Maverick Philosopher

A Reader Poses Some Political-Philosophical Questions, Part I

From a reader:

I have been and continue to be an avid reader of your wonderful blog ever since I stumbled upon your post on Wittgenstein’s anti-philosophy some years ago. And I must say that your assorted musings and reflections – even your polemical jabs - have given me many valuable lessons, even if I do not necessarily agree with every point and detail. For all that, you have the gratitude and admiration of this humble correspondent and junior fellow-traveler in philosophy (male, hailing from the Philippines, partly of Chinese descent through my father).

Now even though we do not stand on the same side with regard to several matters of value and praxis -- as I am far to your left and you are far to my right -– I nonetheless wish to civilly discuss some topics surrounding the more heated disputes. Specifically, there are some nagging political-philosophical questions in my mind that I happily share with you, and your thoughts on them (either as brief responses to each query or perhaps a sustained post or series of posts on a cluster of selected issues) would be very much appreciated. Pardon if it took me so long to reach the heart of the matter, of if I seem to ramble on too much, but here goes:

1. To what extent can one extend hospitality, generosity, or charity to the arguments and premises of one’s opponents or rivals in polemical situations? It seems to me that apart from the unflinching commitment of many of the parties involved to their respective positions despite the absence of perfect justification, there is also the issue of mutual misunderstanding and misrepresentation (unintentional or otherwise), exacerbated by the fog of war. For instance, many conservatives, libertarians, and socialists appear to be rarely acquainted with the intricacies of each other’s theoretical standpoints and values, even as they dispute about practices and proposals.

MavPhil:   How far extend hospitality, etc. in a polemical situation?  Not very far if the situation is truly polemical and one's interlocutor is an opponent or adversary.  I make a sharp distinction between polemical discourse and strictly philosophical discourse, and I engage in both.  I engage in both because both are needed in the world as it is.  It is a mark of the conservative that he deals with the world as it is without illusions or evasions or escapes into u-topia (no place).  In a phrase of Richard M. Weaver, the conservative stands on the "terra firma of antecedent reality," a reality logically and ontologically antecedent to one's hopes, dreams, wishes, and desires. 

As I see it, philosophy ceases to be philosophy when it becomes polemical.  That goes for political philosophy as well which ought not be confused with political discourse in general, most  of which is, of course, polemical.

Philosophy is inquiry.  It is inquiry by those who don't know (and know that they don't know) with the sincere intention of increasing their insight and understanding.  Philosophy is motivated by the love of truth, not the love of verbal battle or the need to defeat an opponent or shore up and promote  preconceived opinions about which one has no real doubt and refuses to examine.  When real philosophy is done with others it takes the form of dialog, not debate. It is conversation between friends, not opponents, who are friends of the truth before they are friends of each other.  Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas.

There is nothing adversarial  in a genuine philosophical conversation.  The person I am addressing and responding to is not my adversary but a co-inquirer.  In the ideal case there is between us a bond of friendship, a philiatic bond.  But this philia subserves the eros of inquiry.  The philosopher's love of truth is erotic, the love of one who lacks for that which he lacks.  It is not the agapic love of one who knows and bestows his pearls of wisdom.

What I have described above, however, is rare in this fallen world of contention and strife.  No philosophy without spectatorship, but here below we are embattled spectators.  Hence the necessity of self-defense in several forms, from verbal polemic to shooting wars. The spaces of civility, wherein philosophy, science, the arts, humane living, and everything civilized flourish have always been encircled by evil forces  against which one must be prepared to deploy violent remedies.  Si vis pacem, para bellum.  If you want peace, prepare for war. (Cf. Plato, Laws, 628d)  Civility is for the civil only. One must oppose and in extreme situations kill the enemies of civilization.  Last century, Nazis among others; this century, radical Muslims.

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

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

Call for Vapors: Dead Smokers' Society to Meet in January in Scottsdale

Mike V. writes,

I am hosting the first meeting of The Dead Smokers Society on Monday, January 13th, from 10 a.m. to noon at the stoplight at Scottsdale Community College.  I have invited all of my friends to smoke and vape with me on the street on the first day of school.  This could be REALLY fun.  I am inviting you if you can come. 

The only rule is:  Membership in the DSS requires use of cigarettes, cigars, pipes, or vapor devices.

I can only applaud this bit of commonsensical,  liberty-affirming activism  and I hope to be able to attend despite my quietism.  I shall sport an Arturo Fuente 'Curly Head,' a cheap smoke, but a good smoke.  Here is some background information and argument and polemic from an old post of mine dated 26 June 2012:

Tobacco Insanity in Maricopa County and the Need for Smoke-Ins

Peter and Mike teach in the Maricopa County Community College system.  One teaches at Scottsdale CC, the other at Glendale CC.  Over Sunday breakfast they reported that, starting 1 July (if I got the story straight), no smoking of tobacco products will be allowed anywhere on any CC campus in Maricopa County, Arizona.  And that includes parking lots and closed cars in parking lots.

Now I would like to believe that our liberal brethren possess a modicum of rationality.  But with every passing day I am further disembarrassed of this conceit of mine. The evidence is mounting that liberals really are as stupid and lacking in common sense as many on the Right say they are. 

What does common sense suggest in a case like this?  Well, that no smoking be allowed in classrooms, libraries, laboratories, restrooms, administrative offices, hallways, etc., and perhaps not even in individual faculty offices during consulation hours or if the smoke will make its way into occuppied public passageways.

This is a common sense position easily buttressed with various aesthetic, safety, and health-related arguments.  The underlying principle is that we ought to be considerate of our fellow mortals and their physical and psychological well-being.  It is debatable just how harmful are the effects of sidestream smoke.  What is not debatable is that many are offended by it.  So out of consideration for them, it is reasonable to ban smoking in the places I listed above.  But to ban it everywhere on campus is extreme and irrational.  For no one but Tom is affected by Tom's smoking in his car and while striding across the wind-blown campus.

You say you caught a whiff of his cigaratte as he passed by?  Well, he heard you use the 'F' word while blasting some rap 'music' from your boom box.  If Tom is involved in air pollution, then you are involved in cultural and noise pollution.  You tolerate him and he'll tolerate you.

You say you smell the residual ciggy smoke on Peter's vest?  That's too bad.  He has to put up with your overpowering perfume/cologne or look at your tackle-box face and tattoo-defaced skin.  Or maybe you are a dumb no-nothing punk wearing a T-shirt depicting Che Guevara and you think that's cool.  We who are not dumb no-nothing punks have to put up with that affront to our sensibilities.

But there really is little point in being reasonable with people as unreasonable as liberty-bashing tobacco-wackos.  So I think Peter and Mike ought to think about organizing a smoke-in.  In the 'sixties we had love-ins and sit-ins, and they proved efficacious. Why not smoke-ins to protest blatantly extreme and irrational policies?

There must be plenty of faculty and staff and students on these campuses -- and maybe even a few not-yet-brain-dead liberals -- who would participate.  Hell, I'll even drive all the way from my hideout in the Superstitions to take part. We'll gather in some well-ventilated place way out in the open to manifest our solidarity, enjoy the noble weed, and reason -- if such a thing is possible -- with the Pee-Cee boneheads who oppose us.

By the way, that is a joint old Ben Franklin is smoking in the graphic.  In this post I take no position on the marijuana question.

Companion post:  Is Smoking Irrational? Other such posts are collected in Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.

Related articles

On 'Socially Conscious' Investing: Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms

Why Dennis Prager Voted Against the California Tobacco Tax

Cigarette, Cigar, Pipe

Vaping Gives Politicians the Vapors

Peter and Mike teach in the Maricopa County Community College system.  One teaches at Scottsdale CC, the other at Glendale CC.  Over Sunday breakfast they reported that, starting 1 July (if I got the story straight), no smoking of tobacco products will be allowed anywhere on any CC campus in Maricopa County, Arizona.  And that includes parking lots and closed cars in parking lots.

Now I would like to believe that our liberal brethren possess a modicum of rationality.  But with every passing day I am further disembarrassed of this conceit of mine. The evidence is mounting that liberals really are as stupid and lacking in common sense as many on the Right say they are. 

What does common sense suggest in a case like this?  Well, that no smoking be allowed in classrooms, libraries, laboratories, restrooms, administrative offices, hallways, etc., and perhaps not even in individual faculty offices during consulation hours or if the smoke will make its way into occuppied public passageways.

This is a common sense position easily buttressed with various aesthetic, safety, and health-related arguments.  The underlying principle is that we ought to be considerate of our fellow mortals and their physical and psychological well-being.  It is debatable just how harmful are the effects of sidestream smoke.  What is not debatable is that many are offended by it.  So out of consideration for them, it is reasonable to ban smoking in the places I listed above.  But to ban it everywhere on campus is extreme and irrational.  For no one but Tom is affected by Tom's smoking in his car and while striding across the wind-blown campus.

You say you caught a whiff of his cigaratte as he passed by?  Well, he heard you use the 'F' word while blasting some rap 'music' from your boom box.  If Tom is involved in air pollution, then you are involved in cultural and noise pollution.  You tolerate him and he'll tolerate you.

You say you smell the residual ciggy smoke on Peter's vest?  That's too bad.  He has to put up with your overpowering perfume/cologne or look at your tackle-box face and tattoo-defaced skin.  Or maybe you are a dumb no-nothing punk wearing a T-shirt depicting Che Guevara and you think that's cool.  We who are not dumb no-nothing punks have to put up with that affront to our sensibilities.

But there really is little point in being reasonable with people as unreasonable as liberty-bashing tobacco-wackos.  So I think Peter and Mike ought to think about organizing a smoke-in.  In the 'sixties we had love-ins and sit-ins, and they proved efficacious. Why not smoke-ins to protest blatantly extreme and irrational policies?

There must be plenty of faculty and staff and students on these campuses -- and maybe even a few not-yet-brain-dead liberals -- who would participate.  Hell, I'll even drive all the way from my hideout in the Superstitions to take part. We'll gather in some well-ventilated place way out in the open to manifest our solidarity, enjoy the noble weed, and reason -- if such a thing is possible -- with the Pee-Cee boneheads who oppose us.

By the way, that is a joint old Ben Franklin is smoking in the graphic.  In this post I take no position on the marijuana question.

Companion post:  Is Smoking Irrational? Other such posts are collected in Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.

Don't Retreat into Your Private Life

The temptation is great.  If you give in and let the Left have free reign you may wake up one day with no private life left.

Plenty more on this topic in the Activism and Quietism category.

Politics as Polemics: The Converse Clausewitz Principle

Would that I could avoid this political stuff.  But I cannot in good conscience retreat into my inner citadel and let my country be destroyed -- the country that makes it possible for me to cultivate the garden of solitude, retreat into my inner citadel, and pursue pure theory for its own sake.

Political discourse is unavoidably polemical. The zoon politikon must needs be a zoon polemikon. 'Polemical’ is from the Greek polemos, war, strife. According to Heraclitus of Ephesus, strife is the father of all: polemos panton men pater esti . . . (Fr. 53) I don't know about the 'all,' but strife  is certainly at the root of politics.  Politics is polemical because it is a form of warfare: the point is to defeat the opponent and remove him from power, whether or not one can rationally persuade him of what one takes to be the truth. It is practical rather than theoretical in that the aim is to implement what one takes to be the truth rather than contemplate it.  What one takes to be the truth: that is the problem in a nutshell.  Conservatives and leftists disagree fundamentally and nonnegotiably.

Implementation of what one takes to be the truth, however, requires that one get one’s hands on the levers of power. Von Clausewitz  held that war is politics pursued by other means. But what could be called the converse-Clausewitz principle holds equally: politics is war pursued by other means.

David Horowitz, commenting on "Politics is war conducted by other means," writes:

In political warfare you do not just fight to prevail in an argument, but rather to destroy the enemy's fighting ability.  Republicans often seem to regard political combats as they would a debate before the Oxford Political Union, as though winning depended on rational arguments and carefully articulated principles.  But the audience of politics is not made up of Oxford dons, and the rules are entirely different.

You have only thirty seconds to make your point.  Even if you had time to develop an argument, the audience you need to reach (the undecided and those in the middle who are not paying much attention) would not get it.  Your words would go over some of their heads and the rest would not even hear them (or quickly forget) amidst the bustle and pressure of everyday life.  Worse, while you are making your argument the other side has already painted you as a mean-spirited, borderline racist controlled by religious zealots, securely in the pockets of the rich.  Nobody who sees you in this way is going to listen to you in any case.  You are politically dead.

Politics is war.  Don't forget it. ("The Art of Political War" in Left Illusions: An
Intellectual Odyssey Spence 2003, pp. 349-350)

 

Related articles

The Losertarian Party

A Place for Polemics in Political Philosophy?

Philosophy, Debate, and Dialog: Can Philosophy Be Debated?

Invective, Philosophy, and Politics

Politics is War and Conservatives Need to Learn How to Fight

Vallicella, Philosophical Conversation, and Political Philosophy

Why Not Stick to Philosophy?

I ask myself this question.

Why not stick to one's stoa and cultivate one's specialist garden in peace and quiet, neither involving oneself in, nor forming opinions about, the wider world of politics and strife? Why risk one's ataraxia in the noxious arena of contention? Why not remain within the serene precincts of theoria? For those of us of a certain age the chances are  good that death will arrive before the barbarians do.

So why bother one's head with the issues of the day? We will collapse before the culture that sustains us does. We enter the arena of contention because the gardens of  tranquillity and the spaces of reason are worth defending, with blood  and iron if need be, against the barbarians and their leftist enablers. Others have fought and bled so that we can live this life of beatitude. And so though we are not warriors of the body we can and   should do our tiny bit as warriors of the mind to preserve for future generations this culture which allows us to pursue otium liberale in  peace, quiet, and safety.

Bread, Circuses, and Decline

This from an English reader commenting on my owl of Minerva post:

America's fondness for bread and circuses is by no means singular and all may be well for a while, as Theodore Dalrymple observed, at least as long as the bread holds out. Yet the twilight quickly becomes darkness and after the owl of Minerva takes off, what then? Some sort of apocalypse seems overdue - but I rather feebly hope not in my lifetime.

Philosophers, for the time being, have their consolations; but when the multitude howls for 'bread' and at the same time burns down the bakeries, for how long will gentlemen and scholars be permitted the peace and quiet in which to enjoy their books, music, and speculations? 

I'm glad that I'm on my way out rather than on my way in because the decline of American civilization will affect the whole world.

Best Wishes from one depressed. . . .

A genuine apocalypse, that is, a revelation ab extra of a Meaning hitherto hidden and inaccessible to us, might be a good thing.  Nur ein Gott kann uns retten, said Martin Heidegger in his Spiegel interview near the end of his life.  But I fear all we will get is a descent into brutality and chaos.  There is, I agree, consolation for the old: I am very happy to be 62 rather than 26.  One can hope to be dead before it all comes apart.  Fortunately or unfortunately, I am in the habit of taking care of myself and could be facing another 25 years entangled in the mortal coil.  When barbarism descends this will be no country for old men. 

In the earlier entry I wasn't reflecting on the possibility of the utter collapse of the U.S. but on the more likely possibility of decline to the level of a European welfare state whose citizens come increasingly to resemble Nietzsche's Last Men.

I fully agree that Minervic flights and the consolations of philosophy cannot be enjoyed when the barbarians are at the gates of one's stoa.  The owl of Minerva is a tough old bird, but no phoenix capable of  rising from its ashes.

I myself have argued more than once in these pages that conservatives, especially those of them given to contemplative pursuits,  need to make their peace with activism in order to secure and defend the spaces of their quietism.  

Chris Mathews, Unhinged, Shamelessly Plays Race Card

Does Mathews really believe what he says here?  If he does then he is mentally unhinged.  I'll assume he's unhinged just to be charitable.  If he doesn't believe what he says,  then he is a scumbag.  But he seems like a nice guy!

Note also the psychological projection.  Unwilling or unable to face the hatred that animates him, he projects it into his opponents.  It is also projection when he claims, absurdly, that conservatives are more political than liberals.  That's delusional.  For libs and lefties politics is their religion, which is certainly not the case for conservatives.  Conservatives don't  seek their meaning in the political sphere; they enter it mainly to counteract and undo the mischief of liberals.

In fact, we conservatives are at a considerable disadvantage because we are not 24/7 political activists.  'Conservative activist' borders on an oxymoron.  There are a few, though, David Horowitz being one.  But don't forget that he was a red diaper baby who imbibed activism with his mother's milk.

The Retreat Into the Private Life

When the world and its hopelessness are too much with us, one can and must beat a retreat into the private life.  Body culture, mind culture, hobbies, family life, the various escapes (which are not necessarily escapes from reality) into chess, fiction, religion, meditation, history, pure mathematics and science, one's own biography and the pleasant particulars of one's past, music, gardening, homemaking . . . .

I pity the poor activist for whom the real is exhausted by the political.  But I detest these totalitarians as well since they seek to elide the boundary between the private and the public.

So we need to battle the bastards in the very sphere they think exhausts the real.  But it is and must be a part-time fight, lest we become like them.  Most of life for us conservatives must be given over to the enjoyment and appreciation, in private, of the apolitical:  nature, for example, and nature's God.

The Quietist on the Delights of Escapism

There are the undeniable and readily accessible delights of escapism into scholarship, and science, and research and inquiry of all sorts.  When 'reality' becomes too much to bear, what is wrong with retreating into an ivory tower?  Who can rightfully begrude us our right to peace and quiet and happiness?

You say that there are more pressing concerns than the nature and extent of the influence of Avicenna on Aquinas' De Ente et Essentia?  No doubt.  But do you really believe that your becoming hot and bothered over these 'pressing concerns' will lead to any improvement?  Are you sure about that?  And isn't your political activism your mode of escape from something or other?  I like peace and quiet; you like 'drama' and contention.  To each his own.

Thus spoke the quietist.

Engagement with Equanimity

Can you engage with the political while retaining peace of mind?  If not, avoid politics.

The monkish virtues are easy to cultivate and practice in the monastery.  The trick, however, is to practice them in the world -- where they are needed.

In the Face of Totalitarians

In the face of totalitarians one cannot retreat into one's private life for they, being totalitarians, won't allow any private life.  So the conservative is forced willy-nilly to become an activist against his natural tendency.  He must draw a line in the sand and say "This far but no farther."

A minor example.  My friends Peter and Mike who teach at community colleges in Maricopa County, Arizona, were on the rant once again yesterday morning over the smoking ban that went into effect on 1 July.  This draconian ruling forbids smoking anywhere on campus, including parking lots and closed cars in such lots.  Bear in mind that reasonable smoking restrictions were already in effect and that my friends, only one of whom smokes, had no objection to them.

Now what is behind the new ruling?  Nothing but lust for power and a desire on the part of its promoters to outdo themselves in pursuit of PC thereby earning 'brownie-points' with the higher-ups.  (I intend 'brownie-points' as a double-entendre with an allusion to brown-nosing.)

And so the breakfast conversation turned to means of combating the insanity: massive disobedience, smoke-ins, and libertarian 'flash mobs':  the tweets go out, the students and faculty assemble quickly to blow some smoke and then just as quickly disperse.  Imagine several such mobs assembling and dispersing at different open-air campus locations on a single day.

The people charged with enforcement would be overwhelmed, the ruling would be flouted into risibility, and then ignored.

Mockery and derision are powerful weapons and perfectly legitimate when one is dealing with willfully stupid and morally stunted Pee-Cee power-heads.

Companion post:  The Conservative Disadvantage

Politics: Would That I Could Avoid It

Using 'quietist' in a broad sense as opposed to the Molinos-Fenelon-Guyon sense, I would describe myself as a quietist rather than as an activist. The point of life is not action, but contemplation, not doing, but thinking. (I mean 'thinking' in a very broad sense that embraces all forms of intentionality as well as meditative non-thinking.)  The vita activa is of course necessary (for some all of the time, and for people like me some of the time), but it is necessary as a means only. Its whole purpose is to subserve the vita contemplativa. To make of action an end in itself is absurd, and demonstrably so, though I will spare you the demonstration. If you are assiduous you can dig it out of Aristotle, Aquinas and Josef Pieper.  I recommend his Leisure: The Basis of Culture.

So the dominant note of my personality is quietism in the sense just sketched. The Big Questions turn my crank, not this foreground rubbish about abortion, illegal immigration, social security, misuse of eminent domain, leftist race-baiting, etc. It would be nice to be able to let the world and its violent nonsense go to hell while cultivating my garden in peace.

Unfortunately, my garden and stoa are in the world and exposed to its threats. So politics, which has too little to do with truth and too much to do with power, cannot be ignored. This world is not ultimately real, but it is no illusion either, pace some sophists of the New Age, and so some battling within it, ideological or otherwise, cannot be  avoided.  Besides, the issues of the day all have roots in the Big Questions.  So an assiduous and deep-going application to the issues of the day will lead one to the Big Questions.  An excellent example is abortion.

The Case of Morris Starsky

Quite by chance this morning I stumbled upon materials relating to one Morris Starsky, a professor of philosophy at Arizona State University who was fired from a tenured position for his political views in 1970.  Here is the Wikipedia article; here is something from the Phoenix New Times; this is from The Militant.  All of these sources to be consumed cum grano salis. 

A search at PhilPapers turned up nothing on the man, which says something.  Some commentary later, perhaps, once I know more about the case.

Addendum (7:05 PM):  The ever-helpful Dave Lull reports that Morris Joseph Starsky earned the Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1967 with a dissertation entitled, "On the Ontological Problem of Oratio Obliqua.

Addendum (5 April):  Lull informs me that the Morris J. Starsky archives are housed at the ASU library.

Why We Can't Ignore Politics

Thomas Mann, Diaries 1918-1939, entry of August 5, 1934:

     A cynical egotism, a selfish limitation of concern to one's
     personal welfare and one's reasonable survival in the face of the
     headstrong and voluptuous madness of 'history' is amply justified.
     One is a fool to take politics seriously, to care about it, to
     sacrifice one's moral and intellectual strength to it. All one can
     do is survive, and preserve one's personal freedom and dignity.
  
I don't endorse Mann's sentiment but I sympathize with it. Hitler came to power in 1933. Imagine the effect that must have had on a man of Mann's sensitivity and spiritual depth. You witness your country, the land of Kant and Schiller, of Dichter und Denker, poets and thinkers, in Heinrich Heine's fine phrase, transformed into a land of Richter und Henker, judges and hangmen.

My response to Mann would be along these lines: It precisely because men of the spirit must survive and survive to create that they must be concerned with politics and with those who can kill and suppress them. You escaped to the USA, but what if there were no such country to which to escape because all of the people of high quality practised your cynical egotism, your selfish limitation to the personal?

One can take politics seriously and do one's bit without sacrificing one's moral and intellectual strength to it.  The latter, I agree, would be folly.

The Upside of the Downturn

Written a few years ago, this entry from the old blog merits reposting.

As the economy stumbles, CD rates tumble, the stock market falters,  gas prices soar, and foreclosures mount, I look at the bright side: less development, fewer sales of State Trust Lands, less destruction of desert and wildlife habitat. A temporary respite from the hyperkinetic rush to a universal pave-over. And less mindless zipping around in gas guzzling behemoths. I don't reckon there is much of a market for Escalades and Hummers these days. Out on U.S. 60 the other day the traffic seemed surprisingly light. People are feeling the pinch of higher gas prices. Good. Maybe they will learn to cultivate local pleasures, those of hearth and home. Maybe they will learn to slow down and walk. Or ride a bike.

Call me a green conservative. I have no patience with libertarians and other open-borders types who think economic considerations trump all others. To sacrifice quality of life and natural beauty to economic expansion makes little sense to me. But don't confuse me with eco-extremists like Dave Foreman who, in a book of his I read some years back, claimed that a bear and a human being have the same value.  That is an equal but opposite form of moral and intellectual idiocy.

And then you have the Sierra Club, the members of which are mostly squishy bien-pensant latte liberals who refuse to work with Jim Gilchrist and the Minuteman Project because they stupidly think that   anyone who insists on the enforcement of immigration laws is a 'racist' and a 'xenophobe.'

So it's a mess and I for one see little point in getting my blood pressure up over it. You've got Republicans who like cheap labor and  Democrats who are hoping that a flood of illegal aliens will assure the permanent ascendancy of their party. Contemplative types like me laugh at those who piss their lives away in activism battling activists of some other stripe. I prefer to use the time and good health I have left enjoying as much natural beauty as I can while there is still some left to enjoy.  A shot from my backyard:

 

I Get a Rise Out of Aristotle

Michael Gilleland, the Laudator Temporis Acti, in his part-time capacity as 'channel' of Aristotle, submits this delightful missive:

Dear Dr. Vallicella:

You wrote:

"Society and its various coercive and noncoercive arrangements exist for the sake of the individual and not the other way around. Given that the individual is the locus of value and the reason for the being of state and society, the latter cannot be ends in themselves, whence it follows that the political life, useful as it is, cannot be the highest life."

I once argued otherwise, in my Nicomachaean Ethics 1.2.8 (tr. H. Rackham):

"For even though it be the case that the Good is the same for the individual and for the state, nevertheless, the good of the state is manifestly a greater and more perfect good, both to attain and to preserve. To secure the good of one person only is better than nothing; but to secure the good of a nation or a state is a nobler and more divine achievement."

Regards,

Aristotle the Stagirite

Dear Aristotle,

I will begin by thanking your for your interest in my humble weblog. If it were not for you and your teacher Plato -- to whom, if I may say so, you do not accord sufficient respect in your otherwise outstanding writings -- none of us epigoni would be so much as thinkable. But now to the matter at hand.

You do indeed argue that politics is the master science of the good in Book I, Chapter 2 of your excellent Nicomachean Ethics, and you do indeed state at 1094b8 that the good of the state is nobler than the good of the individual. But I must remind you of what you say in the tenth and last Book of Eth. Nic. beginning in Chapter 6 and continuing until the concluding Chapter Nine. May I be so bold as to summarize the immortal thought of these inspiring chapters?

Chapter Six: Happiness and Activity. Happiness is a an active state, not one of passivity or amusement. Happiness, as the ultimate goal of human striving, cannot be identified with pleasure as certain 19th century English blockheads thought, and certainly not with bodily pleasures. (The German philosopher Nietzsche, whom you may have heard of, once quipped, "Man does not seek pleasure, only the Englishman does." I think you would approve of that line.) Happiness is an activity of the soul, not the body, in accordance with virtue.

Chapter Seven: Happiness, Intelligence, and the Contemplative Life. Now if happiness, eudaimonia, is an activity of the soul, an ergon of the psyche, in accordance with virtue or excellence, then it ought to be an activity in accordance with the highest virtue or excellence. You wisely distinguished the moral from the intellectual virtues and gave precedence to the latter. But among the intellectual virtues theoretical knowledge or contemplation, what you call theoria, stands in first place. Thus the highest life is the bios theoretikos, the life of theory, of contemplation, of philosophy. This is what your students in the Middle Ages called the vita contemplativa.

One of the arguments you give for the superiority of the theoretical life is the argument from sufficiency (1176b25 ff.) One who practices such virtues as justice, courage, and self-control needs other people. Thus a just legislator, a just judge, and a just executive requires other people as a condition of his virtuous behavior, a fact which brings in its train a lack of self-sufficiency. But he who follows the bios theoretikos needs little beyond the necessities of life. As you put it, "a wise man is able to study even by himself, and the wiser he is the more he is able to do so."

You go on to point out that the theoretical life is legitimately regarded as an end in itself and is a life of true leisure. By contrast, those who engage in military and political pursuits live in unleisurely and servile fashion, and insofar forth can do little to advance the cause of culture. As you point out, we are busy in order to have leisure just as we wage war for the sake of peace. The vita activa is for the sake of the vita contemplativa. Have you read Josef Pieper's Leisure The Basis of Culture? He does an excellent job of expounding this idea of yours. All neg-otiation, whether econonomic or political, is for the sake of otium, leisure. Sorry to employ the inferior language, Latin, but it is nearer to me and my readers than Greek.

Your view, then, is that the contemplative life stands higher than the political life. As the first to investigate logic systematically, you will not take it amiss if I set forth your view in a syllogism:

1. The highest activity is self-sufficient, an end in itself, and productive of the highest pleasure attainable.
2. Only theoretical, but not political, activity is self-sufficient, an end in itself, and productive of the highest pleasure attainable.
Therefore
3. The highest activity is theoretical, not political, activity.

Chapter Eight: The Advantages of the Contemplative Life. The contemplative life is the happiest life since it is the life in accordance with the best in us, nous or intelligence, that in us which make us godlike and self-sufficient.

Chapter Nine: Ethics and Politics. If I may say so, this chapter, something of a grab bag of tentative considerations, does not attain the level of the chapters I have just summarized, and indeed leaves unresolved a tension that you must have felt while composing the various parts of your excellent book.

Is politics the master science of the good, as you say in Book One, so that ethics is a branch of politics? That would seem to suggest that the good of the polis is superior to the good of the individual, and that the happiness and self-realization of the individual must be subordinated to the welfare of the state. But this conflicts with your plain commitment to the thesis that the theoretical life is superior to the political life, not to mention the economic life and the pleasure-seeking life.

I don't need to point out to you that the theoretical life is the individual life par excellence. Indeed, you underscore its solitariness and self-sufficiency as key advantages of it. It is not a group life. And its thinking is not group-think. Indeed, your god, the primum mobile (pardon the Latin!) is noesis noeseos, thought thinking itself, in your beautiful phrase. And you would be the first to admit that no group of thinkers is a thinker.

So I think there is a bit of a tension here. Is politics the master science of the good, or is ethics? Which is subordinated to which? You can't have it both ways, and I would resolve the tension by giving the palm to ethics and to the happiness of the individual. And I would do so invoking your authority!

If over the centuries you have come to any further conclusions on this weighty matter, I should like to hear them, either directly, or via the good graces of your acolyte the estimable Dr. Gilleland.

Yours in the love of wisdom,

MP

Meditation Better Than Travel

It is better to dive below the surface of consciousness than to move around on the surface of the earth.

Dis-tracted

We are pulled towards the world, towards property, progeny, position, power, popularity, pleasure. But in some of us the pull toward the spirit is stronger and will triumph -- in the end. Meanwhile we are pulled apart, dis-tracted, torn between lust for the world and love of the spirit. This is 'par for the course' and 'it comes with the terrain.' There's no turning back now. We must advance.

Political Action and the Principle of Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien

Attributed to Voltaire. "The best is the enemy of the good."

Meditation on this truth may help conservatives contain their revulsion at their lousy choices. Obama, who has proven that he is a disaster for the country, got in in part because of conservatives who could not abide McCain.

Politics is a practical business. It is always about the lesser of evils, except when it is about the least of evils. It is not about being ideologically pure. It is about accomplishing something in a concrete situation in which holding out for the best is tantamount to acquiescing in the bad. Political choices are forced options in roughly William James' sense: he who abstains chooses willy-nilly. His not choosing the better amounts to a choice of the worse.

Political Discourse as Unavoidably Polemical: the Converse Clausewitz Principle

A regular reader writes:

I would urge some caution withyour recent political cartoon.  This is only because you may unjustly be treated with less seriousness than your blog deserves if someone wants to peg you in a certain way.  I'm certainly not being PC or suggesting that political satire is problematic -- it's primarily a tactical point.

I couldn't agree more, of course, that liberalism (and, in particular, it's diseased and mutated zombie baby of multiculturalism) is attempting, even if unwittingly, to destroy its host body.  The cartoon is a very powerful one, indeed!

Point taken.  It's a tricky issue.  But I think it is important to let our opponents know that we will oppose them.  There is no way not to be unfairly pegged by the nimrods and numbskulls of the Left.  So conservatives shouldn't worry about it.  Janeane Garofalo's comment that the 'tea-baggers' as she derisively refers to them are racists and rednecks is, I am afraid, representative of the scum-baggery widespread on the Left.  We should stand up to them and speak the truth with courage.

Would that I could avoid this stuff.  But I cannot in good conscience retreat into my inner citadel and let my country be destroyed -- the country that makes it possible for me to cultivate the garden of solitude, retreat into my inner citadel, and pursue pure theory for its own sake.

Political discourse is unavoidably polemical. The zoon politikon must needs be a zoon polemikon. ‘Polemical’ is from the Greek polemos, war, strife. According to Heraclitus of Ephesus, strife is the father of all: polemos panton men pater esti . . . (Fr. 53) I don't know about the 'all,' but strife  is certainly at the root of politics.  Politics is polemical because it is a form of warfare: the point is to defeat the opponent and remove him from power, whether or not one can rationally persuade him of what one takes to be the truth. It is practical rather than theoretical in that the aim is to implement what one takes to be the truth rather than contemplate it.  'What one takes to be the truth': that is the problem in a nutshell.  Conservatives and leftists disagree fundamentally and nonnegotiably.

Implementation of what one takes to be the truth, however, requires that one get one’s hands on the levers of power. Von Clausewitz  held that war is politics pursued by other means. But what could be called the converse-Clausewitz principle holds equally: politics is war pursued by other means.

A political cartoon like the one I posted surely won't convert any leftists.  How could it, when the 281 patiently argued pages of David Horowitz's Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left (Regnery 2004) made no impression on them?  The Left cannot be persuaded; they must be opposed.

Conservative Activism, the Left's Incomprehension, and the Genetic Fallacy

'Conservative activism' has an oxymoronic ring to it.  Political activism does not come naturally to conservatives, as I point out in The Conservative Disadvantage.  But the times they are a 'changin' and so I concluded that piece by saying that  we now need to become active. "Not in the manner of the leftist who seeks meaning in activism for its own sake, but to defend ourselves and our values so that we can protect the private sphere from the Left's totalitarian encirclement.    The conservative values of liberty and self-reliance and fiscal responsibility are under massive assault by the Obama administration . . . ."

Leftists like to think that they own dissent, a conceit I demolish in Does the Left Own Dissent?  Truth is, they own dissent as little as they own activism.  But libs and leftists simply cannot credit conservative dissent.  They cannot take seriously what conservatives say, but must dismiss and psychologize.

Case in point, Michael Tomasky's Something New on the Mall.  To Tomasky's credit, he does not employ the derisive 'tea-bagger' epithet.  By the way, lefties ought to understand that they don't have proprietary rights in derision any more than they do in dissent.  So I suggest that if a leftist calls you a tea-bagger, return the compliment by calling him a scum-bagger.  A taste of his own medicine may do him some good, if not now, then later after he has grown up.

What struck me about Tomasky's lengthy piece is that there is not a hint of an admission that any of the points brought up by the conservative protesters have any merit.  Nor is there any attempt to rebut these points.  Instead we get a lengthy explanation of "how astroturfing works."  The derisive 'astroturf' is supposed to suggest that the protests are not genuine 'grass roots' expressions of populist  opposition to, among other things, fiscal recklessness, but have been artificially created and orchestrated by powerful 'corporate' interests:

This conservative protest movement, though, has three powerful forces supporting it: bottomless amounts of corporate money; an ideologically dedicated press, radio, and cable television apparatus eager to tout its existence; and elected officials who are willing to embrace it publicly and whose votes in support of the movement's positions can be absolutely relied upon.

But none of that is true of the progressive movement?  Substitute 'progressive movement' for 'conservative protest movement' in the above quotation and the result is actually closer to the truth.  More importantly, attempts by leftists to ferret out the underlying causes and motives of conservative positions border on the genetic fallacy.

The genetic fallacy is committed by those who fail to appreciate that questions about the truth or falsity, or rational acceptability or unacceptability, of a proposition are logically independent of questions about the origin or genesis of someone's believing the proposition.  Whether a proposition is true or false, or posseses some cognate epistemic property, is independent of any role that the believing of said proposition might play in the believer's mental economy. Thus if S's believing that p is comforting to S, it does not follow that p is false, or that S has no good reason for accepting that p. Similarly, if S's believing that p is painful to S, it does not follow that p is true, or that S has a good reason for accepting that p. And if you come to believe that 'Cash for Clunkers' is a policy that is both morally and economically objectionable because of arguments you heard  presented on a conservative talk show, it does not follow from the fact that your believing had that origin that the content of your belief is false or rationally insupportable.

 

In Praise of the Useless

Morris R. Cohen, A Preface to Logic (Dover, 1977, originally published in 1944), p. 186, emphasis added:

It would certainly be absurd to suppose that the appreciation of art should justify itself by practical applications. If the vision of beauty is its own excuse for being, why should not the vision of truth be so regarded? Indeed is it not true that all useful things acquire their value because they minister to things which are not useful, but are ends in themselves? Utility is not the end of life but a means to good living, of which the exercise of our diverse energies is the substance.

Or as I like to say, the worldly hustle is for the sake of contemplative repose, it being well understood that such repose can be quite active, an "exercise of our diverse energies," but for non-utilitarian ends.

Should We Just Tend Our Private Gardens?

From Thomas Mann's Diaries 1918-1939, entry of August 5, 1934:

A cynical egotism, a selfish limitation of concern to one's personal welfare and one's reasonable survival in the face of the headstrong and voluptuous madness of 'history' is amply justified. One is a fool to take politics seriously, to care about it, to sacrifice one's moral and intellectual strength to it. All one can do is survive, and preserve one's personal freedom and dignity.

I don't endorse Mann's sentiment but I sympathize with it. Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933. Imagine the effect that must have had on a man of Mann's sensitivity and spiritual depth. You witness your country, the land of Kant and Schiller, of Dichter und Denker, poets and thinkers, in Heinrich Heine's phrase, transformed into a land of Richter und Henker, judges and hangmen.

My response to Mann would be along these lines: It precisely because men of the spirit must survive and survive to create that they must be concerned with politics and with those who can kill and suppress them. You escaped to the USA, but what if there were no such country to which to escape because all of the people of high quality practised your cynical egotism, your selfish limitation to the personal?

I will have to find the passage in Plato's Laws where he says that the good who refuse to get involved in politics will end up ruled by the evil.