Maverick Philosopher

Ed Koch (1924-2013)

Here is my favorite Koch quotation:  ''Listen, I love Boston,'' Mr. Koch said. ''It's a wonderful town to come up and visit, on occasion, but it's not New York. Boston is a very nice town, but compared to New York it's Podunk.''

That's Koch for you. Outspoken.  Testicular.  Not that I agree with the jibe.  I'd take the Athens of America over the Big Apple any day.  I was offered full funding to  attend graduate school both in New York and in Boston. So in the spring of '73 I made the transcontinental trek from Los Angeles by thumb and 'dog' to check out both places.  The dismality and crowdedness and dirtiness of NYC with smack addicts on the nod in the subway decided the question for me.

My Boston years were blissful.  A great, compact, vibrant town, the hub of the universe and the Eastern hub of the running boom.  A great town to be young in.  But when it comes time to own things and pay taxes, the West is the best, but not so far West that you end up on the Left Coast.  (Trivia question: which member of the 27 Club uttered the italicized words and in which song?)

Roger Kimball on Koch:

Koch was a species of liberal that scarcely exists anymore on the national stage: a liberal, as he liked to put it, “with sanity.” The sanity acted as a prophylactic against the sort of racialist identity politics that  helped make the mayoralty of David Dinkins, Koch’s successor, such a conspicuous disaster. It also underwrote his relative independence as a political actor. Thus Koch, in 2004, crossed party lines to endorse George W. Bush, not so much because he agreed with all of Dubya’s platform but because he understood that that United States was under threat from a mortal, if also amorphous, enemy, and Koch was an unembarrassed patriot.

A sane liberal.  A dying breed.  'Sane liberal' is becoming an oxymoron and 'liberal loon' a pleonasm.

Related articles

Ed Koch, 1924-2013

'Leftist,' not 'Liberal'

Giving Thanks for C. S. Lewis

Here.  I forgot to mention yesterday that another notable Jack died on 22 November 1963.  Aldous Huxley also died on this date.

Bob Koepp Update

Small world.  I just now ran across  a note  at John Pepple's place wherein he reports that Robert V. Koepp was a roommate of his in the mid-'70s and reminisces a bit.

Long-Time MavPhil Commenter, Robert V. Koepp, Passes Away at 60

I was saddened to hear from Malcolm Pollack just now that Bob Koepp, who commented extensively at both our sites, died on 29 February of this year.  Ever the gentleman, Bob contributed to the discussions at the old Powerblogs site and here at the Typepad incarnation of MavPhil.  He had an M. A. in philosophy and studied under Wilfrid Sellars.  He was such a mild-mannered  man that I sometimes wondered if my more acerbic asseverations offended him.  His comments are here.  Bob will be remembered.  My condolences to his family and friends.  As the obituary below says,  for Bob, "the questions mattered more than the answers."  He exemplified the philosophical spirit.

On a lighter note, I once made mention of Maynard G. Krebs, the Bob Denver beatnik character from the 1959-1963 sitcom, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.  Koepp remarked  that back then he thought Krebs the quintessence of cool. 

Koepp, Robert V. Our beloved Bob, age 60, of St. Paul, passed away on February 29. He was diagnosed just three months earlier with lung cancer, which he faced with admirable strength, caring above all for the comfort of those he loved. He is mourned by mother Helen (Rohe) Koepp of Hutchinson, siblings Reinhard of Tarpon Springs, FL; Ken (Jan) of Hot Springs Village, AR; Karen of Minneapolis; Marla (Bob) Lichtsinn of Fountain Valley, CA; Vern (Cindy) of Rush City; Irene (Dave) Schwartz of Litchfield; Marty of Minneapolis; Aaron (Laury) of Fort Collins, CO; Esther of Eagan; and Joanne (Randy) Fischer of Wausau, WI, as well as other dear relatives and friends. He was predeceased by father Reinhard W. Koepp and grandparents Herman and Augusta Koepp and Walter and Anna Rohe.

Bob, whose abiding wish was for racial equality, believed deeply in loving God and your neighbor. He grew up in Brownton, was a lifelong student of philosophy of science, ethics and bioethics (Gustavus, U Pitt, U of M), and coordinated oncology research at Children's Hospital, Minneapolis. Bob also loved nature and fishing, helping family members with jobs and projects of all kinds, especially woodworking, and music, especially Bach. He was astoundingly bright, and for him, in life or in energetic dialogue, the questions mattered more than the answers. He was selfless, generous and exemplary in so many ways, and he will be dearly missed. A memorial gathering is being planned. Remember him by supporting racial equality or nature organizations, or by doing a random act of kindness.

                                                Published in Star Tribune on March 4, 2012

John Fund on the Late George McGovern

Whom did you vote for in '72?  I voted for McGovern!  But of course the Dems back then weren't the extremists they are today.  John Fund remembers what was good about the man.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Three Who Didn't Survive the '60s

1970 was the last year of the 'sixties, and these three died in September and October.

Alan 'Blind Owl' Wilson of Canned Heat.  Date of death: 2 September 1970.  Cause: "acute accidental barbituate intoxication."  I saw him live with Canned Heat in 1968 in a club named  Kaleidoscope on Sunset Boulevard  in Hollywood.  Wilson's high-pitched voice drew jeers from some members of the audience.  On the Road Again.  Going Up the Country.  On the bill with them when I saw them at the Kaleidoscope was an obscure psychedelic band name of "Fever Tree."  They were damned good as witness The Sun Also Rises and San Francisco Girls and Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing.

Jimi Hendrix.  Date of death:  18 September 1970.  Cause: unclear.  In '67 I heard him play The Wind Cries Mary at the Monterey Pop Festival. Third Stone from the Sun.

Janis Joplin. Date of Death: 4 October 1970.  Cause: heroin overdose. She was at Monterey too.  My favorite  is her rendition of Kris Krisofferson's Me and Bobby McGee.  Otherwise, I didn't much like her vocal stylings: too screechy and screamy.  Dead 42 years, she's been dead longer than she lived.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Youth, Fast Cars, and Death

Tomorrow is the 57th anniversary of the death of James Dean.  When the young  Dean crashed his low slung silver Porsche Spyder on a lonely California highway on September 30, 1955, he catapulted a couple of unknowns into the national spotlight.  One of them was Ernie Tripke, one of two California Highway Patrol officers who arrived at the scene.  He died  in 2010 at the age of 88.   But what ever happened to Donald Turnupseed, the driver who turned in front of the speeding Dean, having failed to see him coming?  His story is here. In exfoliation of the theme that "speed kills" I present the following for your listening pleasure:

Jan and Dean, Deadman's Curve (1964).  But it is not just boys who are drawn to speed, little old ladies have been known to put the pedal to the metal.  Case in point: The Little Old Lady From Pasadena.

Johnny Bond, Hot Rod Lincoln (1960)

James Dean, Public Service Announcement

James Dean, The 'Chicken' Scene

Beach Boys, Don't Worry Baby

Ike Turner/Jackie Brenston, Rocket 88 (1951).  The first R & R song?  With footage of Bettie Page.

Billy Joel, Only the Good Die Young

 

 

 

 

Mary Travers

Mary Travers of PP & M fame died on this date in 2009.  Here is something from the archives about her.

The Euphemism of Obituary

How wonderful people are made to appear in death and how different from how they appeared in life.

Richard Swinburne's Obituary of C. J. F. Williams

I wasn't aware of this until now.  Williams was London Ed's teacher.  I  battle the former via the latter. 

It came as news to me that Williams spent most of his life in a wheelchair.  It testifies to the possibilities of the human spirit that great adversity for some is no impediment to achievement.  I think also of Stephen Hawking, Charles Krauthammer, and FDR.

So stop whining and be grateful for what you have. You could be in a bloody wheelchair!

Helmuth James von Moltke

I  sometimes express skepticism about the value of the study of history. If history has lessons, they don't seem applicable to the present in any useful way. But there is no denying that history is a rich source of exemplary lives. These exemplary lives show what is humanly possible and furnish existential ideals. Helmuth James von Moltke was a key figure in the German resistance to Hitler. The Nazis executed him in 1945. Here is his story.  Here is an obituary of his wife, Freya.

Kitsch King Kinkade Dead

RIP.  But if you put a gun to my head and force me to choose between Kinkade and Rothko, I'll go with Kinkade. 

John Hick

John Hick has negotiated that mysterious transition that awaits us all.  Here is one take on his passing.  I saw him in action only once.  I recall him questioning whether Jesus ever claimed to be God.  An ill-mannered colleague of mine attacked him for that, churlishly.  Hick retained his equaninimity, projecting a superiority that was yet without a trace of superciliousness.  That impressed me and furnished me with yet another insight into the hierarchy of the spirit and the inequality of human beings. 

Hick's An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent is required reading for philosophers of religion.  I have two posts on Hick.

John Hick on Religious and Naturalistic Definitions of Religion

No Provision in Islam for Mosque-State Separation

Remembering Michael Dummett

Hilary Putnam, Tim Crane, and a number of other philosophers offer their reminiscences on the passing of Michael Dummett.  I thank the editors of The Stone for their linkage to my recent post, Searle, Subjectivity, and Objectivity.

Xavier Ortiz Monasterio (1926-2011): An Existentialist Remembered

My former colleague Xavier Monasterio died last year on this date.  Curiously, January 4th was also the date of death of his philosophical hero Albert Camus.  This being a weblog, and thus an online journal of the personal and the impersonal, I didn't want the day to pass without a brief remembrance of the man.  I'll say a little today and perhaps supplement it later on.

Reinhardt Grossmann (1931-2010)

An obituary by his Indiana University colleague, Nino Cocchiarella. 

"Grossmann was well known among his colleagues for his eagerness to discuss philosophical problems and to engage in sustained debate on fundamental positions."  Sounds right.  When I, a stranger, wrote Grossmann sometime in the '80s and posed some questions for him, he responded in a thorough and friendly manner.  May peace be upon him.

Here is another obituary  by Javier Cumpa and Erwin Tegtmeier.  It ends with a tantalizing reference to the book Grossmann was working on when felled by a massive stroke: Facts.  I hope Grossmann's literary executors make the manuscript available.

The summer of '84 found me in Bloomington, Indiana.  Thanks to the largesse of the American taxpayer, I was a 'seminarian' in Hector-Neri Castaneda's NEH Summer Seminar.  One afternoon we repaired to a bar where we encountered Professor Grossmann.  He told a story about the 19th century  German philosopher Kuno Fischer, who was a big name in his day and a professor at Heidelberg.  One day some workmen were making a racket outside his apartment.  This incensed the good professor and he warned the workmen: "If you don't stop making this noise, I will leave Heidelberg!"  The workmen stopped.  Grossmann remarked that if Quine were  to have lodged a similar complaint, the workmen  would have laughed and bid him goodbye. 

From an Obituary

"He lived his life like a fart in a whirlwind."  I didn't make that up.  I'm also none too clear as to what it means.

Steve Jobs (1955-2011) on Death

This is from Jobs' 2005 Stanford commencement address:

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

As Heidegger might have said, we achieve our authenticity (Eigentlichkeit) in Being-towards-death (Sein-zum-Tode).

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Amy Winehouse

Amy Winehouse succumbed to the curse of 27 today.  Why is 27 such an auspicious age for a quick exit from life's freeway?  My guess is that at 27 one is still too young  fully to appreciate the ravages to the body of life in the fast lane  but is old enough to have done irreparable damage, so much so that just one more snort, one more shot, one more binge pushes the self-abuser over the edge.  So 27 is a sort of crossroads.

Here is Winehouse singing the great Gerry Goffin-Carole King song, Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?  But there never was and never will be a cover superior to the Shirelle's 1961 version.  I've loved this song, in this version, ever since I first heard it in '61.  Carole King's version from her 1971 Tapestry album is also outstanding.

Carpe Diem!

I quoted Jim Morrison on the eve of the 40th anniversary of his death: "The future's uncertain, and the end is always near." This morning I discovered that Rob Grill, lead singer of The Grassroots, has passed on.  Their first top ten hit, "Live forToday," made the charts in the fabulous and far-off Summer of Love (1967).  The lyrics are laden with the '60s Zeitgeist and express  something true and valuable that continues to resonate with many of us who were young in those days.

Here is a delightful clip in which none other than Jimmy Durante introduces the boys -- "They don't have a manager, they have a gardener" -- singing (or rather lip-syncing) their signature number. 

Carpe diem.  And while you're at it, carpe noctem.

Quentin Gibson (1913 - 2001)

I first became aware of the Australian philosopher Quentin Gibson when I discovered his book The Existence Principle. It was published in 1998, when Gibson was 85 years old, in the Kluwer Philosophical Studies Series, #75. My A Paradigm Theory of Existence appeared in the same series in 2002, #89. Our approaches are radically different:  I maintain what he denies, for one thing, that there are modes of existence. I discuss some of his ideas on pp. 15-22 of my book.

I learned here that Gibson is the son of W. R. Boyce Gibson  whose translation of Edmund Husserl's Ideen I studied as an undergraduate.  Small world.

Charity Before Obituary

If we were as charitable to our fellows when they were alive as we are when we write their obituaries -- what a different world it would be!

Confessions of an Ex-Abortionist

Here.  By Dr. Bernard Nathanson (1926-2011)

George Shearing Dead at 91

Kerouac aficionados will  recall the "Old God Shearing" passage in On the Road devoted to the late pianist George Shearing.  Here is a taste of his playing.  And another.

You will have noticed, astute reader that you are, that my opening sentence is ambiguous.  'The late pianist George Shearing' must be read de re for the sentence to be true, while my formulation suggests a de dicto reading.  Compare:

a. The late George Shearing is such that that there is a passage in OTR about him.

b. There is a passage in OTR about the late George Shearing.

(a) is plainly true and wholly unproblematic.  (b), however, is false in that there is no passage in OTR about George Shearing under the description 'late' or 'deceased.'  On the contrary, the passage in question depicts him as so exuberantly alive as to drive Dean Moriarty 'mad.'  But is (b) plainly false?

I suppose it depends on whether 'about' is ambiguous in (b).  Can a passage that depicts x as F be about x even if x is not F? Or must x be F if a passage that depicts x as F is correctly describable as about x? My tentative view is that there are both uses in ordinary English.  Consequently, (b) is not plainly false.

Is the definite description 'the man in the corner with champagne in his glass'  about a man in the corner even if he does not have champagne in his glass but sparkling water  instead?  If you say 'yes,' then you should agree that (b) is not plainly false, but ambiguous.

Jack LaLanne Dead at 96

An inspiration.  Brother Jackass will carry you over many a pons asinorum for many a year if properly fueled and disciplined.  Reform your diet and set aside two to three hours per day for vigorous exercise.  Lalanne swam an hour a day and lifted weights for two.  Right up until the end.  And he always 'went to failure'  doing his reps until he could do no more.

Was Camus Contemplating Baptism?

Albert Camus, one of the luminaries of French existentialism, died on this day in 1960, in a car crash.  He was 46.  Had he lived, he might have become a Christian. Or so it seems from Howard Mumma, Conversations with  Camus. This second-hand report is worth considering, although it must  be consumed cum grano salis. See also Camus the Christian?

Tripke Joins Turnupseed

When the young James Dean crashed his low slung silver Porsche Spyder on a lonely California highway on September 30, 1955, he catapulted a couple of unknowns into the national spotlight.  One of them was Ernie Tripke, one of two California Highway Patrol officers who arrived at the scene.  He has died at the age of 88.  But what ever happened to Donald Turnupseed, the driver who turned in front of the speeding Dean, having failed to see him coming?  His story is here. 

Is dying young a bad thing for the one who dies?  What if it makes you 'immortal' as in the case of James Dean?  More grist for the Epicurean mill.

The New York Times Kerouac Obituary

Tomorrow, October 21, is the 41st anniversary of Jack Kerouac's death.  I remember the day well, having noted Jack's passing on a piece of looseleaf I still have in a huge file full  of juvenilia from that period. 

The NYT obituary features a perceptive quotation from Allen Ginsberg: "A very unique cat -- a French Canadian Hinayana Buddhist Beat Catholic savant."  For pith and accuracy, that's hard to beat.  The obituary concludes by noting that Kerouac "had no use for the radical politics that came to preoccupy many of  his friends and readers."

"I'm not a beatnik. I'm a Catholic," he said last month. He showed the interviewer a painting of Pope Paul VI and said, "Do you know who painted that?  Me."

Coulter on Sobran

Not Your Average Joe.

Joseph Sobran

Joseph Sobran is dead at the age of 64.  Beginning as a paleocon, he ended up an anarchist, and apparently something of an anti-Semite.    His 1985 Pensees: Notes for the Reactionary of Tomorrow, however, contains a wealth of important ideas worth ruminating on.  A couple of excerpts, not necessarily the best:

"The poor" are to liberalism roughly what "the proletariat" is to Communism--a formalistic device for legitimating the assumption of power. What matters, for practical liberals, is not that (for example) the black illegitimacy rate has nearly tripled since the dawn of the Great Society; it is that a huge new class of beneficiaries has been engendered--beneficiaries who vote, and who feel entitled to money that must be taken from others. It is too seldom pointed out that a voter is a public official, and that the use of proffered entitlements to win votes amounts to bribery. For this reason John Stuart Mill pronounced it axiomatic that those who get relief from the state should be disfranchised. But such a proposal would now be called inhuman, which helps account for the gargantuan increase in the size and scope of federal spending. Corrupt politicians make headlines; but no honest politician dares to refer to the problem of corrupt voters, who use the state as an instrument of gain.

[. . .]

The enemy, for socialism, is any permanent authority, whether it is a long-standing church or a holy scripture, whose tendency is to put a brake on political power. In fact power and authority are often confused nowadays: the thoroughly politicized man who seeks power can only experience and interpret authority as a rival form of power, because it impedes his ambition for a thoroughly politicized society. But authority is more nearly the opposite of power. It offers a standard of truth or morality that is indifferent and therefore often opposed to current desires and forces, standing in judgment over them. If God has revealed Himself to man, the progressive agenda may find itself seriously inconvenienced.

For this reason, religion is a source of deep anxiety to the liberal. He harps on its historical sins: Crusades, Inquisitions, witch burnings, wars. He never notices that the crimes of atheist regimes, in less than a century, have dwarfed those of all organized religions in recorded history. He sees Christianity's sporadic persecutions as being of its essence; he regards Communism's unbroken persecution as incidental to its potential for good. He warns of the "danger" posed by American fundamentalists (one of the most gentle and law-abiding segments of the population) and is unchastened by the results of "peace" in Vietnam and Cambodia.

Famous Last Words: "Don't Worry, It Isn't Loaded"

Life in the fast lane often leads to a quick exit from life's freeway.  You may recall Terry Kath, guitarist for the band Chicago.  In 1978, while drunk, he shot himself in the head with a 'unloaded' gun.  At first he had been fooling with a .38 revolver.  Then he picked up a semi-automatic 9 mm pistol, removed the magazine, pointed it at his head, spoke his last words, and pulled the trigger.  Unfortunately for his head, there was a round in the chamber.  Or that is one way the story goes. 

Such inadvertent exits are easily avoided by exceptionless observation of three rules:  Never point a gun at something you do not want to destroy.  Treat every gun as if   loaded, whether loaded or not.  Never mix alcohol and gunpowder.

Antony Flew Dead at 87

Here.  ". . . it is clear that Flew’s repudiation of atheism was heartfelt and seems to have been largely rooted in his dislike of polemical atheism. His own atheism was always cautious, nuanced and respectful of Christian tradition.  [. . .] Professor Antony Flew, philosopher, was born on February 11, 1923. He died on April 8, 2010, aged 87."

Ralph McInerny (1929-2010)

Ralph McInerny has died.

The Reclusive J. D. Salinger Dies at 91

Here.

We who are obscure ought to be grateful for it.  It is wonderful to be able to walk down the street and be taken for an average schmuck.  A lttle recognition from a few high-quality individuals is all one needs.  Fame can be a curse.   The unhinged Mark David Chapman, animated by Holden Caulfield's animus against phoniness, decided that John Lennon was a phony, and so had to be shot.

The mad pursuit of empty celebrity by so many in our society shows their and its spiritual vacuity.

 

 

UPDATE (1/30/10):  Apparently, today's teens cannot relate to Holden Caulfield.

Stephen Toulmin Dies

On December 4th, in Los Angeles, at age 87.  NYT obituary here.  (HT: Seldom Seen Slim)