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To evaluate and analyze, rather than merely describe, these two books on Hans Loewald, a kind of synoptic vision seems necessary. This is undoubtedly an extensive project—one that compiles the writings of no fewer than twenty-six authors, gathered into two anthologies: The Legacy and Promise of Hans Loewald (hereafter referred to as The Legacy and Promise) and The Emerging Tradition of Hans Loewald (hereafter referred to as The Emerging Tradition). A project that—as noted by the three editors, Rosemary H. Balsam, Elizabeth A. Brett, and Lawrence Levenson—aims to offer a kaleidoscopic view of Loewald's thought and his contribution to psychoanalysis.
Hence, I propose a particular philosophical framework to go beyond a description of the two excellent books. I attempt to position this project within what the American philosopher Wilfrid Sellars called the “logical space of reasons, of justifying and being able to justify what one says” (Sellars, 1956, p. 76). While this might initially appear to be a digression, I hope that it will ultimately provide a helpful path for examining these books—their structure, content, and rationale.
Several times in his writings, Richard Rorty , another American philosopher, expressed the hope that right-wing and left-wing Sellarsians, as he referred to them, would resolve their philosophical disputes more amicably than the “bloody battles” that occurred between the left and right Hegelians. Rorty was strongly influenced by Sellars, his esteemed teacher, and it is reasonable to assume that Rorty did not want to see his multifaceted thought torn apart in a reductive struggle between two factions (Brandom, 2015), the right wing and left wing of post-Sellarsians.
Unfortunately, for us psychoanalysts, such a hope for mutual respect between competing perspectives seems naive. Decades of rivalry in the psychoanalytic field—often at the cost of dogmatism—have already taken place, exacting a heavy personal toll. Yet now, in a polarized reality tha