9/11 and the Blindness of Intellectuals

The commemoration of the 9/11 attacks will take place in New York this weekend. All around the world, a host of reports, television shows and articles will revisit the events of Sept. 11, 2001 and take stock of what has changed in its wake during the last 15 years. Everyone, or almost everyone, agrees on one assessment: A kink in the world’s history was formed that day, the repercussions of which can still be felt to this day and will continue to be for a long time. However, understanding what we can see in the rear-view mirror is less simple. Analyses of the root causes of the attacks differ, as do interpretations of the political and military responses, particularly those of George W. Bush. In this stream of discussion, one point is still rarely perceived – the blindness of philosophers. It is a point that is worth pausing over and questioning.

Rereading the most notable texts on the subject of the attacks, written by renowned philosophers, makes for a strange experience. Predictably, stylish elaborations, grand and peremptory assertions and impressive rhetorical performances are all to be found. Despite all of that, in hindsight, there is an obvious and vast discrepancy between those virtuoso performances and the creeping reality of global terrorism that we are now experiencing in our daily lives. Over the years, a striking gap has appeared between subtle speeches and crude realities, between ethereal words and hard facts.

Sept. 11 must be considered a mystery. The French philosopher Jacques Derrida claimed that “we do not know, we do not think, we do not understand, we do not want to understand what happened in that moment.” We must first reject the evidence, which is largely considered to be ideological clichés or media manipulation. That means no mention of acts of war, of hatred of the West, nor of the will to destroy fundamental freedoms. While discussing 9/11 with Jürgen Habermas, a discussion that became the focus of his analysis of European politics, Derrida lingered on the notion of Ereignis (“event” or “coming”) in Heidegger’s history of being as a means of understanding the event and finally proposed an “unconditional refuge.”

The sociologist Jean Baudrillard maintained the view that “they did it, but we wanted it,” attributing the collapse of the towers and the fascination with images of the attacks to the suicidal desires of the West. For those who want to highlight “the spirit of terrorism,” the “truly” responsible parties were the United States, Western supremacy or any one of us … take your pick. Others immediately asked themselves “who profits from the crime” and concluded that it could be none other than the CIA, thus sparking conspiracy theories that have since flourished.

These are only some examples. A history of philosophical writings on 9/11 has yet to be written. It would show how anti-Americanism and anti-capitalism have prevented so many sharp minds from seeing the religious nature of this new terrorism as unique characteristics of the new war. Add to this the desire not to be taken for a sucker and mistrust of propaganda and it becomes a systematic denial of basic information. Of course, philosophers also have the indispensable role of critics, and therefore should dismantle prejudices and false evidence, but do they not also have a duty not to skip over the facts?

Instead of blaming the American empire, the towers’ arrogance or the influence of the images, we must scrutinize political Islamism, the unprecedented use of violence and the terrorist art of communication. Some have done so, certain voices in the wilderness. Today, there is an urgent need to analyze the implications of the intervening changes since 9/11. Because it is no longer symbols, like the twin towers or the Pentagon, which are targeted, but anyone living among the “non-believers” – in the street, sitting outside a bar, at a concert, at school, anywhere. The terrorists are no longer organized commando units of engineers, trained to fly planes in order to transform Boeings into bombs, but independent small-time delinquents, wielding a kitchen knife or a truck. To overcome this, we must make up for this time wasted on completely mistaken thinking as quickly as possible.