On this issue, he talks sense.
Month: March 2010
Should Conservatives Take the High Road When Opposing the Left?
This just over the transom from a regular reader:
Your recent, small quip about the possibility of accusing liberals of racism had me curious of something. Clearly you think that many on the left use unfair or unjust means of persuasion (Attempting to label their opponents as racists, for example.) And I've often heard it lamented that liberals tend to fight tooth and nail, using every fair and unfair advantage they can, in a political dispute (see the possibilities of the 'nuclear option' or bypassing a vote in this health care debate, etc.) while conservatives tend to be reluctant to.
So here's my question. Do you think conservatives should mimic liberals in this regard – fight tooth and nail, use every means available, including calling their opponents racists, etc,? Or do you think conservatives should (regardless of pure pragmatic effectiveness) always take the high road? Doubly so since conservatives actually believe there is a real high road to take?
I wish I had a good answer to this excellent question. First of all, I agree to the central presupposition of the question, namely, that leftists will do and say anything to win, no matter how outrageous. (Here is a recent example of the widespread race-baiting and slander that even prominent leftists routinely engage in.) They do it because they think the end justifies the means, and because of their conviction that, as the Bard has it, "all's fair in love and war." Leftists think of themselves as good and decent people who are battling valiantly against the dark forces of bigotry, racism, religious fanaticism, science-denial, etc. And because they see themselves in a noble fight against people who are not just wrong, but evil, they feel entirely justified in doing whatever it takes to win.
The essence of it is that the Left accepts and lives by what I call the Converse Clausewitz Principle: Politics is war conducted by other means. (Von Clausewitz's famous remark was to the effect that war is politics conducted by other means.) The party that ought to be opposing the Left, the Republicans, apparently does not believe that this is what politics is. This puts them at a serious disadvantage.
David Horowitz, commenting on "Politics is war conducted by other means," writes:
In political warfare you do not just fight to prevail in an argument, but rather to destroy the enemy's fighting ability. Republicans often seem to regard political combats as they would a debate before the Oxford Political Union, as though winning depended on rational arguments and carefully articulated principles. But the audience of politics is not made up of Oxford dons, and the rules are entirely different.
You have only thirty seconds to make your point. Even if you had time to develop an argument, the audience you need to reach (the undecided and those in the middle who are not paying much attention) would not get it. Your words would go over some of their heads and the rest would not even hear them (or quickly forget) amidst the bustle and pressure of everyday life. Worse, while you are making your argument the other side has already painted you as a mean-spirited, borderline racist controlled by religious zealots, securely in the pockets of the rich. Nobody who sees you in this way is going to listen to you in any case. You are politically dead.
Politics is war. Don't forget it. ("The Art of Political War" in Left Illusions: An Intellectual Odyssey Spence 2003, pp. 349-350)
It is clear how Horowitz would answer my reader's question: Because politics is war, conservatives, if they want to win, must deploy the same tactics the lefties deploy. Joe SixPack does not watch C-Span or read The Weekly Standard. He won't sit still for Newt Gingrich as this former history professor calmly articulates conservative principles. He needs to be fired up and energized. The Left understands this. You will remember that the race-hustling poverty pimp Jesse Jackson never missed an opportunity to refer to Gingrich's "Contract with America" as "Contract ON America." That outrageous slander was of course calculated and was effective. Leftists know how to fight dirty, and therefore the 'high road' is the road to political nowhere in present circumstances.
The fundamental problem, I am afraid, is that there is no longer any common ground. When people stand on common ground, they can iron out their inevitable differences in a civil manner within the context of shared assumptions. But when there are no longer any (or many) shared assumptions, then politics does become a form of warfare in which your opponent is no longer a fellow citizen committed to similar values, but an enemy who must be destroyed (if not physically, at least in respect of his political power) if you and your way of life are to be preserved.
As I have said before, the bigger and more intrusive the government, the more to fight over. If we could reduce government to its legitimate constitutionally justified functions, then we could reduce the amount of fighting. But of course the size, scope, and reach of government is precisely one of the issues most hotly debated.
Coming back to my reader's question, I incline toward the Horowitz answer, though I am not comfortable with it. You will have to decide for yourself, taking into consideration the particulars of your situation. Some of us are buying gold and 'lead.' I suspect things are going to get hot in the years to to come, and I'm not talking about global warming. Things are about to get interesting.
Clarity is Not Enough
This scribbler has penned paragraphs which, upon re-reading, not even he could make head nor tail of. That is often a sign of bad writing. It can also indicate sloppy thinking. But it may also show a noble attempt to press against the bounds of sense and the limits of intelligibility. And if philosophy does not make that attempt, what good is it?
There is, after all, such a thing as superficial clarity. (He said with a sidelong glance in the direction of Rudolf and Ludwig.)
Living Right While Thinking Left
Liberals who have amounted to something in life through advanced study, hard work, deferral of gratification, self-control, accepting responsibility for their actions and the rest of the old-fashioned virtues are often strangely hesitant to preach those same conservative virtues to those most in need of them. These liberals live Right and garner the benefits, but think Left. They do not make excuses for themselves, but they do for others. And what has worked for them they do not think will work for others. Their attitude is curiously condescending. If we conservatives used 'racist' as loosely and irresponsibly as they do, we might even tag their attitude 'racist.'
Care for the Future
So live in the present that the future's memories won't be regrets.
The First Step to Enjoying Running
Arthur Lydiard, Run to the Top (2nd ed. Auckland: Minerva, 1967, p. 4):
The first step to enjoying running — and anyone will enjoy it if he takes that first step — is to achieve perfect fitness. I don't mean just the ability to run half a mile once a week without collapsing. I mean the ability to run great distances with ease at a steady speed.
That's one hell of a first step. But the great coach is right: you will never enjoy running or understand its satisfactions if you jog around the block for 20 minutes four times per week. I find that only after one hour of running am I properly primed and stoked. And then the real run begins. Or as I recall Joe Henderson saying back in the '70s in a Runner's World column: Run the first hour for your body, the second for your self.
Incarnation: A Mystical Approach?
I have been, and will continue, discussing Trinity and Incarnation objectively, that is, in an objectifying manner. Now what do I mean by that? Well, with respect to the Trinity, the central conundrum, to put it in a very crude and quick way is this: How can three things be one thing? With respect to the Incarnation, how can the Second Person of the Trinity, the eternal and impassible Logos, be identical to a particular mortal man? These puzzles get us thinking about identity and difference and set us hunting for analogies and models from the domain of ordinary experience. We seek intelligibility by an objective route. We ought to consider that this objectifying approach might be wrongheaded and that we ought to examine a mystical and subjective approach, a 'Platonic' approach as opposed to an 'Aristotelian' one. See my earlier quotation of Heinrich Heine.
1. The essence of Christianity is contained in the distinct but related doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation. Josef Pieper (Belief and Faith, p. 103) cites the following passages from the doctor angelicus: Duo nobis credenda proponuntur: scil. occultum Divinitatis . . . et mysterium humanitatis Christi. II, II, 1, 8. Fides nostra in duobus principaliter consistit: primo quidem in vera Dei cognitione . . . ; secundo in mysterio incarnationis Christi. II, II, 174, 6.
Paradox and Contradiction
Philosophers love a paradox but hate a contradiction. They love that which stimulates thought but are understandably averse to that which stops it dead in its tracks.
A Battle of Titans: Plato Versus Aristotle
It is sometimes said that there are only two kinds of philosophers, Platonists and Aristotelians. What follows is a quotation from Heinrich Heine which expresses one version of this useful simplification. Carl Gustav Jung places it at the very beginning of his Psychological Types (Princeton UP, 1971, p. 2.)
Plato and Aristotle! These are not merely two systems: they are also types of two distinct human natures, which from time immemorial, under every sort of disguise, stand more or less inimically opposed. The whole medieval period in particular was riven by this conflict, which persists down to the present day, and which forms the most essential content of the history of the Christian Church. Although under other names, it is always of Plato and Aristotle that we speak. Visionary, mystical, Platonic natures disclose Christian ideas and their corresponding symbols from the fathomless depths of their souls. Practical, orderly, Aristotelian natures build out of these ideas and symbols a fixed system, a dogma and a cult. Finally, the Church eventually embraces both natures—one of them entrenched in the clergy, and the other in monasticism; but both keeping up a constant feud. ~ H. Heine, Deutschland
Plato, on the left carrying The Timaeus, points upwards while Aristotle, on the right carrying his Ethics, points either forward (thereby valorizing the 'horizontal' dimension of time and change as against Plato's 'vertical' gesture) or downwards (emphasizing the foundational status of sense particulars and sense knowledge.) At least five contrasts are suggested: vita contemplativa versus vita activa, mundus intelligibilis versus mundus sensibilis, transcendence versus immanence, eternity versus time, mystical unity versus rational-cum-empirical plurality.
Heine is right about the battle within Christianity between the Platonic and Aristotelian tendencies. Trinity, Incarnation, Transubstantiation, Divine Simplicity — these are at bottom mystical notions impervious to penetration by the discursive intellect as we have been lately observing. Nevertheless,"Practical, orderly, Aristotelian natures build out of these ideas and symbols a fixed system, a dogma and a cult." But the dogmatic constructions, no matter how clever and detailed, never succeed in rendering intelligible the transintelligible, mystical contents.
Sacrificium Intellectus
No thank you. A God that would demand the sacrifice of the intellect or even the crucifixion of the intellect is not a God worthy of worship. Imagine moving at death from the shadow lands of this life into the divine presence only to find that God is nothing but irrational power personified, the apotheosis of arbitrarity. What could be more horrible? Far, far better would be to be annihlated at death.
Saturday Night at the Oldies: Blue Velvet
Tony Bennett's 1951 version. Can't find The Clovers' 1955 effort which is as good as any. Bobby Vinton had a #1 hit with it in 1963. Featured in David Lynch's 1986 "Blue Velvet." And while we're in a surreal mood, how about a little of the Big O's In Dreams?
Mental Quiet and Enlightenment/Salvation
In yesterday's post I claimed that the proximate goal of meditation is the attainment of mental quiet, but listed as an ultimate goal the arrival at what is variously described as enlightenment, salvation, liberation, release. In a comment to the post (from the old blog), Jim Ryan raised a difficult but very important question about the connection between mental quiet and salvation. What exactly is the connection? I would like to pursue this question with Jim’s help. I believe he is is quite interested in it since he tells me that he has been thinking about this question for the last twenty years. One way to begin is by outlining the possible positions on the relation between mental quiet and salvation. There seem to be three main positions. On the first, mental quiet and salvation have nothing to do with one another. On the second, there is a positive (non-identity) relation between the two. On the third, the two are identified.
A. Some will say that mental quiet is a merely subjective state with no soteriological import at all. Supposing a resolute meditator works himself into a blissful state of mental tranquility, why should that be taken to be a state of enlightenment or salvation or contact with ultimate truth? Why is it not just a highly unusual subjective state that few attain? Mental quiet on this approach is a non-intentional mental state, one that is not of or about anything. Lacking object-directedness, non-intentional states lack a necessary condition of having a truth-value. So if mental quiet is a non-intentional state, questions of veridicality cannot arise. One could not suppose that someone in this state possesses any insight into anything transcendent of the state. Mental quiet is an intensely blissful state, but not one revelatory of anything external to one’s egoic consciousness. Thus it does not reveal a non-egoic source of egoic consciousness, nor another egoic consciousness such as God.
A*. On an extreme version of (A), both the seeking of and the reposing in mental quiet is escapist: not only does it not put us in touch with reality, it leads the meditator into a state of self-indulgent dreaminess that shuts out reality. The difference between the A-position and the A*-position is that according to the former, achieving mental quiet does not help in the quest for enlightenment/salvation, while according to the latter it positively hinders the quest. A traditional religionist might take this line, maintaining that mental quiet and the mystical states that sometimes arise within it are ‘of the devil,’ a ‘snare and a delusion,’ and that the true path to salvation is via faith, or faith plus works, or faith plus works within an authoritarian structure such as the Roman Catholic Church.
A**. On an even more extreme version of (A), the charge of escapism is buttressed with the further claim that there is is no possibility of enlightenment/salvation. So it is not just that mental quiet is no help in its attainment, or that it hinders its attainment, but that there is nothing to attain. Ideological bedfellows as unlikely as Marxists and Randians would join in taking this A**-line and would denounce mental quiet as an opiate.
B. Although mental quiet is not a state of contact with the saving or enlightening power, it is a necessary condition of such contact: One cannot achieve contact without first being in the state of mental quiet.
B*. A more robust cousin of (B) maintains that mental quiet is sufficient for, though not identical with, contact with the saving or enlightening power.
B.** A less robust cousin of (B) has it that mental quiet is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition of contact with the salvific power but is nonethless conducive to such contact in the sense that it raises the probability of such contact. B** allows the contact to be achieved even by someone who has never engaged in any formal meditation practice, or one who has but has never entered mental quiet. There is a passage somewhere in al-Ghazzali where he points out that a person who climbs to the top of a minaret is more likely to feel a cooling breeze than one who remains on the ground. Similarly, the gusts of divine favor are more likely to reach one who has made the right preparations, entry into mental quiet being one such preparation. This image suggests that salvation cannot be caused by the seeker, but must be graciously received. ‘Own-power’ is not enough; ‘other-power’ is needed. Mental quiet is thus a state of mental receptivity or passivity, a state of interior listening in which one opens oneself to a possible communication from beyond one’s egoic consciousness.
C. On a third main approach, mental quiet is identified with enlightenment/salvation. Achieve one and you achieve the other.
Let me conclude by giving my provisional answer to Ryan’s question. As I see it at the moment,(B**) is the best explanation of the relation between mental quiet and salvation/enlightenment. (C) can be rejected quite easily. I suspect that Ryan, given his naturalism, will plump for one of the versions of the A-approach.
Meditation: What and Why
Here are some preliminary thoughts on the nature and purposes of meditation. Perhaps a later post will deal with methods of meditation.
Meditation Defined
We need to start with a working definition. The question of what meditation is is logically prior to the questions of why to do it and how to do it. The proximate goal of meditation is the attainment of mental quiet. I say ‘proximate’ to leave open the pursuit of further, more specific, goals, and so as not to prejudge the ultimate goal which will be differently conceived from within different metaphysical and religious perspectives. It would be tendentious to claim that the ultimate goal of meditation is entry into Nibbana/Nirvana, or union with the Godhead, or realization of the identity of Atman and Brahman. For these descriptions import metaphysical schemes acceptance of which is not necessary to do meditation. All the major religions have their mystical branches in which meditation is cultivated despite differences in metaphysical schemes. The meditating monks of Mt. Athos whose mantram is the Jesus Prayer subscribe to a Trinitarian metaphysics according to which Jesus Christ is the Son of God, a metaphysics incompatible with that of a Buddhist who nonetheless can employ a similar technique to achieve a similar result.
Welcome to Maverick Philosopher
My name is William F. Vallicella, I have the doctorate in philosophy (Boston College, 1978), and I have published a couple of books and 70 or so articles in the professional journals. A confirmed blogger in the grip of cacoethes scribendi, I’ve been online since May 2004 on various platforms. This is MavPhil Gen IV. I publish online here, at Substack, on Facebook, and at X. I began posting at Substack in early 2021 under the rubric “Philosophy in Progress.” The Substack entries are intended to assist educated non-philosophers in clarifying their thinking about matters of moment. My PhilPeople page links to my Substack articles and provides a list of my professional publications.