues. They all assumed, however, that modern societies take part in the course of historical evolution and that a sound type of political action must be derived from a comprehensive inquiry that clarifies the scopes for social transformation at a given historical moment. The common denominator that constituted coherence within the movement was the assumption that societies undergo a historical development (often described as "stages") and that a tenable conception of political action must react to the objective problems and contradictions inherent in this process. According to Morina, the "attraction lay not primarily in a vaguely suggested utopian perspective, but in the concretely demanded scientific relevance to the present. They [the leading intellectuals and activists of European Social Democracy] drew from Marx's work primarily a promise of knowledge geared to the here and now, not a belief in the future oriented only to tomorrow. For them, Marxism was actually a never-completed study of the real world […]" (Morina, 2017, p. 16). This was the unifying thread of European Social Democracy that spread from the works of Marx and Engels to very different activists and intellectuals, such as Eduard Bernstein, Karl Kautsky, Vladimir Ilych Lenin, and Rosa Luxemburg.6 It needs to be noted that the Second International was a broad political movement. Not the least, syndicalist and anarchist ideas were prevalent in many countries and the theories of Marx and Engels were not the only intellectual resources available at the end of the 19th century.7 However, if it comes to reconstruct the overall mindset that ultimately coined the characteristic controversies within the European labor movement, the "invention of Marxism" (Morina) played a crucial role. This article reconstructs how this political movement dealt with the potentials and short-comings of populist approaches: Section 2 demonstrates that, initially, the young Marx and Engels of the 1840s and 1850s took a skeptical stance on people-centered politics. Quarrelling with the insurrectionist movements of their time, they identified Jacobin flaws that tended to construct considerable hurdles for achieving social transformation. In contrast to this critique, demonstrated in Section 3, European Social Democracy in both its reformist as well as its more radical ramifications returned to mobilize the popular will from the 1870s onward. Section 4 investigates how Rosa Luxemburg—an important figure of European Social Democracy—reacted to the rising constitutionalization of politics and society through a proto-populist restatement of social democracy as Volksbewegung around the 1900s. This transformative populism was meant to mobilize the people, but it should also overcome the Jacobin flaws by establishing collective learning processes. Section 5 presents the argument that European Social Democracy's trajectory can be seen as a learning cycle itself with regard to potentials and pitfalls of left populisms. Contemporary controversies should be sensitive to these insights and thus engage in more context-dependent inquiries. Studies on the history of populism demonstrate that social movements have often relied on the distinction between the people and the elite: ranging from the different attempts to mobilize the populus dei (people of god) against the system of offices in the catholic church to the popular city revolts in early modernity, and then from bourgeois revolutions to large segments of the early labor movement, the reference to the people as opposed to the elites has always played a pivotal role (Dupuy, 2002; Hermet, 2001; Möller, 2020). As the French intellectual historian Pierre Rosanvallon has argued, the 19th century was a decisive stage for the spread of a people-centered politics. National statehood was consolidated and struggles for its constitutionalization became a central site of political conflict. Questions concerning how to conceive of the popular will and how it can be represented amounted to a controversial issue: "Since 1789 the instituted and the instituant, the people moving in the streets and the people embodied in representative institutions, the diversity of social conditions and the unity of the democratic principle were opposing each other" (Rosanvallon, 1998, p. 17). Though partial at the outset, nascent constitutional states established forms of popular legislation and reflected themselves as being authorized by the people as constituent power. Not least, the reference to the people was a point of departure within a politics that conceptualized under the category of "Bonapartism" and "Caesarism".8 The latter combined personalized leadership with plebiscitarian legitimation, as was the case in Louis Napoleon III's ascent to power that toppled France's democratic revolution in 1848 and paved the way for a "unitary combination" of popular sovereignty and monarchical authority (Groh, 1972, p. 732). However, the overall turn to the people was only one part of the story. From the early 19th century, a rather critical engagement with popular sovereignty could be identified as well. One could delve at this point into the classical works of the nascent discipline of sociology, but it was probably none other than G. W. F. Hegel who took, in his "Philosophy of Right," a rather critical stance on popular sovereignty. After an inquiry into the differentiation of social spheres, such as the state, the family, and the market, he advocated for a mixed constitution that should regulate the complexities of modern society instead of subordinating them to the sovereign will of the people. Hegel suspected the latter would lead to totalizing and, ultimately, destructive effects by imposing a political voluntarism that disregarded the historical achievements within these social spheres. He qualified popular sovereignty as "one of those confused thoughts which are based on a garbled notion [Vorstellung] of the people" (Hegel, 1991, §279, 319). He explained that, since popular sovereignty ran the risk of relying on "a formless mass," it was likely to undermine the "internally organized whole" of the state (Hegel, 1991, §279, 319). With this argument, Hegel set the scene for a whole strand of discussions revolving around the relationship between politics and popular sovereignty. Admittedly, it was not his defense of the state, but the skeptical remarks on achieving historical progress through a people-centered politics that were taken up by Left- and Young Hegelians and then migrated into activist circles.9 From then on, attempts to change society had to deal with a fundamental problem: on the one hand, society could be characterized by a differentiation of social spheres. Against this backdrop, holistic approaches to transforming this ensemble as a whole were considered as being likely to exert destructive effects. But on the other hand, society was conceived as a totality and, hence, a transformative politics required searching for "levers" or windows of opportunity that still transcend the whole context. The main question was: to what extent is a politics that relies on the popular will a viable course of action for overcoming the societal contradictions of modern society? Most importantly, Marx and Engels, whose works became the intellectual base for European Social Democracy, instigated a shift in evaluating popular politics. It has become a certain trend in recent political philosophy to make use of Marx's early writings in order to think about democracy and social freedom (Abensour, 2011; Honneth, 2016; Leipold, 2020). However, there is no running away from the fact that Marx critically discussed political action. Indebted to Hegel, he started from the assumption that bourgeois societies are regulated by an interplay of different forms in politics (state form), law (legal form), and civil society.10 Thus, Marx not only defended a bold conception of "true democracy" (Marx, 2010e, p. 30) in his early writings, but he was also interested in providing an explanatory model for how the hegemony of the emerging capitalist economy and its ideological tenets were consolidated through a mutual coupling (and separation) of the political, the economic, and the legal sphere. This point of departure had huge repercussions when it came to clarifying the role of political action. Given the circumstances of modern society, a people-centered politics could not be seen as the privileged site for inducing sudden social change. This led to political tensions within the circles of the early labor movement: as noted by Alan Gilbert, Marx adopted "a long-term strategic view and openly disdained immediate popularity" (Gilbert, 1981, p. 122). His "views differed fundamentally from those of more short-sighted democrats, anarchists, or communists who demanded instant victory (Weitling, Heinzen, Bakunin, Kriege, Ruge)" (Gilbert, 1981, p. 122). Marx remained ambivalent: on the one hand, he lauded democracy as the "solved riddle of the constitution" and defended popular sovereignty against Hegel's conception of statehood in the "Kritik des Hegelschen Staatsrechts" (Marx, 2010b, p. 29). On the other, he was highly critical of approaches to political action that aimed at resurrecting the Jacobin legacy of the French Revolution.11 This critical attitude can be reconstructed from his critique of French insurrectionism in the 1840s.12 By French insurrectionism, one has to understand the circles of revolutionaries—mainly inspired by Filippo Buonarroti's Jacobin activism in the late French Revolution and his later published book "Babeuf's Conspiracy for Equality" (Buonarroti, 1836)—whose aim was to incite an insurrection in the city of Paris and, thereby, commence a revolutionary process "in the name of the sovereign will of the people" (Deppe, 1970, p. 47).13 A central figure was the revolutionary Auguste Blanqui who amounted to political leader in France's revolution of 1830 and from then on stuck to an insurrectionist political strategy (Draper, 1986, 120 ff). Marx and Engels argued that the French insurrectionist circles undermined the "process of revolutionary development" because they envisaged launching "a revolution on the spur of the moment, without the conditions for a revolution" (Marx & Engels, 2010, p. 318). They qualified the insurrectionists as "alchemists of the revolution" who make use of "incendiary destructive of revolts which are to be all the more and in as their is (Marx & Engels, 2010, p. 318). In the later to Marx's writings on the struggles in Engels this he described the insurrectionist as in the which relied on with but to be as they not engage with the central tenets of modern society 2010, p. The political is a political because it within the of politics. The and more it is, the more is it of social The of political is the French Revolution The principle of politics is the will. The more and, therefore, the more the political is, the more it in the of the the more is it to the and of the and the more is it of the of social (Marx, p. The more and the more comprehensive is the political of a the more the will its in the of the that will be in it in political it the will as the of all and and the of a of the state as the the of the French (Marx, p. The approach into an the political that undermine the for in the for social change. As this approach revolves around the of the it that society is by the between and not by the contradictions between and within social spheres. This can be as a critique of people-centered politics. the popular will as the unity that in the political is not able to understand the of historical however, not solely through political but also through other of social change. to the legacy of the late French this popular voluntarism to a Jacobin and when it comes to and strategy approaches without that the of the people is the strategy of This that must always be to a of popular it was not it was not broad or it was A the radical activists and the and so on, with more and than However, they ultimately in many not to of will but to the of social By adhering to a political they have themselves of the for they this critique, Marx rejected French insurrectionism as well as popular to the It may be to at this who identified in Marx a his to a political of the p. one can identify an shift in people-centered instead of in and, in many attempts to change society through collective action centered on the popular will it in the of reformist or one must take in the more question concerning how political action is able to to the transformation of the systemic of modern societies at A revolution in of the existing power and of the a political But be without It needs this political as it needs and But its its its comes to the the political (Marx, p. In this the a conception of politics to the that up an to It was ultimately taken up by the social democratic current in the labor movement: to overcome the Jacobin it more to an perspective on capitalist societies and a politics centered on The of world history the the are on legal than on and The parties of as they are under the legal conditions by They with is the of under this and and look 2010, p. As to democracy and its role in the future not it a more part in than in countries with an But that not the when the of revolution of its a as the most radical bourgeois party has played itself as such in and as the of the whole bourgeois and such a the whole mass in it and which to be as In Marx and Engels a strategic approach and their to the at However, as it the of the popular will and popular sovereignty could not be by it to the and politics. The more that social democratic mass parties emerged in different the more the decisive conflicts around the of the people. Not the least, Marx his attitude in his late writings and with of the movement the of the is to be in the to the of As by this was mainly to Marx's engagement with the legal of in that ultimately led to structure From the European Social Democracy had its unions and social democratic parties emerged which were to a of and a conception of politics. But Marx was in his of a shift from popular to politics. In particular, European Social around the for the political system in the name of the the 1870s and by the of parties were to government by the people and political the First World War and to a extent those parties the main of democratic in p. The labor movement largely returned to people-centered politics and around the for As has demonstrated in his study on European Social Democracy, one can a shift from politics to popular from the activists were to the as a by it from the of the from the 1870s the people as mass became the central point of reference p. one in it all without all those who have no from or from a privileged then they the of the of But this would be a of different of that have more differences themselves than had the "people" of who as as the conditions of are have more at least, than p. that the could exert the within the people" and different of the to the point that the and the become p. the social should not be the trade but the of the people, who is able to react to of and no it no what or of the people it is able to all these and a of and capitalist p. was still to a he was about the need to the complexities of society to a and the popular will. between and the question concerning how to make of the between the critique and the of a people-centered politics in European Social to Marx's about the of political from the political to the the political system a constitutionalization in the 19th Though part in the capitalist ensemble of social the constitutional state its role in that to and society as a In his encompassing of the advent of modern the constitutional has demonstrated that of constitutional were emerging in most European of as well as to the and of p. existing it these to popular sovereignty. The turn to the people was a reaction to the fact that was established to the constitutionalization of the political The existing order was by the role of the people against the ruling constituted Rosa for strategic renewal from the on to the that this As European Social Democracy took part in the of modern society, it established internal of labor ranging from the in and to the trade unions that started to on with the was highly critical of social democracy to p. of achieving partial advances in these different spheres, advocated a political strategy that aimed at mobilizing the through a holistic Volksbewegung p. an because considered such

ConstellationsEarly View BOOK REVIEW Legitimation by constitution: A dialogue on political liberalism. , Alessandro Ferrara and Frank Michelman. Oxford University Press, 2022 Todd Hedrick, Corresponding Author Todd Hedrick [email protected] Correspondence Todd Hedrick Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA. Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author Todd Hedrick, Corresponding Author Todd Hedrick [email protected] Correspondence Todd Hedrick Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA. Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author First published: 03 June 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12690Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL No abstract is available for this article. Early ViewOnline Version of Record before inclusion in an issue RelatedInformation

ConstellationsEarly View ORIGINAL ARTICLE Self-transformation in the Anthropocene Karim Sadek, Corresponding Author Karim Sadek [email protected] Department of Philosophy, Marmara University, Istanbul Correspondence Karim Sadek, Department of Philosophy, Marmara Üniversitesi Göztepe Yerleskesi 34722, Kadiköy, Istanbul. Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author Karim Sadek, Corresponding Author Karim Sadek [email protected] Department of Philosophy, Marmara University, Istanbul Correspondence Karim Sadek, Department of Philosophy, Marmara Üniversitesi Göztepe Yerleskesi 34722, Kadiköy, Istanbul. Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author First published: 26 May 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12684 I thank the editors of this Special Section for their support and helpful comments throughout the writing process. I also thank Carmen Dege and Chris Little for their input on earlier versions of this article. Finally, I thank those who attended and participated in a guest lecture I gave for the course “Society, Ethics, and Environment” (co-taught by Önder Küçükural and Mehmet Ali Üzelgün at Ibn Haldun University) for their valuable insights and suggestions. Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Early ViewOnline Version of Record before inclusion in an issue RelatedInformation

Good persons exist, Agnes Heller famously wrote. And Richard Bernstein was a good person, in the everyday sense of the term and as Agnes defined it in her Philosophy of Morals. Following Agnes, can we explain why Dick made the existential choice to be a good person? No, she would have replied, at least not by the laws of causality. What we can show, is how Dick was a good person, by giving examples of the many moral choices he made over the course of his long and deeply engaged life—from the political stands he took, to the way he wrote philosophy, to the way he gave generously of himself to family, students, colleagues and friends. Dick's warmth and enthusiasm were infectious; his motivations transparent: What Dick wanted was to share with everyone he met his intense passion for living a good and meaningful life. With his colleagues and students at the New School, he shared this passion by building a strong sense of community—in the classroom, in faculty seminars and by serving brilliantly as chairman of the Philosophy Department for over 10 years—then as dean. Dick joined the New School faculty in the winter of 1989, to assume the daunting task of rebuilding a seriously damaged and troubled department of philosophy. I arrived 4 years later, in the summer of 1993, to begin a 7-year stint as dean of the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science, now called NSSR. Wasting no time, Dick took it upon himself to educate me, an anthropologist, about why Philosophy was so important to the future of the Graduate Faculty. And thanks to his high expectations for me and persistence, Dick enriched my intellectual life at the New School, as he did for so many others, and we, together with Carol, became good friends. I saw Dick for the last time on June 15. He looked frail and spoke openly about how much he had suffered over the last several months, but he was in good spirits, looking forward to having a little time in the Adirondacks, where he loved to spend his summers. He also spoke with pride and gratitude about having successfully finished the two courses he had been teaching over the spring semester on American Pragmatism and Hannah Arendt—yes, via Zoom—in spite of everything, without missing a single class, even if he had to hold some of them from his hospital bed. And his book manuscript, The Vicissitudes of Nature: From Spinoza to Freud, he completed that too. None of which, he hastened to add, would have been possible without the extraordinary support he had received from his doctoral student and research assistant Olga Knizhnik. Dick spoke as well about how much it had meant to him to be able to celebrate his 90th birthday with his family on the 14th of May. I began my personal tribute to Dick by quoting Agnes Heller, one of his most cherished colleagues and friends at the New School. Agnes, more than anyone else, had helped him rebuild the department. Speaking often about her with deep affection and admiration, Dick looked up to Agnes, he liked to say, as a role model for how to stay young—seemingly forever. Agnes turned 90 in May 2019; then died two months later while vacationing on Lake Balatón, where she spent 2 weeks every summer, swimming, hiking and renewing herself. Dick turned 90 in May 2022 and died two months later in his beloved Adirondacks, where he spent every summer renewing himself. The coincidence is striking and continues to haunt me, but it is also comforting in some strange way, as if preordained. If there is an afterlife, Dick and Agnes have surely found one another and picked up where they left off, debating an important philosophical question with their inimitable passion, while sipping a glass of champagne, something they enjoyed doing together over lunch, if you please, at an elegant restaurant near the New School. Judith Friedlander is Professor of Anthropology, Emerita Hunter College (CUNY)