Maverick Philosopher

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? 

 

"No Man is a Hypocrite in His Pleasures"

Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959, tr. Ryan Bloom, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2010, p. 95:

Johnson: "No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures."

The Johnson in question is Samuel Johnson. Translator Bloom informs us that James Boswell's Vie de Samuel Johnson (Life of Samuel Johnson) was published in France in 1954. So it looks as if Camus was mining it for ideas. 

In a second footnote we read:

Camus adapted this quote into [his novel] The Fall: "No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures; have I read that or did I think it, my dear compatriot?"

Camus knew the answer, but that didn't stop him from passing on both the thought and its formulation as his own. Is that unseemly for a novelist? Can one plagiarize in a work of fiction? An interesting question.

What the Johnsonian saying means interests me more.  Does it mean that no man preaches a  pleasure he does not practice? An example would be a high school teacher who preaches the pleasures of the life of the mind to his students but spends his leisure hours at the racetrack.  But on this reading the saying comes out false.

Or does it mean that no man indulges in a pleasure that he does not enjoy? This is true, and so this is what I take Johnson to be saying. Consider the pleasure of smoking a fine cigar, a La Gloria Cubana, say. No one indulges in this pleasure if he does not like cigars.

A hypocrite in his pleasures would then be a man who indulged in pleasures he did not enjoy.  But this is much closer to algolagnia than it is to hypocrisy.

Should we say that Johnson's aphorism is flawed? Well, it got me thinking and is insofar forth good.

It got me enjoying the pleasures of the life of the mind which I both preach and indulge in.

The Pyrrhonian as Epistemic Wimp

What is so bad about the strife of systems, controversy, conflict of beliefs? Are they always bad, never productive? Is it not by abrasion (of beliefs) that the pearl (of wisdom) is formed? At least sometimes?

Doxastic conflict can be mentally stimulating, a goad to intellectual activity. We like being active. It makes us happy. Happiness itself is an activity, a work, an ergon, taught Aristotle. It is not a passive state. There is the joy of movement: running, hiking, climbing, dancing. The joy extends to  mental movement. We like problem-solving in our homes, in our jobs, in the aethereal precincts of mathematics and philosophy and science.  We like puzzles of all sorts.  We like to test our wits as much as we like to test our muscles. The rest after the test is the keener, the keener the test.  Mental disturbance, the aporetic predicament, can be enlivening and exhilirating. Damn me, but there must be a way out, a way forward, a work around, a solution! Engineers and chess players and route finders know what I am talking about.

It is equally true that conflicts of belief can be troubling, painful, depressing, unmooring. Cognitive dissonance can induce extreme mental suffering. ('Doxastic dissonance' is a better name for it.) We want certain knowledge, but the indications are many that it is out of reach in this life.  We are thrown back on that miserable substitute, belief. Belief butts up against counter-belief. The joys of dialectic transmogrify into acrimonious division.

So Sextus and the boys are on to something. They see the problem, not that their their diagnosis, let alone their cure, can be reasonably endorsed. Unfortunately, they see the problem onesidedly. They see what is bad about belief and the conflicts of belief. But they ignore the good. Insofar forth they could be called epistemic wimps.

This fits well with the decadence of the late Hellenic schools of Greek philosophy. Things went south after the passing of the titans, Plato and Aristotle.  Social and cultural decline brought with it a turn away from pure theory and a concern with the practical and therapeutic.  The desire for knowledge gave way to a desire for freedom from disturbance.

That is a peace not worth wanting as I argued the other day.

I now hand off to the Franz Brentano, Vier Phasen der Philosophie. 

Related articles

Sidney Hook Reviews Ayn Rand, For the New Intellectual

A Battle of Titans: Plato Versus Aristotle

Where Is the Left's Cognitive Dissonance?

On Continental Philosophy: Response to a German Reader

Reading Now: When Reason Goes on Holiday (Encounter, 2016)

Neven Sesardić  is a Croatian philosopher, born in 1949. He has taught philosophy at universities in Croatia, the United States, Japan, England, and Hong Kong. An earlier book of his  is Making Sense of Heritability (Cambridge U. P., 2005).

“Gripping, thoroughly researched and documented, judiciously argued, and alternately depressing and infuriating, Sesardić’s courageous book offers the astounding spectacle of some of the greatest minds of the past century―including Carnap, Einstein, Gödel, and Wittgenstein―adopting odious political views, supporting Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, for simplistic and plainly fallacious reasons. More shocking still is the story of how prominent journals, encyclopedias, and the American Philosophical Association itself have sacrificed academic integrity on the altar of political activism. Great philosophers repeatedly reveal themselves as terrible thinkers when it comes to morality and politics, plunging headlong into complex controversies without drawing elementary distinctions or differentiating degrees of good or evil.” ―Daniel Bonevac, professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin

The book arrived yesterday. Flipping though it, I was surprised and pleased to find a quotation from one William Vallicella on p. 168. This is from a letter that protests a proposed group resolution on the death penalty:

What then could justify the APA in taking sides on the sort of broadly philosophical issues that tend to become bones of contention in the political arena? . . . Furthermore, by what principle was the death penalty chosen as the topic of an APA resolution rather than, say, partial-birth abortions? Should the APA endorse a package of positions, issuing pronunciamentos on the Balanced Budget Amendment, handgun control and ebonics? If not, why not? (William Vallicella).

Here is a second, later letter of protest (November 2003) that  I sent to the A. P. A. before cancelling my membership:

 
 

Related articles

David Horowitz versus Slavoj Zizek

Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?

An important essay by Robert Nozik. (HT: C. Cathcart) Teaser quotation:

Intellectuals now expect to be the most highly valued people in a society, those with the most prestige and power, those with the greatest rewards. Intellectuals feel entitled to this. But, by and large, a capitalist society does not honor its intellectuals. Ludwig von Mises explains the special resentment of intellectuals, in contrast to workers, by saying they mix socially with successful capitalists and so have them as a salient comparison group and are humiliated by their lesser status.

A Bias of the Intellectual

Robert Paul Wolff:

A rich, complex vocabulary properly deployed is one evidence of a strong mind endowed with a wealth of knowledge.  As I was watching portions of Trump’s press conference yesterday, despite being made physically ill by the man, I somewhat reflexively noticed the extraordinary paucity of his linguistic resources.  Even when he is talking about something he has prepared himself on, he seems utterly unable to use more than the most primitive vocabulary, inaccurately and banally.

Professor Wolff is down with a bad case of TDS if he is made physically ill by Trump's speech.  And yes, the paucity of the Orange Man's linguistic resources cannot be gainsaid.  But might it be that we intellectuals have an inordinate respect for verbal intelligence?  And  an unjustified contempt for those who don't read books?

Among many, myself included, verbal facility is a touchstone of intelligence, or rather of one sort of intelligence, verbal intelligence. Barack Obama has it.  He is a master of soaring rhetoric and empty phraseology.  By way of exaggerated contrast, George W. Bush couldn't rub a subject and a verb together and come up with a clean sentence in his mother tongue.  But there is more to intelligence than the ability to sling words while avoiding syntactic howlers.  And when it comes to this 'more,' Obama has proven to be sadly lacking.  Obama is an uncommonly good bullshitter and blather-mouth, but the net effect of his presidency has been negative.  He lost the Middle East. And to mention only one domestic disaster, his policies, appointments and interventions into local affairs have set back race relations and have led to a terrible spike in inner city violence.  The rule of law has been weakened under his administration.

What Exactly is Trumpism?

Another excellent column by VDH.  Excerpt:

Trump admires people who make money. He doesn’t buy that those, to take one example, with Ph.D.s and academic titles could have made money if only they had wished—but for lots of reasons (most of them supposedly noble) chose not to. For Trump, credentialed academic expertise in anything is in no way comparable to achievement in the jungle of business.

Instead, in Trump’s dog-eat-dog world, only a few bruisers make it to the top and the real, big money — the ultimate barometer of competence. He sees the “winners” as knights to be enlisted in behalf of the weaker others. He might not quite say that a Greek professor [a professor of Greek] is inherently useless, and he might not worry much about preserving the ancient strands of Western civilization. But he might remind us that such pursuits are esoteric and depend on stronger, more cunning and instinctual sorts, whose success alone can pay for such indulgences. Without Greek professors, the world can still find shelter and fuel; without builders and drillers, there can be no Greek professors. Brain surgery and guided missiles both require lots of money without which decline is inevitable.

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

There is an important truth here.  The life of the mind is a noble and magnificent thing, and philosophy is the noblest pursuit of them all.  The vita contemplativa is an end in itself and the vita activa its handmaiden.  

But the spaces of serenity and contemplative repose must be secured by "cunning and instinctual sorts," the rude men who enforce the law and defend us from the barbarians within and the warriors who defend us from the barbarians without.  And none of this is possible without the "builders and the drillers."

We intellectuals have a certain amount of justified contempt for the businessmen who know the price of everything  and the value of nothing.  We are disgusted by the vulgarity, ostentation, and ignorance of types like Trump.  And they return the 'compliment.' The truth is that we need each other's virtues.

We need a man like Trump in the White House now after the disasters both foreign and domestic perpetrated by an adjunct law professor and community organizer with no experience of the real world whose only credentials are a gift of gab and a dark skin pigmentation. 

Among the Joys of Philosophy

One of the joys of philosophy is purely aesthetic in Kierkegaard's sense: the joy of exploring the highways and byways, the twists and turns of human thought.  Included in this are the pleasures of books and quiet and warm lamp light early in the morning and late at night.  

Related articles

Kierkegaard: "To Hell With the Pope!" and Monkishness. The Highest Life

Tongue and Pen

Baptism

Why Keep a Journal?

It was 46 years ago yesterday that I first began keeping a regular journal under the motto, nulla dies sine linea. Before that, as a teenager, I kept some irregular journals.

Why maintain a journal?

When I was 16 years old, my thought was that I didn't want time to pass with nothing to show for it. That is still my thought. The unrecorded life is not worth living. For we have it on good authority that the unexamined life is not worth living, and how examined could an undocumented life be?

The maintenance of a journal aids mightily in the project of self-individuation. Like that prodigious journal writer Søren Kierkegaard, I believe we are here to become actually the individuals we are potentially. Our individuation is not ready-made or given, but a task to be accomplished. The world is a vale of soul-making; we are not here to improve it, but to be improved by it. 

Henry David Thoreau, another of the world's great journal writers,  said in Walden that "Most men live lives of quiet desperation." I  would only add that without a journal, one's life is one of quiet dissipation. One's life dribbles away, day by day, unreflected on, unexamined, unrecorded, and thus fundamentally unlived. Living, for us humans, is not just a biological process; it is fundamentally a spiritual unfolding. To mean anything it has to add up to something, and that something cannot be expressed with a dollar sign.

I have always had a horror of an unfocused existence. In my early twenties, I spoke of the supreme desideratum of a focused existence.  What bothered me about the people around me, fellow students in particular, was the mere aestheticism of their existence: their aimless drifting hither and yon, their lack of commitment, their unseriousness, their refusal to engage the arduous task of   self-definition and self-individuation, their willingness to be guided and mis-guided by social suggestions. In one's journal one collects and re-collects oneself; one makes war against the lower self and the forces of dispersion.

Another advantage to a journal and its regular maintenance is that one thereby learns how to write, and how to think. An unwritten thought is still a half-baked thought: proper concretion is achieved only by  expressing thoughts in writing and developing them. Always write as well as you can, in complete sentences free of grammatical and spelling errors. Develop the sentences into paragraphs, and if the Muse is with you those paragraphs may one day issue in essays, articles, and chapters of books.

Finally, there is the pleasure of re-reading from a substantial temporal distance.  Six years ago I began re-reading my journal in order, month by month, at a 40 year distance.  So of course  now I am up to October 1976.  40 Years from now I will be at the present, or dead. One.

Related articles

The Strange Tale of Chris Knight, the Central Maine Hermit-Thief

First Day of the Year, First Hike of the Year

Waiting for St. Benedict. Various Withdrawal Options

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 term (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. 

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.

Related articles

"Egalitarians By Definition Lack Wisdom" More on the Misuse of 'By Definition'

What the Meinongian Means by 'Has Being' and 'Lacks Being'

More Mischief with 'By Definition'

Passion and Cogency

Passionate presentation does not add to the cogency of one's arguments.  But neither does it detract.  One's audience, however, will likely mistake the presence of passion for the absence of reason.  So the best policy in most circumstances is to present one's arguments in an emotionally neutral way.  Or at least that used to be the best policy.  In this age of the short attention span things may be different.

On Writing Well: The Example of William James

This from a graduate student in philosophy:

I have always been an admirer of your philosophical writing style--both in your published works and on your blog. Have you ever blogged about which writers and books have most influenced your philosophical writing style?

Yes, I have some posts on or near this topic.  What follows is one from 21 September 2009, slightly revised.

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

From the mail bag:

I've recently discovered your weblog and have enjoyed combing through its archives these past several days. Your writing is remarkably lucid and straightforward — quite a rarity both in philosophy and on the web these days. I was wondering if perhaps you had any advice to share for a young person, such as myself, on the subject of writing well.

To write well, read well. Read good books, which are often, but not always, old books. If you carefully read, say, William James' Varieties of Religious Experience, you will learn something of the expository potential of the English language from a master of thought and expression. If time is short, study one of his popular essays such as "The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life."  Here is a characteristic paragraph:

But this world of ours is made on an entirely different pattern, and the casuistic question here is most tragically practical. The actually possible in this world is vastly narrower than all that is demanded; and there is always a pinch between the ideal and the actual which can only be got through by leaving part of the ideal behind. There is hardly a good which we can imagine except as competing for the possession of the same bit of space and time with some other imagined good. Every end of desire that presents itself appears exclusive of some other end of desire. Shall a man drink and smoke, or keep his nerves in condition? — he cannot do both. Shall he follow his fancy for Amelia, or for Henrietta? — both cannot be the choice of his heart. Shall he have the dear old Republican party, or a spirit of unsophistication in public affairs? — he cannot have both, etc. So that the ethical philosopher's demand for the right scale of subordination in ideals is the fruit of an altogether practical need. Some part of the ideal must be butchered, and he needs to know which part. It is a tragic situation, and no mere speculative conundrum, with which he has to deal. (The Will to Believe, Dover 1956, pp. 202-203, emphases in original)

One who can appreciate that this is good writing is well on the way to becoming a good writer. The idea is not so much to imitate as to absorb and store away large swaths of such excellent writing. It is bound to have its effect. Immersion in specimens of good writing is perhaps the only way to learn what good style is. It cannot be reduced to rules and maxims. And even if it could, there would remain the problem of the application of the rules. The application of rules requires good judgment, and one can easily appreciate that there cannot be rules of good judgment. This for the reason that the application of said rules would presuppose the very thing — good judgment — that cannot be reduced to rules. Requiring as it does good judgment, good writing cannot be taught, which is why teaching composition is even worse  in point of frustration than teaching philosophy. Trying to get a student to appreciate why a certain formulation is awkward is like trying to get a nerd to understand why pocket-protectors are sartorially substandard.

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 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 weaving 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.

C. S. Lewis somewhere says something to the effect that reading one's prose out loud is a way to improve it. I would add to this Nietzsche's observation that

Good prose is written only face to face with poetry. For it is an uninterrupted, well-mannered war with poetry . . . (Gay Science, Book II, Section 92, tr. Kaufmann)

A well-mannered war, a loving polemic. There is a poetic quality to the James passage quoted above, but the lovely goddess of poetry is given to understand that truth trumps beauty and that she is but a handmaiden to the ultimate dominatrix, Philosophia. Or to coin a Latin phrase, ars ancilla philosophiae.

Finally, a corollary to the point that one must read good books to become a good writer: watch your consumption of media dreck. Avoid bad writing, and when you cannot, imbibe it critically.

Related articles

On 'Disenfranchise' and Hillary's Will to Power

O. J. Simpson: Trial of the Century?

Can Anyone Recommend a Good History of Philosophy?

Philosophy and Livelihood

Plantinga Reviews Philip Kitcher, Life After Faith: The Case for Secular Humanism

From the mail bag:

I've recently discovered your weblog and have enjoyed combing through its archives these past several days. Your writing is remarkably lucid and straightforward — quite a rarity both in philosophy and on the web these days. I was wondering if perhaps you had any advice to share for a young person, such as myself, on the subject of writing well.

To write well, read well. Read good books, which are often, but not always, old books. If you carefully read, say, William James' Varieties of Religious Experience, you will learn something of the expository potential of the English language from a master of thought and expression. If time is short, study one of his popular essays such as "The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life."  Here is a characteristic paragraph:

But this world of ours is made on an entirely different pattern, and the casuistic question here is most tragically practical. The actually possible in this world is vastly narrower than all that is demanded; and there is always a pinch between the ideal and the actual which can only be got through by leaving part of the ideal behind. There is hardly a good which we can imagine except as competing for the possession of the same bit of space and time with some other imagined good. Every end of desire that presents itself appears exclusive of some other end of desire. Shall a man drink and smoke, or keep his nerves in condition? — he cannot do both. Shall he follow his fancy for Amelia, or for Henrietta? — both cannot be the choice of his heart. Shall he have the dear old Republican party, or a spirit of unsophistication in public affairs? — he cannot have both, etc. So that the ethical philosopher's demand for the right scale of subordination in ideals is the fruit of an altogether practical need. Some part of the ideal must be butchered, and he needs to know which part. It is a tragic situation, and no mere speculative conundrum, with which he has to deal. (The Will to Believe, Dover 1956, pp. 202-203, emphases in original)

One who can appreciate that this is good writing is well on the way to becoming a good writer. The idea is not so much to imitate as to absorb and store away large swaths of such excellent writing. It is bound to have its effect. Immersion in specimens of good writing is perhaps the only way to learn what good style is. It cannot be reduced to rules and maxims. And even if it could, there would remain the problem of the application of the rules. The application of rules requires good judgment, and one can easily appreciate that there cannot be rules of good judgment. This for the reason that the application of said rules would presuppose the very thing — good judgment — that cannot be reduced to rules. Requiring as it does good judgment, good writing cannot be taught, which is why teaching composition is even worse  in point of frustration than teaching philosophy. Trying to get a student to appreciate why a certain formulation is awkward is like trying to get a nerd to understand why pocket-protectors are sartorially substandard.

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 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 weaving 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.

C. S. Lewis somewhere says something to the effect that reading one's prose out loud is a way to improve it. I would add to this Nietzsche's observation that

Good prose is written only face to face with poetry. For it is an uninterrupted, well-mannered war with poetry . . . (Gay Science, Book II, Section 92, tr. Kaufmann)

A well-mannered war, a loving polemic. There is a poetic quality to the James passage quoted above, but the lovely goddess of poetry is given to understand that truth trumps beauty and that she is but a handmaiden to the ultimate dominatrix, Philosophia. Or to coin a Latin phrase, ars ancilla philosophiae.

Finally, a corollary to the point that one must read good books to become a good writer: watch your consumption of media dreck. Avoid bad writing, and when you cannot, imbibe it critically.

Social Utility and the Value of Pure Inquiry: The Example of Complex Numbers

Much as I disagree with Daniel Dennett on most matters, I agree entirely with what he says in the following passage:

I deplore the narrow pragmatism that demands immediate social utility for any intellectual exercise. Theoretical physicists and cosmologists, for instance, may have more prestige than ontologists, but not because there is any more social utility in the satisfaction of their pure curiosity. Anyone who thinks it is ludicrous to pay someone good money to work out the ontology of dances (or numbers or opportunities) probably thinks the same thing about working out the identity of Homer or what happened in the first millionth of a second after the Big Bang. (Dennett and His Critics, ed. Dahlbom, Basil Blackwell 1993, p. 213. Emphasis in original.)

I would put the point in stronger terms and go Dennett one better. Anyone who thinks that intellectual inquiry has value only if it has immediate or even long-term social utility is not only benighted, but is also a potential danger to free inquiry.

One of my favorite examples is complex numbers. A complex number involves a real factor and an imaginary factor i, where i= the square root of -1. Thus a complex number has the form, a + bi where a is the real part and bi is the imaginary part.

One can see why the term 'imaginary' is used. The number 1 has two square roots, 1 and -1 since if you square either you get 1. But what is the square root of -1? It can't be 1 and it can't be -1, since either squared gives a positive number. So the imaginary i is introduced as the square root of -1. Rather than say that negative numbers do not have square roots, mathematicians say that they have complex roots. Thus the square root of -9 = 3i.

Now to the practical sort of fellow who won't believe in anything that he can't hold in his hands and stick in his mouth, this all seems like idle speculation. He demands to know what good it is, what it can used for. Well, the surprising thing is is that the theory of complex numbers which originated in the work of such 16th century Italian mathematicians as Cardano (1501 - 1576) and Bombelli (1526-1572) turned out to find application to the physical world in electrical engineering. The electrical engineers use j instead of i because i is already in use for current.

Just one example of the application of complex numbers is in the concept of impedance. Impedance is a measure of opposition to a sinusoidal electric current. Impedance is a generalization of the concept of resistance which applies to direct current circuits. Consider a simple direct current circuit consisting of a battery, a light bulb, and a rheostat (variable resistor). Ohm's Law governs such circuits: I = E/R. If the voltage E ('E' for electromotive force) is constant, and the resistance R is increased, then the current I decreases causing the light to become dimmer. The resistance R is given as a real number. But the impedance of an alternating current circuit is given as a complex number.

Now what I find fascinating here is that the theory of complex numbers, which began life as something merely theoretical, turned out to have application to the physical world. One question in the philosophy of mathematics is: How is this possible? How is it possible that a discipline developed purely a priori can turn out to 'govern' nature? It is a classical Kantian question, but let's not pursue it.

My point is that the theory of complex numbers, which for a long time had no practical (e.g., engineering) use whatsoever, and was something of a mere mathematical curiosity, turned out to have such a use. Therefore, to demand that theoretical inquiry have immediate social utility is shortsighted and quite stupid. For such inquiry might turn how to be useful in the future.

But even if a branch of inquiry could not possibly have any application to the prediction and control of nature for human purposes, it would still have value as a form of the pursuit of truth. Truth is a value regardless of any use it may or may not have.

Social utility is a value. But truth is a value that trumps it. The pursuit of truth is an end in itself. Paradoxically, the pursuit of truth as an end in itself may be the best way to attain truth that is useful to us.

Related articles

Happy Super π Day!

Jerry Coyne's Latest Outburst re: Pope Francis, Big Bang and Evolution

The Essence of ObamaCare

Write it Down!

If you are blessed by a good thought, do not hesitate to write it down at once. Good thoughts are visitors from Elsewhere and like most visitors they do not like being snubbed or made to wait.

Let us say a fine aphorism flashes before your mind. There it is is fully formed. All you have to do is write it down. If you don't, you may be able to write only that an excellent thought has escaped.

"But there is more where that one came from." No doubt, but that very one may never return.

Why Study Philosophy?

During my days as a philosophy professor, one of the topics often discussed in department meetings was how to 'market' the philosophy major and minor. The following sort of hackneyed point  was often trotted out.

Disciplines such as philosophy and religion help train the mind to think about significant issues or view problems in a different way. Such analytical and critical-thinking skills come in handy when jumping through graduate school hoops like the Law School Admission Test.

The very attempt to justify philosophy, religion, and the classics in this way I found and still find repugnant, and is part of the reason I quit the academic marketplace. Note first that any number of disciplines, when properly taught, help train the mind to think analytically, critically, and in novel ways. So the point made does nothing to distinguish philosophy from history, psychology, or mathematics, and gives a prospective student no reason to major in philosophy rather than in psychology, say. But more importantly, the very notion that one would study philosophy in order to acquire skills that might "come in handy" when taking the LSAT betrays a failure to understand that philosophical understanding is an end in itself, not a means to an end:

Knowledge is capable of being its own end. Such is the constitution of the human mind, that any kind of knowledge, if it be really such, is its own reward . . . . What the worth of such an acquirement is, compared with other objects which we seek, -- wealth, or power or honour or the conveniences and comforts of life, I do not profess here to discuss; but I would maintain, and mean to show, that it is an object, in its own nature so really and undeniably good, as to be the compensation of a great deal of thought in the compassing, and a great deal of trouble in the attaining. (John Henry Cardinal Newman, The Idea of a University, p. 103.)

The above will be dismissed by most nowadays as the quaint and precious rhetoric of a man who even in the 19th century was a superannuated relic. But if so, the university is dead, and we need to pursue, as some of us are, Morris Berman's "Monastic Option" for the 21st Century. The "new monastic individuals," like the members of Paul Fussell's Class X,

. . . make up the class of people that belong to no class, have no membership in any hierarchy. They form a kind of "unmonied aristocracy," free of bosses, supervision, and what is typically called "work." They work very hard, in fact, but as they love their work and do it for its intrinsic interest, this work is not much different than play. In the context of contemporary American culture, such people are an anomaly, for they have no interest in the world of business success and mass consumerism. (Morris Berman, The Twilight of American Culture, Norton 2001, pp. 135-136.)

Related: Should One Stoop to a Defense of Philosophy and the Humanities?

CORRECTION: My "superannuated relic" above is surely or at least arguably pleonastic.   But I will let it stand to illustrate the phenomenon.