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The end of student activity groups?
By Kenneth Rapoza
Christian student groups are using the courts to attack the legality of student fees and changing the free speech debate on campus
(03/08/99)

Thong wars
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When asked not to go bare-assed at the campus pool, a professor makes it a constitutional issue
(03/08/99)

Pop culture studies turns 25
By C.K. McCabe
When Ray Browne founded the first department to study "Star Trek" semiotics and cartoon aesthetics, he expanded the boundaries of academic study forever
(03/05/99)

Vices of the mind
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How Kant blew my mind and changed my life
(03/03/99)

Beyond the bottom line
By Alec Appelbaum
Faced with the unpredictable world of global business, some MBA programs are searching for a new way to teach ethics.
(03/01/99)

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THE MONK, THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE CYNIC | PAGE 1, 2
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The discussion began calmly, with just enough academic panel-style boredom to make it exciting. Lapham introduced the participants with his trademark windiness, eventually relinquishing the floor to Revel. "We have realized that we've ignored Eastern philosophy," Revel said, going on to trace the Western world's "sudden and widespread interest in Buddhism." Speaking slightly more personally, Ricard framed his turn toward Buddhism as less of a defection from the West than a continuation of a larger passion he originally discovered in molecular biology -- "an enthusiasm for explaining external reality." Ricard went on to articulate his distinction between happiness and pleasure, suggesting that the West's interest in Buddhism might be related to the simple promise of increased happiness.

"Happiness should have a more lasting quality," he said, "so that once you have discovered within yourself this sort of inner peace, a sense of fulfillment, a sense of meaning, it doesn't really depend too much on outer circumstances. Whether they are good or bad, we can somehow use them."

The panel responded. Schell, Lapham and Richardson weighed in with words about harmony, peace and the search for meaning.

Finally it was Hitchens' turn. He leaned back, ran a hand through his hair and hit the ground running: "Many of us ... do not think that harmony is the great goal, or unity or peacefulness, [and] actually quite like hard questions for their own sake, and enjoy ... the life of the mind. I just thought if I didn't say this, it's just possible nobody would."

Hitchens, who recently testified for Ken Starr about the lunch-time Monica-laden commentary of his former friend, Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal, seemed anxious to confirm his contentious reputation. For all his graceful British badinage, Hitchens played the part of American jackass to an obnoxious T. As though parading his own notoriety, he spoke with breathtakingly hostile resolve. He called reincarnation "a pathetic belief," nirvana of the mind "a kind of hell," and to the question of how to live responded, "by disagreement." He was funny and caustic and upset. He offered Buddhism little in the way of patient inquiry.

And yet Hitchens -- disharmony incarnate -- deserves a place in an article about Revel and Ricard. Hitchens articulated the unspoken critique hovering above their discourse; his was the voice pausing to ask, "Is this even legitimate? Can this discussion occur?" While Revel may differ with Ricard as consistently as Hitchens does, he has consented to a dialogue -- perhaps, for Hitchens, this is something like surrender. Perhaps the true and stalwart cynic refuses to discuss, as he indeed did by the end of the evening.

It's unclear whether Hitchens was a wonderful or a terrible selection. His was an entrenched, and arguably brave, resistance to the fuzzy vibe floating above the panel discussion. His quasi-nihilism functioned as a perfect foil to Ricard's impassioned devotion, but then maybe a foil wasn't in order this time. Revel, despite profound disagreement with his son, modeled his portion of the dialogue in a spirit of understanding and curiosity, rather than one of antagonism and critique. On a strictly pragmatic level, as both Hitchens and Revel would surely have it, the former proved far more productive; not once did Revel refuse to answer a question or address a point, not once did he substitute venom for content.

Interestingly, Hitchens' tight argument brought him more than once to fifth century B.C. Athens. He admitted to this being his favorite universe, and spoke of it with surprising warmth. It was here -- citing Athens' perfect ideology, its egalitarianism and freedom and beauty -- that a truth about Hitchens seemed to coalesce in the evening. From his love for Classical Greece emerged, conversely, a kind of antipathy for the modern world. At least for an evening, his sole investment in the present day seemed to be the reveling in its failures, being the first and wittiest to pull back the curtain here and there. This was not a man to accept a tradition built upon faith. Ricard watched him calmly, but with a funny look. Maybe the look said, "I pity you, you who hate yourself and everyone else," but maybe he was just looking.

"Do you disagree with everything, including yourself?" Ricard asked at one point.

"Yes," snapped Hitchens.

It had turned ugly. Revel, with his big red impressive face, looked exhausted. Richardson looked angry. Ricard's grin had faded, and Lapham and Schell seemed uncertain as to whether all this was OK. The audience, in its gentle Berkeley way, seemed on the verge of either riot or a standing ovation.

But this worked. This was discord, and this was entertainment, and pleasure, and something less than happiness. There was vindication in the air for Ricard, had he been the man to appreciate vindication. Hitchens was the cynic at the love-in, the joker at the moment of silence, and people seemed to sense that all the wit in the world wouldn't get them anywhere deep. And while he may well have been the voice of reason, the mind unwilling to be "blissed out," as he once put it, by the warm glow of Ricard's attractive, extra-rational vision, one couldn't help picturing him in his next life, a mean little ant, scurrying around in a roomful of Buddhas.
SALON | March 10, 1999

Chris Colin is a writer living in Oakland, Calif. His last piece for Salon was about his music teacher and the failed suicide of Tchaikovsky.