Shattered Syllogisms: Andrew Cole's The Birth of Theory

Abstract

In the birth of theory, Andrew Cole sets out to prove a thesis that is more audacious than it might first seem: “Theory, as we have known it and practiced it for a century or more, finds its origin in Hegel—and Hegel himself finds his theory, his dialectic, in the Middle Ages” (xiii). In the face of the prevailing indifference, if not hostility, to questions of origin, descent, and inheritance in theory today (although Cole's “today” often seems to refer less to the present than to the francophone sixties and the anglophone eighties), we cannot acknowledge Hegel as the real father of theory, let alone understand the effects of theory's unknown paternity. Cole's statement of purpose is clear enough, and whatever ambiguity remains will be quickly dispelled: Hegel, he argues, “begot” theory and is thus “responsible” for it (x, xi). To position Hegel as the begetter or progenitor of theory, who is by virtue of this fact both causally and legally or morally responsible, is important here: it allows Cole to sort through multiple claimants (or suspects) and extend recognition where he feels it is due but has been denied. From this perspective, to complicate notions of origin and “birth” beyond what the title's Nietzschean reference would authorize—that is, to suggest that theory has neither birth nor origin but emerged through an unevenly developed and historically contingent concatenation of multiple causal series—is nothing more than an evasion, another way of saying that theory has many fathers, an absurdity that amounts to saying that theory has no (legitimate) father. Cole proposes to administer a kind of philosophical paternity test and thus to settle the matter once and for all.