Maverick Philosopher

Welcome to Maverick Philosopher

Online since May 2004. I publish both here and at Substack. I began posting at Substack in early 2021 under the rubric "Philosophy in Progress." The Substack entries are intended to assist educated non-philosophers in clarifying their thinking about matters of moment.  My PhilPeople page links to my Substack articles and my weblog Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical, and provides a list of my professional publications. 

Two-line biography:  I taught philosophy at various universities in the USA and abroad. At the relatively young age of 41 I resigned from  a tenured position to live the eremitic life of the independent philosopher in the Sonoran desert. Contact information on the About page on the right sidebar.

Interests: Everything. Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto. (Terentius) "I am a man: I consider nothing human foreign to me." 

Comment Policy: This site is not a discussion board.  Comments must address directly what the author says or what the commenters say.  Other comments will not be allowed to appear. 

My politics?  From Democrat to Dissident

Much more below the fold. Best wishes to all men and women of good will who love truth, seek it, and strive to incorporate it in their lives.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: October Jazz

October already! October's a bird that flies too fast. Time herself is such a bird. I would freeze her flight, but not that of

Charley 'Bird' Parker, Ornithology

Jack Kerouac and Steve Allen, Charlie Parker

Kerouac and Allen, October in the Railroad Earth

Jack Kerouac, San Francisco

Mose Allison, Parchman Farm.

This one goes out to Tom Gastineau, keyboard man in our bands Dudley Nightshade and Rosedale, who introduced me to Mose Allison and Herbie Hancock in the late '60s. Tom went on to make it in the music business. I caught Allison at The Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach, California, a couple or three times before I headed East in August of '73.  I heard him on the East Coast as well at a joint in Marblehead, Massachusetts with a girlfriend  I dubbed 'Springtime Mary'  which was Kerouac's name for his girlfriend Mary Carney.

Mose Allison, Young Man's Blues

Mose Allison, I Ain't Got Nothing but the Blues

Dave Brubeck, Blue Rondo al a Turk

Herbie Hancock, Watermelon Man

Are Trad Catholics a Protestant Sect?

One of the more interesting blog posts I have run across recently. 

Robert Giroux

Catholic bookman and editor of Merton, Kerouac, Flannery O' Connor, and Walker Percy, to name just four. 

Is Religion Escapist?

Top o' the Stack

Moderate?

WASHINGTON (AP) — Liz Cheney, one of Donald Trump’s fiercest Republican antagonists, will join Democrat Kamala Harris at a campaign event in Wisconsin on Thursday aimed at reaching out to moderate voters and rattling the former president. (emphasis added)

The implication, of course, is that Trump's policies are extreme.  What we have here, once again, is political projection: unwilling to admit their own extremism, the extremist Dems project it into their political opponents. And Turncoat Liz goes right along with it. She is one of the more repulsive of the RINOs.  

The Dems embrace a number of extreme, and extremely deleterious, policies. I challenge anyone to point to one of Trump's policies that is extreme.  Policies, not personality. He is not Mr. Nice Guy, like Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House. But how effective is a guy like that in the clinch?

UPDATE (10/5):  A Dem sees the light.

Three American Sophomores

The Restlessness of Thomas Merton, J. D. Salinger, and Jack Kerouac.

On balance, a very good essay, but just wrong in places. For example:

Due to our separation from God that occurred in the Garden, all men intuitively sense that they are missing something, that they are radically incomplete.3 Aristotle had this incompleteness in mind when he opened Metaphysics with the statement, “All men by nature desire to know.” 

Vito Caiati, cradle Catholic, native New Yorker, former resident of Greenwich Village, ex-pat in France for a time, historian, NYU Ph.D., with a finely-honed literary sensibility, is well qualified to offer some astute commentary on this essay.  I invite him to do so. 

Caiati introduced me to the novels of Richard Yates.

Why did Kerouac's writing give rise to an outpouring of biographies, commentaries, dissertations, articles, not to mention new editions and the publication of the shoddiest of his literary efforts, when Yates' novels and short stories had no similar effect?  One thought is this. Kerouac was a sort of unwitting pied piper. His 1957 On the Road gave rise to the 'rucksack revolution' of the 'sixties.  Yates' 1961 Revolutionary Road, his best novel, was backward-looking, in large part social criticism of the  Zeitgeist of the fading 'fifties.  

But my one thought is one-sided and wants augmentation and qualification. Later perhaps.

While I admire Yates' superb craftsmanship, his writing does not move me. Kerouac moves me, literary slop, hyper-romantic gush, and all.  No one would accuse Kerouac of being a craftsman. 

Literary sensibility is an ineluctably subjective thing,  but not so subjective as to disallow higher and lower grades of sensibility. But how describe and order them? 

Two weblogs I regularly consult are Patrick Kurp's Anecdotal Evidence, and the late D. G. Myers' A Commonplace Blog. Myers died ten years ago. Kurp here recounts a meeting with him.

The Paradox of Solitude

Jack Kerouac and Thomas Merton

Kamala and Moria/Witzelsucht

Joe Biden, suffering from dementia, was finally and 'democratically' kicked to the curb only to be replaced with Kamala Harris who may be suffering from her own neuropsychiatric malady, moria. How else explain her giddiness,  uncontrolled childish euphoria, inappropriate laughter, inability to be serious about matters of grave importance, hyper-joyous inanity, and the like? This very short video (1:33) displays her astonishing unseriousness about a very serious matter.

It is not for me to decide whether there is anything pathological here, let alone suggest a treatment protocol, but this article may shed light on this strangest of all presidential candidates in the history of the Republic.

Having pointed to a possible psychiatric cause of the 60-year-old's laughing-gas vacuity, let me now suggest a sociological cause: we live in an Age of Feeling. Like a superannuated AOC -- the overgrown adolescent narcissist of the occasional cortex -- Kameradin Kamalita can feel, but not think. 

"It's an unfortunate reality that millions of Americans lack convictions founded in logic, reason, and history, instead relying on feelings as their primary touchstone."  That nails it.

A Problem for Hylomorphic Dualism in the Philosophy of Mind

Edward Feser's Immortal Souls: A Treatise on Human Nature may well be the best compendium of Thomist philosophical anthropology presently available.  I strongly recommend it. I wish I could accept its central claims. This entry discusses one of several problems I have.

The problem I want to discuss in this installment is whether  an Aristotelian-Thomistic (A-T) hylomorphic analysis of human beings can make sense of our post-mortem existence as distinct persons. Thomas Aquinas maintains that after death the souls of rational animals, but not the souls of non-rational animals, continue to exist as disembodied forms, numerically distinct among themselves. What the following argument seems to show is that the survival of distinct souls is impossible on hylomorphic dualism.  I will not be questioning whether in fact we survive our bodily deaths. In question is whether A-T style hylomorphism renders it intelligible.

1) A primary substance (a substance hereafter) is a concrete individual.  A man, a horse, a tree, a statue are stock examples of substances.  A substance in this technical sense is not to be confused with stuff or material. Substances are individuals in that they have properties but are not themselves properties.  Properties are predicable; substances are not. Substances are concrete in that they are causally active/passive. 

2) Material substances are analyzable into matter (ὕλη, hyle/hule) and form (μορφή, morphe). A-T ontological analysis is thus hylomorphic analysis.  

3) The soul of an animal, whether rational or non-rational, is not a complete substance in its own right, but the (substantial) form of its body. Anima forma corporis. Hylomorphic dualism is not a Cartesian dualism of complete substances, but a dualism of ontological constituents of one and the same complete substance.  

4) Substances of the same kind have the same substantial form, where the substantial form of a substance is the conjunction of the essential (as opposed to accidental) properties that make the substance the kind of substance it is. Unlike Platonic Forms, Aristotelian forms cannot exist except as instantiated in matter.

5) There are many numerically different human beings (human substances).  I assume that the reader is familiar with the distinction between numerical and qualitative identity and difference. (Comments are enabled  if you have questions.) 

6) Since these substances of the human kind have the same form, it is not their form that makes them numerically different. (4, 5) What then grounds their numerical difference?

7) It is the matter of their respective bodies that makes numerically different human beings numerically different. (2,6) Matter, then, is the principium individuationis, the principle of individuation, the ontological ground of the numerical difference of material substances, including human beings.  It is matter that makes Socrates and Plato numerically different substances, not the substantial form they share.

8) A human being is a person.

9) A person is an individual substance of a rational nature. (Thomas, following Boethius)

10) There are many numerically different persons. (5, 8)

11) Only embodied, 'enmattered,' persons are numerically different from one another: embodiment is thus a necessary condition of difference of persons. (7) It is matter that makes a person the particular person that he is. The matter in question is not materia prima, but what Thomas refers to as materia signata (designated matter, signate matter) in his De Ente et Essentia. As Feser puts it in his Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction (2014, p. 199):  "The matter that is the principle of individuation is, in Aquinas's view, matter as made distinct by quantity or dimension -- designated matter . . . .

12) At death a person suffers the loss of embodiment, which implies that after death, a person survives, if at all, as a disembodied form (until the general resurrection, at which time the disembodied soul/form acquires a resurrection body).

Therefore

13) After death a human person ceases to exist as the particular person that it is. But that is to say that the particular person, Socrates say, ceases to exist, full stop.  What survives is at best a form which is common to all persons. That form, however, cannot be me or you.  Thus the particularity, individuality, haecceity, ipseity of persons, which is essential to persons, is lost. (11, 12)

 

Drive, He Wrote

What the Beats were About. Lewis Menand, The New Yorker.

John Kerry on the First Amendment and 'Disinformation'

Unbelievable. And you say we are not in a war?

More proof that the Republic is hanging by a thread: Megyn Kelly on Kamala Harris.

UPDATE 9/30

It's war for sure. Sasha Stone. Elon Musk. Victor Davis Hanson. Matt Taibi.

Which side are you on?

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Late September and Fare Thee Wells

Rod Stewart, Maggie May. "Wake up Maggie, I think I got something to say to you/It's late September and I really should be back at school."

Carole King, It Might as Well Rain Until September

The 'sixties forever! We were young, raw, open, impressionable, experience-hungry; we lived intensely and sometimes foolishly.  We felt deeply, and suffered deeply. Youth has its truth. And our popular music put to shame much of the stuff that came before and after. Or so we thought. Would I want to live though the 'sixties again? Hell no, I am having too good a time enjoying it memorially at a safe distance.  Youth has its truth, but if you can make it into old age with health and intellect intact, and a modicum of the lean green, you are winning the game. 

Django Reinhardt, September Song

Walter Huston, September Song 

Marcus Mumford and Oscar Isaac, Fare Thee Well

Mumford and the boys cover Dylan's "Farewell."  Fabulous. Let it play on.

The Miracles, What's So Good about Good-Bye?

Woody Guthrie, So Long it's been Good to Know You

Peter, Paul, and Mary, Leaving on a Jet Plane

Kimball on Kolakowski on Marxism as a Bogus Form of Religion

I have argued time and again that Marxism is not a religion. But many have a burning need so to misunderstand it. What the great Kolakowski says below reinforces me in the correctness of my opinion.  As for Fredric Jameson, whom Roger Kimball discusses in his Guilt of the Intellectuals, I haven't read him and never will. Theodor Adorno, on the other hand, I have read with care.  I rate him higher than Roger Kimball does, who is more of a public intellectual (a very good one!) than a philosopher. (PhilPapers lists only seven works of his.) I consider Adorno worth reading and evaluating, as I do in Contra Adorno: A Preliminary Plea for Omphaloscopy.

Kimball:

Whatever Professor Jameson’s personal commitment to Marxist doctrine, there can be little doubt that his habits of thought were deeply tinged by the gnostic contempt for everyday experience and faith in a secular apocalypse that has characterized Marxism from the beginning. As the philosopher Leszek Kolakowski noted in the third volume of his magisterial study Main Currents of Marxism, this is the ultimate source of Marxism’s Utopian dreams and its great seductiveness for suitably disposed intellectuals. “The influence that Marxism has achieved,” Kolakowski wrote,

far from being the result or proof of its scientific character, is almost entirely due to its prophetic, fantastic, and irrational elements. Marxism is a doctrine of blind confidence that a paradise of universal satisfaction is awaiting us just around the corner. Almost all the prophecies of Marx and his followers have already proved to be false, but this does not disturb the spiritual certainty of the faithful, any more than it did in the case of chiliastic sects. … In this sense Marxism performs the function of a religion, and its efficacy is of a religious character. But it is a caricature and a bogus form of religion, since it presents its temporal eschatology as a scientific system, which religious mythologies do not purport to be.

That the Marxist apocalypse is declared to be the inevitable result of inscrutable “scientific” laws only means that its partisans are potentially as dangerous as they are mystifying: the revolutionary is one whose possession of “the truth” is impervious to experience. For him, “History” speaks with a voice beyond contradiction or appeal.

By the way, 'magisterial' is exactly the word to describe Kolakowski's Main Currents of Marxism. It is the work of a master, a magister. But would it have killed Kimball to provide a page reference? If he had, the editors would probably have deleted it.  Why do you think that is?

Just over the Transom from Malcolm Pollack

Hi Bill,

 

My neighbor didn't call me a Trumper to my face, but mentioned (back in April) to my wife that he had the impression that I was one. (I felt obliged to unpack the assertion in a post.)

 

The Cape has a lot of Dems, but most of the working people out here are what Zman calls "dirt people" (i.e., those who encounter actually existing reality in their work), and they are . . . well, Trumpers. They are also well-armed.

 

[. . .]

 

The post to which Malcolm links, from April,  is up to his usual high standard and is one you ought to read.  I agree with it in its entirety. As the political temperature rises, its relevance does as well. 

Religion and Anthropomorphism . . .

. . . with an oblique reference to Mormonism.

Substack latest.

Edward Feser, Immortal Souls: A Treatise on Human Nature

I want to thank Ed Feser for sending me a copy of his latest contribution to Thomistic Studies.  

Immortal Souls provides as ambitious and complete a defense of Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophical anthropology as is currently in print. Among the many topics covered are the reality and unity of the self, the immateriality of the intellect, the freedom of the will, the immortality of the soul, the critique of artificial intelligence, and the refutation of both Cartesian and materialist conceptions of human nature. Along the way, the main rival positions in contemporary philosophy and science are thoroughly engaged with and rebutted.

Like all of Feser's books, Immortal Souls is a model of expository clarity and analytic precision informed by an extensive knowledge of the contemporary literature.  You may order a copy of this (physically and intellectually) weighty tome from Amazon for a mere 31 USD.  

A non-technical effort of mine saw the light in August, Life's Path: Some Trail Notes. 

In this collection of aphorisms, observations, maxims, and mini-essays, a professional philosopher quits the ivory tower and hits the road of life. Here are some of his trail notes. They offer guidance and insight in a non-dogmatic spirit while encouraging in the reader the development of a critical attitude. While philosophical, these writings focus on the existential and practical aspects of philosophy rather than on the technical or theoretical. This is not academic discourse but life-philosophy with an edge that cuts against the grain of our contemporary decadence.

Topics include happiness and ambition, youth and old age, body and soul, love and lust, money and its uses, manners and morals, and the last things.

The price is right: $2.99 for Kindle, $20 for paperback, $28 for hardbound.  I have mailed six free copies to friends and I have four more free copies to distribute locally to Kid Nemesis, Biker Mike, Medico, and The Great Navigator when our paths next cross.  So if you are one of these characters, don't buy it. There's a copy with your name on it.

Political Enemies and Political Tactics

I had an interesting exchange with Dr. Caiati about political tactics in the comment thread to Haitians, Cats, and Red Herrings. Here are some further thoughts.

When our political enemies use our virtues against us, we should use their vices against them. Call it the Converse Alinskyite Tactic (CAT).

I used to say to them: Lie about us, and we will tell the truth about you. Now I say: Lie about us and we'll lie about you.  Along the same lines, and given that Kamalism Will Destroy America, as it surely will, Tom Klingenstein writes:

In wartime, as Churchill famously observed, “truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” We are told, by Republicans almost as frequently as by Democrats, that Trump lost the recent debate. But even if this were true, to say so merely gives aid and comfort to the enemy. Like Trump, we must stand up and proclaim victory. Assert it: He won. These are wartime rules. The other side already plays by such rules. We do not. 

Likewise, we fight Kamalism with facts and arguments, but today these are no more effective than using a straw to penetrate the shell of tortoise, as Lincoln  put it. For example, our best historians, liberals and conservatives, thoroughly debunked the 1619 project, the official history of Kamalism. But to what avail? War is not a battle of facts. 

The point here is that we conservatives will always lose so long as we fail to grasp that our political opponents are enemies who see politics as warfare.  If that is the way they see it, and it is, then that is the way we must see it.  Taking the high ground does no good. You might think that taking the high ground would shame our enemies and inspire them to play fair and speak the truth. But this ignores the fact that our opponents are enemies who are out to win by any means. They cannot be shamed.  

See my Politics as Polemics: The Converse Clausewitz Principle. I quote David Horowitz, a former leftist, who understands how these people operate.

I also refer you to recent posts by Malcolm Pollack who draws upon Carl Schmitt.

It is time to gird our loins and enter the fray. The fate of the Republic hangs in the balance.

See also: Rod Dreher: Floating Above the Fray as Usual. In the last couple of years, however, Dreher has 'evolved' somewhat.

Books or Eternal Life?

A quick Substack poke at Camus.

Central Bank Digital Currency

It is already upon us. Fifty Shades of Central Bank Tyranny.

In this article, I will define what a Central Bank Digital Currency is by exploring its major categories. I’ll demonstrate that the US already operates with a form of CBDC, albeit without the flashy labels. I will also show that the Federal Reserve (the Fed) can introduce more dystopian elements into this system—such as programming restrictions on when, how, and where you can spend your money without requiring Congressional approval.

However, the fear of central bank control over your transactions is, in fact, a red herring. The real threat lies with our government, which has already perfected the art of surveillance. Adding programmability is just the next logical step. Ultimately, both Republicans and Democrats are steering us toward the same destination: total digital control. They may use different words and different propaganda, but their goals converge. While we can’t simply vote out of this predicament, we can opt out entirely.

Am I a Religious Pluralist?

This from Tom O:

I would very much appreciate it if you could clarify your views on religious pluralism. Are you a pluralist of some kind? That is, do you believe no single religion or religious tradition can lay exclusive claim to the truth regarding the Divine, salvation, the soul, etc.? If so, could you please elaborate?

I'll make a start. It's a long story.

My belief, tentatively but not dogmatically held, is that no single institutionalized religion or church, such as the Roman Catholic Church (RCC), can justifiably claim to be the only way to salvation such that baptism into this church, and continuing good-faith membership in it, are necessary conditions of attaining salvation.  Holding this, I hold that Protestants and the Eastern Orthodox are not barred from salvation.  So in this weak sense I am a religious pluralist.* The Roman Catholics cannot justifiably claim that extra ecclesiam salus non est ("There is no salvation outside the church") applies only to their church, even if it is the case that good-faith membership in some Christian church or other is necessary for salvation.  And the same goes for Protestants of any denomination and the Eastern Orthodox of any stripe.

A more interesting question arises when we consider John 14, and in particular, John 14:6:

⁶ Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. (KJV)

This implies, first, that to be saved is to "come unto [God] the Father," to be received by him, accepted by him, and in some sense or other come to share in his life for all eternity, and second, that there is only one way to come unto the Father, and share in his life (vita), and that is via Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who is both a particular man, and God the Son, and as such the truth (veritas) or Word or revelation of God.  Via, veritas, vita. A bit later in John 14 the Holy Ghost, the third Person of the Trinity, makes his appearance as the "Comforter." 

John 14 gives us normative Christianity in a nutshell, including Trinity and Incarnation, and provides partial answers to the questions, What is salvation? and How do we attain it?  

I expect to be asked:  "Assuming that this is what salvation is, do you hold that there is only one way to it, the way of accepting Jesus as God and by keeping his commandments? Or are there other ways?"

My tentative answer is that, yes, there is only one way, but this is so only on the normative Christian conception of salvation. For on this conception, to be saved is to participate in the life of the triune God, the Second Person of which lived on Earth as a particular man, in a particular place, and shared fully in the miseries of our earthly sojourn. So if you accept normative Christianity, there is only one way to salvation.

My point is that whether there is only one way to the ultimate religious goal, salvation, depends on what salvation is, and there are different conceptions thereof.  These will have to be examined.

I'll leave it here for now, and if Tom or anyone wants to pursue this topic and its many ramifications, I'm game.

_____________________________________

*Two questions that naturally arise, and that cannot be engaged in any detail at the moment are: What is religion? and What is salvation?  For present purposes we may assume that Christianity is a clear example of a religion, and that, within Christianity, salvation is participation in the divine life.

Hillary Fuming

The sad cow is one poor loser. Interviewed by Maddow in under four minutes.  The political equivalent of a stool sample. Sad, as the Orange Man would say.

Why Would Cheney Endorse Harris?

A plausible explanation.

Here is their plan. Under two minutes. Endorsed by Elon Musk.  Not their plan, mind you, but the video exposé thereof. Watch it!

Gold Will Surge Should Kamala Win

So buy more now to cushion the shock later, should disaster strike.

Gold to $10K/oz under Harris admin.

Update (9/22). Spot is now $2621/oz as of 12:10 NY time. Kamala or no Kamala it will most likely trend upwards.

"When we have gold we are in fear; when we have none we are in danger." An English proverb the pertinence of which is proven by recent developments.

There's a Moon Out Tonight

I caught a preview this morning at 5:15 from the mountain bike.  A great caffeine-fueled ride from 5:15-6:43.  It's cooling down in the Zone. Wore a shirt for a change. The strenuous life is best by test. It doesn't matter how old you are. Get out there and bust your hump for an hour or two every day. Brother Jackass will be glad you did. He'll be exploding with energy afterwards. 

Supermoon tonight. 

Theme music. 

I first heard this when I was ten. This morning's moonset set it off one more once in the old man's head. "Without music, life would be a mistake." (Nietzsche). And it doesn't matter whether it's an old doo-wop number or The Ride of the Valkyries.

You may remember it from Apocalypse Now.

It might even be Mary Had a Little Lamb.

The Road to One-Party Rule

Here is the Democrat plan clearly explained in a few words.

The Man in the Mirror and Belief De Se

The following can happen.  You see yourself but without self-recognition.  You see yourself, but not as yourself.  Suppose you walk into a room which, unbeknownst to you, has a mirror covering the far wall.  You are slightly alarmed to see a wild-haired man with his fly open approaching you.  You are looking at yourself but you don't know it.  (The lighting is bad, you've had a few drinks . . . .) You think to yourself

1) That man's fly is open!

but not

2)  My fly is open!

Now these thoughts or propositions are different.  For one thing, they have different behavioral consequences.  I can believe the first without taking action with respect to my fly, or any fly.  But if I believe the second I will most assuredly button my fly.  A second point is that one cannot validly infer (2) from (1). That is because (2) says more than (1). For (2) says that BV's fly is open AND that I am BV.  When I refer to myself using 'BV' I refer to myself in the third person using an abbreviation (or a name) that both I and others can use. When I refer to myself using 'I,' I refer to myself in the first person using a word that only I can use to refer to myself.

So  (1) and (2) are different propositions.  I can believe the first without believing the second.  But how can this be given the plain fact that 'that man' and 'BV' refer to the same man?  The demonstrative phrase and the proper name have the same referent. Both propositions predicate the same property of the same subject.  So what makes them different propositions?

If propositions are Russellian, then BV, all 170 lbs of him, is a constituent of both propositions, which implies that these propositions are one and the same. But the propositions are distinct as has already be shown. So they must be Fregean.  BV himself cannot be a constituent of such a proposition: he needs a surrogate entity, a Fregean sense, to stand in for him in the proposition and to represent him.  (Note that this sense is both a representative of BV and a representation of BV.)  

As noted, (2) analyzes into a conjunction of 

3) BV's fly is open

and

4) I am BV.

Here is the point at which I am flummoxed and reach an impasse.  (4) says more than

5) BV is BV.

(5) is a miserable tautology. It is a logical truth, true in virtue of its logical form. Its negation is a contradiction. (4) is in some sense 'informative,' 'synthetic.' It smacks of a certain 'contingency': might I not have inhabited a numerically different body? Might not my epistemic access to the world have been mediated by a different body and brain?  

(5) differs in cognitive value (Erkenntniswert) from (4). But I am at a loss to say what this I-sense is. It has to be a sense, an abstract item of sorts, but what is it? What is the sense of this sense?  It appears utterly ineffable. The sense of 'I' when deployed by BV is unique to him: it somehow captures his ipseity and haecceity which are of course 'incommunicable,' as a scholastic might say, to anyone else.  

How eff the ineffable?  Hegel: there is no ineffable to eff. Tractarian Wittgenstein: Es gibt allerdings das Unaussprechliche. 'There is, however, the inexpressible."

Are the Souls of Brutes Subsistent?

Aquinas says No but his argument is inconclusive.

Substack latest.

Reader Zacary writes,

I am just a layman who likes studying Aristotelian and Thomistic philosophy, and recently I haven’t been studying the issue of animals in the afterlife. I stumbled across your post from many, many years ago (all the way back in 2009!) that was about the unity of consciousness argument and the subsistence of animal souls. 

Thank you for writing, Zacary.  That post from 2009 left a lot to be desired, so I rewrote it almost completely and published the result over at Substack. I have no time now to respond  to the rest of what you wrote, but if you read the Substack entry and have questions or objections I will try to answer them here.

Friday the 13th Cat Blogging!

In the foothills of the Superstition Mountains! Friday cat blogging is an ancient and  venerable tradition in the blogosphere. We pioneers of the 'sphere aim to keep it going. To hell with all you change-for-the-sake-of change 'progressives.'

I Ain't Superstitious, leastways no more than Howlin' Wolf, but two twin black tuxedo cats just crossed my path.  All dressed up with nowhere to go.  Nine lives and dressed to the nines. 

Stevie Ray Vaughan, Superstition.  Guitar solo starts at 3:03. 

And of course you've heard the story about Niels Bohr and the horseshoe over the door:

A friend was visiting in the home of Nobel Prize winner Niels Bohr, the famous atomic scientist.

As they were talking, the friend kept glancing at a horseshoe hanging over the door. Finally, unable to contain his curiosity any longer, he demanded:

“Niels, it can’t possibly be that you, a brilliant scientist, believe that foolish horseshoe superstition! ? !”

“Of course not,” replied the scientist. “But I understand it’s lucky whether you believe in it or not.”

Haitians, Cats, and Red Herrings

Do Haitians eat cats?

I don't know and I don't care. I do care that the Biden-Harris administration is violating the Constitution, undermining the rule of law, and destroying the country by importing illegal aliens. That's the issue. Whether Haitians chow down on what we consider pets is not the issue, but a distraction from it. It is an example of what is called a red herring.

Paradoxically, however, the current explosion of cat-memes,  far from distracting us from the relevant issue, is drawing attention to it, namely the invasion of illegals, which is not only permitted, but promoted by Biden-Harris.  This invasion will of course continue under a Harris-Walz administration, despite Kamala's brazen lies to the contrary. 

Here is Charlie Kirk and Donald Trump, Jr. on the issue.

My tone above is polite, but for some time now I've been wondering whether we really should be polite to our political enemies.  Do any of you have an opinion on the question you would be willing to share? 

Finally, I don't really want to believe that Haitians eat cats, but then again, where are all the cats in Port-au-Prince?

9/11: 23 Years Later

Substack latest

22 Claims in Trump-Harris Debate Fact-Checked

Here

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So are the Haitians who are enriching the culture of Springfield, Ohio, chowing down on cats and dogs and ducks? The deplorables of Springfield need to understand that diversity is our strength and that people have a right to live anywhere the global elites send them and the right to do whatever they want when they get there.  Ohio is fly-over country. People who live there are rubes and know-nothings.  The people who live there are poor white trash who need all the cultural enrichment they can get.  They need to understand that automotive diversity is as important as every other kind. Running red lights and stop signs is an alternative automotive lifestyle. It is racist and xenophobic to be judgmental. Anyone who makes moral judgments is judgmental, by definition!

More cat-memes, all in good Alinskyite fun. Think of it this way. Truth is not a leftist value.  So in our war against them we ought to honor their value system by using it against them.

Diversity = Cultural Enrichment

California, Colorado, and now Ohio. As a former resident of Ohio, this got my attention:

Welcome to Springfield, Ohio. It’s a nice town of about 60,000 that the administration decided needed about 20,000 Haitians – flown in directly from Haiti, mind you. Injecting this wonderful diversity from arguably the worst place on the planet into a nice little Midwestern town has had the predictable effect. Remember all those swans and ducks that used to swim in the park? They’re gone. The Haitians ate them. They’ve also eaten pet cats and dogs. Yeah, they’re eating peoples’ pets, slaughtering and butchering them, and turning them into lunch. I guess the cash they’re getting from all of us for the privilege of being here illegally isn’t enough – they have to chow down on Fido. Naturally, the American citizens of Springfield are disgusted by this, as well as the other crime and pathological behavior they’re seeing. What does the government say? “Shut up, racists. Also, you’re probably transphobes.”

The Geezer's Paradox

Étienne Gilson on the Jewish Philosophers He Knew

Étienne Gilson (1884-1978) writing in 1962 about his experiences as a student at the Sorbonne circa 1900:

. . . instead of resorting to philosophy for a better understanding of their religious faith, as Christian philosophers do, the Jews I have known have used philosophy to liberate themselves from their religion. Christians philosophize to  identify themselves more intimately with their Christianity; our masters philosophized in order to run away from the synagogue. The illustrious example of Spinoza is a typical instance of what I mean. After the Theologico-Political Treatise, written as a farewell to the Law, its commands and it rites, came the Ethica, whose purpose was to create a mental universe in which reason was liberated from all contact with any religious revelation, Jewish or Christian. It would seem that the philosophical conversion of such children of Israel consists in turning their backs on their religion. (The Philosopher and Theology, Cluny Media, 2020, p. 6)

Gilson is of course speaking of his experiences with his teachers at the Sorbonne circa 1900. What he says, however, suggests a follow-up question I am not competent to answer.

Consider Jews of all times and places who (i) became professional philosophers and who (ii) were brought up in Judaism and who (iii) have used philosophy to liberate themselves from their religion.  Is their number greater than the number of cradle Christians who became professional philosophers and then used philosophy to liberate themselves from their religion?  My guess is the answer is in the affirmative.  If so, why?

We can ask a parallel question about Muslims. 

A Classicist Misanthrope Opens a Bar . . .

. . . and names it: Margaritas Ante Porcos.