Maverick Philosopher

Travel and the Indifference of Places

Malcolm Pollack writing from Ha Long Bay, near Hanoi, Vietnam:

. . . mainly I’m writing just now to note how little enthusiasm I have for travel these days. I’ve been all over the place in my lengthening life (I’ll be 69 in April), and more and more it seems to me that every place is, well, just some other place, and that gallivanting around is increasingly just exhausting and distracting. The world outside seems increasingly finite in comparison to what can (and should) be explored within — and once you’ve scratched the youthful itch of restlessness the trick, I think, is just to find someplace you like well enough, and to make yourself at home.

I could not agree more.  

You may enjoy Three Reasons to Stay Home.

Of travel I've had my share, man. I've been everywhere.

Is Trump's Order to End DEI Conservative?

From the Independent Institute:

President Trump signed a flurry of executive orders last week, leaving media pundits breathless in their efforts to cover it all. One of the most controversial orders was titled “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing.”

Yes, conservatives applauded loudly the government’s suspension of its commitment to DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion)—but the order wasn’t conservative. The history of colorblind meritocracy is a classical liberal one that originated from neither the Left nor Right.

I beg to differ.  Commitment to race-neutral meritocracy is indeed classically liberal,  but classical liberalism is an essential ingredient in American conservatism. This is more than a terminological quibble: it is a disagreement over the nature of American conservatism.

For many of us who reject leftism, and embrace a version of conservatism, there remains a choice between what I call American conservatism, which accepts key tenets of classical liberalism, and a more robust conservatism.  This more robust conservatism inclines toward the reactionary and anti-liberal. The difference emerges in an essay by Bishop Robert Barron entitled One Cheer for George Will's The Conservative Sensibility. The bolded passages below throw the difference into relief.

And so it was with great interest that I turned to Will’s latest offering, a massive volume called The Conservative Sensibility, a book that both in size and scope certainly qualifies as the author’s opus magnum. Will’s central argument is crucially important. The American experiment in democracy rests, he says, upon the epistemological [sic] conviction that there are political rights, grounded in a relatively stable human nature, that precede the actions and decisions of government. These rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are not the gifts of the state; rather, the state exists to guarantee them, or to use the word that Will considers the most important in the entire prologue to the Declaration of Independence, to “secure” them. Thus is government properly and severely limited and tyranny kept, at least in principle, at bay. In accord with both Hobbes and Locke, Will holds that the purpose of the government finally is to provide an arena for the fullest possible expression of individual freedom. [. . .]

With much of this I found myself in profound agreement. It is indeed a pivotal feature of Catholic social teaching that an objective human nature exists and that the rights associated with it are inherent and not artificial constructs of the culture or the state. Accordingly, it is certainly good that government’s tendency toward imperial expansion be constrained. But as George Will’s presentation unfolded, I found myself far less sympathetic with his vision. What becomes clear is that Will shares, with Hobbes and Locke and their disciple Thomas Jefferson, a morally minimalistic understanding of the arena of freedom that government exists to protect. All three of those modern political theorists denied that we can know with certitude the true nature of human happiness or the proper goal of the moral life—and hence they left the determination of those matters up to the individual. Jefferson expressed this famously as the right to pursue happiness as one sees fit. The government’s role, on this interpretation, is to assure the least conflict among the myriad individuals seeking their particular version of fulfillment. The only moral bedrock in this scenario is the life and freedom of each actor.

Catholic social teaching has long been suspicious of just this sort of morally minimalist individualism. Central to the Church’s thinking on politics is the conviction that ethical principles, available to the searching intellect of any person of good will, ought to govern the moves [sic] of individuals within the society, and moreover, that the nation as a whole ought to be informed by a clear sense of the common good—that is to say, some shared social value that goes beyond simply what individuals might seek for themselves. Pace Will, the government itself plays a role in the application of this moral framework precisely in the measure that law has both a protective and directive function. It both holds off threats to human flourishing and, since it is, to a degree, a teacher of what the society morally approves and disapproves, also actively guides the desires of citizens.

I applaud the idea that the law have both a protective and a directive function.  But to what should the law direct us? 

On a purely procedural liberalism, "the purpose of the government finally is to provide an arena for the fullest possible expression of individual freedom. " This won't do, obviously. If people are allowed the fullest possible expression of individual freedom, then anything goes: looting, arson, bestiality, paedophilia, voter fraud, lying under oath, destruction of public and private property, etc.  Liberty is a high value but not when it becomes license. Indisputably, ethical principles ought to govern the behavior of individuals. But which principles exactly? Therein lies the rub. We will presumably agree that there must be some, but this agreement gets us nowhere unless we can specify the principles.

If we knew "with certitude the true nature of human happiness or the proper goal of the moral life" then we could derive the principles. Now there are those who are subjectively certain about the nature of happiness and the goal of life.   But this merely subjective certainty is worth little or nothing given that different people and groups are 'certain' about different things.  Subjective certainty is no guarantee of objective certainty, which is what knowledge requires.  This is especially so if the putative knowledge will be used to justify ethical prescriptions and proscriptions that will be imposed upon people by law.

For example, there are atheists and there are theists in almost every society. No atheist could possibly believe that the purpose of human life is to know, love, and serve God in this world and be happy with him in the next.  From this Catechism answer one can derive very specific ethical prescriptions and proscriptions, some of which will be rejected by atheists as a violation of their liberty. Now if one could KNOW that the Catechism answer is true, then those specific ethical principles would be objectively grounded in a manner that would justify imposing them on all members of a society for their own good whether they like it or not.

But is it known, as opposed to reasonably believed, that there is a God, etc.?  Most atheists would deny that the proposition in question is even reasonably believed.  Bishop Barron's Catholicism is to their minds just so much medieval superstition. Suppose, however, that the good bishop's worldview is simply true.  That does us no good unless we can know that it is true. Suppose some know (with objective certainty) that it is true. That also does us no good, politically speaking, unless a large majority in a society can agree that we know that it is true. 

So while it cannot be denied that the law must have some directive, as opposed to merely protective, function, the question remains as to what precisely it ought to direct us to.  The directions cannot come from any religion, but neither can they come from any ersatz religion such as leftism.  No theocracy, but also no 'leftocracy'!  Separation of church and state, but also separation of leftism and state.

This leaves us with the problem of finding the via media between a purely procedural liberalism and the tyrannical imposition of  prescriptions and proscriptions that derive from some dogmatically held, but strictly unknowable, set of metaphysical assumptions about man and world.  It is a dilemma inasmuch as both options are unacceptable.  

I'll end by noting that the main threats to our liberty at the present time do not emanate from a Roman Catholicism that has become a shell of its former self bereft of the cultural relevance it enjoyed for millennia until losing it in the mid-1960s; they proceed from leftism and Islam, and the Unholy Alliance of the two.

And so while the dilemma lately noted remains in force, a partial solution must take the form of retaining elements of the Judeo-Christian worldview, the Ten Commandments chiefly,  and by a restoration of the values of the American founding. Practically, this will require vigorous opposition to the parties of the unholy alliance.

Remembering Lenny Skutnick

Last night's  mid-air collision over the Potomac reminded me of January 1982 and the heroism of Lenny Skutnick:

On a bitterly cold and snowy day in January 1982, Air Florida flight 90 took off from Washington D.C. heading to Tampa, Florida.

Immediately after takeoff the plane began experiencing problems from the ice that had formed on its wings. It plummeted, skipping off Washington’s 14th Street bridge and crashing into the icy waters of the Potomac River.

The ensuing rescue effort was broadcast on local television. Frigid temperatures and bad weather hampered the first responders. With time running out to save the crash victims, a bystander named Lenny Skutnik suddenly jumped in and saved flight attendant Priscilla Trijado, who had twice fallen back into the water after slipping away from rescue lines.

A speechwriter for Ronald Reagan named Aram Bakshian was watching the coverage. He immediately thought Skutnik’s story would resonate with the American people and decided to include it in his draft of Reagan’s upcoming State of the Union address.

Here is Reagan's SOTU tribute to Skutnick.

The low level of humanity tempts some of us to misanthropy. But there is no denying that heroes walk among us. Daniel Penny is another. And there is no denying that the White House from time to time is graced with a truly worthy occupant. Reagan, and now Trump.

How Christian is the Doctrine of Hell?

The traditional doctrine of hell appears to be a consequence of two assumptions, the first  of which is arguably unbiblical.

Geddes MacGregor: ". . . the doctrine of hell, with its attendant horrors, is intended as the logical development of the notion that, since man is intrinsically immortal, and some men turn out badly, they cannot enjoy the presence of God." (Reincarnation in Christianity, Quest Books, 1978, 121)

1) We are naturally, and intrinsically, immortal.

2) Some of us, by our evil behavior, have freely and forever excluded  ourselves from the divine presence.

MacGregor: "Having permanently deprived themselves of the capacity to enjoy that presence [the presence of God] , they must forever endure the sense of its loss, the poena damni, as the medieval theologians called it." (Ibid.)

Therefore

3) There must be some state or condition, some 'place,' for these immortal souls, and that 'place' is hell. They will remain there either for all eternity or else everlastingly.

According to MacGregor, premise (1) is false because it has no foundation in biblical teaching. (Ibid.) St. Paul, says MacGregor, subscribes to conditional immortality.  This is "immortality that is dependent on one's being 'raised up' to victory over death through the resurrection of Christ." (op. cit., 119)   It follows that the medieval doctrine of hell  is un-Christian.

The choice we face is not between heaven and hell but between heaven and utter extinction which, for MacGregor, is worse than everlasting torment.

Two issues: Would extinction of the  person be worse than everlasting torment? That is not my sense of things. I would prefer extinction, for Epicurean reasons. The other issue is whether the Pauline texts and the rest of the Bible support conditional immortality.  I have no fixed opinion on that question.  

On Corporate Prayer and Institutionalized Religion

Substack latest.

Ecclesiolatry is one of the topics discussed.

Steve Bannon and Megyn Kelly on FAFO

Here.

Megyn Kelly, being relatively young, may be forgiven for referring to Elliot Ness as Elliot Nest (ouch!), but Steve Bannon, whose superannuation shows, and who ought to know better, either missed her mistake or let it pass, being the gentleman that he is.  

In all other particulars, however, the short video is delightfully on target.

As for the man himself, what Kennedy said about Nixon could also be said about Trump: "The man has no class."

But what is more important, both domestically and internationally, class or the ability to kick ass?* We conservative quill-drivers do some good, I suppose, but none of us are positioned to bring about decisive, world-shaking, change. While we sit at our ink wells and drive our quills, great men stand at the ramparts and drive history.

But we the people must keep an eye on them. It is not that power corrupts; it does not. It is that we who are all morally defective and susceptible to the blandishments of power, abuse it.  Power itself, however, is good. If it were not, why would all-power count among the omni-attributes of deity?

The Founders understood how easily fallen natures are suborned by the possession of power. So they designed a constitution-based republic with built-in safeguards to check and balance the executive's power lest it issue in tyranny.

Long live the Republic, the republic our political enemies aim to tear down.  They will not succeed. The right man came along at the right time, whether or not by divine design.

But one thing troubles me. Government by executive orders cannot be what the Founders had in mind. Given our current predicament, however, such orders are a necessary evil. If Congress did its job, they would not be necessary.

An executive order is an edict. 'Edict' and 'dictator' share the PIE root, deik-. And so, true to his word, Donald Trump was a dictator on Day One, reversing the pernicious edicts of his corrupt predecessor, Joseph Biden who on his first day, playing the dictator, viciously and stupidly reversed Trump's  wise  2017  border policies.  Biden ought to have been impeached and removed from office on the grounds of dereliction of duty and failure to uphold the Constitution he swore to uphold and protect.  But so divided have we become, that Biden's removal could not be brought about.

And so here we are. If in the unlikely event that the Dems take back the White House in 2028, the cycle of reversing and promulgating edicts will begin again.  A suboptimal outcome, that.

One more thing. We need an opposition party as part of the system of checks and balances. The Dems would do just fine if they could be restored to sanity, the Camelot sanity of the early 'sixties, say.  But that is a big 'if.' Kamalot would be a disaster. If the Dems persist in their subversive ways, however, serious thought will have to be given to the question whether their party should be outlawed. 

I'm serious. The CPUSA was never outlawed, as far as I know.** There was no need to, because of their relative lack of political clout. Outlawing them would only have given them attention and brought them supporters. But the transmogrification over the last decades of the Dems into a hard-Left subversive outfit with real chances of winning puts a different complexion on the matter.

Toleration is the touchstone of classical liberalism.  But toleration has limits: it negates itself when extended unto political suicide. 

____________

*To put it politely and allusively, 'kick donkey.'

**I'm not an historian, so correct me if I am wrong or omitting pertinent facts.

Is Illegal Immigration a Crime?

Over at the Stack.

It is. Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and other prominent Democrats lied to us about this. Illegal immigrants are subject to criminal penalties. While improper entry is a crime, unlawful presence is not a crime. One can be unlawfully present in the U. S. without having entered improperly, and thus without having committed a crime.

Read it all.  Very short.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Ramblin' Charles Adnopoz

David Dalton, Who is That Man? In Search of the Real Bob Dylan, Hyperion, 2012, p. 65:

As Dave van Ronk pointed out in his autobiography, many of the people involved in the first folk revival of the 1930s and '40s were Jewish -- as were the folkies of the '60s. Van Ronk reasoned that for Jews, belonging to a movement centered on American traditional music was a form of belonging and assimilation.

[. . .]

"The revelation that Jack [Elliot] was Jewish was vouchsafed unto Bobby one afternoon at the Figaro," Van Ronk recalled.  "We were sitting around shooting the bull with Barry Kornfeld and maybe a couple of other people and somehow it came out that Jack had grown up in Ocean Parkway and was named Elliot Adnopoz.  Bobby literally fell off his chair; he was rolling around on the floor, and it took him a couple of minutes to pull himself together and get up again.  Then Barry, who can be diabolical in things like this, leaned over to him and just whispered the word 'Adnopoz' and back he went under the table."

Lacking as it does the proper American cowboy resonance, 'Elliot Charles Adnopoz' was ditched by its bearer who came to call himself 'Ramblin' Jack Elliot.'  Born in 1931 in Brooklyn to Jewish parents who wanted him to become a doctor, young Adnopoz rebelled, ran away, and became a protégé of Woody Guthrie.  If it weren't for Ramblin' Jack, Guthrie would be nowhere near as well-known as he is today.  

Pretty Boy Floyd.  "As through this life you ramble, as through this life you roam/You'll never see an outlaw drive a family from their home."  No?  An example of the  tendency of lefties invariably to  take the side of the underdog regardless of whether right or wrong.  

Ramblin' Jack does a haunting version of Dylan's Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues.  It grows on you. Give it a chance.  

Cigarettes and Whisky and Wild Woman.  

Soul of a Man. 

Dylan's unforgettable,  Don't Think Twice. 

Here he is with Joan Baez, Leonard Cohen, Buffy Sainte Marie singing the beautiful, Passing Through.

Addendum:  A correspondent sends us to an article by Peter Hitchens on Dylan. Tell me what you think of it.

Dumb Dems and the Hitler Card

Having been dealt a stinging rebuke on 5 November 2024, you might think the Democrats would learn something, for example, that playing the 'Hitler card,' like playing the 'race card,' will henceforth give them a losing hand. But no! The knuckleheads double down! 

Elon Musk is an exuberant fellow at the top of his game. And he is, like all sane people, very happy with the outcome of the November election. His heart goes out to all who brought the Orange Man to a second term. And so he jumps around and cuts loose with idiosyncratic arm-hand gestures. He puts his hand on his heart and then extends his arm. A neutral observer might call it a 'heart-felt thank-you' salute. See here for a video of his antics.

But of course the Musk gesture is a Nazi salute to our political enemies. Out comes the 'Hitler card'! Typical.

And then they amalgamate this piece of scurrilous stupidity with a display of their penchant for double standards. (An old saying has it that if you strip a leftist of his double standards he will be left with no standards at all.) After all, "Tampon Tim" (Tim Walz) and "Fauxcahontas" (Elizabeth Warren) have been known to engage in similar arm extensions.  Are they too Nazis?

What these fools don't understand is that they will continue to lose as long as they continue to slander we us the people.  

Should people this stupid be let anywhere near the levers of power?

That is a rhetorical question, as is the one that preceded it.

Addendum (1/26)

A commenter points out that Elon's gesture was the Bellamy salute.

Enforcement of Borders is neither 'Draconian' nor 'Xenophobic'

I just heard a Democrat politician refer to the The Trump-Homan border crackdown as 'draconian' and 'xenophobic.' It is neither.

It is not cruel or severe. Although you may think that 'severe' is  etymologically related to 'sever,' it is not. To witness a penology that includes beheading and limb amputation you will have to take a trip to the Middle East. Iran and Saudi Arabia are go-to locales for draconian punishments. If there are any draconian punishments in the USA at the present time, they are inflicted by leftists. J-6 trespassers and abortion protesters are good examples of inflictees. 

As for 'xenophobic,' it it is the adjectival form of 'xenophobia.'  Now a phobia is an irrational fear.  But we who stand for the rule of law, have no irrational fear of foreigners or of things foreign.  If we did, why would we freely travel abroad and indeed freely live for extended periods in foreign lands? ('Freely' as opposed to 'by military order.') I myself have lived two and a half years abroad: six months in Salzburg, Austria, a year in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, and a year in Ankara, Turkey, and I have intensively studied the native languages, cultures, religions, and histories of these countries.

What's more, I entered legally, did not overstay my visa, obeyed the local laws, ate their food, observed their customs, and dressed appropriately. I did not, for example, walk around Turkey Arizona-style in short pants. I showed respect for Muslim ways. I entered legally in the way my ancestors entered the USA, legally. And like them, I studied the native languages and did my best to assimilate.  

You can always count on a leftist to misuse language. Language abuse is as it were inscribed into their DNA.  Show me a leftist and I'll show you a linguistic hijacker.  The scumbaggery of our subversive political enemies has many sources, but the mother of them all, and the mother of all subversion,  straight from the pit of hell and the Father of Lies, is the subversion of language.

The 'Gordian' Solution to the World-Knot

If the mind-body problem is the world-knot, as Schopenhauer is supposed to have said, then eliminative materialism is the 'Gordian' solution.  

Memo to Zennists

You can't get beyond the discursive intellect until you get to it.

Integration, Free Association, Open Immigration

An addendum to The Integrationist Fantasy.

Forced integration violates the right to free association. To add to both the irony and the outrage, the integrators refuse to integrate with the integrated.

Open immigration is not only in open defiance of the rule of law, it also leads to a particularly offensive form of forced integration, as when illegal aliens are shipped to various locales to the detriment of the citizens who live there, citizens who lack the political clout to prevent the invasion.

It is no surprise why Trump garnered such strong support from the the black, Hispanic, and working class demographics.

Hats Off to Huntington Beach, California

It was the summer of '65. I was lying in the sand at Huntington Beach, California listening to the Beach Boys, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, sing about hot rods, surfing, boy-girl relations and such when a song came on that "blew my mind" in the parlance of the day. But what I want to say, today, is that the city so-named 

. . . voted to approve the initiative brought by Mayor Pat Burns to Declare the City of Huntington Beach a “Non-Sanctuary City for Illegal Immigration for the Prevention of Crime.” As the City Council Members commented, the intent of this Resolution is to deliberately sidestep the Governor’s efforts to subvert the good work of federal immigration authorities and to announce the City’s cooperation with the federal government, the Trump Administration, and Border Czar Tom Homan’s work. This new City policy and Declaration are common sense, supports our law enforcement, and advances public safety throughout the City. What the Governor is doing does not.

Read it all. (HT: Fellow native-Californian, Ingvarius Maximus of Alhambra)

Scott Johnson on Richie Havens

Powerline:

Havens grew up in Brooklyn singing with a choir in church and with doo wop groups on street corners. He crossed the river to figure out how to make a go of it in Greenwich Village as a performer. He recorded two albums on Douglas Records before he signed a contract with Verve Forecast in 1967. He seemed to materialize out of nowhere that year with Mixed Bag, a beautiful album of folk covers and original compositions. The album was full of striking performances, but none more so than Havens’s interpretation of Bob Dylan’s “Just Like A Woman.” By the way, I may need to take a break from what is meant to be an occasional series until we celebrate Bob’s birthday next May with our traditional Bobfest.

By the way, did you catch Amy Klobuchar's oblique reference to Dylan at the Trump Inaugural? And what a speech our boy gave! He can turn on the gravitas when he wants to and needs to.  

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Remembering Suze Rotolo and the Songs She Inspired

Suze Rotolo, depicted above, died on 25 February 2011 at 67 years of age. Dylanologists usually refer to the following as songs she inspired:

Don't Think Twice.  This Peter, Paul, and Mary rendition may well be the best.  It moves me as much as it did 62 years ago in 1963 when it first came out.  It was via this song that I discovered Dylan.  The 45 rpm record I had and still have showed one 'B. Dylan' as the song's author.  I pronounced it as 'Dial-in' and wondered who he was.  I soon found out.

One Too Many Mornings

Tomorrow is a Long Time

Boots of Spanish Leather (Nancy Griffith) Joan Baez version.

There is some irony, of course, in Baez's renditions of songs inspired by Rotolo: Dylan's affair with Baez was a factor in his break up with Rotolo.

Ballad in Plain 'D.' Analysis. The song. This song is only indirectly inspired by Suze; it is 'inspired' by Suze's sister, Carla Rotolo, the "parasite sister" in Dylan's song. The link below that references their mother Mary Rotolo will also bring you to pages about Suze and Carla.  The commie character of the Village folk scene as represented by the Rotolos, Pete Seeger, and so many others  is a good part of the backstory to Dylan's My Back Pages. "Ah, but I was so much older them, I'm younger than that now."

Finally a great song by Baez inspired by and about Dylan: Diamonds and Rust

In her memoir, A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties (Broadway Books, 2008, p. 277-8), Suze Rotolo says this about her mother Mary Rotolo:

I remember her informing me that the career army man an older cousin was married to had lost out on a promotion that involved security clearance because of my appearance on the cover of Bob's album.  I was astounded.

True, the times they were troubled.  Protest against the escalating war in Vietnam was on the rise, draft cards were being burned, and colleges were erupting with discontent.  Blues, bluegrass, and ballads no longer defined folk music, since so many folksingers were now writing songs that spoke to current events.  Bob Dylan was labeled a "protest singer."  But the absurdity of my mother, Marxist Mary, trying to make me feel responsible for a military man's losing a security clearance because I am on an album cover with Bob Dylan, a rebel with a cause, left me speechless.  And that was all she said to me about the cover or the album in general. 

It Ain’t Me, Babe Today on TAP: When biopics get it wrong—and occasionally get it just right

On Anselmian or 'Perfect Being' Theology

Tom O. writes,

I was wondering if you have time to weigh in on the following problem. I take it you subscribe to perfect being theology as a constraint on our theorizing about God’s nature. For example, you write, “God is the absolute, and no absolute worth its salt is a contingent being. No absolute just happens to exist. it is built into the divine job description that God be a necessary being…”. Here, it looks to me like you’re endorsing a prior conception of what God must be like (‘absolute’) in order to infer that God must be a necessary being. 

 

Actually, Tom, I do not subscribe to 'perfect being' theology, as I explain below.   I do, however, have a prior conception of what God must be like to be 'worth his salt,' i.e., to satisfy the exigencies built into our concept of God.  God is the Absolute, and nothing could be the Absolute if it merely happened to exist. So God, if he exists, exists of absolute metaphysical necessity, and he has this necessity from himself, and not from another, a se non ab alio. It follows that if God does not exist, then he is impossible. Thus  what we should not say is that God necessarily exists, for this way of putting it implies that he does exist. We should say that God is necessarily non-contingent, i.e. necessarily such that, if he exists, he exists  necessarily (in all possible worlds in the Leibnizian patois), and if he does not exist, then he is impossible (exists in no possible world in the same façon de parler.) 

 

Now, suppose someone endorses a conception of God as a limited being. Maybe God is not all powerful, or he is dependent in some way (and so not a se in a strong sense- think pantheism) or he is contingent in some way. This view of God obviously parts ways with perfect being theology. But I want to know how the proponent of perfect being theology will argue that conceptions of God as a limited being are deficient. The very conception of God (as limited or absolute/perfect) is at issue here. So, the proponent of perfect being theology can’t assume God is the absolute to then argue a limited God is deficient. What criterion could he possibly appeal to in order to sort ‘genuine’ conceptions of God from ‘deficient’ conceptions?

 

In the context of this discussion there are three approaches to God that we ought to distinguish: the limited being approach, the perfect being approach, and  the beyond-perfect-being approach of Aquinas, Barry Miller, and myself, et al.  As for the limited being approach, I will just say for now that there might be one or more limited gods, but that they don't interest me. What interests me is whether there is an unsourced Source of the being, intelligibility, and value of everything other than it, a being of limitless perfection, return to which or fellowship with which, or participation in the being of which, would bring the ultimate in human felicity.  That is my concept of God, and not just mine.  My question then becomes: does anything in reality answer to that concept?  

I have no interest in limited gods. I have no interest in affirming them or denying them. There might even be one or more in addition to the unlimited God; they might serve as emissaries between the unlimited God and us.  But they would not be worthy of worship or worthy of my ultimate concern because my ultimate beatitude and need for final meaning could not be secured  by them.

My interest is whether we need to go beyond perfect being theology.  I say we do and that PBT is a limited approach to the divine.

The anthropomorphism of perfect being (Anselmian) theology

One approach to God and his attributes is Anselmian: God is "that that which no greater can be conceived."  God is the greatest conceivable being, the most perfect of all beings, the being possessing all perfections.  But what is a perfection?  A perfection is not just any old (positive, non-Cambridge) property, but a great-making property. Some of these properties admit of degrees while some do not. To say of God that he is the ens perfectissimum, the most perfect of all beings, is to say that he possesses all great- making properties, and of those that admit of degrees, he possesses them to the highest degree.

For example, power admits of degrees; so while Socrates and God are both powerful, only God is maximally powerful.  Wisdom too admits of degrees; so while both Socrates and God are both wise, only God is maximally wise.  And the same holds for love and mercy and moral goodness.  Many of the divine attributes, then, are maxima of attributes possessed by humans.

Are Socrates and God wise in the same sense of 'wise'?  This follows if wisdom in God is just the highest degree of the same attribute that is found in some humans.  Accordingly, the predicate 'wise' is being used univocally in 'Socrates is wise' and 'God is wise' despite the fact that God but not Socrates is all-wise.  Bear in mind that the sense of a predicate is not to be confused with the property (attribute) the predicate is used to express. Suppose we distinguish three 'planes': the linguistic, the semantic, and the ontic. Predicates inhabit the linguistic plane, senses the semantic plane, and properties the ontic plane. 

Thus a commitment to univocity appears to be entailed by the Anselmian or perfect-being approach.  The predicate 'wise' is being used in the very same sense when applied to Socrates and when applied to God. 

The polar opposite of univocity is equivocity.  The phenomenon of equivocity is illustrated by this pair of sentences: 'Socrates is wise,' 'Kamala is in no wise fit to be president.'  The meaning or sense of 'wise' is totally different across the two sentences.  Midway between univocity and equivocity there is analogicity.  Perhaps an example of an analogical use of 'wise' would be in application to Guido the mafioso.  He's a wise guy; he knows the score; but he is not a wise man like Socrates, though he is like the latter in being knowledgeable about some things.   But I mention analogy only to set it aside.

My thesis: an Anselmian approach to God and his attributes such as we find in Alvin Plantinga and T. V. Morris and the rest of the 'perfect being' theists is anthropomorphic. One takes God to have the very same great-making attributes or properties that (some) humans have, but to the maximal degree.  Socrates is benevolent and merciful; God is omnibenevolent and all-merciful.  And so on.  We could say that God is omni-qualified or omni-propertied with respect to the great-making properties. If we take this tack, we approach God from the side of man, assimilating God to man.  God is 'made' (conceptualized) in the image and likeness of man, as a sort of superman, but with defects removed and attributes maximized. 

This anthropomorphism is very different from the God-is-an-anthropomorphic-projection thesis of Ludwig Feuerbach.  Feuerbach's thesis entails the nonexistence of God. Perfect being anthropomorphism does not. 

Well, what is wrong with anthropomorphism?  The problem with it is that it fails to do justice to God's absolute transcendence and ineffability.  If the difference between creatures and God is only a matter of degree, then God would not be worthy of worship. He would be "the greatest thing around" and no doubt an object of wonder and admiration, but not an appropriate object of worship. (See Barry Miller, A Most Unlikely God, U. of  Notre Dame Press, 1996, p. 3)

God is the Absolute.  I take that to be axiomatic. That God is the Absolute is built into the very concept of God whether or not anything in reality answers to that concept.  Starting from the concept, one cannot prove (demonstrate) that God exists. Kant is surely right that the ontological argument "from mere concepts" (aus blosser Begriffen) is not valid. To understand what I just wrote you must understand that the concept of X is not to be confused with the nature of X. Natures (quiddities, essences) are situated on the ontic plane mentioned above; concepts are either finite-mind-dependent in which case they cannot exist in themselves but only in minds, or else,they exist in themselves on the semantic plane, which I distinguished above from the ontic plane. One could say that  the nature of God entails (or rather is) the existence of God.  That, I believe, is true. But that truth does not help us prove the existence of God unless we have a rationally coercive reason to think that our concept of God is an adequate concept, i.e., one that captures the essence or nature of God. But we have no such concept. The doctor angelicus will back me up on this.  In God, essence and existence are one. To capture God's essence in a concept, therefore, would require squeezing God himself into a concept. That would be like emptying the Pacific Ocean, or any ocean, into a hole in the sand at the seashore.

God is radically other than creatures.  His attributes cannot be 'in series' with human degreed attributes even if at the limits of these series.  God is not just another thing that exists  and possesses properties in the way creatures possess properties.   

Bergoglio on Borders

What a hypocrite this guy is! You can 'migrate' anywhere, just not into the Vatican.

Don't you love that word 'migrate'? Its use manages to elide two important distinctions in one fell swoop: the distinction between legal and illegal immigration, and that between immigration and emigration.  A worthy addition to the lexicon of the Left.

Move Over IRS: Make Way for the External Revenue Service

I kid you not. 

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

 

For far too long, we have relied on taxing our Great People using the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Through soft and pathetically weak Trade agreements, the American Economy has delivered growth and prosperity to the World, while taxing ourselves. It is time for that to change. I am today announcing that I will create the EXTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE to collect our Tariffs, Duties, and all Revenue that come from Foreign sources. We will begin charging those that make money off of us with Trade, and they will start paying, FINALLY, their fair share. January 20, 2025, will be the birth date of the External Revenue Service. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

 

Jan 14, 2025, 9:28 AM

 

Good riddance to Biden, his bromides, and his bullshit. Finally a leader with ideas and the cojones to execute them.

 

How would a journo (my term of disapprobation for a leftist pseudo-journalistic shill for the despicable Dems) respond to this?  By willfully ignoring the main point and drawing attention to Trump's odd capitalizations and less-than-elegant use of the English language. That tactic comports well with their inability to look past style to substance.  You will by now have noticed their fascination with empty celebrities and such narcissistic pretty boys as Gavin Newsom and  Justin Trudeau not to mention such airheads as the overgrown teenage girl, AOC, and that hilarious birdbrain Kamala. 

 

If Trump accomplishes 10% of what he has planned, that will be 100% more than Kamala could do. (Riff adapted from Michael Savage, the wittiest pundit on our side.)

What is Fueling the L. A. Fires?

The obvious answer in terms of tinder-dry flammable materials, the Santa Ana winds, etc. does not cut deep enough. Ideologically, nature idolatry plays a major role in the ferocity, force, and human impact of the L. A. fires.  Their source is in radical environmentalism. Radical environmentalism, as opposed to a wise stewardship of nature, is an anti-humanism. This species of wokery issues in extreme misanthropy.  By radical environmentalism I mean positions like that of David Foreman, founder of Earth First.  His extremism is displayed in the following quotations:

• “Our environmental problems originate in the hubris of imagining ourselves as the central nervous system or the brain of nature. We’re not the brain, we are a cancer on nature.”
• “Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental.”
• “Humanity is the cancer of nature.”
• “I believe that human overpopulation is the fundamental problem on Earth Today” and, “We humans have become a disease, the Humanpox.”
• “The optimum human population of earth is zero.”

This AI-generated list may be verified at AZ Quotes.

Now not every environmentalist on the Left embraces the late Foreman's absurdities. But the mitigated forms of leftist environmentalism are also objectionable.  Here is a paradox worth thinking about. A sane environmentalism cannot be anti-human. It must promote human flourishing. But this will require various violent interventions in nature including drilling, mining, farming, dam-building, tunneling, road-building, and the like.  These are anti-environmental actions. To refuse to manage nature for the sake of human flourishing by engaging in these anti-environmental actions will lead, as it has in the case of the California conflagration, to a worse environmental outcome.

That is the paradox. A sound environmentalism must be in some measure anti-environmental.  But a paradox is not a contradiction, and this is one that must be accepted.

So, even apart from arson, the L. A. inferno is in large part man-made by the likes of Governor Hair-Style and Mayor Dumbass. (Those choice epithets courtesy of Kurt Schlichter.) Wildfires there will always be. Their benighted policies, however,  have made things worse than they had to be.

The Integrationist Fantasy

Top o' the Stack.

E pluribus unum? Out of many, one? It can work, and it did work for a time, though not perfectly. But thanks to ‘progressives,’ regression has set in. Whether a One can be made of Many depends on the nature of the Many.

A viable One cannot be made out of just any Many.

To think otherwise is to succumb to what I call the Integrationist Fantasy. This is the dangerous conceit that people can be brought together peacefully and productively despite deep differences in their languages, religions, cultures, traditions, and values.

Read it all; it's short: your Twitterized (X'ed out?) brain will be able to process it.

Was January 6 an Insurrection?

Obviously not.

How Could God be Ineffable?

The mystically inclined say that God is ineffable.  The ineffable is the inexpressible, the unspeakable. Merriam-Webster:

 Ineffable comes from ineffābilis, which joins the prefix in-, meaning "not," with the adjective effābilis, meaning "capable of being expressed." Effābilis comes from effārī, "to speak out," which in turn comes from ex- and fārī, meaning “to speak.”

But: "What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence." (Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 7) Does it follow that there is nothing ineffable, inexpressible, unspeakable? Some will draw this conclusion; Hegel is one. Ludwig the Tractarian, however, does not draw this conclusion: 

There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical. (Tractatus, 6.522)

God is the prime example of das Unaussprechliche. But if we cannot say anything about God, then we cannot say any of the following: he exists; he does not exist; he is transcendent; he is immanent; he is all-knowing; he is not all-knowing; he has attributes; he has no attributes; he is ineffable; he is not ineffable; and so on.

Is this a problem? Maybe not.  

Consider any mundane thing, a rock, say.  Can you put it into words? Can you capture its existence and its haecceity (its non-qualitative thisness) in concepts?  You cannot. At most you can capture  conceptually only its quidditative determinations, all of which are multiply exemplifiable or repeatable. But the thing itself is unrepeatable and escapes conceptual capture.  The discursive intellect cannot grasp it. Es ist unbegreifbar.  It cannot be 'effed' linguistically or conceptually.  Individuum ineffabile est.

If you can see that the individual qua individual is conceptually ineffable, why do you balk at talk of the divine ineffability? If the haecceity of a grain of sand or a speck of dust cannot be conceptualized, then a fortiori for the super-eminent haecceity and ipseity of the super-eminent Individual who is not a mere  individual among individuals but Individuality itself.   

The Ineffable One cannot fall under any of our ordinary concepts. We can however, point to it by using a limit concept (Grenzbegriff).  A limit concept is not an ordinary concept. Note that we do have the concept of that which is beyond all concepts. (If we did not, this discourse would be nonsense when it plainly is not, pace Wittgenstein.) That smacks of self-contradiction, but the contradiction is avoided by distinguishing between ordinary and limit concepts. 

So, while remaining within the ineluctable discursivity of our discursive intellects, I am able to point beyond the sphere of the discursive intellect into the Transdiscursive.  You can understand this by analogy to the transdiscursivity of a stick, a stone, a dog, a bone, a bird, a turd, or any part thereof.

How do I gain epistemic access to a mundane particular such as a stick or a stone in its unrepeatable particularity?  By sensible intuition (sinnliche Anschauung in Kant's sense).  We do it all the time. And so, by a second analogy, we can understand how epistemic access to the Absolute and Ineffable One is to be had: by intellectual intuition or mystical gnosis. 

On Writing Philosophy

One writes the hard-core stuff with no assurance that one will  be read, except by a few. And these few cannot be expected to read with much care and almost certainly not with the care the author expended in writing. And of the those who read with care, only a few of them will actually understand what the author is maintaining.

And soon enough, for the vast majority, one's book will languish on a library shelf  to gather dust or else end up in a remainder bin.  

So why do we write?  For the same reason the great philosophers wrote. To get at the truth, to articulate the inchoate, to know one's mind, to realize one's mind.  

Legutko on Libertarianism

I have some bones to pick with Legutko, but this is good:

[Libertarianism] crumbles because it attempts to square the circle. Two loyalties -- one particular to one's own community, the other to an infinitely open system -- cannot be reconciled.

 

― Ryszard Legutko, The Cunning of Freedom: Saving the Self in an Age of False Idols

 

Brazen Lies and Big Lies

1) Brazen lies.  Here is an AI-generated definition: "A brazen lie is a bold and shameless falsehood, often told without any attempt to hide or conceal it." 

The AI-generated definition is on the right track, but it is not quite right: it blurs the line between a falsehood (a false statement) and a lie. A lie is not the same as a false statement. For one can make a false statement without lying: one may sincerely believe that what one is asserting is true when in fact it is false. The intention to deceive is essential to a lie: there is no  lie without the intention to deceive. A lie, then, is an intentional misrepresentation of what one either knows to be the case or sincerely believes to be the case for the purpose of deceiving one's audience.

So that is what a lie is. But not all lies are brazen lies. A brazen lie is a lie told boldly and shamelessly.   

2) Big lies.  I would define a big lie as a brazen lie so outrageous that an ordinary person would think the liar had to be telling the truth because no one would have the chutzpah to say something so outrageous unless  it were true. Example: Alejandro Mayorkas's claim that the border is secure. 

Culpably Ignorant Dems

Is a soupçon of Schadenfreude justifiable? He who lives by DEI can expect to die by it.  Michael Shellenberger at X:

I’m not suggesting that Democrats consciously sought to destroy Los Angeles. The entertainment industry professionals in Malibu, Topanga Canyon, and Pacific Palisades, who voted overwhelmingly for California’s progressive Governor, Gavin Newsom, and LA’s radical Left mayor, Karen Bass, thought they were voting for social justice and sustainability. They didn’t imagine their vote would result in their homes burning down.

And yet that’s what their votes resulted in.

Too tepid for my taste. The Dems in question are not inherently stupid, but they deserve to be condemned for their culpable ignorance. They should have known better than to support the likes of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, Karen "Go to the URL" Bass, Kristin Crowley, George Gascon, Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, and the rest of the reprobates that populate their once-respectable party. They should have by now seen through the scam called 'social justice.'

The trouble with these people is that you cannot reason with them no matter how calm, fact-based, and rigorous your arguments. These Hollyweirdos do not inhabit the plane of reason and common sense.  They need to experience at their bodies and in their lives the consequences of their willful self-enstupidation.  Only then will some of them see the light.

Does the current LaLaLand conflagration have an upside? It does: it came at just the right time to galvanize the MAGA forces so that they can hit the ground running, take back the country, restore the republic, and defeat the depredatory Dems. May the Winds of Woke not prevail against them.

 

Peter Yarrow (1938-2025)

Guardian obituary. Malcolm Pollack's tribute. And here is a rare photo taken by an unknown German photographer at Gerde's Folk City, Greenwich Village, 1961.  (HT: Tony Flood)

Idle Talk and Idle Thought

If you aim to avoid idle talk, then you ought also aim to avoid idle thought. A maxim to mind:

Avoid the near occasion of useless conversation.

This applies both to conversation with others and with oneself. The latter is avoided by internal situational awareness which is classically enjoined by:

Guard the mind.

Not easy. It is easy to avoid others, but not easy to avoid one's garrulous self.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Radosh and 'Spengler' on Dylan

In October of 2016, I wrote,

This brings me to Bob Dylan who was recently awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature. Now I've been a Dylan fan from the early '60s.  In the '60s  I was more than a fan; I was a fanatic who would brook no criticism of his hero.  And I still maintain that in the annals of American popular music no one surpasses him as a songwriter.  

But the Nobel Prize for Literature?  That's a bit much, and an ominous foreshadowing of the death of the book and of quiet reading in this hyperkinetic age of tweets and soundbites.

I might have added that Dylan is important in the way Kerouac is.  But is Kerouac a great novelist? Obviously not.  I have enough literary sense to realize that my own love of Kerouac is largely determined by my own quirks and generational affiliation.

Ron Radosh, whom I respect highly, thinks that Dylan deserved the prize.  But David P. Goldman, 'Spengler,' whom I also respect, takes a harsh line:

And so it is with Bob Dylan, parodist, satirist, scammer and snake-oil salesman par excellence. He never hid from us what he had in mind: he's been playing with our heads since high school, finding the lever that loosened our tears, and our wallets. He caught a wave in the early 1960s with the folk revival movement, itself a hoax. We Americans are not a "folk," not in the sense that Johann Gottfried Herder used the term. We do not have the deep memory of autochthonous roots that characterizes European cultures, the hand-me-downs of long-lost pagan experience. We are a people self-created by religious and political impulse.

[. . .]

Of course, it was all a put-on. Woody Guthrie was a middle-class lawyer's son. Pete Seeger was the privileged child of classical musicians who decamped to Greenwich Village. The authenticity of the folk movement stank of greasepaint. But a generation of middle-class kids who, like Holden Caulfield, thought their parents "phony" gravitated to the folk movement. In 1957, Seeger was drunk and playing for pittances at Communist Party gatherings; that's where I first met him, red nose and all. By the early 1960s he was a star again.

To Dylan's credit, he knew it was a scam, and spent the first part of his career playing with our heads. He could do a credible imitation of the camp-meeting come-to-Jesus song ("When the Ship Comes In") and meld pseudo-folk imagery with social-protest sensibility ("A Hard Rain's  a' Gonna Fall"). But he knew it was all play with pop culture ("Lone Ranger and Tonto/Riding down the line/Fixin' everybody's troubles/Everybody's 'cept mine"). When he went electric at the Newport Festival to the hisses of the folk purists, he knew it was another kind of joke.

Only someone who was not moved by the music of that period could write something so extreme.  No doubt there was and is an opportunistic side to Dylan.  He started out an unlikely rock-and roller in high school aping Little Richard, but sensed that the folk scene was where he could make his mark.  And so for a time he played the son of Ramblin' Jack Elliot and the grandson of Woody Guthrie.

In his recent Nobel Prize lecture, Dylan mentions early influences. Let's dig up some of the tunes that inspired him.

Buddy Holly, True Love Ways

I think it was a day or two after that that his [Holly's] plane went down. And somebody – somebody I’d never seen before – handed me a Leadbelly record with the song “Cottonfields” on it. And that record changed my life right then and there. Transported me into a world I’d never known. It was like an explosion went off. Like I’d been walking in darkness and all of the sudden the darkness was illuminated. It was like somebody laid hands on me. I must have played that record a hundred times.

Leadbelly, Cotton Fields

It was on a label I’d never heard of with a booklet inside with advertisements for other artists on the label: Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, the New Lost City Ramblers, Jean Ritchie, string bands. I’d never heard of any of them. But I reckoned if they were on this label with Leadbelly, they had to be good, so I needed to hear them. I wanted to know all about it and play that kind of music. I still had a feeling for the music I’d grown up with, but for right now, I forgot about it. Didn’t even think about it. For the time being, it was long gone.

Sonnie Terry and Brownie McGhee, Key to the Highway.  Just to vex London Ed who hates Eric 'Crapton' as he calls him, here is his Derek and the Dominoes version with Duane Allman. Sound good to me, Ed!

New Lost City Ramblers, Tom Dooley

Jean Ritchie and Doc Watson, What Will I Do with the Baby-O?

By listening to all the early folk artists and singing the songs yourself, you pick up the vernacular. You internalize it. You sing it in the ragtime blues, work songs, Georgia sea shanties, Appalachian ballads and cowboy songs. You hear all the finer points, and you learn the details.

You know what it’s all about. Takin’ the pistol out and puttin’ it back in your pocket. Whippin’ your way through traffic, talkin’ in the dark. You know that Stagger Lee was a bad man and that Frankie was a good girl. You know that Washington is a bourgeois town and you’ve heard the deep-pitched voice of John the Revelator and you saw the Titanic sink in a boggy creek. And you’re pals with the wild Irish rover and the wild colonial boy. You heard the muffled drums and the fifes that played lowly. You’ve seen the lusty Lord Donald stick a knife in his wife, and a lot of your comrades have been wrapped in white linen.

I had all the vernacular down. I knew the rhetoric. None of it went over my head – the devices, the techniques, the secrets, the mysteries – and I knew all the deserted roads that it traveled on, too. I could make it all connect and move with the current of the day. When I started writing my own songs, the folk lingo was the only vocabulary that I knew, and I used it.

Mississippi John Hurt, The Ballad of Stagger Lee

Mississippi John Hurt, You Got to Walk that Lonesome Valley

Mississippi John Hurt, You Are My Sunshine

Blind Willie Johnson, John the Revelator

George F. Will, The Prize that Bob Dylan Really Deserves

Robert Paul Wolff (1933-2025)

When John Silber died in September of 2012, Robert Wolff expressed his contempt for the conservative Boston University president in an ironically entitled notice, De Mortuis. Wolff's title alludes to the Latin saying de mortuis nil nisi bonum.  Literally translated: "About the dead, nothing except the good," which is to say, "Speak no evil of the dead." I have criticized Wolff with trenchancy and sarcasm on more than one occasion, and he richly deserved it;  on this occasion, however, I will not follow his example but heed the Latin injunction and refer you to On Books and Gratitude wherein I say something nice about the man. I will add that his writings on anarchism and on Kant are well worth the time and effort.  Here are my Substack articles on Wolff on anarchism:

Notes on Anarchism I

Notes on Anarchism II

Notes on Anarchism III

Robert Paul Wolff on Anarchism and Marxism

Here is an obituary. (HT: Dave Lull)

Bret Stephens on the Biden Presidency: Four Illusions, Four Deceptions

Tepid, not trenchant.  But it at least shows that some of the members of the NYT commentariat are beginning to extract their heads from a locus from which the visibility is poor if not nonexistent.

DocuSign Bitcoin Scam Alert

I received one of these phishing e-mails this morning. Caveat lector!

Related: Why are People So Easy to Swindle?

Grades of Prayer

Substack latest. 

A partial list of the rungs on an ascending ladder.

"Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread"

Physical bread or meta-physical bread?  Top o' the Stack.

A Complete Unknown

A lot happened to young Bob in a few short years, from Song to Woody to Like a Rolling Stone.

I saw the movie and it moved me. How about you?

Here is a good article about Dylan's falling out with Seeger.  

A Complete Unknown isn’t that interested in clarifying this point. Because the film almost entirely ignores politics. And it should ignore Dylan’s politics, whatever they might be. But it makes an unforgivable error in ignoring the politics of his Greenwich Village confederates who adhered to the Maoist dictum that art must serve the people, avoid manifestations of the individual, and reject commercial concerns.

As one critic complained in the aftermath of Newport, for the new, electrified Dylan “the words [matter] less than the beat.” What he “used to stand for, whether one agreed with it or not, was much clearer than what he stands for now. [Which is] maybe himself.” Irwin Silber, the rigidly Communist editor of Sing Out! magazine, the in-flight magazine of the radical folk scene, excoriated the New Dylan for having abandoned political songs in favor of “inner-directed, innerprobing, self-conscious” music. Decades later, Silber reflected on his criticism by acknowledging that his “biggest concern was not with the electricity. . . but with what Dylan was saying and doing about moving away from his political songs.”

Dylan was so desperate to slip out from folk’s rigid ideological strictures that he would simply deny the politics even of his most transparently political songs. “Blowin’ in the Wind” wasn’t topical but “just a feeling I felt because I felt that way.” Already in 1964, he would shrug at a song he wrote about the lynching of Emmett Till, “which in all honesty was a bullshit song. . . . I realize now that my reasons and motives behind it were phony.”

Suffering, Evil, and Galen Strawson's 'Proof' of the Nonexistence of the Christian God

This just in from our old friend Malcolm Pollack:

I'm writing because I went to your Substack to read your 2A post, and beneath it was a link to your post about Galen Strawson's audacious letter to the NYT -- in which Professor Strawson, in a single paragraph, proves the nonexistence of the Christian God!

 

I have a quibble, however, about your response. In the version of Strawson's argument you offer, you make a move from "suffering" (Strawson's word) to "evil", and then rely on the incoherence of the idea of objective "evil" in a Godless world to undercut Strawson's argument.

 

Strawson, though, never mentions evil; he only speaks of suffering. This means, it seemed to me, that the word "suffering" should take the place of "evil" in your framing of Strawson's argument, and I think it changes that line of attack that you might have used. (Evil is always wrong, of course, but how are we to know what suffering might be necessary in ways that, like children, we can't understand?) 

 

Am I being petty here? It seems to me that the distinction between the concepts of suffering and evil, though they share deep connections, is important enough to point out.

 

1) It is perfectly plain that the words 'suffering' and 'evil' have different meanings and that the corresponding concepts are different. I implied as much when I asked, "Is it certain that evil exists?  Is it even true?  Are there any evils?  No doubt there is suffering.  But is suffering evil?"   

 

2) A different but related question is whether every instance of animal or human suffering is evil.  I am inclined to say No, and that some instances of suffering are evil and some are not. William Rowe, however, disagrees.  Here is my view in contrast to Rowe's from a February 2019 entry:

 

Suppose that to be restored to health a child must undergo an extremely painful medical treatment. So the parents of the child allow the treatment to be administered. We will agree that the infliction of the suffering upon the child is morally justified by the fact that the treatment is necessary to prevent a greater evil such as the child's death. Now what Rowe is saying above [in the linked article] is that in a case like this, the suffering is (morally) justified but evil nevertheless.

I find this difficult to understand. It sounds like a contradiction. For if the infliction of the suffering is morally justified, then the infliction is morally permissible. But if the suffering is morally evil, then its infliction is also morally evil, which is to say that its infliction is morally impermissible. But surely it is a contradiction to affirm of any action A that A is both morally permissible and morally impermissible.  

If the suffering is morally justified in that it leads to a good unobtainable without it, then the suffering, though certainly unpleasant, disagreeable, repugnant, awful, excruciating, etc., is not under the conditions specified evil in a sense of 'evil' inconsistent with the divine omnibenevolence.  It is instrumentally good.  In the situation we are imagining, it is not only morally permissible but also morally obligatory for the parents to allow the painful treatment to be administered. This implies that the treatment ought to be administered. Therefore, if you say that the child's suffering remains evil despite its leading to a greater good, then you are committed to saying that the infliction of evil upon the child is morally obligatory, something that ought to be done. But this smacks of absurdity since it is hard to understand how any infliction of evil could be morally obligatory. Since in our example the infliction of suffering is morally permissible, I conclude that even intense suffering is not in every case evil.

What Rowe is saying is that suffering is intrinsically evil, and that its evilness remains the same whether or not the suffering is instrumentally good. What I am asserting contra Rowe is that whether or not an instance of suffering is evil depends on whether or not it is instrumentally good. For me, suffering that is instrumentally good is not evil. I concede of course that such suffering remains unpleasant, disagreeable, repugnant, awful, excruciating, etc. But I do not understand how suffering in itself, or intrinsically, can be said to be evil in circumstances in which it serves a greater good.

Perhaps the problem is that there are two senses of 'evil' in play, one non-normative (amoral) the other normative (moral), and that Rowe is appealing to the former sense. Accordingly, the non-normatively evil is that which elicits aversion. In this sense, mental and physical suffering is evil in that beings like us are prone to shun it. The normatively evil, on the other hand, is that which ought not exist. So perhaps the puzzle can be resolved by saying:

a) Every instance of suffering is evil in the non-normative sense that, as a matter of empirical fact, beings like us are prone to shun it.

b)  Some instances of suffering are not evil in the normative sense that it is false that they ought not exist.

c) If an instance of suffering conduces to a good that outweighs it, and the good is unobtainable by any other means, then the instance of suffering ought to exist. Thus the child's suffering in our example ought to exist. Admittedly, this sounds paradoxical. But note that this 'ought' is not categorical but hypothetical or conditional: the child's suffering ought to exist given that, on condition that, the treatment that causes it is the only way to avoid the child's death, which would be an evil worse than the child's suffering from the treatment.

d) (c) is not paradoxical or incoherent.

e) The moral goodness of God is called into question not by the existence of evils in the non-normative sense, but by the existence of evils in the normative sense. Thus the mere existence of suffering, which is non-normatively evil, does not by itself cause a problem for the divine moral goodness. For it may well be that all instances of suffering are morally justifiable in the light of a greater good. This does not make these sufferings any less repugnant; but this repugnance is not a moral repugnance but the non-normative property of thwarting desire or eliciting aversion.

3) Therefore, if Strawson follows Rowe and not me, then 'suffering' and 'evil' are intersubstitutable in the following argument both salva veritate et salva significatione:

i) If God exists, then God is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect.

ii) If God is omnipotent, then God has the power to eliminate all evil.

iii) If God is omniscient, then God knows when and where any evil exists or is about to exist.

iv) If God is morally perfect, then God has the desire to eliminate or prevent all evil.

v) Evil exists.

vi) If evil exists and God exists, then either God doesn’t have the power to eliminate or prevent all evil, or doesn’t know when or where evil exists, or doesn’t have the desire to eliminate or prevent all evil.

vii) Therefore, God doesn’t exist.   

4) But I have argued against Rowe, so my response to Malcolm has to be different. I don't say that every instance of suffering is evil in a sense of 'evil' incompatible with the goodness of God.  I say only that some instances of suffering are evil in that sense.  But then it seems to me just to impute to Strawson the above argument. 

5) Malcolm misconstrues what I am doing in that Substack article. He thinks I am "rely[ing] on the incoherence of the idea of objective evil in a Godless world to undercut Strawson's argument." I am not doing that. I am not presupposing that the objective existence of evil requires the existence of God.  If I did that I would be begging the question against Strawson. For it may be that evil objectively exists whether or not God exists.  What I am doing is refuting Strawson's claim to have proven the nonexistence of God. He has not done that because he has not proven that (ii) and (v) are objectively certain. 

Word of the Day: Bafflegab

Gobbledygook

Shakespeare on Lust

Sonnet 129: Th'expense of spirit in a waste of shame

 

Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame

Is lust in action; and till action, lust

Is perjured, murd'rous, bloody, full of blame,

Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,

Enjoyed no sooner but despisèd straight,

Past reason hunted; and, no sooner had

Past reason hated as a swallowed bait

On purpose laid to make the taker mad;

Mad in pursuit and in possession so,

Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;

A bliss in proof and proved, a very woe;

Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.

    All this the world well knows; yet none knows well

    To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

    

Related:

 

The Role of Concupiscence in the Politics of the Day

 

Like a Moth to the Flame.  A sermon of sorts on romantic folly. Jean van Heijenoort plays the moth, Anne-Marie Zamora the flame. The moth dies.

'2A' a Terrorist Marker?

Top o' the Stack.

It emerged in the Congressional FBI whistleblower hearings that the abbreviation '2A' is a "terrorist marker." That came as news to me. (But see here.) I have been using '2A' from time to time as an innocuous abbreviation of 'Second Amendment.' The context, of course, is the Bill of Rights which are the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution.

I have written sentences like this:

2A does not confer, but protects, the citizen's right to keep and bear arms.

My use of the harmless abbreviation makes me a terrorist, a white supremacist, and what all else in the eyes of the Biden regime. What does it make the regime? A police state.

Read it all.

Could a Jew Pray the "Our Father"?

I return an affirmative answer at Substack.

It dawned on me a while back that there is nothing specifically Christian about the content of the Pater Noster. Its origin of course is Christian. When his disciples asked him how they should pray, Jesus taught them the prayer. (Mt 6:9-13) If you carefully read the prayer below you will see that there is no mention in it of anything specifically Christian: no mention of Jesus as the Son of God, no mention of the Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us (the Incarnation), no mention of the Resurrection, nothing that could be construed as even implicitly Trinitarian. So I thought to myself: a believing (non-Christian) Jew could pray this prayer, and could do so in good faith. There is nothing at the strictly doctrinal level that could prevent him. Or is there?

Read the rest.

Birthdays

People celebrate birthdays.  But what's to celebrate?  First, birth is not unequivocally good.  Second, it is not something you brought about.  It befell you.  Better to celebrate some good thing that you made happen.

"It befell you."

Riders on the storm . . .
Into this house we're born, into this world we're thrown.

Thus Jim Morrison recycling Heidegger's Geworfenheit. (Sein und Zeit, 1927, sec. 38)

For all we can legitimately claim to know, however, we may have pre-natally, or rather 'pre-conceptually' chose to enter this crap storm and go for a ride. Can you rule that out with objective certainty? No more than you can rule it in with the same certainty.

As for anti-natalism, see my Anti-Natalism and Benatar categories. Here too no objective certainty either way.

It's Later than You Think

Decay is inherent in all component things. Work out your salvation with diligence! This was the last word of the Tathagata.

Mahāparinibbāna Sutta

Substack latest.