In Memoriam: John Patrick Diggins (1935 – 2009)
by Advocate Staff
BILL KELLY
In the days since Jack Diggins’ death, I’ve been struck by how many times I’ve heard and read that Jack was beyond category: a contrarian, a maverick, a relentlessly independent thinker. To some extent, Jack cultivated that perception. His own assessment of himself as “to the right of the Left and to the left of the Right” might well serve as an epitaph for his remarkably productive career.
In many ways, Jack was sui generis. Funny, sharp, tough: a man whose appetites and expertise knew no bounds. But to insist that Jack was one of a kind is to risk casting him as an eccentric, a thinker who courted difference for its own sake. Worse still, it is to ignore his organic bonds with the American tradition he so brilliantly described. Jack’s affinity with the men and women whose lives and thought he chronicled was absolute. That is not to suggest that Jack confused criticism with autobiography; rather it is to say that Jack’s interest in the Founders, in Lincoln, in O’Neill, in Reagan, in Veblen and Weber, in the Old and New Left was grounded on their – and his – passionate engagement with the promise and the disappointments of American life.
Jack spent a good deal of time pondering the fault-line that separated the Declaration from the Constitution; his books and essays probe the consequences of that divide with a degree of eloquence and incision that placed him in the first-rank of intellectual historians. But, for me, Jack’s strongest affiliation was with the American pragmatists. Like Emerson, Jack regarded foolish consistency as the hobgoblin of little minds; but more important, he understood truth as a process rather than a destination. He knew in his bones that all views are contingent, subject to debate and revision. If that position made Jack a contrarian, the same can be said of most of the writers whose work he embraced.
Jack was angry when Gordon Wood described him as a cultural critic rather than an historian. I think that was so not simply because Wood’s wrong-headed remark insulted Jack’s professionalism, but because it assumed a divide Jack had devoted his life to bridging. Jack knew that ideology and experience were inextricably bound, that thought had consequence. He devoted his professional life to illuminating that nexus. Here too Jack stood squarely in the mainstream of American intellectual life.
I last saw Jack in late November when we attended a performance of The Grand inquisitor. Jack wasn’t well, but he had spent the morning before the matinee re-reading The Brothers Karamazov. As I rambled on about the place of the production in Peter Brook’s canon, Jack returned to Dostoevsky. Ivan’s parable, he maintained, was directed not against his brother Alyosha’s faith, but against the rationale established order always invokes to protect its privilege. Dostoevsky led Jack to Athens and from there to the Continental Congress and from there to Obama with stop-over’s at Reagan and Niebuhr. What had been, for me, a disappointing play began to glow and oscillate.
On the day we learned of Jack’s passing, Luke Menand emailed to ask, “What is the Irish word for mensch?” Mensch Jack was, and more than that, he was a man of letters. I can think of no higher accolade or one more fitting.
LOUIS MENAND
If there is an Irish word for mensch, Jack was it. As he did with many younger writers whose work caught his attention before they had achieved much of anything in the world’s eyes, he befriended me, took an interest in my career, argued with me about politics and ideas, and was a warm and generous and reliable soul. He was one of the people who made it possible for me to come to the Graduate Center, back in 1994, and that appointment changed my life. I will always be grateful to him for the confidence he showed in me and for his companionship during our years as colleagues. The course he, Joan Richardson, and I taught together, on Twentieth-Century Studies, is one of the most memorable in my teaching career — a real, and fruitful, experiment in interdisciplinarity. Jack’s work as an intellectual historian was more fearless, productive, and wide-ranging than mine will ever be, but some of our interests did overlap, and we had disagreements.
Those disagreements never, for a moment, eclipsed the feeling that we each wished each other well. This was, in fact, the most valuable lesson Jack taught all of us, and certainly me: that people who can argue about (say) the need for foundationalism in a democratic polity already have more in common with each other than they do with most other human beings on the planet. People who like to debate stuff like that need each other, and they ought to look out for each other. Jack’s whole way of being in the world was a refutation of the narcissism of small differences. He took ideas seriously because he took friendship and pleasure and life itself seriously, and he never made it seem as though the pursuit of any of these had to be at the expense of the others. He was a man it was very easy to love, and I miss him.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
MARYJANE SHIMSKY
As scholars, we are expected to come up with the novel idea — the as-yet unthought thought, the observation illuminating dark corners never before seen. It is hard to believe that Jack Diggins ever had a problem doing that. The thoroughness of his rebellion against conventional thinking can be fully appreciated only by reading some of his intellectual history. Forget the analysis, the structure of the argument — even his sentence structure seems somehow different.
Just as he followed his own intellectual path, he wanted his students to follow theirs. He enjoyed sharing his opinions in class, but had a profound respect for those who didn’t agree. The result could be an intellectual free for all. I’ll never forget leaving a seminar on John Adams shaking my head and wondering out loud to some classmates, “is Professor Diggins a monarchist?”
I can only imagine what he would have thought about my question. He took great joy out of disregarding ideological categories, because he was determined not to look at the world through the eyes of conventional wisdom. His interpretation of Ronald Reagan must have made some heads turn. I’m sure he meant every word of his praise for the conservative icon, but his book is no polemic: it is, I believe, the product of his intellect trying to make sense of his Irish American roots.
In a profession in which high intelligence is pretty much a prerequisite, he was frightfully smart. No matter how long, how detailed, how foreign the subject matter might have been to him, his few lines of critique at the end of a paper invariably would zero in on the fundamental strengths and weaknesses in the author’s thinking. In his own work, he was always in command of his information.
He enjoyed history tremendously. In class, or during office hours, an idea would sometimes seem to catch him by surprise. The nodding, the chuckle and the hand to the chin appeared straight out of central casting, but the way he shook his head, and the twinkle in his eyes — a combination of wonder and amusement — suggested that he was not teaching: he was having fun with the material and with those who were there to share the joke.
There was a unique quality to his relationship with his students. I never really could bring myself to call him Jack, as did some of my contemporaries, but there was always a sense — in his classes, in office hours, at his parties — that whatever authority he had (and I’m not sure he wanted much) did not come from rank. Whenever he critiqued my work, there was such an effort at earnest persuasion that it sometimes felt like a student to student discussion, just with more intellectual candlepower.
Professor Diggins created an extraordinary body of work; left his students far better for having known him; and led a full and, all told, happy life. Our existence would be charmed indeed, if the same is said of us by those we leave behind.
MITCHELL ROCKLIN
I had the distinct privilege of having Prof. Diggins as a teacher and advisor for the past two and a half years. I was on my way to meet him in his office when I learned he had passed away. With Prof. Diggins, there was never a need for an appointment. One could usually just drop by and find him there, hard at work. His dedication to his work and students was self-evident. Many of us in the history department knew he was ill, but the news came as a shock, both because we did not expect it so soon, and because it seemed impossible that Prof. Diggins could be missing. A professor expressed a common feeling: “Somehow I thought Jack would just get better.”
This kind man seemed above pettiness and rivalries, getting along with just about everyone around him, regardless of differing views. If you wandered by his office, you might just find yourself in a long, interesting conversation with him, covering everything from family to philosophy. He cared for his students as if they were close relatives.
Professor Diggins had a personality that included both dour realism and jolly humor. Laughter and irony allowed him to gracefully accept an imperfect world — one that, he never tired of telling us, while flawed, might be carefully and gradually improved with knowledge. “For with much wisdom there is much vexation,” wrote Ecclesiastes. Professor Diggins understood these words, ever aware of the tragedies of life and the difficulties involved in the acquisition and enjoyment of wisdom in our troubled existence. Along with this pointed realism, however, he was able to transcend the tragic. His happiest moments in class were when he could relate a humorous anecdote to explain a concept. He relished the opportunity to lighten the atmosphere. One of the Professor’s favorite lines was from Leo Strauss’s analysis of John Locke: “Life is the joyless quest for joy.” He certainly succeeded in giving his students much of it.
“Jack,” as his colleagues affectionately called him, was as humble as he was wise, and as soft-spoken as he was opinionated. In four classes and many conversations with him, I never witnessed him raise his voice save on one occasion — when a student argued for the relative nature of all knowledge. This was too much — wisdom exists and must be found. Within this quest, which he saw, in the philosophical tradition, as a joint venture between teacher and student, he displayed prudence and care. He doubted his own views along with those of others, and considered opposing opinions fairly and humbly. Maimonides considered anger and arrogance to be the worst possible measures of character, since they cloud judgment. This man knew neither. It showed in his speech, which was always soft-spoken. Ecclesiastes wrote that “The words of the wise spoken in quiet are more acceptable than the cry of a ruler among fools.” The wise, measured, and soft words of Dr. Diggins were certainly in keeping with this advice.
Finally, Prof. Diggins was never one to march in lockstep. He particularly enjoyed telling us an anecdote about his high school life, often repeating his claim that he “wasn’t a very good student in high school.” Upon seeing him staring out the window, his high school teacher yelled: “Diggins, stop staring out the window! Class, Diggins isn’t going to be anything but a truck driver!” Ironically, this is a fine description of what the young student became — an intellectual truck driver, endlessly seeking his own route to knowledge. Sadly, however, we are now the ones staring through a window, looking at the dark pane of glass by his office, wishing we could again see light inside, illuminating the face of the good professor at work.
