The Difference between Philosophy and Polemics

Top o' the Stack. 

Tony Flood comments:

Congrats on another vital post, Bill. You referred to our spectatorship and to theoria without adverting to the etymological connection between them. (You can't do everything in one post! (:^D) ) In Philosophy after Christ, p. 39n1, I noted: 

The Greek theoreō (θεωρέω) means to look at; gaze; spectate; form a picture. “Theory” comes from the noun for “spectacle” and the verb “to behold,” theaomai (θεάομαι), from which we get “theater.” A theoros is a spectator. “When all the people who had gathered to witness this spectacle (θεωρίαν, theōrian) saw what took place, they beat their breasts and went away” (Luke 23:48). “He [Jesus] beholds (θεωρεῖ) a commotion with people crying and wailing loudly” (Mark 5:38).

 

You'll no doubt see other implications.

Comments

[Kevin Kim]

Doesn't theoria also have the meaning of "contemplation"? It seems that's how you're using the term in your own piece. I suppose, though, that contemplating requires an accusative, so maybe there's a sense in which the thing contemplated is "beheld," "gazed at," etc. That said, contemplation is more than mere perception or witness: it's cogitation.

[BV]

Yes, Kevin, it does. 'Vita contemplativa' translates 'bios theoretikos.' Both are ingredient in Aquinas' visio beata, although there is much more to the VB.

And yes, contemplation takes an accusative: to contemplate is to contemplate something. But here things get 'mystical' even in sober Aristotle with his talk of noesis noeseos, thought thinking itself. Act and object achieve some sort of dialectical unity. The divine self-sufficiency cannot put up with any intentional object that exists an sich to which the divine contemplator is delivered over.

>>That said, contemplation is more than mere perception or witness: it's cogitation.<<

For the archetypal intellect that is certainly true. But for us ectypal intellects?

You seem to be wanting to proffer a criticism of what I wrote, but I don't know what that criticism is.

[EG]

Bill,

As always, a privilege and a pleasure. Keep scribbling, it is a feast!

[EG]

Bill writes:

"But why not stick to one's stoa and cultivate one's specialist garden in peace and quiet, neither involving oneself in, nor forming opinions about, the wider world of politics and strife? Why risk one's ataraxia in the noxious arena of contention? Why not remain within the serene precincts of theoria? For those of us of a certain advanced age the chances are good that death will arrive before the barbarians do. Why bother one's head with the issues of the day? Many of us will most likely collapse before the culture that sustains us does. Rome was not built in a day, and it did not fall in a day.

We enter the arena of contention because the gardens of tranquillity and the spaces of reason are worth defending, with blood and iron if need be, against the barbarians and their witting and unwitting leftist enablers. Others have fought and bled so that we can live this life of beatitude. What has been passed on to us, we must pass on. That is a moral ‘must.’ And so though we are not warriors of the body we can and should do our bit as warriors of the mind to preserve for future generations this culture which allows us to pursue otium liberale in peace, quiet, and safety."

This seems like an active and forward political and polemical position that is not tied to merely maintaining the stoa and garden.

Said another way: what is wrong with a more pacifist position, one that can invoke self-defense of what is ones' own, but which does not actively trangress ones' own garden walls.

And finally, as I was re-reading the first paragraph: is this active militancy actually directed at Death? Is there some instinctual desire to fight?

[EG]

RE: the linked webpage on Richard Weaver writes:

"Weaver vigorously defended the inviolable right to private property, naming it “the last metaphysical right.” He used this nomenclature to emphasize that the right to private property exists independently from, if not regardless of, its social utility. This metaphysical nature of private property rights derives from the natural connection between honor, responsibility, and the relationship of a person to property. Weaver also contended that work, honorable in itself, tends to result in the accumulation of property. Hence property becomes an extension of one’s labor—and of oneself. Weaver believed that property constitutes a great source for personal growth because of the inalienable bond between a person’s labor and property. Weaver also noted that the ownership of private property can serve as a check on the pressures of majority opinion, allowing anyone to think and to act as he or she chooses without having to appease the majority opinion to secure a place to live or food to eat. Another reason that Weaver labeled private property as a metaphysical right was to show that it is based not in the changing, temporal material order, but rather in the unchanging, eternal order of the spiritual. For Weaver, rights and obligations correlate with each other. To properly preserve the right to property, an obligation to engage in proper stewardship must also be recognized in order to prevent property from being spoiled from use by successive generations. Property rights then essentially promote a communal continuity between the dead, the living, and the unborn. Weaver never tired of advancing these convictions, always confident that these convictions truly reflected reality."

Can we move from this Weaverian position about private property rights and the accumulation of property to one critical of what Capitalism has become, and its influence on people and culture in America as a whole, and why despite our being beneficiaries of its influences and effects, it has taken on, in the present moment, some distorted version of itself?

See here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/sethmatlins/2023/06/14/madison-avenue-takes-on-capitalism/?sh=1bd75ce04c2a

[BV]

EG asks, >>Said another way: what is wrong with a more pacifist position, one that can invoke self-defense of what is ones' own, but which does not actively transgress ones' own garden walls.<<

I see your point, but I think that if one's defense starts at the garden walls, then it is too late. I think one ought to fight to secure a buffer zone between the garden walls and Leviathan and its barbaric agents.

[EG]

Bill, that's perfectly reasonable position. In fact it is usefully pithy; though I might quibble that in some sense you have really just moved "the garden wall" further back.

I find that "the problem" with engaging, and sometimes arguing with, reasonable people is that you have no nit to pick. And that, sometimes, is no fun. :)