Stephen Toulmin Memorial
In the velvet night of the Venezuelan tropics I was knighted by Stephen Toulmin. We’d
arrived by small plane to a languishing airport and no taxis. The Italian constructivist Alviani who’d
been charged with organizing transport had three cars at his disposal, none of which worked.
Apparently this gave him a headache and he retired to bed. So we waited. And waited. Vendors tried
to unload trinkets on us in the dank heat of the late afternoon. Stephen sweated through a
discussion of why the concept of modernity needed to open into a family of related ways in which
cultures comprised modern life: “If you mean by modern life science and technology that is one
thing, ideologies of reason another, globalization of markets yet another, bureaucratization and
state formation, a sense of history another”, Cosmopolis stuff before the fact of that masterpiece.
Street boys tried to shine his shoes at emphatic moments, but he waved them aside. Eventually
someone from the museum arrived in a foul mood with three taxis that threatened to collapse at
each bump in the road.
In the twilight we ate pasta at Alviani’s apartment on the river. He’d revived enough to cook.
We chewed our way through the continuing debate. Over guavas and mangoes Stephen waxed
nostalgic: “Constuctivism preaches a single model of development with art leading the way but as
me old man Wittgenstein would have said, don’t assume things should always reduce to a single
model”. He finished off the thought in a mellifluous, restrained basso: “The world does not consist of
number alone you know.” We finished off fifth bottle of Lambrusco grateful that a thin breeze now
punctuated the humidity. Outside the windows stars now floated above the faint imprint of the
river. The sky had turned from purple to black.
“I would have marched in the procession today” I said out of the blue.
Stephen clapped his hands. “We must have a ceremony for your doctorate Herr Herwitz!”
His eyes darted about the room for the right props. A knight’s dark cape and two swords presented
themselves in a corner and he quickly fetched them. I thought to ask Alviani what they were doing
there but he’d conked out again. Someone flicked the lights, lit candles and Stephen asked me to
kneel.
“By the powers vested in me I pronounce you prince of the realm” he said, touching my
head with each sword. Then we celebrated like a cosy family on a river cruise sailing towards
uncharted territories.
The next morning we assembled at the museum. Half its buildings were unfinished because
the money had run out. In these quixotic ruins of modernity I began to wonder what realm I’d been
knighted for, and how I got there. I pieced it together like this. Stephen had become important to
these artists and museum people. That was why I had the chance to go to Venezuela. He was
important to them because he brought a philosopher’s wizardry down from the mountaintop to the
places where they lived. He knew how to interpret their languages of aspiration. They knew his
interventions would deepen their projects, make them more reflective about what they were doing.
How did they learn this about Stephen so quickly? By reading his books? Hearing him talk?
Over the years I saw it happen again and again. Very quickly people would realize Stephen
could bring artists, historians, scientists, policy makers, poets, sociologists, economists, political
theorists to the same table and find ways for them to agree--or agree to tolerate their
disagreements. Very quickly they realized he had the deft generosity to empower them. And he
would deliver, turning a project into an adventure. I was lucky to have shared in his adventures
across three continents.
Stephen used to say that one of the reasons he loved art was that unlike life, it tied up all the
loose ends. I would like to tell Stephen I still find his wizardry daunting, that it is a loose end I am
grateful to hear inside my head, part of the realm I wish to inhabit. But then he would reply in his
low, well tempered voice, “Danny, Danny, you do so dramatize don’t you”.
Daniel Herwitz