Month: October 2009

Pessimistic Thoughts on Political Discourse in America

Mark Crispin Miller The following piece was written on 12 April 2006.  I repost it, slightly emended, because events since then have led me to believe that the grounds for pessimism are even stronger now than they were before.  It is becoming increasingly clear that conservatives and liberals/leftists live on 'different planets.'  And it is becoming increasingly clear which planet bears the name 'Reality.'  A return to federalism may help mitigate tensions, as I suggest here.  But that is not likely to happen.

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A few nights ago on C-Span I listened to a talk by Mark Crispin Miller given at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst). His theme was that of a book he had authored alleging that the 2004 election was stolen by the Republicans and how democracy is dead in the USA. Not having read Crispin's book, I cannot comment on it. But I will offer a few remarks on his talk.

Miller, a tenured professor at New York University, is obviously intelligent and highly articulate and entertaining to listen to, his mannerisms and delivery reminiscent of Woody Allen. He takes himself to be a defender of the values of the Enlightenment. But then so do I. So here is the beginning of a 'disconnect.' From my point of view, Miller is an extremist motivated by the standard Leftist fear of, and hostility toward, religion. (Miller's NYU colleague, Thomas Nagel, owns up to his fear of religion, as I document here.) Miller's hostility was betrayed a dozen or so times during his speech by mocking turns of phrase. But of course he doesn't see himself as an extremist but as a sober defender of values he feels are threatened by Christian Reconstructionism, also know as  Dominion Theology.

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Continental Philosophy Criticized: Levinas

Levinas-portrait Another example of Continental obscurity in my ongoing series comes from a philosopher I mainly respect, Emmanuel Levinas. The following passage is from Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo, tr. Richard A. Cohen (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1985, p. 106). It first appeared in French in 1982. It goes without saying that the numerals in brackets are my interpolation.

[1] The "invisible God" is not to be understood as God invisible to the senses, but as [2] God non-thematizable in thought and nonetheless as [3] non-indifferent to the thought which is not thematization, and [4] probably not even an intentionality.

Got that?  I will go through this passage bit by bit to show you what is wrong with this sort of writing and thinking.

Ad 1. To be properly formulated, this first clause must contain a word like ‘merely’ right after ‘understood.’ God is obviously invisible to the senses, and a formulation that suggests that he is not is inept. This sort of mistake is often made. For example, if what you want to say is that religion is not merely matter a matter of doctrine (because it is a matter of practice as well), then don’t say: Religion is not a matter of doctrine. For if you say the latter, then you say something that is just plain false.

Ad 2. We are being told that God is non-thematizable in thought. In plain English: God cannot be a theme or topic or object of thought. I am very sympathetic to this idea if what is intended is that God cannot be reduced to a mere object of thought whose being is exhausted by his objecthood. But since we are talking about God right now, there is some sense or other in which God is an object of thought. In some sense, we are thematizing God; we are thematizing him as a being whose being surpasses his thematicity.

You will note that I am now starting to write like a Continental philosopher. I know the idiom and can break into it when it suits me. I know their typical moves, althought they wouldn’t say ‘move’ inasmuch as that suggests something rigorous and logical like chess — and we can’t have that. The point, however, is that there is a problem here, and Levinas and Co. don’t do enough — or much of anything — to bring it into the open. The problem is to explain how we can think correctly of God as nonthematizable in thought if God has this very property. Or at least that is one aspect of the problem.

Ad 3. We are being told that there is a non-thematizing or non-objectifying mode of thinking and that God is non-indifferent to this mode of thinking. But what does ‘non-indifferent’ mean? Does it mean not different, so that the non-objectifying thinking of God just is God? Or does it perhaps mean that God cares about this mode of thinking? Who knows? And that’s the problem. Levinas takes no pains to be clear about what he means.  And the context does not help.

Ad 4. Finally, we are informed that the non-objectifying mode of thinking is "probably not even an intentionality." ‘Intentionality’ is a philosopher’s term of art for the peculiar of-ness, aboutness, or directedness of (some) mental states to their objects. So what Levinas is saying is that the non-objectifying mode of thinking lacks aboutness. But then what is it? Something like a mute sensory state, a pain, for example? Clearly, there is some sense in which a non-objectifying mode of thinking about God is about God – and about nothing else. This sense needs clarification.

To sum up. I am not trying to ‘refute’ Levinas.  I like him and agree with some of his ideas in Totality and Infinity, his critique of Heidegger for example.  I am not charging him with incoherence or self–contradiction above. What I am objecting to is the lack of time and energy spent on clarification, and on setting forth clearly the problems and questions implied by his ideas. Brentano, Husserl, and the early Sartre were clear-headed thinkers. After that, the early standards go by the board.

 

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Three Greenwich Village Folkies

Davedylan Remember Dave van Ronk?  I haven't heard his version of "Cocaine" in maybe 45 years.  Enjoy it before it is pulled.  Last Saturday I reminded you of Fred Neil.  Here is another delightful tune of his, I've Got a Secret.  Based loosely on Elizabeth Cotten's  Shake Sugaree.  And then there was a young cat who named himself after a Welsh poet, a callow youth who in his early days played guitar and harmonica much better than in later days and sang better too as you can hear in his versions of Cocaine and Rocks and Gravel.  But the Zeitgeist chose the unlikely Jewish kid from Hibbing, Minnesota as its avatar, and you know the rest of the story

Milton Munitz on Boundless Existence, Cosmic Spirituality, and the Meaning of Life

MKM_ForWebsite The last book Milton K Munitz published before his death in 1995 is entitled Does Life Have a Meaning? (Prometheus, 1993).  It is a fitting capstone to his distinguished career and exemplifies the traits for which I admire him: he is clear and precise like a good analytic philosopher, but he evinces the spiritual depth conspicuous by its absence in most analysts.  Philosophy for him was not a mere academic game: he grappled with ultimates.  Herewith, some notes toward a summary and critique of Munitz's position on the meaning-of-life question.  I will also draw upon his penultimate book, The Question of Reality (Princeton 1990), as well as Existence and Logic (NYU Press, 1974)  and The Mystery of Existence (NYU Press, 1974).  These titles will be abbreviated by 'LM,' ' QR,'  'EL,' and 'ME,'  respectively.  Words and phrases enclosed in double quotation marks are quotations from Munitz; otherwise I use single 'quotation' marks.

 

 


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Adding Insult to Injury

That we are formed and malformed by our environments from birth on is bad enough. It is made worse by those who want to see us as nothing but products of environment. These reductionists of course make an exception in their own cases. It is as if they say to us: "We are able to discern truth, but you are not. What we say expresses our insight, but what you say only expresses your conditioning."  That is the injustice of the psychologizer.

First Impressions

You will find it difficult to undo the damage of a bad first impression. One must realize that too many people base lasting judgments on them. This is folly of course, but it may be even worse folly to attempt to disembarrass  them of their folly. The world runs on appearances, a fact made worse by the pseudo-authority of first appearances. One eventually learns that this world of seeming not only really is a world of seeming but is necessarily one. One learns to deal with it and abandons the attempt to find plenary reality where it can exist only fitfully and in fragments.

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Can Philosophy be Taught?

In one sense a philosophy is a set of conclusions, systematically set forth, on ultimate matters. To appreciate the conclusions, however, one must appreciate the arguments and counterarguments the sifting of which first led the philosopher to the conclusions. But to understand the arguments and counterarguments one must understand the issues and problems that they revolve around. Appreciation of the issues and problems, in turn, is rooted in wonder  the presupposition of which is a contemplative detachment from the taken-for-granted.

And so we must distinguish: doctrines, arguments, problems, wonder.  Philosophy as the study of the doctrines of the philosophers is philosophy in its most superficial sense.  Studying that, one is not studying philosophy, but philosophies, and them in their most external form.  Philosophy as the grappling with the arguments whose conclusions  are the doctrines is closer to the real thing.  Philosophy as the exfoliation and penetration of the problems themselves, under suspension of the need to solve them at all costs, is closer still to philosophy's throbbing heart.   This is philosophy as aporetics.  But without wonder there can be no appreciation of problems, let alone solutions.  Thus we have it on the excellent authority of both Plato and Aristotle that philosophy begins in wonder.

Upshot? Teaching philosophy is well-nigh impossible. One can of course teach the lore of the philosophers, but that is not what philosophy is in its vital essence.  And although argumentative and logical skills are impartable to the moderately intelligent, the aporetic sense, the feel for a philosophical problem, is not readily imparted regardless of the intelligence of the student. A fortiori, the wonder at the source of the aporetic sense is a gift of the gods, and nothing a mere mortal teacher can dispense.

So I propose to go Kant one better. Somewhere deep in the bowels of   The Critique of Pure Reason,  he remarks that "Philosophy cannot be taught, we can at most learn to philosophize." I say that neither philosophy as doctrinal system nor the art of philosophizing can be taught. For there is no one extant doctrinal system called philosophy, and neither the aporetic sense nor the wonder at its root can be taught.   As I used to say in my teaching days, "Philosophy cannot be a mass consumption item." Logic perhaps, philosophy no.

Or to paraphrase a remark I once heard Hans-Georg Gadamer make, "Just as there are the musical and the unmusical, there are the philosophical and the unphilosophical."  One cannot teach music to the unmusical or philosophy to the unphilosophical.  The muse of philosophy must have visited you; otherwise you are out of luck.

Too Old to Learn?

This just over the transom from a reader in Virginia: 

I stumbled across your blog a year or two ago, and since then I've periodically dropped in to see what's going on.  I enjoy what I understand of your material but, to be honest, I find much of it quite difficult to follow.  I think the main problem is that, having never studied philosophy formally, I simply haven't developed sufficient fluency in the vocabulary and methods of thinking required by the discipline.  (At the risk of sounding arrogant, I'm certain I possess the native intelligence to grasp at least the basics.)  With less than a year to go until my fortieth birthday it may be a little late to start learning, but, for reasons that I won't get into unless you really want to know, I'd like to try.  With that said, could you (and would you) suggest one or two books by way of introductory reading?
You are not even forty and you consider yourself too old for study?  Nonsense.  Nietzsche says somewhere that at thirty a man is yet a child when it comes to matters of high culture.  Well, to employ a trendy manner of speaking, forty is the new thirty.  Actually, fifty is the new thirty.  It is a good bet that you have another forty years ahead of you.  It is never too late to be learning new things.  The mind declines much more slowly than the body and its decline is much more easy to offset by preventative measures.  See Studiousness as Prophylaxis Against the Debilities of Old Age.  It is also worth noting that the waning of one's libido is conducive to the sort of peace of mind that makes study a pure delight.
 
As for your native intelligence, I too am certain that you possess enough of it to grasp the basics.  This is obvious from your letter which is flawlessly written and a model of clarity. Never start with the assumption that any subject matter is beyond your understanding.  Always start with the opposite assumption and let experience teach you your limits.  She will not fail to do so!
 
You say that you find much of what I write on this weblog hard to follow.  That is only to be expected when the post is of a technical nature as many of my posts are, or when I simply presuppose even in non-technical posts that the reader has read Aristotle, Hegel, Heidegger, Sartre, Quine . . . . 
 
You would like me to recommend one or two introductory books.  I cannot think of anything I could wholeheartedly recommend in good conscience, but the following are worth a look:  Bryan Magee, Confessions of a Philosopher, and Jay F. Rosenberg, The Practice of Philosophy.  Mr. Google will be glad to assist you in locating copies.  These books will give you some idea of what philosophy is about, even though I cannot endorse their particular slants or emphases.
 
But you really cannot learn philosophy by reading about it or attending lectures.  You have to do it.  It is an activity first and foremost, not a body of doctrine there to be learned.   You have to have one or more burning questions that torment you, and then you have to try to work out (in writing!) your own answers to those questions as best you can, all the while consulting what others have said about them.
 

The Past as Burden

The past is a burden one is free to put down — if others will let us. In this regard as in others, the less fame the better. Others like to keep us in the past, safely categorized, pinned to our deeds. To their ossifying gaze, we are what we were, a fixed essence rather than a project. If I rightly recall, Hegel summed up the Aristotelian to ti en einai and the scholastic quod quid erat esse in the phrase, Wesen ist was gewesen ist: essence is what was. But Dasein, said Heidegger, is essentially futural. And that despite all Geworfenheit, thrownness.  Sound is the existentialist insight that man  is a project.

Each day is new, but we make it old with our thoughts and habits. We drag the past along with us like a penal chain. But every day is a beginning. Some say: "of the rest of your life." But that formulation is too retrospective: it evaluates the present and the future by the standard of the past, as time that remains. Better to say: "Each day begins a new life." Of course, it cannot be all that new, but no matter. Let the continuities take care of themselves, seek the novelty in the moment.

There are possibilities yet unexplored in this present which is not merely a boundary between past and future, but a source of the new. 

The Demise of the Dollar

An important article by Robert Fisk in the The Independent.  (HT: Seldom Seen Slim)

Frugal bastards like me, who live according to the old virtues, play by the rules, are totally debt-free, save and invest, exercise 'due diligence' across the board — we are now going to get the shaft through no fault of our own.  What's a poor philosopher to do as his stash of cash threatens to transmogrify into a pile of trash?  Three simple suggestions:

1. Buy gold and other precious metals.  But gold is at an all-time high of $1038.65 a troy ounce, and you know what they say about buying high.  Gold is extremely volatile and has no intrinsic value.  Nor does it have any growth potential like stocks.  Because the world's gold supply increases very slowly, its exchange value is mainly driven by demand.  But the demand is perception-driven, so be careful.  Still, gold is and always has been the money of last resort, money for when the crap hits the fan, and thereafter.

2. Stockpile nonperishable goods, including those you don't use yourself.  What you don't need or want can be used later on for barter.  While prices are low and the dollar still has purchasing power, lay in a supply of clothes and footwear, tools, mountain bikes and musical instruments, wine and liquor, canned food and dry staples such as rice and beans, guns and ammunition, and so on.

3. Make repairs and improvements on your domicile.

Yet More Evidence of a Lack of Common Sense Among Democrats

It is hard to believe, but then again, given how preternaturally stupid and politically correct Dems are, maybe it is not so hard to believe:  a significant number of these jokers oppose photo ID when it comes to applying for Medicare and Medicaid benefits!  Here is John Fund, Making the World Safe for Medicaid Fraud:

Americans expect to show a photo ID when they board a plane, enter many office buildings, cash a check or even rent a video — but rarely in voting or applying for government benefits such as Medicaid. Many Democrats seem to view asking citizens for proof of identity as an invasion of privacy — though what's really being protected is the right to commit identity fraud.

Exhibit A is Tuesday's 13 to 10 party-line vote in the Senate Finance Committee rejecting a proposal to require that immigrants prove their identity when signing up for federal health care programs. [. . .]

This shows that the Dems are not serious about health care reform.  If they were serious they would begin by solving pressing and solvable problems such as the fraud and waste in existing programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.  But they refuse to take the simplest steps toward this end.