Maverick Philosopher

On Taking One's Time in Philosophy

Both Brentano and Wittgenstein advise philosophers to take their time. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value (University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 80:

Der Gruss der Philosophen unter einander sollte sein: "Lass Dir Zeit!"

This is how philosophers should greet one another: "Take your time!"

A similar thought is to be found in Franz Brentano, though I have forgotten where he says this:

Wer eilt, bewegt sich nicht auf dem Boden der Wissenschaft.

One who hurries is not proceeding on a scientific basis.

But how much time does one have? One does not know.  It is later than one thinks. So get on with it!

"Take your time!" does not apply to the jotting of notes or to blogosophy. It applies to what one writes 'for the ages.' 

One's best writing ought to be written 'for the ages' even if one is sure that one will not be read beyond one's time or even in one's time.  The vast majority of us are mediocrities who will be lucky to end up footnotes. Don't let that bother you. Just do your level best and strive for the utmost. Do the best you can, with what you've got, for as long as you can. Then let the cards fall where they may.

Habent sua fata libelli. (Terentianus Maurus.) "Books have their fates."   What their fates are is unknown to their toiling authors.

Who knows whom you will instruct, inspire, engage, enrage?

Do I Repeat Myself?

Repetitio est mater studiorum.

Ambiguity, Vagueness, Generality, Disambiguation

Top o' the Stack

Some distinctions needed for intellectual hygiene.

The Idea of Inevitable Progress versus Archaism

Philosophers and theologians alike should heed a distinction I found in Henri de Lubac's magisterial The Mystery of the Supernatural (Herder and Herder, 2001, originally published in French in 1965, p. 18):

Lastly, returning to the essence of an older position can never be purely and simply a return. Archaism . . . of this kind is always deceptive. It is as illusory, in the reverse sense, as the idea of inevitable progress.  "Those who wrote before us are not our masters, but our leaders" [non domini nostri sed duces fuerunt]. (Guibert de Tournai, "De modo addiscendi," Revue neo-scholastique, 1922 : 226)

 

Alan Dershowitz, Thomas Nagel, and David Benatar

What do they have in common?

Top o' the Stack.

Generalizations are the Offspring of Wisdom

People foolishly oppose generalization. One often hears, 'Never generalize!' But that itself is a generalization in the imperative mood. The partisan of brute particularity who so opines is hoist by his own petard.

So it was with pleasure that I heard Dennis Prager one day  remark   that "Generalizations are the mother of wisdom." But my man had the cart before the horse. Being a quibbler and a pedant, I cannot forebear to suggest an improvement:

   Generalizations are the offspring of wisdom

Or perhaps: 

   Generalization is wisdom's distillate.

For wisdom does not spring from generalization; it is rather that (true) generalizations spring from wisdom as its expression and codification.  

Why Do We Front Our Ideas?

"Preaching to the choir is unnecessary, and if you were to attain the age of a Methuselah you would still not be near converting your opponents. So what's the use of your arguing and asserting?"

This is a text-book example of a False Alternative. For there is a third reason to argue and assert, namely, to sway the fence-sitters whose number is legion, and to bring them over to our side.

What's more, it is false that preaching to the choir is unnecessary. We do so to reinforce them in their 'faith' and prevent their backsliding. It is also false that it is pointless to engage our opponents. We 'preach' to them for several reasons: (a) to change the minds of some; (b) to get our opponents to appreciate that we have a position that is rationally defensible even if not ultimately acceptable to them; (c) to oppose and demoralize them; (d) to make their arguments look bad to others so that their influence wanes.

Finally, some of us just naturally incline to the life of the mind. Its pleasures are intense and reliable. They extend deep into old age. We love to study and we love to write. We athletes of the mind thrive on the agon of intellectual exertion and struggle. For me to go even one day without studying  and writing is 'unthinkable,' as 'unthinkable' as going a day without coffee, meditation, and physical exercise.

Political Argumentation and Political Evolution

Top o' the Stack.  Written in May 2016 but still relevant. I defend the cogency of the  'Hillary is worse' defense of Donald Trump against Charles Murray.

In the January 2004 post scriptum I concede that the impressive 'Jacques,' an untenured Canadian philosopher whose name I cannot reveal because of vicious leftists such as Brian Leiter, gets the better of me in the comment thread.

Despite the infirmity of reason and the pointlessness of most discussions of controversial questions, some discussion can be profitable, can lead to mutual clarification, and in some rare cases effect a salutary modification of one's position.

On Hairsplitting

Substack latest.

The charge is brought by anti-intellectuals, too many of them conservatives.

 

Thomas Mann on Blogging

Thomas Mann: Diaries 1918-1939 (Abrams, 1982, tr. R & C Winston), p. 194:

I love this process by which each passing day is captured, not only in its impressions, but also, at least by suggestion, its intellectual direction and content as well, less for the purpose of rereading and remembering than for taking stock, reviewing, maintaining awareness, achieving perspective . . . .

I agree, although for me rereading and remembering have as much value as the taking stock, etc. There is the pleasure of writing but also that of rereading and rethinking what one has written.

As for remembering a passage such as one above, its notation allows me to pull the book off the shelf and return to the pleasurable semantic penumbra which is the quotation's context. 

To Write Well, Read Well

The example of William James.  Excerpt:

But what makes James' writing good? It has a property I call muscular elegance. The elegance has to do in good measure with the cadence, which rests in part on punctuation and sentence structure. Note the use of the semi-colon and the dash. These punctuation marks are falling into disuse, but I say we should dig in our heels and resist this decadence especially since it is perpetrated by many of the very same politically correct or ‘woke’ ignoramuses who are mangling the language in other ways I won't bother to list. There is no necessity that linguistic degeneration continue. We make the culture what it is, and we get the culture or unculture we deserve.

As for the muscularity of James' muscular elegance, it comes though in his vivid examples and his use of words like 'pinch' and 'butchered.' His is a magisterial interweaving of the abstract and the concrete, the universal and the particular. Bare of flab, this is writing with pith and punch. And James is no slouch on content, either.

A Little Learning

by Alexander Pope

A little learning is a dangerous thing ;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring :
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fired at first sight with what the Muse imparts,
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of Arts ;
While from the bounded level of our mind
Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind,
But, more advanced, behold with strange surprise
New distant scenes of endless science rise !
So pleased at first the towering Alps we try,
Mount o’er the vales, and seem to tread the sky ;
The eternal snows appear already past,
And the first clouds and mountains seem the last ;
But those attained, we tremble to survey
The growing labours of the lengthened way ;
The increasing prospect tires our wandering eyes,
Hills peep o’er hills, and Alps on Alps arise !

Why Am I So Happy?

Top o' the Stack.

Is Graduate School Really That Bad?

Top of the Stack.

On Independent Thinking

Substack latest.

A Philosopher's Life

"Irving Thalberg Jr., born rich of Hollywood royalty, chose a low profile and a life of the mind."

I recall reading this years ago.  Keith Burgess-Jackson, blogger buddy from way back, reminded me of it this morning.

Reader Asks: What Should I Read?

Nathaniel T. writes,

In the new year, I'm committing to some more regular reading habits. 

 

What serious books would you recommend to someone outside academia who has about half an hour uninterrupted in the morning to read, three times a week? How about a list that would last that person a year? 

 

Here are some additional parameters that might aid in your selection:

 

I went to St. John's College in Annapolis, so I've read many of the "greats" in whole or in part, at least once. I have kept up some serious reading since my graduation in 2012, just irregularly. 

I already pray and read the New Testament and spiritual reading daily. 

 

Thanks for your insight and writing!

 

The best advice I could give anyone  with your background who is committed to the life of the mind is to buy and study a copy of A. G. Sertillanges, O. P., The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods. He explains how to proceed.  It is a classic. He draws upon Aquinas and upon Alphonse Gratry, of whom C. S. Peirce had a very high opinion. So I also recommend Gratry's Logic if you can find a copy. Reference here.

 

I hesitate to offer a list of books on particular topics given the constraints on your time.  But here are a couple that are  short, very clear, and unusually thought-provoking: Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation (make sure to get the Sea Harp Press edition which contains an introduction by C. S. Lewis); Romano Guardini, Jesus Christus (anything by Guardini is worth reading).

 

If perchance you are interested mystical theology, and have already read the great Spanish mystics, Juan de la Cruz and Teresa de Avila, and have the stamina for a long slog, then I recommend Augustin Poulain, The Graces of Interior Prayer: A Treatise on Mystical Theology. Reference and notes here.

 

For more suggestions see my Bibliophilia category.

 

Combox open if anyone has any recommendations.

 

By the way, has St. John's College, Annapolis gone 'woke'?  

Against Philosophical Dismissal

To dismiss Hegel is as bad as to dismiss Donald Davidson. On second thought, it is far worse. For you cannot understand Marx without understanding Hegel, and you cannot understand the current culturally Marxist, 'woke' mess we are in without understanding Marx and his successors. Davidson & Co. can be safely ignored if it is the latter understanding you are after.

Ideas, whether true or false, whether rationally defensible or indefensible, have social and cultural consequences. Short-sighted folk dismiss philosophy as so much hot air. But when the 'air' of such Luftmenschen as Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche drifts down from the ivory towers and the garrets and influences the climate on the ground, then things can get 'hot' in a different sense.

Book Lust

The old man's libido may be on the wane, but this man's book lust  remains as stiff-standing as ever.  I'm reading along in Anthony Kenny's Aquinas on Being and I find a footnote in which he praises a certain Hermann Weidemann's article contained in a certain anthology. I think, "Oh boy, when I am in Tempe on Friday I'll snag that volume from the Arizona State University  library."

In the bookman's eros we descry the superiority of the spirit over the flesh. The pleasures of the mind can extend for decades, from earliest youth to advanced old age.  But not even the artifices of a Hugh Hefner can help those enmired  in the dotage and decrepitude of the flesh.

At the end, even stoked to the max with Viagra to the point of hearing loss, Hef couldn't get it up sufficiently to penetrate the young lovelies who cavorted around him. He was reduced to manual mode while the bunnies romped with each other exchanging intimacies I charitably imagine to be more innocently sororal than libidinously lesbian.

A Sane Populism is not an Anti-Intellectualism

Here is a statement that is not only extreme but also manifestly false:

In fact, you could wipe society’s table clear of every writer, artist, actor, musician, professor, dancer, reporter, tastemaker, producer, influencer, teacher, lobbyist, politician, everyone on TV, everyone who doesn’t get their hands dirty, and our world would keep turning just fine. 

If there were no trucks, there would be no truckers. If there were no automotive technology, there would be no trucks. If there were no engineering (applied physical science), there would be no automotive technology.  If there were no theoretical physics, there would be no applied science. If there were no pure mathematics, there would be no theoretical physics (in the technologically implemental, post-Galilean sense of the term).  If there were no people who never got their hands dirty, there would be no pure mathematics. And there would be none of this if there were no philosophers.

It all began with philosophy, the attempt to know man and world by the use of reason applied to the data of experience.  If there were no philosophers, we would still be retailing cosmogonic myths.

And if there were no philosophers like me, there would be no one to explain all of this to you, something I have just done, in an admittedly inadequate bloggity-blog sort of way, without getting my hands dirty.

That being said, I fully support the peaceful and eminently democratic  protests of the Canadian truckers and their American confreres.

And I heartily condemn the anti-democratic fascists of the Left, both here and to the North, who use the power of the State to suppress individual liberty, and then engage in the Orwellian subversion  of language to cover their tracks and gaslight the citizenry.

For example, the foolish Justin Trudeau, prime minister of Canada, claims that the trucker protests are racist. But what does race have to do with them? Nothing. When he's done misusing 'racist,' he will go on to misuse 'domestic terrorist' and 'insurrectionist.'   What sort of person is terrorized by the blaring of horns? What does terrorism and insurrection have to do with these legitimate and eminently democratic peaceful protests? Nothing.

And isn't Trudeau famous for his asseveration that "Diversity is our strength"?  One who dissents from fascist clamp-down is holding a view diverse from that of the fascists.

Circular Definitions, Arguments, and Explanations

In the course of our discursive operations we often encounter circularity.  Clarity will be served if we distinguish different types of circularity.  I count three types.  We could label them definitional, argumentative, and explanatory.

A.  The life of the mind often includes the framing of definitions.  Now one constraint on a good definition is that it not be circular.  A circular definition is one in which the term to be defined (the definiendum) or a cognate thereof occurs in the defining phrase (the definiens).  'A triangle is a plane figure having a triangular shape,' though plainly true, is circular.  'The extension of a term is the set of items to which the term applies' is an example of a non-circular definition. 

Ibram X. Kendi, the race 'theorist' currently much-loved by the 'woke,' was recently asked to define 'racism.' He came out with this brilliancy:  “A collection of racist policies that lead to racial inequity that are substantiated by racist ideas." Video here.

B.  Sometimes we argue.  We attempt to support a proposition p by adducing other propositions as reasons for accepting p.  Now one constraint on a good argument is that it not be circular.  A circular argument in is one in which the conclusion appears among the premises, sometimes nakedly, other times clothed for decency's sake  in different verbal dress.  Supply your own examples.

C.  Sometimes we explain.  What is it for an individual x to exist?  Suppose you say that for x to exist is for some property to be instantiated.  One variation on this theme is to say that for Socrates to exist is for the haecceity property Socrateity to be instantiated.  This counts as a metaphysical explanation, and a circular one to boot.  For if Socrateity is instantiated, then it is is instantiated by Socrates who must exist to stand in the instantiation relation.  The account moves in a circle, an explanatory circle of embarrassingly short diameter.

Suppose someone says that for x to exist is for x to be identical to something or other.  They could mean this merely as an equivalence, in which case I have no objection.  But if they are shooting for a explanation of existence in terms of identity-with-something-or-other, then they move in an explanatory circle. For if x exists in virtue of its identity with some y, then y must exist, and you have moved in an explanatory circle.

Some philosophers argue that philosophers ought not be in the business of explanation.  I beg to differ.  But that is a large metaphilosophical topic unto itself.

Benatar Defended Against a Scurrilous Attack

In my latest Substack article I defend Benatar's courageous pursuit of the truth, not the results of said pursuit. 

Intellectual Hygiene

I am all for intellectual hygiene. But it can be taken to an extreme by a certain sort of analytic philosopher who is afraid to touch anything that might in the least be infected with the murk and messiness of life as she is lived. Such types remind me of neurotic hand-washers and those who, fearful of the Chinese flu, walk around in the open air, alone, in masks.

On Profitable Study of Philosophy

One needs to work through a text slowly, pondering, comparing, re-reading, reconstructing and evaluating the arguments, raising objections, imagining possible replies and all of this while animated by a burning need to get to the bottom of some pressing existential question.  You must bring to your reading questions if you expect study to be profitable.

If one fails to enter into the dialectic of the problems and issues one will come away with little more than a vague literary impression. But real study is hard work demanding aptitude, time, peace, and quiet, a commodity in short supply in these hyperkinetic and cacaphonous times.  Back in the day,  Arthur Schopenhauer was much exercised by "the infernal cracking of whips" as he he complained in his classic "On Noise."  What would he say today?  Could he survive in the contemporary crapstorm of   cacaphony?

So turn off that cell phone before I smash it to pieces!

On Acquiring a Large Vocabulary

How does one acquire a large vocabulary? The first rule is to read, read widely, and read worthwhile materials, especially old books and essays.  The second rule is to look up every word the meaning of which you do not know or are not certain of: don't be lazy. The third rule is to compile vocabulary lists. The fourth rule is to review the lists periodically and put the words to use.  Use 'em or lose 'em.

But what good is a large vocabulary in a society of semi-literates? Not only is it of little use, it can harm relations with regular guys social intercourse with whom can be useful.  Among the latter, one needs to pass oneself off as one of them. Use 'big words' and you will strike them as putting on airs, whether or not you are -- not that the semi-literates would understand this old phrase.

While alive to and appreciative of the good in people, one should not overlook the prevalence of the mean, the paltry, the envious, and the resentful. In this joyous season, and in every season.

Why Write?

I write to know my own mind, to actualize my own mind, and to attract a few like-minded and contrary-minded people.  The like-minded lend support, and the contrary-minded – assuming that their criticisms are rationally based – allow me to test my ideas. 

Dialectic is to the philosopher what experiment is to the scientist.

A Reason to Blog

Chary of embalming in printer's ink ideas that may be unworthy of such preservation, due perhaps to underdevelopment, or lack of originality, or some more egregious defect, the blogger satisfies his urge to scribble and publish without burdening referees and editors and typesetters, and without contributing to the devastation of forests. He publishes all right, but in a manner midway between the ephemerality of talk and the finality of print.

A Mistake Many Make

They think that what is not immediately intelligible to them is unintelligible, period, or perhaps even a product of willful obfuscation.

The Australian positivist, David Stove, somewhere takes umbrage at a passage from Heidegger and pronounces it gibberish, when the passage is not gibberish at all. The miserable Stove, unwilling to to do his homework, and with no understanding of Heidegger's intellectual antecedents, dismisses as gibberish what is not immediately intelligible to his shallow positivist pate.  He is a trenchant polemicist in some of his writing, so I am simply responding in kind.

I need to find that passage.

But let me say something good about old Stove: he was one formidable opponent of the scourge of political correctness.

There are some interesting materials for and against the curmudgeon in my Stove category.

De mortuis nil nisi bonum? De mortuis bonum et malum.

In a Philosophical Discussion . . .

. . . three's a crowd and four's a cross-conversation. 

One-on-one, back-and-forth, defining and refining, pursuing the point, focusing like a laser, driven by eros for truth but free of polemos under the aegis of philia.  But also under the aegis of 

Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas.

And with no illusions about achieving agreement. An attainable goal here below is clarity about differences. "I will teach you differences." (Shakespeare, King Lear, Wittgenstein.)

Advice on Study and the Improvement of the Mind

Reader M.L.P. inquires,

I was wondering what habits one should acquire to study philosophy profitably. I read philosophy books but I tend to forget most of what I read. I also find it hard to come up with my own ideas.

Roughly how many books or articles should one read in a day? Or is this the wrong way to approach the issue?

Should one start by reading ancient philosophy or by familiarizing oneself with current philosophical debates?

And finally, how crucial is it to study philosophy with a mentor? Is it possible to be a good philosopher by studying alone?

A great deal could be said on this topic. Here are a few thoughts that may be helpful. Test them against your own experience. First some general points, then to your specific questions.

1)  Make good use of the morning, which is an excellent time for such  activities  as reading, writing, study, and meditation.  But to put the morning to good use, one must arise early.  I get up at 1:30, but you needn't be so monkish.  Try arising one or two hours earlier than you presently do. That will provide you with a block of quiet time.  Fruitful mornings are of course impossible if one's evenings are spent dissipating.  You won't be able to spend the early morning thinking and trancing if you spent the night before drinking and dancing. The quality of the morning is directly affected by the quality of the previous evening.

2)  Abstain from all mass media dreck in the early morning.  Read no newspapers.  "Read not The Times, read the eternities." (Thoreau)   No electronics. No computer use, telephony, TV, e-mail, etc.  Just as you wouldn't pollute your body with whisky and cigarettes upon arising, so too you ought not pollute your pristine morning mind with the irritant dust of useless facts, the palaver of groundless opinions, and every manner of distraction.    There is time for that stuff later in the day if you must have it.  (And it is a good idea to keep an eye on the passing scene.) The mornings should be kept free and clear for study that promises long-term profit.

3) Although desultory reading is enjoyable, it is best to have a plan.  Pick one or a small number of topics that strike you as interesting and important and focus on them.  I distinguish between bed reading and desk reading.  Such lighter reading as biography and history can be done in bed, but hard-core materials require a desk and such other accessories as pens of various colors for different sorts of annotations and underlinings, notebooks, a cup of coffee, a fine cigar . . . .

4) If you read books of lasting value, you ought to study what you read, and if you study, you ought to take notes. And if you take notes, you owe it to yourself to assemble them into some sort of coherent commentary. What is the point of studious reading if not to evaluate critically what you read, assimilating the good while rejecting the bad?

The forming of the mind is the name of the game.  This won't occur from passive reading, but only by an active engagement with the material.  The best way to do this is by writing up your own take on it.  Here is where blogging can be useful.  Since blog posts are made public, your self-respect will give you an incentive to work at saying something intelligent.

5) You say that you forget what you read. 

Well, there is little  point in learning something that you will forget.  The partial cure for this is to read in an active way, with pen in hand. I use pens of different colors for underlining and note-taking. Write key words on the top of the page.  Isolate and mark the key passages. Make a glossary on the book's fly leaves.  When a book arrives, I note the date of its arrival so that I an track my intellectual biography. At the end of a chapter I note the time and date of my first and subsequent readings of it.  Reconstruct the author's arguments in a notebook in your own words.  Look up reviews online, print them out, then insert them into the book.  A properly annotated book is easy to review, and of course review is essential. Review fixes the material in your mind.

You ask how many books or articles should one read in a day.

I'll use myself as an example. Yesterday, N. Rescher's Aporetics arrived.  I read and annotated the first chapter this morning slowly and carefully. Then I sketched a blog post in my handwritten journal that was inspired by Rescher's chapter.  Then I went back to Palle Yourgrau's Death and Nonexistence which I am working through and mulled over a few pages of that.  These activities took me from 2:00 am to 3:35. Then 45 minutes of formal meditation. Then I logged on and put up a couple or three Facebook posts.  Around 5:20 I was out the door for an hour on the mountain bike.  The main thing is to read and write every single day.

You ask whether one should start by reading  the ancients or by studying current debates. 

You could do either, as long as you do the other.   You need to have some issue, problem, or question that you need to get clear about.  Perhaps you want to understand knowledge in its relation to truth, belief, and justification.  Contemporary sources will give you some idea of the relevant questions. Armed with these, you can profitably read Plato's Theaetetus.

You ask whether you need a mentor. 

No, but it helps to find one or more intelligent individuals with whom you can interact productively.  But even this is not necessary, and in any case, these individuals may be hard to find.  To exaggerate somewhat, all real learning is via autodidacticism.

A great deal could be said on this topic. Here are a few thoughts that may be helpful. Test them against your own experience. First some general points, then to your specific questions.

1)  Make good use of the morning, which is an excellent time for such  activities  as reading, writing, study, and meditation.  But to put the morning to good use, one must arise early.  I get up at 1:30, but you needn't be so monkish.  Try arising one or two hours earlier than you presently do. That will provide you with a block of quiet time.  Fruitful mornings are of course impossible if one's evenings are spent dissipating.  You won't be able to spend the early morning thinking and trancing if you spent the night before drinking and dancing. The quality of the morning is directly affected by the quality of the previous evening.

2)  Abstain from all mass media dreck in the early morning.  Read no newspapers.  "Read not The Times, read the eternities." (Thoreau)   No electronics. No computer use, telephony, TV, e-mail, etc.  Just as you wouldn't pollute your body with whisky and cigarettes upon arising, so too you ought not pollute your pristine morning mind with the irritant dust of useless facts, the palaver of groundless opinions, and every manner of distraction.    There is time for that stuff later in the day if you must have it.  (And it is a good idea to keep an eye on the passing scene.) The mornings should be kept free and clear for study that promises long-term profit.

3) Although desultory reading is enjoyable, it is best to have a plan.  Pick one or a small number of topics that strike you as interesting and important and focus on them.  I distinguish between bed reading and desk reading.  Such lighter reading as biography and history can be done in bed, but hard-core materials require a desk and such other accessories as pens of various colors for different sorts of annotations and underlinings, notebooks, a cup of coffee, a fine cigar . . . .

4) If you read books of lasting value, you ought to study what you read, and if you study, you ought to take notes. And if you take notes, you owe it to yourself to assemble them into some sort of coherent commentary. What is the point of studious reading if not to evaluate critically what you read, assimilating the good while rejecting the bad?

The forming of the mind is the name of the game.  This won't occur from passive reading, but only by an active engagement with the material.  The best way to do this is by writing up your own take on it.  Here is where blogging can be useful.  Since blog posts are made public, your self-respect will give you an incentive to work at saying something intelligent.

5) You say that you forget what you read. 

Well, there is little  point in learning something that you will forget.  The partial cure for this is to read in an active way, with pen in hand. I use pens of different colors for underlining and note-taking. Write key words on the top of the page.  Isolate and mark the key passages. Make a glossary on the book's fly leaves.  When a book arrives, I note the date of its arrival so that I an track my intellectual biography. At the end of a chapter I note the time and date of my first and subsequent readings of it.  Reconstruct the author's arguments in a notebook in your own words.  Look up reviews online, print them out, then insert them into the book.  A properly annotated book is easy to review, and of course review is essential. Review fixes the material in your mind.

You ask how many books or articles should one read in a day.

I'll use myself as an example. Yesterday, N. Rescher's Aporetics arrived.  I read and annotated the first chapter this morning slowly and carefully. Then I sketched a blog post in my handwritten journal that was inspired by Rescher's chapter.  Then I went back to Palle Yourgrau's Death and Nonexistence which I am working through and mulled over a few pages of that.  These activities took me from 2:00 am to 3:35. Then 45 minutes of formal meditation. Then I logged on and put up a couple or three Facebook posts.  Around 5:20 I was out the door for an hour on the mountain bike.  The main thing is to read and write every single day.

You ask whether one should start by reading  the ancients or by studying current debates. 

You could do either, as long as you do the other.   You need to have some issue, problem, or question that you need to get clear about.  Perhaps you want to understand knowledge in its relation to truth, belief, and justification.  Contemporary sources will give you some idea of the relevant questions. Armed with these, you can profitably read Plato's Theaetetus.

You ask whether you need a mentor. 

No, but it helps to find one or more intelligent individuals with whom you can interact productively.  But even this is not necessary, and in any case, these individuals may be hard to find.  To exaggerate somewhat, all real learning is via autodidacticism.

The Ability to Write and to Comprehend a Good, Long Sentence . . .

. . . is one mark of an educated mind. You won't learn this in the English Department of Rutgers, however. Example:

If you value the life of the mind, the pursuit of truth, the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge, high culture and its transmission, in short, the classical values of the university as set forth in such great works as John Henry Cardinal Newman's The Idea of a University,  then you should withdraw all support from the culturally Marxist indoctrination centers that the vast majority of contemporary 'universities' have become.

A good stylist, I will add, varies the length of his sentences.   (And a good upholder of traditional values insists on his right to use standard English.)

The 'universities' of the present day are more an impediment to the development of an educated mind than  a help. You don't need them.  Do your bit to defund them.

Note the difference between 'good, long sentence' and 'good long sentence.'

Machiavelli on the Pleasure of Study

Although he was decidedly of the world and not merely in it, Machiavelli knew how to retreat from its brutality into the serene precincts of the life of the mind and lose himself there, for a time, in conversations with the ancients.

I return home and enter my study; on the threshold I take off my workday clothes, covered with mud and dirt, and put on the garments of court and palace. Fitted out appropriately, I step inside the venerable court of the ancients, where, solicitously received by them, I nourish myself on that food that alone is mine and for which I was born; where I am unashamed to converse with them . . . and they, out of their human kindness, answer me. And for four hours at a time I feel no boredom, I forget all my troubles, I do not dread poverty, and I am not terrified by death. I absorb myself into them completely. And because Dante says that no one understands anything unless he retains [it], I have jotted down what I have profited from in their conversation and composed a short study, De principatibus.

See here.

Related: Studiousness as Prophylaxis against the Debilities of old Age

Should Humanities Departments be Shut Down?

The following is  from a reader who takes issue with  Chad McIntosh's Euthanizing Liberty.  Secondarily, he takes issue with me since I basically endorse McIntosh's contentions. McIntosh maintains that

. . .  the closure of philosophy departments, along with others in the humanities, [is] a good thing, for three reasons. First, institutions of higher education have already devolved to the point that the humanities are a mere vestigial organ. Their removal helps clarify the image of these institutions as something other than true universities. Second, removing the humanities will help slow the spread of the insidious ideology destroying society that’s incubated there. Finally, it’s plausible that the future of the humanities is better off in the hands of independent lovers of wisdom. So, to all the institutional bureaucrats just thinking about the bottom dollar: cut the humanities! Slash, chop, dice, hack them into nothing. Leave thinking about the bigger picture to those who know what a real university is.

According to my reader:

Chad's article is interesting, but short-sighted. The humanities aren't ever going to close entirely . . . . My issue is that as long as our current culture is converting people and otherwise pushing out [producing?] lefties, it's only a matter of time until they take over the country. Suppose Trump wins. What are you going to do in five years? How is he going to change the culture and stop the country from becoming more and more liberal? He's stopping some of the bleeding and slowing the left down, and that is reason to vote for him over alternatives, but let's not get carried away. I'm reminded of what Peter Hitchens said in his recent interview with Eric Metaxas talking about Christianity disappearing from e.g. political discourse: "Once you've given away that ground, it's hard to see what you can do to fight back." It seems to me that Christianity was needed to renew conservative values with each generation. Without it (or some suitable replacement), unless we fix the superstructure to include it (or a replacement), it's only a matter of time.

My reader appears to be arguing that humanities departments ought not to be shut down because they impede to some slight extent the total leftist takeover of the culture.  But that impedance can happen only if some conservatives manage to get jobs, and eventually tenure, in these departments.  These hardy souls, however, would have to hide their conservative beliefs to get hired in the first place, and then carefully keep them hidden for six or so years until they -- if they are lucky -- get tenure.  So during that time they would be unable to do anything to impede the spread of leftism.  But once tenured, they would not be safe either, for any espousal of conservative positions would get them branded racists and white supremacists, and, as we all know, tenure affords no absolute protection if the administrators and the faculty really want to get rid of you.

More fundamentally, any conservatives in humanities departments that are allowed to speak and publish and influence students and get tenure would be vastly outnumbered by their leftist 'colleagues.' So the net effect of keeping the humanities departments in operation would be a further poisoning of the culture with 'woke,' i.e., benighted, leftist nonsense.

So isn't McIntosh right to celebrate the closure of humanities departments, even if the closures are motivated by the wrong reasons, e.g. the failure of business types to grasp the value of the humanities (properly understood and properly taught)?

And wouldn't it be better for serious truth-seekers to abandon the present-day pseudo-universities and set up their own competing institutions, both on-line and with brick and mortar?  Back to my reader:

As an aside, it's nice that he [McIntosh] holds you [BV] up as an example of an independent scholar, but I don't think a scholar of equal ability would be taken even fractionally as seriously as you are if he hadn't also held a professorship in the past. I hope I'm wrong, but it seems to me that you having gotten that "stamp of approval" is important.

Getting taken seriously is much more a matter of publishing competent work in well-regarded peer-reviewed journals and presses. That does not require having a Ph.D., or an academic post, or having had a (tenured, full-time) academic post.  My being retired from a tenured, full-time academic post does nothing to enhance my credibility in the eyes of leftists for whom I remain a 'racist,' a 'white supremacist,' and and a 'theocrat.' And to these despicable people, any proof that I might proffer that I am not any of these things is just further proof that I am.

It is important to realize just how sick and destructive academe has become, and not just in the humanities and social sciences. A prime example at the present time is the tenured fool, Robin DiAngelo.

Euthanizing Liberty

Chad McIntosh sees an upside in the recent closures of philosophy programs.  I agree with him.

In conclusion, I now see the closure of philosophy departments, along with others in the humanities, as a good thing, for three reasons. First, institutions of higher education have already devolved to the point that the humanities are a mere vestigial organ. Their removal helps clarify the image of these institutions as something other than true universities. Second, removing the humanities will help slow the spread of the insidious ideology destroying society that’s incubated there. Finally, it’s plausible that the future of the humanities is better off in the hands of independent lovers of wisdom. So, to all the institutional bureaucrats just thinking about the bottom dollar: cut the humanities! Slash, chop, dice, hack them into nothing. Leave thinking about the bigger picture to those who know what a real university is.

Since the spirit of true philosophy has fled the leftist seminaries, a New Monasticism is needed to preserve and transmit high culture:

I will end on a (slightly) more hopeful note. In his 2017 book The Benedict Option, Rod Dreher says orthodox Christians should think of themselves as a people in exile, and that their best chance of preserving their faith and traditions is to form quasi-monastic communities within this increasingly hostile post-Christian culture. Those of us who still believe in the university, classically understood, would do well to consider adopting a similar strategy. Since we can no longer depend on modern institutions of higher education as places where the great classics of Western thought and tradition can be faithfully taught, learned, and engaged, we will have to do those things on our own. Thankfully, we are not in wholly untrodden territory. Homeschooling parents have been blazing these trails for a long time. As for aspiring academics, William Vallicella, the Maverick Philosopher, is a model. True, few people have the means to support themselves as an independent scholar. But those who find a way will be precisely those seek knowledge for its own sake. The independent scholar will not have to continually debase himself by justifying his own field of study to some institutional bureaucrat or even to his colleagues. Furthermore, being unburdened by the duties of managing classes of disinterested students and time-consuming administrative tasks, he is in a position to do his best work.

A Philosopher' Life

For some reason I just now thought of Irving Thalberg Jr.'s ENIGMAS OF AGENCY. I knew he had died in the '80s, so I looked him up and found this fascinating account of the man and his (once famous) father. Long, but good.

'Educate' and 'Inform'

To use 'educate' in place of 'inform' shows a lack of education.

Related: Whitehead on Education and Information

Roger Kimball on Roger Scruton (1944-2020) on Tradition, Authority and Prejudice

Here:

Sir Roger wrote several times about his political maturation, most fully, perhaps, in “Why I became a conservative,” in The New Criterion in 2003. There were two answers, one negative, one positive. The negative answer was the visceral repudiation of civilization he witnessed in Paris in 1968: slogans defacing walls, shattered shop windows, and spoiled radicals. The positive element was the philosophy of Edmund Burke, that apostle of tradition, authority, and prejudice. Prejudice? How awful that word sounds to enlightened ears. But Sir Roger reminds us that prejudice, far from being synonymous with bigotry, can be a prime resource in freedom’s armory. “Our most necessary beliefs,” he wrote, “may be both unjustified and unjustifiable from our own perspective, and . . . the attempt to justify them will lead merely to their loss.”

A necessary belief, I take it, is one that we need to live well.  And it may be that the beliefs we need the most to flourish are ones that we cannot justify if our standards are exacting.  It is also true that a failure to justify a belief can lead to skepticism and to a loss of belief.   But which prejudices should we live by? The ones that we were brought up to have?  Should we adopt them without examination?  

Here is where the problem lies. Should we live an unexamined life, simply taking for granted what was handed down?  Think of all those who were brought up to believe that slavery is a natural social arrangement, that some races are fit to be slaves and others to be masters.  Others were brought up to believe that a woman's place is in the home and  that any education beyond the elementary was wasted on them.  Punishment by crucifixion, the eating of human flesh, and so on were all traditionally accepted practices and their supporting  beliefs were  accepted uncritically from supposed authorities.  "That's the way it has always been done." "That's the way we do things around here." "Beef: It's what's for dinner." It is not that the longevity of the practices was taken to justify them; it is rather that the question of justification did not arise.  Enclosed within their cultures, and shielded from outside influences, there was no cause for people to doubt their beliefs and practices.  Beliefs and practices functioned well enough as social cement and so the questions about truth and justification did not arise.

The opposite view is that of Socrates as reported by Plato: "The unexamined life is not worth living."  For humans to flourish, they must examine their beliefs and try to separate the true from the false, the justified from the unjustified, the better from the worse.  Supposed authorities must be tested to see if they are genuinely authoritative.  The cosmogonic myths and the holy books contradict each other; hence they cannot all be true. Which is true? Might it be that none are true? Then what is the ultimate truth about how we should live? 

Man come of age is man become aware of the great dualities: true and false, real and unreal, good and evil. Man come of age is man having emerged into the light of spirit, man enlightened, man emergent from the animal and tribal.  Mythos suppressed and Logos ascendent, inquiry is born, inquiry whose engine is doubt. While remaining a miserable animal, man as spirit seeks to know the truth.  To advance in knowledge, however, he must question the handed-down.

The problem is the tension between the heteronomous life of tradition, authority, prejudice, and obedience, and the autonomous Socratic, truth-seeking life, a life willing to haul everything and anything before the bench of Reason, including itself, there to be rudely interrogated. In different dress this is the old problem of Athens and Jersualem in its stark Straussian contours.  

The problem is real and it is no solution to appeal to tradition, authority, and prejudice. On the other hand, there is no denying that the spirit of  inquiry, the skeptical spirit, can and in some does lead to a weakening of belief and a consequent loss of the will to act and assert oneself and the interests of one's group. Decadence and nihilism can result from the spirit of inquiry, the skeptical spirit. The West is in danger of perishing due to lack of will and a lack of belief in our values as we let ourselves be replaced by foreign elements.  Europe faces extinction or dhimmitude if it does not affirm its will to live and take measures against the invasion of representatives of an  inferior unenlightened culture.  

Burke saw with penetrating insight that freedom was not the antonym of authority or the repudiation of obedience. “Real freedom,” Sir Roger observed, “concrete freedom, the freedom that can actually be defined, claimed, and granted, was not the opposite of obedience but its other side. The abstract, unreal freedom of the liberal intellect was really nothing more than childish disobedience, amplified into anarchy.”

Really? So I am truly free when I bend my knee to the sovereign? True freedom is bondage to the lord and master? Sounds Orwellian. Could real freedom, concrete freedom, be a form of obedience? Perhaps, if the one obeyed is God himself. But God is absent. In his place are dubious representatives.

My interim judgment: Scruton's conservatism as presented by Kimball is facile, superficial, and unsatisfying. It is a mere reaction to Enlightenment and classically liberal excesses.

Another typically aporetic (and therefore inconclusive) conclusion by the Aporetic Philosopher. It seems right, fitting, and helpful unto enlightenment that a maverick should be an aporetician.

Words and Distinctions

A wise man does not quibble over words, but he insists on distinctions.

We Lesser Lights

The great thinkers think for humanity, and the great writers write for humanity.  The great teachers are teachers of humanity. Buddha was such a one and so were Jesus and Socrates. We lesser lights think and write to clear our heads, and to appropriate what we have inherited. 

Was du ererbt von deinen Vätern hast,
erwirb es, um es zu besitzen!

 

What from your fathers you  received as heir,

Acquire if  you would possess it. 

 

(Goethe's Faust, Part I, Night, lines 684-685, tr. W. Kaufmann)

 

We think and write to know our own minds, to form our minds, and attract a few of the like-minded.  As Aristotle says somewhere, we philosophize best with friends. Philosophy does not make progress in us so much as we make progress in philosophy. We are teachers of humanity only at second-hand, and only to a few.  But we too participate in the great tradition and are grateful for the vocation to such participation.

 

Perfectionism

Some, of modest ability, publish too much; others, of greater ability, are stymied by perfectionism.

Perfectionism is a curse!

Leave perfection to the gods. The most that can be asked of a mortal is that he strive for excellence within the limits of time, talent, and circumstance. Striving is not achieving, and excellence is not perfection.

You will never get to the point where you have read all the literature on a topic, even a well-defined one. Some of the material is out of print or otherwise unavailable, some of it is in foreign languages. Should you hold off on writing something about mereology until you can read Polish?

Too much reading blocks the channels of one's own creativity. Forever reading, never read. 

Writing is the best way of working out your ideas; so if you wait until you know exactly what you want to say before writing, you will miss the best way of determining exactly what you want to say.

On 'Illegal Alien' and 'Illegal Immigrant'

Liberals, whose love of political correctness gets the better of their intellects, typically object to the phrase 'illegal alien.' But why? Are these people not in our country illegally, as the result of breaking laws?  And are they not aliens, people from another country? 

"But you are labeling them!"  Yes, of course.  Label we must if we are not to lose our minds entirely. 'Feral cat' is a label.  Do you propose that we not distinguish between feral and non-feral cats?  Do you distinguish between the positive and the negative terminals on your car battery?  You'd better!  But 'positive terminal' and 'negative terminal' are labels. 

Label we must.  There is no getting around it if we are to think at all.  There is a political outfit that calls itself "No Labels."  But that too is a label.  Those who eschew all labels label themselves 'idiots.'

Related to this is the injunction, 'Never generalize!' which is itself a generalization. Label we must and generalize we must.  Making distinctions and labeling them, and constructing sound generalizations on their basis are activities essential to, thought not exhaustive of, the life of the intellect.

Liberals also object to 'illegal immigrant.'  In fact, the AP has banned the phrase.  But given that there are both legal and illegal immigrants, 'illegal immigrant' is a useful label.  There is nothing derogatory about it.  It is a descriptive term like 'hypertensive' or 'diabetic.' 

One consideration adduced at the AP site is that actions are illegal, not persons. But suppose your doctor tells you that you are diabetic, and you protest, "Doc, not only are you labelling me, you are forgetting that diabetes is a medical condition and that no person is a medical condition." The good doctor would then have to explain that a diabetic is a person who has diabetes.  Similarly, an illegal immigrant is one who is in the country illegally.  There is the act of illegally crossing the border, but there is also the state of being here illegally.

Plain talk is an excellent antidote to liberal nonsense. When a liberal or a leftist misuses a word in an intellectually dishonest attempt at forwarding his agenda, a right-thinking person ought to protest.  Whether you protest or not, you must not acquiesce  in their pernicious misuse of language.  Or, as I have said more than once in these pages,

If you are a conservative, don't talk like a liberal!

Bear in mind that many of the battles of the culture war are fought, won, and lost on linguistic ground. If we let  our opponents destroy the common language in which alone reasonable  debate can be conducted, then much more is lost than these particular  debates.  The liberal-left misuse of language is fueled by their determination to win politically at all costs and by any means, including linguistic hijacking.

Language matters!

Is the Philosophical Life the Best?

This from a reader:

I have a concern about the philosophical life. While I do think philosophy is intrinsically valuable, and while I do deny that one is obligated to "do the most good" with one's life (I'm not a consequentialist), I wonder if there are better ways to live than to devote one's life to philosophy. Prima facie, devoting one's life to solving global poverty or curing cancer seems better than focusing on philosophy. If so, then even if one isn't obligated to solve global poverty or cure cancer, why not devote one's life to these causes instead?

 

Perhaps the philosophical life is better than these other options, but that isn't clear to me. It seems more plausible that, all things being equal, a life that saves countless lives is better lived than a life that doesn't save a single life. Again, I'm not saying we're obligated to save lives, I'm just making a comparative judgment.

I can't refute what you say, but I can offer an alternative point of view.  If you consider it, it may help you better understand your own point of view even if it does not motivate any modification of it.

 

One question concerns the best life humanly possible.  Aristotle discussed it in his Nicomachean Ethics. He considered lives devoted to pleasure, material acquisition, politics, and philosophy. I set forth his answer here.

 

But the best life possible for humans might not be the best life  for a particular human.  Whether or not the best life is the philosophical life, not everyone is 'philosophy material.'

 

Philosophy is a vocation, and only some are called to it. (I am speaking in ideal terms here: what passes for 'philosophy' in the 'universities' falls far short of the ideal.)

 

The best life for you will depend on your aptitudes, values, and worldview.   Everyone has a worldview of sorts even if unexamined and unarticulated.  Suppose your outlook is broadly secular.   And suppose you find secularism obvious.  Then you will not be inclined to question it and will have no need for philosophy.  You have 'your truth,' a worldview you believe is true, and therefore feel no need to investigate whether it is true in whole or in part.  Doubt is the engine of inquiry, but you have no doubts. For you philosophical inquiry would be idle.  You would be left cold by the Socratic, "The unexamined life is not worth living."

 

And if the people you associate with share your tacit worldview, then you will have no need to articulate and defend it.  The existence of competing worldviews might trouble you or then again it might not. You might be the sort of person who is not disturbed or given pause by the disagreement of others.

 

For me, disagreement is a goad to inquiry. I have a consuming need to know. And a life lived without examination is definitely worth little or nothing. Such a life remains on the animal level. A human life, speaking normatively, is a transcending life, a life of self-transcendence and aspiration.

 

Primum vivere deinde philosophari.  I agree. We must live and live fully to gather the grapes of experience from which to press the wine of wisdom.  We don't gather grapes to gather grapes, but for the wine. The vita activa subserves the vita contemplativa.

 

You say it is not clear to you that the philosophical life is superior to, say, cancer research.  Then I say you should leave philosophy alone.  The quest for the ultimate truth about the ultimate matters is the highest calling and it demands total commitment.  I can argue for this conviction, but I can't prove it, and I will persuade only those who already sense its truth.

 

In the early '80s I heard a speech by the American politician, Mario Cuomo, in which he touted the political life as the highest life. I thought to myself: "He can't really believe that!"  But I soon concluded  that he did believe it.  I can give my reasons why Cuomo is wrong, but these reasons, which suffice for me, will make no impression on those who think the political life the highest. (To me, politics is like taking out the garbage or unplugging the toilet: it's a dirty job and it has to be done and done properly; in an ideal world, however, there would be no State and no need for politicians. As things are, our fallen predicament makes the State  practically necessary, a necessary evil, along with its agents.)

 

My advice is, first of all, know thyself.  Having honestly assessed your abilities, do with your life what you think is the best, and what you are fit to do.

 

I realize that this advice is of very little practical value.  Listen to others, but keep your own counsel, and follow the urgings vouchsafed to you in the highest moments of existential clarity and discernment.

Is the Unexamined Life Worth Living?

Written in October of 2004.

I recently read Norman Podhoretz's Ex-Friends: Falling Out with Allen Ginsberg, Lionel and Diana Trilling, Lillian Hellman, Hannah Arendt, and Norman Mailer (The Free Press, 1999). It is an enjoyable and stimulating analysis of the breakdown of friendship in the crucible of political disagreement. I recommend it.

But an early passage inspired me to fire up the old Pentium II. Describing "most people," Podhoretz says that "The ideas that underlie their way of life are mostly taken for granted and remain unexamined – luckily for them, since the biggest lie ever propagated by a philosopher was Socrates’ self-aggrandizing assertion that the unexamined life is not worth living." (p. 4)

Can a philosopher let this passage pass unexamined? The first thing that raised my critical hackles is the irresponsible use of the word ‘lie,’ a use that is unfortunately widespread these days. Does Podhoretz really mean to suggest that Socrates was lying when he made his famous statement at his trial? Does he mean to imply that the great Athenian knew the truth, but was bent on deceiving us? Of course not. Podhoretz knows that one can utter a falsehood without lying, as when one says what one believes to be true but is not true, and I am sure that he appreciates that Socrates was sincere in his belief that the unexamined life is not worth living. Charitably interpreted, Podhoretz is opining that Socrates was wrong in his belief, not that he was lying.

A second thing to question is whether the Socratic assertion is "self-aggrandizing." If I praise a certain way of life that happens to be my way of life, it does not follow that I praise this way of life simply because it happens to be mine. For there is also the possibility that I praise this way of life because I have objective reasons to believe that it is a good way of life, and that I have chosen it for these objective reasons. In the second case, the life is mine because I have objective grounds for praising it, not praised because it is mine. Only in the first case would we speak of Socrates’ assertion as self-aggrandizing. Given that Podhoretz has provided no evaluation of the Socratic reasons for the Socratic assertion, he is not justified in describing the latter as "self-aggrandizing."

But the main issue is this: Is an unexamined life worth living? If my way of life happens to be good, then one might argue that it is good whether I examine it or not, whether I can give objective reasons for its goodness or not. (Compare: if my roof is in good condition, it is so whether I examine it or not. It is no part of my roof’s being in good condition that it, or someone, know that it is in good condition or that it, or someone, raise the question of its condition.) In this sense, an unexamined life could very well be worth living. But a human life is not merely a biological process, but essentially involves the exercise of (not merely the capacity for) emotion, will, and reason. Thus no ‘fully human life’ (an unabashedly normative phrase used unabashedly!) is possible without the exercise of reason upon the ultimate objects, among which is one’s own life, its whence, whither, and wherefore. A fully human life, as a life necessarily involving the exercise of reason, requires the examination of such questions as how we should live. To live thoughtlessly, uncritically, without consideration of ultimates and without consideration of alternative ways of living – there is indeed something  contemptible about this,assuming that the person is in a position to conduct the examination. To that extent, Socrates was surely right, and Podhoretz is surely wrong.

But Socratic self-examination implies no rejection of traditional ways of life. Perhaps lurking in the background of Podhoretz’s mind is some such argument as this: (1) Socratic self-examination leads to the rejection of traditional mores; (2) traditional mores are sound; ergo, (3) Socratic self-examination is a mistake. I hope this is not the way Podhoretz is thinking, given the falsity of (1). Socratic examination may lead to the rejection of traditional mores, but it might also lead to their rational defense.

Word of the Day: Demesne

Merriam-Webster:

1: legal possession of land as one's own

2: manorial land actually possessed by the lord and not held by tenants

3a: the land attached to a mansion

b: landed property : ESTATE

c: REGION sense 2, TERRITORY

4: REALM sense 2, DOMAIN

How does one acquire a large vocabulary? The first rule is to read, read widely, and read worthwhile materials, especially old books and essays.  The second rule is to look up every word the meaning of which you do not know or are not certain of: don't be lazy. The third rule is to compile vocabulary lists. The fourth rule is to review the lists periodically and put the words to use.  Use 'em or lose 'em.

If you think you know the meaning of a word, you are well-advised to check your understanding. Even if you really do know the meaning of a word, you probably don't know all of its shades and variants.

If you work steadily at this, then perhaps someday you will have a vocabulary half as extensive as that of your humble correspondent.

Evening and Morning

The quality of the first will affect the quality of the second. An evening of drinking and dancing  is no preparation for a morning of thinking and trancing.

Related: Suggestions on How to Study

Alan Dershowitz, Thomas Nagel, and David Benatar

What do these three have in common besides uncommon intellectual penetration and the courage to speak and write publicly on controversial topics?

Each has been viciously attacked by ideologues. Dershowitz and Nagel have been attacked from the Left and Benatar from the Right and the Left.

It is all over for the West if we don't punch back hard against the the forces of dogmatism and darkness in defense of free speech and open inquiry.

Alan Dershowitz

I have already said a bit in defense of the Harvard law professor. I now invite you to listen to his account of how a Martha's Vineyard woman wants to stab him through the heart, presumably because he has not aligned himself with the anti-Trump crowd. He speaks so well in his own defense that there is no need for me to say more.

Thomas Nagel

Another classical liberal who has ignited the rage of the Left is Thomas Nagel, the distinguished NYU philosopher.  He has impeccable liberal and atheist credentials and yet this does not save him from the wrath of ideologues who think his 2012 Mind and Cosmos (Oxford UP) and other of his works  give aid and comfort to theism.  Simon Blackburn attacks him in a New Statesman article that suggests that if there were a philosophical index librorum prohibitorum, then Nagel's 2012 book should be on it. The article ends as follows:

There is charm to reading a philosopher who confesses to finding things bewildering. But I regret the appearance of this book. It will only bring comfort to creationists and fans of “intelligent design”, who will not be too bothered about the difference between their divine architect and Nagel’s natural providence. It will give ammunition to those triumphalist scientists who pronounce that philosophy is best pensioned off. If there were a philosophical Vatican, the book would be a good candidate for going on to the Index [of prohibited books].

The problem with the book,  Blackburn states at the beginning of his piece, is that

. . . only a tiny proportion of its informed readers will find it anything other than profoundly wrong-headed. For, as the title suggests, Nagel’s central idea is that there are things that science, as it is presently conceived, cannot possibly explain.

Blackburn doesn't explicitly say that there ought to be a "philosophical Vatican," and an index of prohibited books, but he seems to be open to the deeply unphilosophical idea of censoring views that are "profoundly wrong-headed."  And why should such views be kept from impressionable minds?  Because they might lead them astray into doctrinal error.  For even though Nagel explicitly rejects God and divine providence, untutored intellects might confuse Nagel's teleological suggestion with divine providence.

Nagel's great sin, you see, is to point out the rather obvious problems with reductive materialism as he calls it.  This is intolerable to scientistic  ideologues since any criticism of the reigning orthodoxy, no matter how well-founded, gives aid and comfort to the enemy, theism -- and this despite the fact that Nagel's approach is naturalistic and rejective of theism!

So what Nagel explicitly says doesn't matter.  His failing to toe the party line makes him an enemy  as bad as theists such as Alvin Plantinga.  (If Nagel's book is to be kept under lock and key, one can only wonder at the prophylactic measures necessary to keep infection from leaking out of Plantinga's tomes.)

Blackburn betrays himself as nothing but an ideologue in the above article.  For this is the way ideologues operate.  Never criticize your own, your fellow naturalists in this case.  Never concede anything to your opponents.  Never hesitate, admit doubt or puzzlement.  Keep your eyes on the prize.  Winning alone is what counts.  Never follow an argument where it leads if it leads away from the party line.

Treat the opponent's ideas with ridicule and contumely.  For example, Blackburn refers to consciousness as a purple haze to be dispelled.  ('Purple haze' a double allusion, to the eponymous Jimi Hendrix number and to a book by Joe Levine on the explanatory gap.) 

What is next Professor Blackburn? A Naturalist Syllabus of Errors?

Another philosophical ideologue who has attacked Nagel is Brian Leiter.  David Gordon lays into Leiter with justice, and Keith Burgess-Jackson has this to say about the Nagel bashers:

The viciousness with which this book [Mind and Cosmos] was received is, quite frankly, astonishing. I can understand why scientists don't like it; they're wary of philosophers trespassing on their terrain. But philosophers? What is philosophy except (1) the careful analysis of alternatives (i.e., logical possibilities), (2) the questioning of dogma, and (3) the patient distinguishing between what is known and what is not known (or known not to be) in a given area of human inquiry? Nagel's book is smack dab in the Socratic tradition. Socrates himself would admire it. That Nagel, a distinguished philosopher who has made important contributions to many branches of the discipline,  is vilified by his fellow philosophers (I use the term loosely for what are little more than academic thugs) shows how thoroughly politicized philosophy has become. I find it difficult to read any philosophy after, say, 1980, when political correctness, scientism, and dogmatic atheism took hold in academia. Philosophy has become a handmaiden to political progressivism, science, and atheism.  Nagel's "mistake" is to think that philosophy is an autonomous discipline. I fully expect that, 100 years from now, philosophers will look back on this era as the era of hacks, charlatans, and thugs. Philosophy is too important to be given over to such creeps.

Burgess-Jackson puts his finger on the really important point, namely, the politicization of philosophy. This is part and parcel of the Left's politicization of everything.

David Benatar

The Right too has its share of anti-inquiry ideologues, and Benatar's anti-natalist views have drawn their ire and fire. I come to his defense in the following entries:

A Defense of David Benatar Against a Scurrilous New Criterion Attack. The piece begins:

By a defense of Benatar, I do not mean a defense of his deeply pessimistic and anti-natalist views, views to which I do not subscribe. I mean a defense of the courageous practice of unrestrained philosophical inquiry, inquiry that follows the arguments where they lead, even if they issue in conclusions that make people extremely uncomfortable and are sure to bring obloquy upon the philosopher who proposes them.

Mindless Hostility to David Benatar 

Jordan Peterson Throws a Wild Punch at David Benatar

I end on a personal note. When I met Benatar in Prague in late May at the Anti-Natalism Under Fire conference, I found him to be a delightful man, friendly and chipper, receptive to criticism, open for dialog and not the least bit arrogant and self-important in the manner of some academics.  He said to me, "Are you the Maverick Philosopher?"  Apparently someone had informed him of the series of posts I have written on his work.  

Those posts are collected in the Benatar and Anti-Natalism categories. I focus on his The Human Predicament. 

My series of posts on Nagel's Mind and Cosmos can be found in the Nagel, Thomas category.

On the Road with Peter Wust

Both Pyrrhonists and dogmatists aim at and achieve a sort of psychological security: the former by ceasing to inquire and by living more or less adoxastos, without beliefs; the latter by the rigid and unquestioning holding of contentious beliefs. The dogmatists hold on, the skeptics let go. The former live tenaciously, clinging to their tenets; the skeptics live or try to live without beliefs and tenets.  (The Latin tenere means to hold.)

What the two opposing groups have in common is that they cease inquiry. The dogmatist, secure in his dogmas, feels no need to inquire. "We don't seek the truth; we have the truth." The Pyrrhonian skeptic, despairing of finding truth, and sick of the agitation consequent upon discussion and debate, gives up inquiry. "We don't seek the truth; the truth is not to be had."

Neither form of doxastic security is to be recommended.

Peter Wust in his excellent but largely forgotten Ungewißheit und Wagnis (1937), speaking of dogmatists and skeptics, writes that:

 

 

 

Beide wollen sich von dem Zustand des Unterwegsseins befreien . . . (UW 236)

Both want to free themselves from the state of being on the way . . .

. . . when man, here below, is and must remain homo viator. 

In this world we are ever in statu viae, on the road, coming from we know not where, headed for we know not where. The Whither and Whence remain shrouded in darkness, and the light  that guides us is but a half-light. On this road there is no rest from inquiry. Rest, if rest there be, lies at the end of the road.

Why Be Consistent? Three Types of Consistency

A reader inquires:

This idea of the necessity to be consistent seems to be the logician's "absolute," as though being inconsistent was the most painful accusation one could endure. [. . .] What rule of life says that one must be absolutely consistent in how one evaluates truth? It is good to argue from first principles but it can also lead one down a rat hole.

Before we can discuss whether one ought to be consistent, we need to know which type of consistency is at issue. There are at least three types of consistency that people often confuse and that need to be kept distinct. I'll call them 'logical,' 'pragmatic,' and 'diachronic.' But it doesn't matter how we label them as long as we keep them separate.

 1. Logical or Propositional Consistency. To say of two propositions that they are consistent is to to say that they can both be true, where 'can' expresses logical or broadly logical possibility. To say of two propositions that they are inconsistent is to say that they cannot both be true, where 'cannot' expresses logical or broadly logical impossibility.

I am blogging but not wearing a hat. My blogging is obviously consistent with my not wearing a hat since both propositions are true. But my blogging is also consistent with my wearing a hat since it is possible that I both be blogging and wearing a hat. But I am blogging now and I am not writing now are inconsistent since they cannot both be true. The first proposition entails the second, which implies the impossibility of the first being true and the second false.

Liberals often say that support for fetal rights is 'inconsistent' with support for the death penalty. But surely the following propositions are not logically inconsistent:

P1. Human fetuses have a right to life which cannot be overridden except in rare cases (e.g. threat to the life of the mother).

P2. Capital punishment for certain offences is morally justified.

Where is the inconsistency? I see none. Indeed, they are plainly logically consistent. Suppose that the right to life is grounded in the potentiality to develop into something to which one accords person-status. This is a possible view, and indeed one actually held by many. Any Aristotelian worth his salt will be able to spell it out coherently and perhaps even persuasively. Suppose also that a similarly coherent case is made for P2. One will then have made a case for the possibility of each. Joint possibility does not straightaway follow from the possibility of each, but if there is no reason to think of them as jointly impossible, then we should consider them jointly possible. On the face of it, P1 and P2 are logically consistent.  They can both be true.

2. Pragmatic Consistency. By this I mean consistency in the application of a principle. Consistency in this sense is not a relation between or among propositions, but involves a relation among a person,  a principle,  and cases to which the person applies the principle.

To apply a principle consistently is to apply it to all like cases in a like manner. So if the principle is to cherish, value, and uphold human life, then perhaps the thought of those who see inconsistency in support of both fetal rights and capital punishment is that to apply this principle to the unborn but not to certain criminals is to apply it inconsistently. "How can you oppose the killing of the unborn, when you favor the killing of certain criminals? Be consistent!"

The answer to this should be obvious. The cases are dissimilar. The unborn are innocent while criminals are not. This is a difference that makes a moral difference; it is a difference that justifies a difference in treatment. No doubt principles should be applied to like cases in a like manner. But there is no inconsistency in refusing to apply a principle to cases that are relevantly dissimilar.

Principles obviously allow of exceptions. A person who fancies himself 'consistent' in opposing both abortion and capital punishment on the ground that all human life is worthy of respect will in almost all cases make an exception when it comes to killing in self-defense or killing in a just war. Now wouldn't it be churlish and absurd to accuse such a person of being 'inconsistent'? "If you were consistent in your valuing of human life, you would value the life of the jihadi who has come to decapitate you and your family, and you would not lift a finger against him."

3. Diachronic or 'Emersonian' Consistency. Here is a famous passage from Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Self-Reliance" rarely quoted in full:

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and tomorrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.(Ziff, 183)

People routinely rip the initial clause of this passage out of its context and take Emerson to be attacking logical consistency. But he is doing no such thing. It should be clear that Emerson’s dictum has nothing to do with logical consistency and everything to do with consistency of beliefs over time. The consistency in question is diachronic rather than synchronic. A “little mind” is “foolishly consistent” if it refuses to changes its beliefs when change is needed due to changing circumstances, further experience, or clearer thinking.

It should be clear that if I believe that p at time t, but believe that ~p at later time t*, it does not follow that I hold logically inconsistent beliefs. Doxastic alteration, like alteration in general, is non-contradictory for the simple reason that properties which are contradictory when taken in abstracto are had at different times. My coffee changes from hot to non-hot, and thus has contradictory attributes when we abstract from the time of their instantiation. But since the coffee instantiates them at different times, there is no contradiction such as would cause us to join Parmenides in denying the reality of the changeful world.

Belief change is just a special case of this. Suppose a politician changes her position for some good reason. There is not only nothing wrong with this, it shows an admirable openness. She goes from believing in a progressive tax scheme to believing in a flat tax, say. Surely there is no logical contradiction involved, and for two reasons. First, the property of believing that a progressive tax is warranted is not the contradictory, but merely the contrary, of the property of believing that a flat tax is warranted. (They cannot both be instantiated at the same time, but it is possible that neither be instantiated.) Second, the properties are had at different times. A logical contradiction ensues only when one simultaneously maintains both that p and that ~p.

Emerson’s sound point, then, is that one should not make a fetish out of doxastic stasis: there is nothing wrong with being ‘inconsistent’ in the sense of changing one’s beliefs when circumstances change and as one gains in experience and insight. But this is not to say that one should adopt the antics of a John Kerry or a Hillary Clinton.  Relative stability of views over time is an indicator of character.

Before leaving this topic, let's consider what Walt Whitman has to say in the penultimate section 51 of “Song of Myself” in Leaves of Grass:

Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Here it appears that Whitman is thumbing his nose at logical consistency. If so, the Emersonic and Whitmanic dicta ought not be confused.

4. Why be consistent? Ought one be consistent in any of these three senses? I should say it is self-evident that one ought to strive to be logically consistent. For if one's beliefs are inconsistent, then they cannot all be true, which implies that one or more of them are false. The ideal doxastic set would consist of beliefs that are both true and consistent. Logical consistency by itself is not enough since false beliefs can be consistent. But consistency is necessary for doxastic perfection and thus a goal worthy of pursuit.

As for pragmatic consistency, consistency in the application of principles to like cases, this too seems to be a goal that ought to be pursued, although I don't know how I would argue for it. More on this later.

Diachronic (Emersonian) consistency, however, is not an epistemic desideratum. On the contrary, one ought to change one's beliefs when new facts and arguments so warrant.

A reader inquires:

This idea of the necessity to be consistent seems to be the logician's "absolute," as though being inconsistent was the most painful accusation one could endure. [. . .] What rule of life says that one must be absolutely consistent in how one evaluates truth? It is good to argue from first principles but it can also lead one down a rat hole.

Before we can discuss whether one ought to be consistent, we need to know which type of consistency is at issue. There are at least three types of consistency that people often confuse and that need to be kept distinct. I'll call them 'logical,' 'pragmatic,' and 'diachronic.' But it doesn't matter how we label them as long as we keep them separate.

 1. Logical or Propositional Consistency. To say of two propositions that they are consistent is to to say that they can both be true, where 'can' expresses logical or broadly logical possibility. To say of two propositions that they are inconsistent is to say that they cannot both be true, where 'cannot' expresses logical or broadly logical impossibility.

I am blogging but not wearing a hat. My blogging is obviously consistent with my not wearing a hat since both propositions are true. But my blogging is also consistent with my wearing a hat since it is possible that I both be blogging and wearing a hat. But I am blogging now and I am not writing now are inconsistent since they cannot both be true. The first proposition entails the second, which implies the impossibility of the first being true and the second false.

Liberals often say that support for fetal rights is 'inconsistent' with support for the death penalty. But surely the following propositions are not logically inconsistent:

P1. Human fetuses have a right to life which cannot be overridden except in rare cases (e.g. threat to the life of the mother).

P2. Capital punishment for certain offences is morally justified.

Where is the inconsistency? I see none. Indeed, they are plainly logically consistent. Suppose that the right to life is grounded in the potentiality to develop into something to which one accords person-status. This is a possible view, and indeed one actually held by many. Any Aristotelian worth his salt will be able to spell it out coherently and perhaps even persuasively. Suppose also that a similarly coherent case is made for P2. One will then have made a case for the possibility of each. Joint possibility does not straightaway follow from the possibility of each, but if there is no reason to think of them as jointly impossible, then we should consider them jointly possible. On the face of it, P1 and P2 are logically consistent.  They can both be true.

2. Pragmatic Consistency. By this I mean consistency in the application of a principle. Consistency in this sense is not a relation between or among propositions, but involves a relation among a person,  a principle,  and cases to which the person applies the principle.

To apply a principle consistently is to apply it to all like cases in a like manner. So if the principle is to cherish, value, and uphold human life, then perhaps the thought of those who see inconsistency in support of both fetal rights and capital punishment is that to apply this principle to the unborn but not to certain criminals is to apply it inconsistently. "How can you oppose the killing of the unborn, when you favor the killing of certain criminals? Be consistent!"

The answer to this should be obvious. The cases are dissimilar. The unborn are innocent while criminals are not. This is a difference that makes a moral difference; it is a difference that justifies a difference in treatment. No doubt principles should be applied to like cases in a like manner. But there is no inconsistency in refusing to apply a principle to cases that are relevantly dissimilar.

Principles obviously allow of exceptions. A person who fancies himself 'consistent' in opposing both abortion and capital punishment on the ground that all human life is worthy of respect will in almost all cases make an exception when it comes to killing in self-defense or killing in a just war. Now wouldn't it be churlish and absurd to accuse such a person of being 'inconsistent'? "If you were consistent in your valuing of human life, you would value the life of the jihadi who has come to decapitate you and your family, and you would not lift a finger against him."

3. Diachronic or 'Emersonian' Consistency. Here is a famous passage from Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Self-Reliance" rarely quoted in full:

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and tomorrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.(Ziff, 183)

People routinely rip the initial clause of this passage out of its context and take Emerson to be attacking logical consistency. But he is doing no such thing. It should be clear that Emerson’s dictum has nothing to do with logical consistency and everything to do with consistency of beliefs over time. The consistency in question is diachronic rather than synchronic. A “little mind” is “foolishly consistent” if it refuses to changes its beliefs when change is needed due to changing circumstances, further experience, or clearer thinking.

It should be clear that if I believe that p at time t, but believe that ~p at later time t*, it does not follow that I hold logically inconsistent beliefs. Doxastic alteration, like alteration in general, is non-contradictory for the simple reason that properties which are contradictory when taken in abstracto are had at different times. My coffee changes from hot to non-hot, and thus has contradictory attributes when we abstract from the time of their instantiation. But since the coffee instantiates them at different times, there is no contradiction such as would cause us to join Parmenides in denying the reality of the changeful world.

Belief change is just a special case of this. Suppose a politician changes her position for some good reason. There is not only nothing wrong with this, it shows an admirable openness. She goes from believing in a progressive tax scheme to believing in a flat tax, say. Surely there is no logical contradiction involved, and for two reasons. First, the property of believing that a progressive tax is warranted is not the contradictory, but merely the contrary, of the property of believing that a flat tax is warranted. (They cannot both be instantiated at the same time, but it is possible that neither be instantiated.) Second, the properties are had at different times. A logical contradiction ensues only when one simultaneously maintains both that p and that ~p.

Emerson’s sound point, then, is that one should not make a fetish out of doxastic stasis: there is nothing wrong with being ‘inconsistent’ in the sense of changing one’s beliefs when circumstances change and as one gains in experience and insight. But this is not to say that one should adopt the antics of a John Kerry or a Hillary Clinton.  Relative stability of views over time is an indicator of character.

Before leaving this topic, let's consider what Walt Whitman has to say in the penultimate section 51 of “Song of Myself” in Leaves of Grass:

Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Here it appears that Whitman is thumbing his nose at logical consistency. If so, the Emersonic and Whitmanic dicta ought not be confused.

4. Why be consistent? Ought one be consistent in any of these three senses? I should say it is self-evident that one ought to strive to be logically consistent. For if one's beliefs are inconsistent, then they cannot all be true, which implies that one or more of them are false. The ideal doxastic set would consist of beliefs that are both true and consistent. Logical consistency by itself is not enough since false beliefs can be consistent. But consistency is necessary for doxastic perfection and thus a goal worthy of pursuit.

As for pragmatic consistency, consistency in the application of principles to like cases, this too seems to be a goal that ought to be pursued, although I don't know how I would argue for it. More on this later.

Diachronic (Emersonian) consistency, however, is not an epistemic desideratum. On the contrary, one ought to change one's beliefs when new facts and arguments so warrant.

Why is Friendship So Fragile Among Intellectuals?

A certain commie and I were were friends for a time in graduate school, but friendship is fragile among those for whom ideas matter. Unlike the ordinary non-intellectual person, the intellectual lives for and sometimes from ideas.  They are his oxygen and sometimes his bread and butter.  He takes them very seriously indeed and with them differences in ideas.  So the tendency is for one intellectual to view an ideologically divergent intellectual as not merely holding incorrect views but as being morally defective in so doing.

Why?  Because ideas matter to the intellectual.  They matter in the way doctrines and dogmas mattered to old-time religionists.  If one's eternal  happiness is at stake, it matters infinitely whether one 'gets it right' doctrinally. If there is no salvation outside the church, you'd better belong to the right church.   It matters so much that one may feel entirely justified in forcing the heterodox to recant 'for their own good.'  

The typical intellectual nowadays is a secularist who believes in nothing that transcends the human horizon.  But he takes into his secularism that old-time fervor, that old-time zeal to suppress dissent and punish apostates.  It is called political correctness.

And as you have heard me say more than once: P.C. comes from the C. P. 

...............

The above is excerpted from a longer entry, A Red-Diaper Baby I Once Knew: Anecdotes Illustrating Leftist Illusions.

Once More on the Bogus Aristotle 'Quotation'

The indefatigable Dave Lull delivers again.

But first Uncle Bill's lessons for the day:

1) Be skeptical of all unsourced quotations.

2) Do not broadcast unsourced quotations unless you are sure they are correct.

3) Verify the sources of sourced quotations.

4) Correct, if you can, incorrect 'quotations.'

5) Do not willfully mis-attribute!  Or, like Achmed the Dead Terrorist, I KEEL you!

6) Don't use 'quote' as a noun; it is a verb.

 

Mr. Lull send us to Aristotle and accuracy where the following comment clarifies matters:

Robin Smith said...

 

You are correct that this quotation, in the form that seems to be all over the Internet now, is not a quotation from Aristotle: it's not even a loose translation of Nicomachean Ethics 1094b23-25. The English translation from which it has descended is as follows (I'm not sure whose this is):

"It is the mark of an educated mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness where only an approximation is possible."

In fact, this isn't a great translation, but at least it gets the sense right. Notice that the first eight words match the beginning of the spurious quote exactly (actually, the corresponding Greek is just two words, (pepaideumenou esti), one of which (esti) means "it is" and the other one of which (pepaideumenou) is translated "the mark of an educated mind". Since it's distinctive of this translation to supply "mind" instead of "man" or "person", I'm sure that's the source. In bouncing about the Internet, Aristotle's own quote has been transmogrified into something quite different that evidently resonates with many people. Just for the record, I am an academic in a philosophy department, I specialize in Aristotle, and I've published translations of some of Aristotle's works. --Robin Smith

I believe this is the Robin Smith I met at a Plato conference back in 1980.  I am indeed blessed with, and grateful for, a good memory.  You would expect that of a Platonist, right?