Maverick Philosopher

Year Ten Begins: In Praise of Blogosophy

Today I begin my tenth year as a 'blogosopher.'  Traffic is good: rare is the day when the page view count drops below 1200, and there are numerous surge days above 2000. I'm in this game 'for the duration,' as they say: as long as health and eyesight hold out.

In Praise of Blogosophy

Philosophy is primarily an activity, not a body of doctrine. If you were to think of it as a body of doctrine, then you would have to say there is no philosophy, but only philosophies. For there is no one universally recognized body of doctrine called philosophy. The truth of course is one not many. And that is what the philosopher aims at: the one ultimate truth about the ultimate matters, including the ultimate truth about how we ought to live. But aiming at a target and hitting it are two different things. The target is one, but our many arrows have fallen short and in different places. And if you think that your favorite philosopher has hit the target of truth, why can't you convince the rest of us
of that? 

Disagreement does not of course prove the nonexistence of truth, but it does cast reasonable doubt on all claims to its possession. Philosophy aspires to sound, indeed incontrovertible, doctrine. But the quest for it has proven tough indeed. For all we know it may lie beyond our powers. Not that this gives us reason to abandon the quest. But it does give us reason to be modest and undogmatic.

Philosophy, then, is primarily an activity, a search, a quest. Somewhere deep in the bowels of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Kant remarks that "Philosophy cannot be taught, we can at most learn to philosophize." I agree. It cannot be taught because it does not exist as teachable doctrine. Philosophy is not something we profess, except perhaps secondarily; it is something we do. The best professors of philosophy are doers of philosophy.  A professor, obviously, need not be a paid professor, an academic functionary.

How then should we do philosophy? Conversation face-to-face with the like-minded, intelligent, and sincere is useful but ephemeral and often hard to arrange. Jetting off to conferences can be fun especially if the venue is exotic and the tab is picked up your department. But reading and listening to papers at conferences is pretty much a waste of time when it comes to actually doing productive philosophy. Can you follow a technical paper simply by listening to it? If you can you're smarter than me.

So we ought to consider the idea that philosophy in its purest form, its most productive form, is 'blogosophy,' philosophy pursued by weblog. And there is this in favor of it: blogging takes pressure off the journals. Working out my half-baked ideas here, I am less likely to submit material that is not yet ready for embalming in printer's ink.

Related: Should One Stoop to a Defense of Philosophy or the Humanities?

666 at 6

Already 666 pageviews at 6 AM.  Good thing I consider numerology buncombe.  And that 24/7/365.

The Joy of Blog

Blogging attracts the like-minded, some of whom one meets face-to-face.  Sunday's breakfast has long since passed through the mortal coil, but I am still digesting the thoughts and insights of Peter and Steven.  I would never have met these wonderful people had it not been for this weblog.

You bait your hook and cast your line into the vasty deep.  Occasionally you snag a scum-sucker or bottom-feeder.  But they are easily dealt with.  Your patience is rewarded when you hook unto yourself a worthy denizen of Neptune's realm.

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Thoughts on Blogging

The Conservative Sociologist

'Conservative sociologist' smacks of an oxymoron, does it not?  So just for fun this morning I typed the phrase into my search engine of choice and was directed to The Conservative Sociologist where I encountered the graphic below.  The proprietor of the site is of the female persuasion.  We need more distaff bloggers, though not a federal program to encourage them.

High-Level Self-Denial

Going to the mat of meditation at the appointed time when the caffeine-induced riot of thoughts clamors for blogic expression.

One Thing You Won't Blog About

Nothing is not fodder for the omniloquacious blogger. Nothing but one thing: his being dead.

Not MavPhil Material

'Heisse Lisa' left a self-promoting junk comment that I promptly deleted.  If you call yourself 'Hot Lisa' or 'Shithead,' that by itself is grounds for banishment.  A little self-deprecation is good, but if you announce by your handle that your skull is feculent, then you demonstrate thereby that you are not MavPhil  material.

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The Blogger Slacker Award

2606 Pageviews at 5:55 A.M.?

I don't get it.  Ostrich nominalism is not that hot a topic. 

By the way, my ComBox is not for your self-promotion.  Try it, and you will have wasted your time.  Comment moderation is on, and I have an itchy 'delete finger.'  Trackbacks are off.  What a worthless utility that turned out to be.

How to Read an Online Article Without Distraction

I thank long-time blogger buddy Bill Keezer for pointing out something that should have been obvious. To read an online article at a money-grubbing site such as NRO, a site awash with advertising, moving images, noise, and what all else, click on the 'print' icon.  The article should  appear without the junk.  But you knew that already.

I may not have the prettiest 'skin' in the 'sphere, but at my site you will find no advertising, begging, moving images, noise . . . just solid content day after day, year after year.

 As one of my aphorisms has it, a blog is to be judged, not by the color of its 'skin' but by the character of its content.

I thank you for your patronage.  Rare is the day when traffic dips below 1000 pageviews.  In recent days spikes have been in the 3000-4000 range.  2012 was a banner year.

UPDATE:  The ever-helpful Dave Lull e-mails:

Usually I prefer using the free Readability browser add-on (the page formatted for printing is often too wide for me to read comfortably and is sometimes not an option):

http://readability.com/addons

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Why Online Advertising Need Not Die (And Could Just Get Better)

Traffic Surge

Today I received 4845 page views.  Yesterday's tally was 2659.  Why the surge?  I have no idea.  I don't reckon there's a whole lot of interest in constituent ontology out there in cyberland.

But I do humbly thank all and sundry, human and robotic, for their kind patronage.

Long-Time MavPhil Commenter, Robert V. Koepp, Passes Away at 60

I was saddened to hear from Malcolm Pollack just now that Bob Koepp, who commented extensively at both our sites, died on 29 February of this year.  Ever the gentleman, Bob contributed to the discussions at the old Powerblogs site and here at the Typepad incarnation of MavPhil.  He had an M. A. in philosophy and studied under Wilfrid Sellars.  He was such a mild-mannered  man that I sometimes wondered if my more acerbic asseverations offended him.  His comments are here.  Bob will be remembered.  My condolences to his family and friends.  As the obituary below says,  for Bob, "the questions mattered more than the answers."  He exemplified the philosophical spirit.

On a lighter note, I once made mention of Maynard G. Krebs, the Bob Denver beatnik character from the 1959-1963 sitcom, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.  Koepp remarked  that back then he thought Krebs the quintessence of cool. 

Koepp, Robert V. Our beloved Bob, age 60, of St. Paul, passed away on February 29. He was diagnosed just three months earlier with lung cancer, which he faced with admirable strength, caring above all for the comfort of those he loved. He is mourned by mother Helen (Rohe) Koepp of Hutchinson, siblings Reinhard of Tarpon Springs, FL; Ken (Jan) of Hot Springs Village, AR; Karen of Minneapolis; Marla (Bob) Lichtsinn of Fountain Valley, CA; Vern (Cindy) of Rush City; Irene (Dave) Schwartz of Litchfield; Marty of Minneapolis; Aaron (Laury) of Fort Collins, CO; Esther of Eagan; and Joanne (Randy) Fischer of Wausau, WI, as well as other dear relatives and friends. He was predeceased by father Reinhard W. Koepp and grandparents Herman and Augusta Koepp and Walter and Anna Rohe.

Bob, whose abiding wish was for racial equality, believed deeply in loving God and your neighbor. He grew up in Brownton, was a lifelong student of philosophy of science, ethics and bioethics (Gustavus, U Pitt, U of M), and coordinated oncology research at Children's Hospital, Minneapolis. Bob also loved nature and fishing, helping family members with jobs and projects of all kinds, especially woodworking, and music, especially Bach. He was astoundingly bright, and for him, in life or in energetic dialogue, the questions mattered more than the answers. He was selfless, generous and exemplary in so many ways, and he will be dearly missed. A memorial gathering is being planned. Remember him by supporting racial equality or nature organizations, or by doing a random act of kindness.

                                                Published in Star Tribune on March 4, 2012

The Constructive Curmudgeon

I don't know whether he is an antediluvian and a bibliomaniac, but Douglas Groothuis is a self-professed curmudgeon, albeit of a constructive stripe. I am not persuaded by his case for Biblical inerrancy, but I find his political observations astute, as in this list of reasons not to vote for Obama.  Read the list!

By the way, my opening sentence illustrates the principle that the antecedent of a pronoun need not come before  (in the order of reading) the pronoun of which it is the antecedent despite the following bit of schoolmarmishness from Grammar Girl:

Our second antecedent problem is what’s called “anticipatory reference,” which Bryan Garner calls “the vice of referring to something that is yet to be mentioned (5)," meaning that the writer puts the pronoun before the antecedent—a no no.

I say to hell with that.  I opened with a beautiful classy sentence.  Grammar Girl needs a good spanking not only for endorsing this stupid rule of the dumbed-down and inattentive but also for her use of 'no no' baby talk.

I should rant more fully on pronouns, their antecedents, with an application to Obama's "You didn't build that."

I do have a fine rant here on baby talk and first-grade English.

Thoughts on Blogging

A fellow blogger inquires, " How did you get your blog 'noticed' or 'visited'? And how long did it take? I have had a few spikes from your blog and American Catholic, but the visits seem to have slowed down. Of course, it may be that getting people interested involves actual writing, as opposed to simple link collection.

1.  In the early days of the blogosphere, over ten years ago now, weblogs were mainly just 'filters' that sorted through the WWW's embarrassment of riches and provided links to sites the proprietor of the filter thought interesting and of reasonable quality.  So in the early days one could garner traffic by being a linker as opposed to a thinker.  Glenn Reynold's Instapundit, begun in August 2001, is a wildly successful blog that consists mainly of links.  But there are plenty of linkage blogs now and no need for more, unless you carve out  a special  niche for yourself. 

2.   What I find interesting, and what I aim to provide, is a blend of original content and linkage delivered on a daily basis.  As the old Latin saying has it, Nulla dies sine linea, "No day without a line."  Adapted to this new-fangled medium: "No day without a post."  Weblogs are by definition frequently updated.  So if you are not posting, say, at least once a week, you are not blogging.  Actually, I find I need to restrain myself by limiting myself to two or three posts per day: otherwise good content scrolls into archival oblivion too quickly.

Here is my definition of 'weblog':  A weblog is a frequently updated website consisting of posts or entries, usually short and succinct, arranged in reverse-chronological order, containing internal and off-site hyperlinks, and a utility allowing readers to comment on some if not all posts.

'Blog' is a contraction of 'weblog.'  Therefore, to refer to a blog post as a blog is a mindless misuse of the term on a par with referring to an inning of a baseball game as a game, a chapter of a book as a book, an entry in a ledger as a ledger, etc.  And while I'm on my terminological high horse: a comment on a post is not a post but a comment, and one who makes a commenter is a commenter, not a commentator.  A blogger is (typically) a commentator; his commenters are -- commenters.

There are group blogs and individual blogs.  Group blogs typically don't last long and for obvious reasons, an example being Left2Right.  (Of interest: The Curious Demise of Left2Right.) Please don't refer to an individual blog as a 'personal' blog.  Individual blogs can be as impersonal as you like. 

3. I am surprised at how much traffic I get given the idiosyncratic blend I serve up.   This, the Typepad version of MavPhil, commenced on Halloween 2008.  Since then the site has garnered 1.4 million page views which averages to 1045 page views per day.  In recent months, readership is around 1300-1700 p-views per diem with various spikes.  3 July saw a spike of 2421 p-views.  Don't ask me why.  Total posts: 3489.  Total comments:  5644.

Now to answer the question.  How did I get my site noticed?  By being patient and providing fairly good content on a regular basis.  I don't pander: I write what interests me whether or not it interests anyone else.  Even so, patience pays off in the long run.  But it will take time: I've been at it for over eight years using three different service providers.   I don't solicit links or do much to promote the site.  I bait my hook and cast it out into the vasty deeps of cyberspace.  I have managed to snag many interesting, high-quality 'fish.'  You could say I have become 'a fisher of men.'  Comment moderation keeps the bottom-feeders and scum-suckers at bay.  (That's a bit of a mixed metaphor wrapped in a bad pun.)

Blogging is like physical exercise.  If you are serious about it, it becomes a daily commitment and after a while  it becomes unthinkable that one should stop until one is stopped by some form of physical or mental debilitation.

Would allowing comments on all posts increase readership?  Probably, but having tried every option, I have decided the best set-up is the present one: allow comments on only some posts, and don't allow comments to appear until they have been moderated. 

The Blogger Slacker Award

I hereby present the coveted MavPhil Blogger Slacker Award to Harriet Baber of The Enlightenment Project.  So far this year, she has uploaded a grand total of two posts.  In 2011 she managed to scribble only eleven.  That averages to less than one a month.  It's a pity: her cantankerous and idiosyncratic entries  make for enjoyable reading.

Other good blogs infrequently updated: Jim Ryan's Philosoblog and Franklin Mason's The Philosophical Midwife.

 

Vanity Plates

I reckon most motorists find vanity plates distasteful.   Upon seeing a plate bearing the letters 'Ph.D.' or 'M.D.' or 'J.D.,' the response is likely to be: BFD! In any case, who needs vanity plates when one can have for free one's very own vanity blog? And weblogs have this advantage: they are not in people's faces. You must freely decide to visit a site, and if you don't like what you find there, you bear at least half of the blame.

Would Ortega Have Been a Blogger?

Julian Marias on his master, Ortega y Gasset:

Throughout his life he wrote circumstantial, occasional, studies, in which he went straight to the point, to say something, to  communicate to the reader -- a very particular reader, whose figure  gradually changed over the course of time -- certain truths, certain warnings, certain very concrete exhortations. To do so he had to put into play the totality of his philosophical thought . .  . . (Julian Marias, Jose Ortega y Gasset: Circumstance and Vocation, tr. Lopez-Marillas, University of Oklahoma Press, 1970, p. 235.)

Typos and the Pleasures of Blogging

One of the pleasures of blogging, for me at least, is re-reading what I have written.  But then I discover the typographical errors.  I seem to be almost blind to them: I see past words to their sense, though sense is not something literally to be seen. (Here, in nuce, is yet another argument against physicalism.)

How can I fail to see a typo in a two-sentence post that I have re-read many times?  Here is what I just now discovered and corrected:

Aporeticians qua aporeticians do not celebrate Christmas. The celebrate Enigmas.

We see what we want to see.  We also sometimes see what we don't want to see.  I went hiking with a guy once.  We took his car.  A third guy persuaded the first to drive to a trailhead that didn't interest him.  He was in a bad mood as a result.  After the hike, he looked at a rear tire and cursed his having a flat.  I said, "No flat, it's just the way the tire is distended by its contact with that rock." He began to argue with me.  I insisted there was no flat.  I was right.  Obviously, he didn't want there to be a flat, but that's exactly what he, or his bad mood, saw.

Of Brussels Sprouts and Professor Mondo

Professor Mondo describes himself as follows:

I am a medievalist at a small college in a small college town. I like reading, writing, music, and thinking — practicing any of these individually or in combination. Turnoffs include Brussels sprouts, bad music, and creeping totalitarianism.

Excellent, except I simply do not understand food aversions.  Nothing edible is foreign to me.  Pursuing the Terentian parallel into the precincts of (bad) humor:  I am edible; nothing edible is foreign to me.

Brussels sprouts were on the menu at Thanksgiving, and mine were pronounced delicious by all parties to the feast.  But you have to steam the hell out of them and then drench them in a good Hollandaise sauce, itself laced with Tabasco, that marvellous Louisiana condiment simply unsurpassed in its class.

The same steaming-and-saucing treatment works wonders with broccoli and other stink-weeds.

There is no God but God and 'Coffee' is His Name

Image taken from Appeared-to-Blogly, the proprietor of which states that the two loves of his life are coffee and books.  For expressing that sentiment alone, he deserves and receives a link.

Right Side Bar Update

I've been slacking off when it comes to the right side bar.    I apologize for not linking to some of you who  link to me:  I'm a lazybones when it comes to 'housekeeping' and technical minutiae. Here's what's new:

• On-site search engine added.  Try it with 'sex,' 'lust,' 'greed,' 'money.'
• Ad Free Blog logo added. Click on it!
• Off-site Google engine added.
• Daily archives utility added.
• TypePad People link added.
• Typepad badge added.
•  Blogroll expanded.

Third Anniversary of the TypePad Incarnation of Maverick Philosopher

This weblog commenced  on 4 May 2004 and has been in operation for seven and a half years.  This, the latest incarnation, the Typepad version, began on Halloween 2008.  Here are the posts from three years ago. Typepad is not the perfect platform; I doubt if there is one.  But it is superior for my purposes to the crappy Blogger, the defunct Powerblogs, and the adequate WordPress.

Readership is trending upwards.  I now routinely receive 1,000 to 1,700 pageviews per day.  The total pageview count for the last three years is now over one million: 1,029,176 as of a few moments ago. That averages to 939.89 pageviews/day with 2,828 total posts and 4,971 comments.

Can you say cacoethes scribendi?

I've missed only a few days in these seven and a half  years so it's a good bet I'll be blogging 'for the duration.'  It's like reading and thinking and meditating and running and hiking and playing chess and breathing and eating and drinking coffee. It is not something one gives up until forced to.  Some of us are just natural-born scribblers.  We were always scribbling, on looseleaf, in notebooks, on the back of envelopes, in journals daily maintained.  This is just an electronic extension of all of that. 

Except now I conduct my education in public.  This has some disadvantages, but  they are vastly outweighed by the advantages.  I have met a lot of interesting and stimulating characters via this blog, many in the flesh.  You bait your hook and cast it into the vasty deeps of cyberspace and damned if you don't snag some interesting fish.  The occasional scumsucker and bottomfeeder is no counterargument.

I thank you for your patronage, and I hope my writings are of use not just to me. 

First Things

A tip of the hat to Joe Carter of First Things who links to and substantially quotes from my Could the Mind be the Brain? 

On the topic of original sin which is exercising me these days I recommend an excellent First Things article by Edward T. Oakes, Original Sin: A Disputation.

And I note that philosophers Christopher Tollefsen and Alexander Pruss have a piece entitled, The Case Against False Assertion.

Why Blog?

To know your own mind.  To actualize your own mind. To attract a few like-minded travellers on the road to truth.  (And to  learn how to write in this pithy, telegraphic, and  non-academic style.)

Another Reader Who Prefers Comments Disabled

Yesterday I mentioned that I have received e-mail from readers who prefer blogs that do not allow comments. Here is another just over the transom from a reader in Lincoln, England:

One of the reasons, but not the most important consideration, why I read your blog is because you don't permit comments. There is a surfeit, which includes me now and then, of inane commenters on the internet - enough to satisfy anyone addicted to the puerile opinions of strangers.

Blogs, or some of them anyway, are a form of vanity publishing. After all, a first rate mind with something original to say could write a book and have it published in the regular way. So why bother blogging?  But commenting on someone's blog is even more vain. The commenter desires to disseminate his second-hand views and inflict his opinions on a blog’s readership without the trouble of producing a thoughtful discourse in the first place.

Commenters are parasites in the blogosphere. If I had anything original and sagacious to say, and I could say it eloquently, then I could inform the attentive world on my own blog. Regarding the impact of eloquence: Not many  bloggers can retain a discriminating audience by repeatedly exploring serious topics with stylish felicity. 

I would qualify the "Commenters are parasites" remark with a 'most' or a 'many.'  I have received excellent comments over the years that have helped me improve my thinking.  As for vanity, I admit that there is something vain about blogging, mine included.  But is not all self-presentation and self-expression vain when measured by monkish standards? 

There is a Greek orthodox monastery in the desert not far from here.  The monks there are allowed no internet access.  And that is as it should be.  Whatever the value of monasticism and world-renunciation, internet access is incompatible with it.  Or so say I.  I would expect The Blogging Monk to disagree.

Why I Don't Allow Comments

Why don't I allow comments on most of my posts?  Part of the reason is the 'high level' of discussion that tends to occur in threads attached to posts that address 'hot button' issues.  A good example is the 'commentary' elicited by Why Sexism is Obsolete over at Victor Reppert's place.  Not an edifying spectacle. 

Curiously, the lack of comments does not seem adversely to affect my traffic.  In fact, I have e-mails from people who positively like the paucity of comments.

Second Thoughts: A Philosophy Blog

Readers who have stuck with me over the years will remember commenter 'Spur' whose comments were the best I received at the old Powerblogs site.  Safely ensconced in an academic position, he now enters the blogosphere under his real name, Stephen Puryear.  His weblog is entitled Second Thoughts.

I recently reposted from the old blog Hume's Fork and Leibniz's Fork which is in part a response to 'Spur.' His counter-response is here.

In Praise of Blogosophy

Philosophy is primarily an activity, not a body of doctrine. If you were to think of it as a body of doctrine, then you would have to say there is no philosophy, but only philosophies. For there is no one universally recognized body of doctrine called philosophy. The truth of course is one not many. And that is what the philosopher aims at: the one ultimate truth about the ultimate matters, including the ultimate truth about how we ought to live. But aiming at a target and hitting it are two different things. The target is one, but our many arrows have fallen short and in different places. And if you think that your favorite philosopher has hit the target of truth, why can't you convince the rest of us of that? 

Disagreement does not of course prove the nonexistence of truth, but it does cast reasonable doubt on all claims to its possession. Philosophy aspires to sound, indeed incontrovertible, doctrine. But the quest for it has proven tough indeed. For all we know it may lie beyond our powers. Not that this gives us reason to abandon the quest. But it does give us reason to be modest and undogmatic.

Philosophy, then, is primarily an activity, a search, a quest. Somewhere deep in the bowels of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Kant remarks that "Philosophy cannot be taught, we can at most learn to philosophize." I agree. It cannot be taught because it does not exist as teachable doctrine. Philosophy is not something we profess, except perhaps secondarily; it is something we do. The best professors of philosophy are doers of philosophy.  A professor, obviously, need not be a paid professor, an academic functionary.

How then should we do philosophy? Conversation face-to-face with the like-minded, intelligent, and sincere is useful but ephemeral and hard to arrange. Jetting off to conferences can be fun especially if the venue is exotic and the tab is picked up your department. But reading and listening to papers at conferences is pretty much a waste of time when it comes to actually doing productive philosophy. Can you follow a technical paper simply by listening to it? If you can you're smarter than me.

So we ought to consider the idea that philosophy in its purest form, its most productive form, is 'blogosophy,' philosophy pursued by weblog. And there is this in favor of it: blogging takes pressure off the journals. Working out my half-baked ideas here, I am less likely to submit material that is not yet ready for embalming in printer's ink.

Site Stats

MavPhil readership continues to grow.  It is not uncommon now to have spikes into the 1300-1600 range.  Yesterday saw 1399 page views.  Some of its driven by the social media, Facebook and Twitter mainly.  I am approaching the 1000 page view per diem threshhold.  Not bad, given the forbidding topics I tackle in these pages. 

I owe Joe Carter of First Things a hat tip for his linkage.  Thanks, Joe!

Introverts and Blogging

The blogosphere makes possible the sort of socializing and 'sharing'  -- to use a squishy word -- acceptable to an introvert. Long live the 'sphere!

By the Character of its Content

I should like my blog to be judged, not by the color of its 'skin,' but by the character of its content.

Maverick Philosopher 7th Blogiversary

I began this weblog seven years ago today in 2004.  My seventh year ended well yesterday with 1717 pageviews for the day and with Dennis Prager reading from one of my posts on his nationally syndicated radio show.   

Some say that blogging is dead.  Read or unread, whether by sages or fools, I shall blog on.  A post beats a twit tweet any day, and no day without a post.  Nulla dies sine linea.   It is too early to say of blogging what Etienne Gilson said of philosophy, namely, that it always buries its undertakers, but I am hopeful.  After all, a weblog is just an online journal, and journal scribbling has flourished most interestingly for centuries. 

To put it romantically, blogging is a vehicle for the relentless quotidian sifting, seeking, and questing for sense and truth and reality without which some of us would find life meaningless.

This, the fourth version of Maverick Philosopher, was begun on 31 October 2008.  I thank you for your patronage.

Why Blog?

Here's why.

On Comments

From the mail:

. . . I also wanted to thank you for hosting a blog where you disable comments half the time, and I mean that sincerely. I'm very tired of comment-culture, and it's nice to go to an interesting blog where the blogger seems focused on producing thoughtful and interesting things to read, rather than providing raw meat for comment-warriors to spar over.

Looking forward to more, as ever.

 

Who is Dave Lull?

If you are a blogger, then perhaps you too have been the recipient of his terse emails informing one of this or that blogworthy tidbit.  Who is this Dave Lull guy anyway?  Patrick Kurp of Anecdotal Evidence provides an answer:

As Pascal said of God (no blasphemy intended) Dave is the circle whose center is everywhere in the blogosphere and whose circumference is nowhere. He is a blogless unmoved mover. He is the lubricant that greases the machinery of half the online universe worth reading. He is copy editor, auxiliary conscience and friend. He is, in short, the OWL – Omnipresent Wisconsin Librarian.

For other tributes to the ever-helpful Lull see here.  Live long, Dave, and grease on!

Thanks, Joe Carter

Joe Carter at First Things links to my The Difference Between Me and You.  Thanks, Joe.  First Things is first-rate. "Then why isn't it on your blogroll?"  Because I'm lazy.

In Defense of Eclecticism

From an English reader:

The extraordinary eclecticism of the Maverick Philosopher blog has struck me with unusual force just recently. This diversity of interest  is what keeps me reading - though sometimes I stare at your commentaries in ignorant awe.

I'll never get up to speed with many of your discussions, and give up on some of them. I've wondered how many of your readers are capable of understanding at whatever level you choose to communicate.

Although the kind reader praises my eclecticism, his comment provides me an occasion to mount a defense of it.

I've had people ask me why I don't just stick to one thing, philosophy, or, more narrowly, my areas of expertise in philosophy.  Some like my philosophy posts but cannot abide my politics.  And given the overwhelming preponderance of liberals and leftists in academe, my outspoken conservatism not only reduces my readership but also injures my credibility among many.  I am aware of that, and I accept it.  Leftists, being the bigots that many of them are, cannot take seriously anything a conservative says.  But conservatives ought nevertheless  to exercise their free speech rights and exercise them fearlessly, standing up for what believe to be right.  Surely, if liberals are serious about diversity, they will want a diversity of ideas discussed!  Or is it only racial and sex diversity that concern them? 

I should add that I do not hold it against any young conservative person trying to make his way in a world that is becoming ever more dangerously polarized that he hide his social and political views.  It is easy for a tenured individual, or one like me who has established himself in independence, to criticize those who hide behind pseudonyms.   I hesitate to criticize, not being exposed to the dangers they are exposed to.  That being said, I hate pseudonyms.  Do you have something to say?  Say it like a man (or a woman) in your own name.  Pseudonyms are for wimps and cyberpunks, generally speaking.  I am reminded of Charles Carroll, the only Catholic signatory to the Declaration of Independence.  He signed his name 'Charles Carroll of Carrollton' which leaves little doubt  about his identity. There is such a thing as civil courage.

My weblog is not about just one thing because my life is not about just one thing.  As wretched as politics is, one ought to stand up for what's right and do one's bit to promote enlightenment.  Too many philosophers abdicate, retreating into their academic specialties. (Cf. The Abdication of Philosophy: Philosophy and the Public Good,  ed. Freeman, Open Court, 1976)  Not that I am sanguine about what people like me can do.  But philosophers can contribute modestly to the clarification of issues and arguments and the debunking of various sorts of nonsense.  Besides, the pleasures of analysis and commentary are not inconsiderable.

"But why the polemical tone?"

I say polemics has no place in philosophy.  But it does have a place in politics.  Political discourse is unavoidably polemical. The zoon politikon must needs be a zoon polemikon. ‘Polemical’ is from the Greek polemos, war, strife. According to Heraclitus of Ephesus, strife is the father of all: polemos panton men pater esti . . . (Fr. 53) I don't know about the 'all,' but strife  is certainly at the root of politics.  Politics is polemical because it is a form of warfare: the point is to defeat the opponent and remove him from power, whether or not one can rationally persuade him of what one takes to be the truth. It is practical rather than theoretical in that the aim is to implement what one takes to be the truth rather than contemplate it.  'What one takes to be the truth': that is the problem in a nutshell.  Conservatives and leftists disagree fundamentally and nonnegotiably.  We won't be able to achieve much if anything by way of convincing each other; but we will clarify our differences thereby coming to understand ourselves and our opponents better.  And we may even find a bit of common ground.

"OK, you've explained the admixture of politics.  But you talk about such a wide range of philosophical topics.  Isn't there something unprofessional about that?  Surely you are not an expert with respect to every topic you address!"   

There is no good philosophy without a certain amount of specialization and 'technique.'  Not all technical pilosophy is good, but most good philosophy is technical.  Too many outsiders wrongly dismiss technical philosophy as logic-chopping and hairsplitting.  That being understood, however, specialization can quickly lead to overspecialization and a concomitant loss of focus on the ultimate issues that brought one to philosophy in the first place, or ought to have brought one to philosophy in the first place.  There is something absurd about someone who calls himself a philosopher and yet devotes most of his energy to the investigation of anaphora or epistemic closure principles.  There is nothing wrong with immersing oneself in arcana: to each his own.  But don't call it philosophy if burrowing in some scholarly cubbyhole becomes your be-all and end-all.

Study EVERYTHING, join nothing.

Blog and Post

It's only blog and post but I like, like it, yes I do!

Current MavPhil Site Stats

This, the Typepad incarnation of Maverick Philosopher, commenced operations on 31 October 2008.  Since that date there have been 722,386 pageviews which averages to 876.68 pageviews per day. The site boasts 2107 posts and 4017 comments.  Recent surges: 1369 pageviews on 27 January and 1248 on 1 February.  I am somewhat surprised at this relatively high level of traffic given the arcane topics I write about.  Many thanks to those who visit.

I write out of an inner need, and would do so if I had no readers, driven by what drove me to maintain an off-line journal for the last 40 years.  But better read than unread.  Which reminds me of Schopenhauer's observation, "Forever reading, never read."

Halloween 2010

Maverick Philosopher moved to TypePad two years ago this night. Here are the posts from two years ago.  TypePad has proven to be a very good platform with an extremely reliable server.

Brevity

Brevity is the soul of blog.

The Two Kinds of People and the Manifold Uses of Blogging

I once worked as a mail handler at the huge Terminal Annex postal facility in downtown Los Angeles. I was twenty or twenty one. An old black man, thinking to instruct me in the ways of the world, once said to me, "Beell, dey is basically two kahnds a people in dis world, the fuckahs and the fuckees, and you gonna have to decide which side you gonna be on." This morning I found the thought expressed with a bit more elegance by Giacomo Leopardi (1798- 1837) in his Pensieri:

The human race, from the individual on up, is split into two camps: the bullies and the bullied. Neither law nor force of any kind, nor advancement in civilization and philosophy, can prevent men now or in the future from belonging to one of these two camps. So, he who can choose, must choose. Although not everyone is able, nor is the choice always available. (Pensieri [Thoughts], tr. Di Piero, Louisiana State University Press, 1981, p. 69)

Am I endorsing the alternative?  No. I am merely presenting it for your consideration.

My posts are not all of the same type. Some are just notes to myself, records of what I am reading and thinking about. Others are meant to draw the reader's attention to this or that for his edification or delectation. Some carefully argue a thesis I believe to be true. Others merely assert a thesis I believe to be true. Some are sloppy and impressionistic. In others, the rigor mentis approaches rigor mortis.

Some posts are aphoristic. But don't assume that an aphorism cannot have deep and rigorous and systematic thought at its origin. Some posts are polemical. There are people who do not occupy the space of reasons so that attempting to engage them in that space is a fool's errand. They are in need of defeat or perhaps therapy, not rational persuasion. The verbal equivalent of a blow to the head or a kick in the ass will do them more good than a patient setting-forth of reasons beyond their comprehension.

The uses of blogging are manifold.

Philosophia Perennis

Thanks to Philip Blosser the Pertinacious Papist for reposting one of my old entries.  (Amazing what one finds while on ego surfari!)  And here are some reminiscences of Dietrich von Hildebrand by an undergraduate teacher of mine.  There are plenty of other interesting posts on this site.

Matt and Madeleine Flannagan

M and M.  These two have been good to me over the years.  They credit me with inspiring them to enter the blogosphere.

Thank You Zoe Pollock of The Daily Dish

When I logged on yesterday, I was surprised to see that my readership was way up: by the end of the day I had logged 2,698 page views for the day.  That's about double what I was getting the few days preceding.  Here is the link from Zoe Pollock. 

Hell, if I knew she was going to link to that meditation on death and Hitchens, I would have polished it.  Almost everything I post on this site is first-draftish.  That is the nature of the 'sport' of blogging.  The idea is to see if you can bang out something interesting, substantive, penetrating, muscular yet elegant, without spending the whole day doing it.

I have been blogging for over six years now on a daily basis. Something tells me I'm in it for the duration.  It has added very considerably to the quality of my life, especially because of the likeminded friends I have made.  You guys know who you are.  The social networking that the Internet makes possible solves a very nasty problem of human relations:  How can one find people one can relate to?

Taking a Few Days Off

I should be back to blog on Thursday.  I'll leave you this hot August evening with this '40s rendition of "Don't Get Around Much Any More" by Lina Romay. 

Did I hear her sing, " Couldn't BARE IT without you; don't get around much any more"?

We Philosophize Best With Friends

Aristotle says that somewhere, but I forgot where.  In any case, it is true as I verified once again yesterday in Tempe, where I met up with Steven Nemes, Mike Valle, Peter Lupu and his student Scott.  Before joining them I stopped at the library where I borrowed Thomas McKay's Plural Predication and Douglas Hyde's I Believed. 

The conversation went on for about five hours from 2 to 7.  The 19 year old Nemes has made a fairly thorough study of my book on existence (see here for links to the ten posts he has written about it) and we discussed some topics from the book.  He really understands me, and has a keen eye for problems potential and actual.  I jokingly call Nemes my nemesis.  We also discussed free will and Biblical inerrancy.  Steven floated some interesting ideas that he then today began to work out in this post.

It occurred to me today that Peter and I, sitting and smoking out in front of the Churchill cigar emporium, did a good job of instantiating the role of Sidewalk Socrates, a role Peter learned from his friend and teacher, Sidney Morgenbesser.  "There are people who have a passion for discourse, who are addicted to debate, who live in a world of constant conversation, and Morgenbesser was among the purest examples of the type."  The description fits Peter as well.  But I chided Peter for being a 'corrupter of youth' when he offered Steven cigarettes.

 

Don Colacho's Aphorisms

Ah, the webbiness of the Web!  I used an aphorism of Nicolás Gómez Dávila three days ago for purposes of logical analysis and received a comment from one 'Stephen' who is the proprietor of an interesting site devoted to translations of Don Colacho's aphorisms.  The blog is appropriately entitled Don Colacho's Aphorisms.  Please do check it out if you are a lover of aphorisms.  His are even better than mine, if I do say so myself.  Here is an example:

“Social” is the adjective that serves as a pretext for all swindles.

Excellent! If I may be permitted to supply an example: social justice.

Another good aphorist is Deogolwulf, proprietor of The Joy of Curmudgeonry.  Here is an example of one of his fewtrils:  "The common man is never so clever as the politician says and never so stupid as the politician believes."

John Pepple on the Need for a Cultural Revolution

I drew your attention to John Pepple's weblog, I Want a New Left, a few days ago.  Pepple identifies himself as a leftist, but what's in a label?  If he were characteristic of leftists, which he isn't, I would  have little or no problem with them.  I find myself wholly in agreement with his post, We Need a Cultural Revolution.  His topic is violent crime among the poor, and how the rebellious attitudes propagated by the 'Sixties Left have had terrible consequences for the poor without harming the well-off who spread the pernicious attitudes and who, after sloughing off their rebelliousness, slid comfortably back into the establishment.  Excerpts, emphasis added:

The problem goes back to that cultural revolution called the Sixties, because this sort of thing [extreme gang violence] did not happen before that decade. Part of that decade was the rise of the left’s cultural dominance, and the left (whether the old left or the new left) has always been soft on crime. Pushing poor people into crime makes sense to the left because such criminals are seen by them as heroes against the evil capitalists. But in fact poor people who turn to crime basically rob other poor people, which means that the total gain for the poor is zero. Moreover, once businesses in poor neighborhoods realize they have to deal with criminals, they raise prices, either because they have to hire more security people or because they have to compensate for the goods lost through theft. Once again, this doesn’t really help the poor.

That is spot on.  Leftists coddle criminals and the unproductive while penalizing productive behavior via taxation and regulation.  But by attacking those who create wealth, they make everyone poorer.  Fetishizers of equality, leftists would rather have everyone poor and equal rather than tolerate inequalities that benefit the worst off.

The Trouble With Larry

I share Steve Burton's misgivings about the work of Lawrence Auster.  We need a broad coalition to defeat leftists and Islamists.  A certain amount of intramural squabbling  is to be expected and may even be healthy, but not if it ramps up to internecine warfare.

John Pepples Wants a New Left

During our lazy float down the Rio Salado today, Mike Valle and I had a lot to talk about. He mentioned a new blog he had come across entitled I Want a New Left. The author, John Pepples, aims to develop a self-critical leftism.  Now, having read quickly through most of his posts, I am a bit puzzled by the same thing that puzzles Mike:  why does Pepples hang on to the 'leftism' label?

But labels aren't that important.  What is important are the issues and one's stances on them. On that score, conservatives like me and Mike share common ground with Pepples.  In his biographical statement he says that in college he majored in mathematics and took a lot of physics courses. "But this was during the late 60s and early 70s, when much questioning was occurring, and I ended up as a grad student in philosophy."  Sounds very familiar!  The 'sixties were a heady time, a time of ferment, during which indeed "much questioning was occurring."  I started out in Electrical Engineering but also "ended up as a grad student in philosophy."  I did, however, have a bit more luck career-wise and didn't experience the same difficulties getting into print.

Why did so many of us 60s types end up in philosophy?  Because we were lost in a strange land, traditional understandings and forms of world-orientation having left us without guidance, and we needed to ascend to a vantage point to reconnoiter the terrain, the vantage point that philosophy alone provides.

Political change, a species of the genus doxastic change, is a fascinating topic.  I recently stumbled upon an effort by a distaff blogger who documents her transition from a comfortable enclave of mutually reinforcing Democrats to the more open world of contemporary conservatism, and the hostility with which her turncoat behavior was rewarded.  She calls her blog Neo-Neocon.