Maverick Philosopher

Intimations of Elsewhere Dismissed

Stack topper.  Good and short, short and good.

Ukraine

A perfect storm may soon be upon us thanks to the feckless fool at the helm.

These two gentlemen talk sense:

Victor Davis Hanson

James Soriano

Thomas Nagel on the Mind-Body Problem

Substack latest.

Mom versus School Board

Here

In case you missed it, here is a NYC mommy with a rather saltier tongue.

A Quest for Transcendence Gone Wrong

Substack latest.

Is There No Limit to Biden's Vicious Mendacity?

Apparently not. And you voted for him? What were you thinking? Were you thinking? 

More on the Politics of Abortion: Ron Paul and Subsidiarity

Ron Paul. M.  D.:

I strongly believe that the more difficult the issue is, the more local should be its solution. That is the real success of the Dobbs decision, because abortion should have never been a federal issue in the first place. Overturning Roe v Wade returned us to where we belonged, with state and local laws governing all issues not Constitutionally reserved for the Federal Government.

Bigger problems are best decided closest to home. Look for example at what happened when parents started going to school board meetings and demanding accountability on everything from Covid restrictions to transgenders in school bathrooms. Parents were extremely effective because they only had to travel to the local school board meeting to demand – and get – results. Does anyone think they would have been able to get the same results at the Department of Education in Washington DC?

Similarly, immigration is much better handled by those closer to the action. Ideally it would be a property rights issue, but at the least states like Texas should be taking an active role in preventing a foreign invasion into its borders rather than waiting for Washington to make a move.

Ron Paul is urging something very much like the Catholic doctrine of subsidiarity. David A. Bosnich, The Principle of Subsidiarity:

One of the key principles of Catholic social thought is known as the principle of subsidiarity. This tenet holds that nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization which can be done as well by a smaller and simpler organization. In other words, any activity which can be performed by a more decentralized entity should be. This principle is a bulwark of limited government and personal freedom. It conflicts with the passion for centralization and bureaucracy characteristic of the Welfare State.

The principle of subsidiarity strikes a reasonable balance between statism and collectivism as represented by the manifest drift of recent Democrat administrations, on the one hand,  and the libertarianism of those who would take privatization to an extreme, on the other.  

Subsidiarity also fits well with federalism, a return to which is a prime desideratum and one more reason not to vote for Democrats.  'Federalism' is  one of those words that does not wear its meaning on its sleeve, and is likely to mislead.  Federalism is not the view that all powers should be vested in the Federal or central government; it is the principle enshrined in the 10th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Whether or not you are Catholic, if you accept the principle of subsidiarity, then you have yet another reason to oppose the Left.  The argument is this:

1. The Left encroaches upon civil society, weakening it and limiting it, and correspondingly expanding the power and the reach of the state.  (For example, the closure of Catholic Charities in Illinois because of an Obama administration adoption rule.)

2. Subsidiarity helps maintain civil society as a buffer zone and intermediate sector between the purely private (the individual and the familial) and the state.

Therefore

3. If you value the autonomy and robustness of civil society, then you ought to oppose  the Left (and the Democrat Party which is now hard-leftist to the core.)

The truth of the second premise is self-evident.  If you wonder whether the Left does in fact encroach upon civil society, then see my post Obama's Assault on the Institutions of Civil Society.

Geraldo Rivera and the Musket Canard

Top o' the Stack.

How could a wokester object to a trans musket?

Filed under Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.

The Politics of Abortion Again

Tony Flood writes and wants my response:

What if we gain the presidency and lose our soul?

I believe the conceptus (a fortiori, the embryo, the fetus) is an immature, but complete, human being with all the rights accruing thereto, including the right not to be wantonly destroyed. Most of the electorate, however, disagrees and will not extend protection to a human fetus younger than 15 weeks, or so Trump calculates. If Republicans insist on such protection, as I interpret his calculus, the majority will electorally complete America's descent into a one-party tyranny. In the American gulag we will reflect on the price of principle. Trump will not (because he cannot) provide the analytical rigor we need now to weigh life against liberty.

Our topic is not the morality of abortion, but the politics thereof. Tony and I agree that abortion is a grave moral evil, from conception on.  (For arguments, see my Abortion category.) But as Tony rightly points out, most of the electorate disagrees.  As for Trump's calculation, I will assume that it is correct.  And I suspect that Trump is right that if Republicans say the kind of stupid things that Mike Pence said in the first debate, the chances of a Republican return to the White House will be appreciably lessened.

I will now reproduce portions of something I wrote earlier which Tony may not have read.

The overturning of Roe v. Wade returned the abortion question to the states. That means that each state is now empowered to enact its own laws regulating abortion. Some states will permit abortion up to the moment of birth. Others will not. Different states, different laws.

What then are we to make of Mike Pence and Senator Tim Scott and their  call for a Federal law that bans abortion (apart from the usual exceptions) during the last 15 weeks of pregnancy? 

Am I missing something? [. . .] It strikes me as obvious that if the abortion issue is for the states to decide, then there cannot be any federal abortion laws. 

Nikki Haley and Pence danced around this issue but their heated tango  was irrelevant blather. [. . .]

The precise question is: How is a federal abortion restriction consistent with the states' right to decide the abortion laws? [. . .]

The answer to the precise question is that a federal restriction is not consistent with states' rights. It is unconstitutional.

This is not a very satisfying answer given that abortion is a moral abomination. (See my Abortion category for arguments.) But arguments, no matter how good, cut no ice in the teeth of our concupiscence. This is explained in my Substack article, Abortion and the Wages of Concupiscence Unrestrained.

Now Tony, you must respond directly to what I said above, in particular, to the third paragraph. Am I right or am I wrong? If you think I am wrong, explain why.

I now add a couple of further points that I consider very important.

1) Politics is a practical game. It is not about perfect versus imperfect. It is (almost) always about better or worse. If you sit on the sidelines waiting for the perfect candidate, you are a fool.  Trump is flawed, but he is far better than Biden or anyone else the Dems are likely to replace him with. So if Trump gets the nod, the conservative must vote for Trump; if De Santis, then De Santis. 

2) Abortion is just one issue of several. Here are some issues that are equally if not more important. Crime.  No doubt, unborn lives matter.  But then so do born lives.  A little old lady should be able to walk down the street to buy groceries without fear of being beaten to death with a tire iron. Democrat policies have led to an unprecedented upsurge in unspeakably vicious forms of violence against persons and property. National sovereignty. The Biden administration is guilty of utter dereliction of duty in intentionally allowing the invasion of the country by drug cartels, human traffickers, terrorists, people bearing sub-tropical diseases, etc.  Financial collapse.  Assaults on constitutionally-guaranteed liberties. I could go on. 

My suggestion is that presidential candidates should shut up about abortion. There is nothing that they can do about it at the the federal level. This issue has been returned to the states.  

Tony asked: "What if we gain the presidency and lose our soul?" 

My answer is that if we don't gain the presidency then we lose everything including our soul. Think about it. If the Left wins, then they will pack the Supreme Court and reinstate Roe v. Wade.

And Tony, haven't we already lost our collective soul? You admit that the majority of the electorate has no moral objection to abortion on demand at any stage of fetal development.  A soul that has already been lost cannot be lost a second time.

Where am I going wrong?

The Political Burden of Proof

As contemporary 'liberals' become ever more extreme, they increasingly assume what I call the political burden of proof.  The onus is now on them to defeat the presumption that they are so  morally and intellectually obtuse as  to not be worth talking to.

Agnosticism and Religiosity

There is an element of agnosticism at the heart of true religiosity. The atheist knows the god he denies; the theist hesitates to claim knowledge of the God he affirms. The god of a Christopher Hitchens is a cartoonish construct that lies open in every respect before the mind of the cartoonist. But the god that Hitch denies is not the one we affirm.

I Get a Rise out of Aristotle

Substack latest.

Is the political life the highest life?

The Ultimate Replacement

The ultimate replacement, I fear, will not be the ethno-masochistic self-replacement of whites who have lost the will to preserve and defend Western culture, but the replacement of humanity itself by soulless robots. I fear the robotic erasure, not just of human animals, but of humaneness, of spirit, of the imago dei in and around the third stone from the sun.

And to make the dark thought darker, there appears to be little we can do about it. 'Our' technology has been for some time now been living a life of its own. What was created by us to serve us will master, and then replace us. Sublunary humanity will come to an end.

This one belongs in the Dark Thoughts file.

A Commonplace Blog

D. G. Myers remembered. Top o' the Stack.

The End of Liberty is Nigh: The Digital Pound and Cancel Culture

And to add insult to injury, irony to outrage, the end of liberty is being ushered in by the mother country.  Here:

The digital pound would be a new type of money issued by the Bank of England for everyone to use for day-to-day spending. You would be able to use it in-store or online to make payments. 

This type of money is known as a central bank digital currency (CBDC). You may also hear it being called ‘digital sterling’ or even ‘Britcoin’. We call the UK version of CBDC the digital pound.

The digital pound would be denominated in sterling and its value would be stable, just like banknotes. £10 in digital pounds would always have the same value as a £10 banknote.

If we introduced it, it would not replace cash. We know being able to use cash is important for many people. That’s why we will continue to issue it for as long as people want to keep using it.

And you can take that italicized paragraph to the bank! (Italics added.)

In a parallel assault on liberty, the Brits are going cancel-crazy. Dreher:

It’s a country that gave the world George Orwell, but now, it’s a ‘Brand’ new world for free speech in once-great Britain, which these days specializes in doling out the unwelcome gift of Orwellianism.

Dame Caroline Dinenage, the chair of a British Parliamentary committee, has been writing to social media platforms Facebook, TikTok and Rumble, asking them if they plan to follow YouTube’s lead and demonetize the accused sex pest Russell Brand. On committee letterhead, Dame Caroline wrote to express the committee’s concern that Brand will not be able to make money on the platform and thereby “undermine the welfare of victims of inappropriate and potentially illegal behavior.”

Potentially illegal. This Conservative MP is using her powerful position to attempt to crush Brand’s ability to make a living, even though he denies the allegations, and they have not been subject to any sort of trial. This member of the British government is attempting to demonetize Russell Brand himself, based solely on allegations.

If this outrageous intimidation is allowed to stand, no one is safe in Britain. All it takes is for the right people to level fashionable accusations against you—ones having to do with racism, sexism, LGBT-phobia, ‘toxic masculinity,’ and whatnot—and you could see your livelihood evaporate overnight. You could even see your own government persecute you, as the committee headed by Dame Caroline, Baroness Lancaster of Kimbolton, is doing to Brand.

The Anglosphere is lost, and America is no exception. The push-back is too little, too late. But it ain't over 'til it's over.

We fight on in the gathering gloom. No defeatism! On the other hand, don't be a fool who sacrifices his life on the altar of activism. We have but one night to spend in this bad inn.  But a night is not nothing. I'll leave it to you to figure out the right mix of commitment to the fight and Gelassenheit. And it is up to you to balance praeparatio vitae and praeparatio mortis.

"So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late."

"War, children, it's just a shot away."

"Here I (under)stand, I cannot do otherwise."

I found the above witticism in an essay by Kelly James Clark. It works in German as well:

Hier (ver)stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders.

In German the allusion to what I allude to is transparent to my class of readers.

I'll book this quickie under Varia.

Thomas Aquinas Against Open Borders

Substack leader. 

With linkage to a passage (pun intended) from the doctor angelicus.

Garland Grilled

How sweet it is to watch the despicably mendacious Atty Gen'l squirm in the hot seat under interrogation by such patriots as Gaetz, Jordan, Roy, and others. In the last bit I caught, the crapweasel was asked whether it was illegal to question an election. He couldn't seem to grasp the question. Finally the superannuated Demento-shill tried to dismiss it as 'hypothetical.'  He must think we are stupid.

Nothing hypothetical about it at all: a simple question about the law.  Is it illegal to ask questions or to express opinions about the legitimacy of an election? Obviously not. The right to do so is guaranteed by the First Amendment.  Hillary did it re: 2016, and so have others about 2016 and other elections.

The panel is now back from recess, but I've had my fill. Linkage later.

UPDATE (9/21)

Soviet-Born Republican's Exchange With AG Garland Will Give You Chills

Representative Victoria Spartz is a woman who grew up in the totalitarian, authoritarian, stifling, single party, communist state of the Soviet Union, and she's now worried that her voters, her constituents, the citizens who live in her district who asked her to represent them are now afraid of their own government.

No Day without Cultural Appropriation

Substack latest.

Ayn Rand on C. S. Lewis; Flannery O'Connor on Ayn Rand

Here, via Victor Reppert, who cleverly speaks of Rand's  "Jack-hammering":

Ayn Rand was no fan of C.S. Lewis. She called the famous apologist an “abysmal bastard,” a “monstrosity,” a “cheap, awful, miserable, touchy, social-meta­physical mediocrity,” a “pickpocket of concepts,” and a “God-damn, beaten mystic.” (I suspect Lewis would have particularly relished the last of these.)

My posts on Miss Rand are collected here. 

Here is Flannery O'Connor on Ayn Rand:

I hope you don’t have friends who recommend Ayn Rand to you. The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky.

Miss O'Connor is exaggerating, but she is essentially correct in her literary judgment. Both women are firm adherents of worldviews that inform their novels, and in the case of O'Connor, short stories.  

The difference is that . . . well, you tell me what the difference is. Why do I have to do all the work?

Defeatism

It's a pretty good article until the final paragraph:

I don’t think the election of Donald Trump in 2024, if it were to be allowed, would make any fundamental difference in The System. He couldn’t change it in his first term, and he wouldn’t be allowed to change it in a second. At the same time, I completely understand the desire of many Americans to instinctively support someone who at least appears to be hated by The System.

This is just  plain stupid. Did the capture of SCOTUS by conservatives during Trump's first term make "any fundamental difference in The System"? The question answers itself. The overturning of Roe v. Wade would not have occurred had Hillary been elected. And that is just one of Trump's numerous accomplishments. Trump has proven himself as president. If Trump wins the White House in 2024, he will immediately reverse most of Biden's unspeakably destructive policies, the most traitorous of which is the open border policy. He will have the people behind him and the political savvy he acquired in his first term. The filthy Dems understand this, which is why they wage illegal and extra-constituional lawfare against him. But don't take my word for it. Listen to those lions of the law Alan Dershowitz and Jonathan Turley, both (unaccountably) still Democrats. 

And what's with the last sentence? Trump "at least appears to be hated by The System"? Nothing is clearer than that the oligarchs hate Trump in adamantine fact, as is shown by their willingness to overturn democratic norms to save 'our democracy' in their Orwellian way of putting it.

We need to collect more examples of political defeatism. Here is an old chestnut from Geraldo Rivera. "Build a twenty-foot wall, and the the illegals will show up with a twenty-five-foot ladder."  Can you think of others?

How Not to Define 'Atheism'

Top o' the Stack.

 

Doom and Gloom

America enters the doom loop.

But look on the bright side! We have but one night to spend in this bad inn.

Termitic Librarians

Library 'science' now attracts the mindlessly presentist, the terminally woke-assed, the viciously anti-civilizational, and the erasers of the historical record. See here and here.  

Build private libraries and be prepared to defend them.  In your will, specify a worthy, like-minded heir to whom to bequeath the library that you have spent a lifetime building along with the tools for its defense.

Related: Withdrawn from Circulation

Thinking Meat?

Substack latest.

Is it my brain that feels and thinks when I feel and think?

Both of the following arguments are valid, but only one is sound. Which one is it?

Argument A.  Meat can't think.  My brain is meat.  Therefore, what thinks in me when I think is not my brain.

A in Reverse: What thinks in me when I think is my brain.  My brain is meat. Therefore, meat can think.

How to Tell the Impostor RCC from the Real Thing

The Roman Catholic Church with Bergoglio at its head is an impostor church. So William Kilpatrick asks:

. . . how can one tell the imposter Church from the Church established by Christ?

Although there are several indicators, the main giveaway, I believe, can be found in differing attitudes toward sin. The true Church takes sin very seriously and warns about it constantly. Indeed, the main mission of the Church is to save us from our sins. On the other hand, one of the main goals of the Church which Francis and his followers are building is to diminish the importance of sin.

On several occasions, Francis has belittled sexual sins, referring to them as the “lightest of sins” or jokingly as “sins below the waist.” He reportedly told a group of Spanish seminarians that they must absolve all sins in the confessional, even if there is no sign of repentance. On one occasion, when asked about the exploits of a homosexual priest, Francis replied, “Who am I to judge?” But—with the exception of sins against the environment and “sins” of rigidity—he seems to take a “Who-am-I-to-judge” attitude toward almost all sins.

In a Substack article from a couple of years ago, I  explore the real root of the rot in the Roman church. See The Role of Concupiscence in the Decline of the Catholic Church. 

Related

Abortion and the Wages of Concupiscence Unrestrained: Why do the powerful arguments against abortion have such little effect?

Milquetoast Mitt Won't Seek Reelection

Here. Good riddance!

Who will the Democrats replace him with?

Rod Dreher Talks Sense

Here:

In America, when you hear media figures and politicians gassing on about “threats to democracy,” you should be aware that what they really might mean is “threats to a system that favors current elites and their prejudices, against the common good.” 

And this despite Dreher's to-me-incomprehensible  case of TDS.

Delete the might and Dreher's point is spot on.

No word or phrase is safe from an Orwellian language-hijacker, and leftists are language-hijackers, as I have been documenting online since 2004.

Jacques Derrida on 9/11

John Searle famously remarked that Derrida gives bullshit a bad name. Striking indeed is the French penchant for pseudo-literary vaporosity.  

"Something" took place, we have the feeling of not having seen it coming, and certain consequences undeniably follow upon the "thing." But this very thing, the place and meaning of this "event," remains ineffable, like an intuition without concept, like a unicity with no generality on the horizon or with no horizon at all, out of range for a language that admits its powerlessness and so is reduced to pronouncing mechanically a date, repeating it endlessly, as a kind of ritual incantation, a conjuring poem, a journalistic litany or rhetorical refrain that admits to not knowing what it's talking about. We do not in fact know what we are saying or naming in this way: September 11, le 11 septembre, September 11. The brevity of the appellation (September 11, 9/11) stems not only from an economic or rhetorical necessity. The telegram of this metonymy—a name, a number—points out the unqualifiable by recognizing that we do not recognize or even cognize that we do not yet know how to qualify, that we do not know what we are talking about. 

For the entire piece, go here.  You are forgiven if you have had enough.

9/11 Twenty-Two Years Later

Top o' the Stack.

Was 9/11 an 'inside job'? I take no position on this question. Here is a review of David Ray Griffin's latest.

To say it again: linkage does not constitute endorsement in whole or in part.

UPDATE

New York Tony writes:

Since I was a kid, I would annually see the demolition of public housing, buildings imploding and pancaking into their footprint in the last half-minute of a local news broadcast. So had millions of others. But in a macabre illustration of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, nearly everyone, including me, fell for it on 9/11: the Towers fell after the planes hit, therefore they fell because they hit, imploding and pancaking into their footprint, so geometrically conveniently.  And Tower 7 wasn't hit at all. (In Iran, a jet slammed into a smaller building which burned for three days but didn't collapse.) It was a controlled demolition (see videos here), so the only question, which I remember posing to you then as I do now, is who strategically placed and who detonated the explosives? And why did we not instinctively connect what we saw with what we remembered and so easily accept the official narrative? Someone did, even if we can't agree on who. 

If two different spatiotemporally contiguous events, E1 and E2, occur with E1 temporally prior to E2, one cannot validly infer that E1 caused E2. To think otherwise would be to commit the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. There has to be more to causation than spatiotemporal contiguity and temporal succession. To show that 9/11 was an 'inside job,' however, one has to do a lot more than avoid the fallacy in question. One has to work out the details of a plausible account of who placed the explosives without being detected and who detonated them, and why.

 

I suspect Tony will agree with what I just wrote. Twenty-two years ago I looked into the matter and was unconvinced of the 'truther' allegations. To mollify Tony, I will now make a major concession. We now have a mountain of evidence that Deep State apparatchiki are hard at work in nefarious and lawless ways destroying our republic and "fundamentally transforming" -- you know the origin of the phrase -- the U.S. into something like the S. U.  These undeniable facts make me more receptive to the 'truther' allegations.

 

The hard Left's takeover of the Democrat Party also explains why the events of 9/11/01 were not taken as an impetus to bring the southern border under control. Uncontrolled illegal immigration without assimilation is a most effective means of bringing a democratic, constitutionally-based republic to its knees. 

 

Orwellian globalists love the word 'democracy,' but please note that what they mean by it is oligarchy. As I have said more than once, the subversion of language is the mother of all subversion.

 

UPDATE 9/13)

 

1) Rod Dreher asks: Was 9/11 a metaphysical event?

I have never gone in my interpretation beyond the conclusion that in some real sense, God had removed His hand from America, and had given us over to our sins, as He had done in ages past with Biblical Israel. Of course I have no proof of that, but if you look at the trajectory of our country since that terrible September day, you will find ample evidence to confirm the thesis.

2) Hugh Murray on 9/11.

 

Are New Yorkers Getting What They Deserve?

Arguably, yes. If you vote leftism into power, then you are collectively responsible for the destruction and depredation that you ought to know follows leftist policies as night follows day. Here is just one example among hundreds of recent examples of what is happening on the mean streets of NYC.  The video is graphic, depicting as it does an elderly black lady being beaten by a black thug with her own cane. Shocking? Not to anyone who has been paying attention to the Democrat-driven destruction of once-great American cities.

No doubt there are some decent people in NYC. My advice to them is to 'git' while the 'gittin's' good. A vote with the feet is also a vote with the wallet. An excellent way to defund the Left.

Of course, some cannot leave for various reasons. Must they shoulder any of the blame? Yes, if they didn't do their bit in opposing the destructive Dems.

As for the leftists who are leaving, but with their leftist views intact, they ought to wallow in the shit they shat. You and your deleterious garbage are not wanted where the morally straight and mentally awake flourish. You may earn more than the proverbial cold shoulder.

UPDATE (9/9).

1) Another woke joke of a crap hole is Portland, Oregon where rampant crime  has driven Nike out. Go woke, go broke.

2) Another reason for the rotting of the Big Apple is the presence there of so many useful idiots. One such is NYC Assemblyman Ron Kim who on Cavuto's show on Fox this morning uncorked the asinine canard that "no person is illegal." Kim didn't come across as stupid, but surely he must know, first, that no one ever said that any person is illegal, and second, that an illegal alien is so-called because of the person's illegal action. I would be very surprised if Kim lacks the mental equipment to distinguish between agent and action, which in plain English is the distinction between the doer of a deed and the deed done. Since Kim is not inherently stupid, what we have here is another example of willful self-enstupidation which has the effect of promoting  social collapse even if Kim does not himself intend to promote social collapse.  What makes him a useful idiot is the fact that he is being used by evil people who do intend the destruction of our republic. 

3) Here is a mad NYC mommy who has had enough and is not afraid to tell leftist hate-America swine what she thinks of them.  Civility meets a limit when your civil space is allowed to be invaded by the very people charged with its protection.

4) Powerline: "Texas Gov. Greg Abbott came out swinging on Friday. Abbott, who has rightly been busing thousands of illegals to U.S. sanctuary cities such as New York City, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, vowed to send even more migrants to Washington, D.C.

He wrote: “We will send Biden the same swift justice. And, we will add even more buses of migrants to Washington, D.C.”

UPDATE (9/10)

5) Let New York City Die. "So, let New York die. Let Chicago die. New Jersey, Massachusetts, everywhere these sanctuary leftists rule and are currently choking on what they’ve supported imposing on others, let them collapse. And enjoy the view as it happens." 

I don't agree with the Schadenfreude of the last line, but the only way leftist fools will learn is by experiencing in their own lives and at their own bodies the consequences of their actions. Probably the best form of resistance is by bussing all illegal aliens to so-called 'sanctuary' jurisdictions, whether cities or states, so that leftists can be brought to understand the consequences of their deliberate self-enstupidation.

6) The RCC needs to be condemned as well. In its current 'woke' form with Bergoglio the Termite at its head it is in dire need of defunding. Michelle Malkin:

Make no mistake: These are not desperate people suddenly seeking refuge from violence and harm. They are low-wage workers, pew-fillers and future ethnic-bloc voters being exploited by Big Business, the Vatican and the Democrat Party.

Pueblo Sin Fronteras may be the most recognizable name behind the caravans, but global Catholic elites play a central role in the coordination of this transnational human smuggling racket. Trump-bashing, American sovereignty-trashing Pope Francis donated $500,000 nine months ago from his Peter's Pence fund to assist illegal immigrant caravan participants. The subsidies cover "27 projects in 16 dioceses and Mexican religious congregations" for "housing, food and basic necessities," as well as "migrant" assistance programs "run by seven dioceses and three religious congregations: the Scalabrinians, the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary and the Hermanas Josefinas," according to the Catholic News Service.

UPDATE 9/12

7) Pope Francis to urge resignation of Bishop Strickland.  Figures. Defund the RCC! Send the cadre of termites into the desert for a long, long season of Besinnung. When the Archdiocese of Tucson sent us a contribution form, I sent it to the shredder. I should have written them back a nasty letter. Of course, many of the Protestant denominations are even worse. 

8) Corruption everywhere: FDA Gone Rogue.

Next Stop: The Catacombs

Catacomb Joe sends us to this Rod Dreher piece in the European Conservative. 

Believe it or not, the Trial of the Century just happened in a courtroom in Helsinki. The Finnish parliamentarian and physician Päivi Räsänen this week returned to the dock to face hate crimes charges for having quoted the Bible in defense of Scripture’s teaching on homosexuality.

Alain on Monasticism

Stack leader. 

The other morning I recalled the passage in Alain where he recorded his boyhood visit to the abbey at La Trappe and his visceral revulsion at the life of the monks. So I pulled his On Happiness from the shelf and to my surprise opened right to the passage in question. Coincidence, or synchronicity? I'll leave that question for later. Here is the passage:

Carpe Noctem

To make good use of the night, don't load the mind with dreck before drifting off.

The Downward Drift of the Democrat Party

Substack latest.

Existence Exists: Analytic or Synthetic?

 Recently over the transom:

I am A. Kashfi, Professor of philosophy from Tehran University, Iran.

I am currently engaged in studying your esteemed book A PARADIGM THEORY OF EXISTENCE. In this book, you argue that “existence exists”. Regarding this proposition, a question has arisen for me. I would be grateful to have your response.

Is this proposition analytical or synthetic?

If this proposition is analytical, its equivalent would be: "Existence is existence" or "Existent is existent," which, as it is evident, doesn't contain particularly useful information.

If this proposition is synthetic, it requires that the concept of “existence” be distinct from the concept of “existent”. I want to know what the distinction between these two concepts is. Here, which concept "other than existence" (note: distinct from existence), in accordance with the synthetic nature of the mentioned proposition, are we attributing to existence?

 

In other words, I understand the proposition "A tree exists", but what does the proposition "existence exists", (given the synthetic nature of this proposition), mean?

Yours sincerely, A. Kashfi

Thank you for writing, Professor Kashfi. Nothing in philosophy fascinates me more than the topic of Existence, and so it is with pleasure that I think through your questions.

To understand what I mean when I say that Existence exists you have to understand that I distinguish between existing items (existents) and Existence.  Thus I do not use 'existence' as some philosophers do to refer to existents collectively.  Nor do I mean by 'Existence exists' what Ayn Rand means by it. The distinction between Existence and existents, as I construe it, is motivated by (i) the apparent fact, evident to the senses,  that there are many existents but that (ii) these existents all have something in common, namely, Existence. Existence is one to their many as that in virtue of which the many existents exist. The distinction gives rise to several questions. Here are four. First, what is it for an individual existent to exist? Second, what is Existence itself in its difference from individual existents? Third, how is Existence common to existents? Fourth, does Existence itself exist?

Reinhardt Grossmann proffers a quick answer to the fourth question: How could it fail to? "If existence did not exist, then nothing would exist." (The Categorial Structure of the World, Indiana UP, 1983, p. 405) Of course, he is not talking about my theory, but his own. He goes on to say that it does not matter to which category you assign Existence.  Whatever Existence is, it must exist if anything is to exist. I argue in my book that Existence cannot be a first-level property and thus that it cannot be that existents exist by instantiating Existence, not that this is what Grossmann maintains. Suppose that I am wrong and that Existence is a first-level property, a property of individual existents, and that the latter exist by instantiating Existence.  Then surely that property would have to exist if anything exists. Here then is an example of a meaningful use of 'Existence exists.' If Existence is a first-level property, a property of individuals, then Existence must exist if anything is to instantiate it.

The distinction between existents and Existence is nothing new. In Aquinas it is the distinction between ens/entia and esse.  In Heidegger it is the distinction (ontologische Differenz) between das Seiende and das Sein. We also find it it Islamic philosophy. Fazlur Rahman, glossing Mulla Sadra, writes, "Existence is that primordial reality thanks to which things exist . . ." (The Philosophy of Mulla Sadra, SUNY Press, 1975, p. 28. Diacriticals omitted.)

Sadra is clearly distinguishing between the things that exist (existents) and that in virtue of which they exist, Existence. There are of course very important differences between the three thinkers mentioned, and between their views and mine. But there is a close affinity between my view and that of Aquinas, and a somewhat close affinity between my view and that of Mulla Sadra.   

For Aquinas, Existence itself exists as God: Deus est ipsum esse subsistens. I am using 'Being' and 'Existence' interchangeably. For Aquinas, then, God is (identical to) self-subsisting Being.  God is both Being (esse) and the supreme being (ens).  In my jargon, the God of Aquinas is the Paradigm Existent. God does have have esse; he is (identical to) esse. So the Paradigm Existent  is both Being (esse) and being (ens). That is equivalent to saying that Existence exists. 

Aquinas is saying that Being itself is. On my reading, he is making three interconnected claims. (1) Being is not other than every being, as it is for Heidegger. His is not an 'alterity' theory of Being.  (2) Being does not divide without remainder into beings. He rejects what I call radical ontological pluralism.  (3) God (self-subsistent Being) is not a being among beings; God is the being, where 'the' connotes uniqueness. See God: A Being among Beings or Being itself? Aquinas thus rejects an ontic conception of Being/God. Everything other than God is in a dependent and derivative way or mode. It is important to note that God for Aquinas is not only unique, but uniquely unique: unique in his very mode of uniqueness. If you understand what Aquinas is saying, then you will understand what I am saying when I say that Existence itself exists. Existence itself is Existence in its difference from the phenomenal existents which derive their existence from the Paradigm Existent.

'Ens' (being) is the present participle of the infinitive 'esse' (to be). This linguistic fact points us in a Platonic direction: phenomenal existents (you, me, my cats, the Moon, Trafalgar Square, my bicycle, its parts such as the chain, and its parts, the links . . .) participate in noumenal Existence. In virtue of this participation, phenomenal existents exist and form a unified plurality of existents. This plurality is no illusion. It is real, but derivatively real. What is derivatively real, however, is not ultimately real. I agree on this point and others with Plato, Aquinas, and Sadra.

Taking a further step in the Platonic direction, I will note that instead of 'Paradigm Existent' I could have used 'Exemplary Existent.' Both exemplars (paradigms, standards) and universals are ones-over-many, but an exemplar is not a universal. Universals have instances, but Existence has no instances.  Exemplification is not instantiation.

As for Sadra, if Existence is the "primordial reality," then this is tantamount to saying that Existence itself exists. For if Existence is real, then it cannot have a merely conceptual or mental status, as it would be if it were a product of abstraction, and if it is the primordial reality, then everything other than it is real in virtue of being dependent on it. As for Heidegger, while he too distinguishes Being from beings, he denies that Being itself is. Das Sein ist kein Seiendes! The overly triumphalistic subtitle of my book, "Onto-theology Vindicated" was meant to signal my opposition to Heidegger, whose critique of what he calls metaphysics is in part a critique of onto-theology. An onto-theological approach to Being avoids both the alterity view and the ontic view. But to explain this in any depth is beyond the scope of this response. See my Heidegger category for more on Schwarzwaldontologie. See also Three Theisms: Ontic, Alterity, and Onto-Theological and their Liabilities.

Analytic or Synthetic?

I will now respond to Professor Kashfi directly. He asks whether 'Existence exists' is analytic or synthetic and finds difficulties either way. My short answer is that Kashfi's question is not relevant to my broadly Platonic view. His question, couched in Kantian terms, is modern; my theory, harking back to Platonic exemplarism, is ancient. His question presupposes that Being is a being among beings. But that I deny. Now to the details.

Immanuel Kant applies the terms 'analytic' and 'synthetic' to judgments (Urteile). In the simple categorical case, a judgment involves a relation between a subject-concept and a predicate-concept. Thus the judgment expressed by 'Bodies are heavy,' (Kant's example of a synthetic judgment a posteriori) relates the concept body to the concept heavy via the copula 'are.'  But there has to be more to it than this, Kant insists, since we need to know "in what the asserted relation consists." (CPR B 141) His answer is that the relation of subject-concept to predicate-concept in a judgment is grounded in the bringing-together of concepts in the objective unity of apperception.  It is this objective unity of apperception (self-consciousness) that is "intended by the copula 'is.'" (B 142) In  Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, section 22, Kant writes, "The union of representations (Vorstellungen) in one consciousness is judgment." If these representations are united in the consciousness of a particular person, then the judgment is "accidental and subjective." If, however, they are united in a "consciousness in general," then the judgment is "necessary and objective."  This consciousness in general is what in Critique of Pure Reason he calls the objective unity of apperception.

Kant's central problem, as explained in his letter to Marcus Herz, is this: On what ground rests the relation of that in us which we call representation to the object? A judgment is a representation composed of concepts which are themselves representations. Judgments purport to be true or objectively valid. Suppose I see a green tree and judge that the tree is green. The judgment purports to be true  whether I or anyone make it. The purport is that the tree is green in reality apart from us  and our subjective mental states. I have an empirical representation of  green and an empirical representation of tree.  What I don't have is an empirical representation of what the 'is' denotes.  I have no empirical representation of the copulative tie or, equivalently, I have no empirical representation of the existence of the green tree. (The tree is green if and only if the green tree exists.) So how do I know that the tree is green? How do I secure the objective validity of the judgmental representation? What is the ultimate ground of the synthesis of subject and predicate in the object?  What makes it the case that the judgment expressed by 'This body is heavy' is true independently of my particular mental state and thus true for all actual and possible finite cognizers? What assures me that the judgental purport is satisfied? This is Kant's problem. To put it oxymoronically, it is a classically  modern problem. (The modern period in the West begins with Descartes, 1596-1650.)

Kant's solution is a transcendentally idealist one. The ultimate ground of the synthesis of subject and predicate in the object is is supplied by the objective unity of apperception which is also the transcendental unity of apperception. This solution is fraught with difficulties. For me, the central difficulty is the one I tackled in my doctoral dissertation: what exactly is the status of this transcendental unity of apperception? But that is basically what Kant is maintaining: we, in our transcendental capacity,  constitute objects in their objectivity. For we are the source of the the objective synthesis that lends objectivity to judgments.

Whether a judgment is analytic (e.g., 'All bodies are extended') or synthetic ('This body is heavy'), all such judgments are about phenomenal particulars in space and time.  But neither Kant's transcendental unity of apperception nor my Paradigm Existent is a phenomenal particular in space and time. For Kant, the ultimate transcendental condition of anything's being an object is not itself an object among objects. Similarly, the The Paradigm Existent is not an existent among existents. It is no more such than the God of Aquinas is a being among beings. 

And so I say that the question 'Analytic or Synthetic?' is inappropriately asked of 'Existence itself exists.'

Kashfi writes, "If this proposition ['Existence exists'] is synthetic, it requires that the concept of 'existence' be distinct from the concept of 'existent'."  Kashfi thereby assumes something that I explicitly deny early on in my book, namely, that Existence is a concept. Concepts track essences. The concept triangle, for example, 'captures' the essence TRIANGLE. The existence of an existing thing, however, cannot be captured, grasped, 'made present to the mind'  by any concept.  Existence is trans-conceptual.

One reason is that existence is not essence. Another reason is that each existing thing has its own existence: Socrates' existence is his and not Plato's. The two philosophers differ numerically in their very existence. They differ numerically as existents. Thus their numerical difference is numerical-existential difference. But as Aristotle said (in Greek, not in Latin): Individuum qua individuum ineffabile est. Individuals as such are ineffable. That strikes me as obvious given that (i) there is and can be no concept that captures or grasps the haecceity (non-qualitative thisness) of an individual, and (ii) there are no haecceities except those of existing things.  (Pace Plantinga, there are no such metaphysical monstrosities as  uninstantiated haecceities.)  There are, in other words, no individual concepts. Definitions and arguments here and in the surrounding entries in the identity and individuation category.

Neither the existence of Socrates, the existence that is his alone and not possibly shared with any other existent, nor Existence itself in its difference from existents is a concept. My point is that Existence either in finite existents or in itself cannot be reduced to a concept. I am not saying that we have no concept of Existence; we do. It is just that the concept of Existence is the concept of something that is not and cannot be a concept.  Existence is in this respect like God. We have various concepts of God, but God is not a concept. Or do you think that a mere concept in a mortal's mind created the world? Similarly, do you think that that in virtue of which finite existents exist is a concept in a mortal's mind?  See The Concept GOD as a Limit Concept.

To understand what I mean by 'Existence itself exists,' you have to understand that Existence itself is like the Platonic Form/Idea, Humanity. The former, like the latter, is not self-predicable or self-instantiating: Humanity is quite obviously not human, nor a human. And because Humanity is not self-predicable, one cannot sensibly ask whether the predicate-concept human is analytically contained in the subject-concept Humanity or synthetically  attached to it. The Form/Idea Humanity exists by being (identical to) itself. Its Being is (identically) its self-identity unlike a particular human such as Socrates whose Being is not its self-identity. (If Socrates' Being were his self-identity, then he would be a necessary being, when in fact he is a contingent being.) The same goes for Existence in its different from existents: its Being is its self-identity, which implies that the Paradigm Existent is metaphysically necessary.

If Humanity were self-predicable (self-instantiating), then the Third Man Regress would be up and running. For if  'is human' is univocally predicable of both the Form Humanity and its phenomenal instance Socrates, then a second Form -- call it Humanity II -- would have to be introduced to explain what is common to both Humanity and Socrates. And so on into an infinite explanatory regress which, as explanatory, is vicious. (Sone infinite regresses are benign, e.g. the truth regress.)

The Form/Idea Humanity is a CASE of itself, but not an INSTANCE of itself. A case because Humanity  is not a universal what-determination abstractly common to particular phenomenal beings, but a paradigm or exemplar.  The standard meter bar in Paris might prove to be a useful analogy if you take it the right way (which is of course that way I want you to take it.) The standard meter bar is obviously not an instance of itself because it is a material particular, and such things do not have instances.  For the same reason, you cannot predicate the standard meter bar of itself.  The standard meter bar is nonetheless a case of itself in that it is a metal bar exactly one meter in length: it sets the standard by being (identical to) the standard.

Now the standard meter bar is a phenomenal particular relative to which other phenomenal particulars either measure up or fall short, whereas the Paradigm Existent is not a phenomenal particular.  This is a point of disanalogy. But if you understand how the standard meter bars functions as a paradigm, you should also be able to understand how Existence could so function, mutatis mutandis.

Performative Catholicism

Opening:

Performative Catholicism has become the norm today, and the Rosary is the primary tool in the performance. President Joe Biden loves to show off his rosary, such as during a virtual conversation with Mexico’s President Lopez Obrador. Claiming his devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe—despite the fact that President Biden has promoted the most extreme pro-abortion policies in history—Biden told Obrador that he had visited Mexico four times as vice president and during his visits he “paid his respects to the Virgin of Guadalupe.”  

Rod Dreher on the Ben Op and the Bon Op

One of the few free ones.

Excerpt:

“The Benedict Option is not available to us; it is either the Boniface Option or destruction,” he writes. “You cannot run and hide from Trashworld. Our only option is to despise it and to fight back.”

Leaving aside this inaccurate caricature of the Ben Op, what does Isker mean by despising it and fighting back? Though he doesn’t think so, that’s what we’re both after: rejecting what is evil in this post-Christian world, and devising a method of resistance. Having read Isker’s book, and sincerely appreciating what is good in it, my view is that his Bon Op is primarily about seeking worldly power as a means to impose Christianity — his kind of Christianity — on the people. (In this, the Calvinist Bon Op is a dwarfish parallel to the elvish proposals of the Catholic integralists.)

I like the parenthetical remark at the close of the quotation. Compare my Integralism in Three Sentences: Reasons Contra.