July 2011 – Page 3 – Maverick Philosopher

Serious Faith

A serious faith, a vital faith, is one that battles with doubt. Otherwise the believer sinks into complacency and his faith becomes a convenience. Doubt is a good thing. For doubt is the engine of inquiry, the motor of Athens. Jerusalem needs Athens to keep her honest, to chasten her excesses, to round her out, to humanize her. There is not much Athens in the Muslim world, which helps explains why Islam breeds fanaticism, murder, and anti-Enlightenment.

The Problem of Individuation: Genuine or Pseudo?

1. The ontological problem of individuation is actually two problems. One is the problem of what makes two or more numerically different individuals numerically different. What grounds numerical difference? The other is the problem of what makes an individual an individual as opposed to a member of some other category of entity. What grounds individuality? If the first question is about the differentiator (the ground of numerical difference), the second is about the individuator (the ground of individuality).

The two questions are often conflated, but as you can see, they are different. The conflation is aided and abetted by the fact that on some theories the entity posited to do the differentiating job also does the individuating job. For example, in Gustav Bergmann's ontology, bare particulars are both differentiators and individuators. But if I both load the truck and drive the truck it doesn't follow that loading and driving are the same job. So we cannot just assume that what does the differentiating job will also do the individuating job. I won't say anything at the moment about the details of Hector-Neri Castaneda's ontology, but in it, the individuator is not a differentiator.

Therefore, 'problem of individuation' is a bit of a misnomer. A better phrase would be 'problem(s) of individuation/differentiation.' Having said that, I revert to the stock phrase.

Note also that we are talking ontology here, not epistemology. 'Individuate' can be used in an epistemological way to mean: 'single out,' 'pick out,' 'make an identifying reference to,' etc. Suppose I single out x as the only item that has properties P, Q, R . . . . It doesn't follow that having exactly those properties is what makes x an individual or makes x numerically different from y. It could be like this: concrete particulars a and b are told apart by their difference is properties, but that makes them numerically different is that each has a numerically different bare particular, or a different nonqualitative thisness, where this is not understood to be a bare particular.

2. Before going any deeper into this we ought to ask whether our two problems are genuine.

Taking the first one first, why is there any need for a differentiator? If S and P are numerically distinct concrete particulars, why not just take that as a brute fact? Brute facts need no explaining. That's what their bruteness consists in.

A constituent ontologist might answer as follows. Concrete particulars have ontological consituents, among them, their properties. Properties are universals. It is possible that two particulars share all their properties. Since they are not different due to a difference in properties, there must a further ontological factor that accounts for their difference.

This sketch of an answer won't cut any ice with a certain nominalist of our acquaintance. He will presumably deny both that concrete particulars have ontological constituents, and that there are any universals. He may even go so far as to claim that the very idea of an ontological constituent is senseless. He will take our first question as a pseudo-question that rests on false assumptions.

Our nominalist will say something similar about the first question. 'Only if one starts with the assumption that individuals have ontological constituents, that among these are properties, and that these are universals, will one have the problem of explaining why the individual is an individual and not a collection or conjunction of universals. The assumptions are false, so the problem is pseudo.'

Is There an Obligation to be Happy?

I once heard Dennis Prager say that there is no correlation between a happy childhood and a happy adulthood. That is certainly confirmed by my experience. An unhappy childhood gave way to a happy adulthood. With others, it is the other way around.

Prager also likes to say that we have a moral obligation to be happy. A more cautious way to put the point would be that we have a moral obligation to do what we can to make ourselves happy. Strictly speaking, there can be no moral obligation to be happy. As we learned at Uncle Manny's knee, 'ought' implies 'can,' and for some the weight of circumstances makes it impossible to be happy. One cannot be morally obligated to do what one cannot do. There is an element of luck involved in happiness, and there is no moral obligation to be lucky. A good part of my happiness derives from a good marriage to an angelic woman. But had she not flown into my air space — a matter of luck — I would not have been able to use my skill to bring her down with my arrow of love.

So if you are happy, don't imagine it was all your own doing. Luck was involved.

But Prager is surely on the right track. Although we cannot have a moral obligation to be happy, we should strive to be happy, not just for ourselves, but for others. Happy people tend not to cause trouble. Do happy people tend to be party to 'road rage' altercations? Do happy people engage in vandalism or write malware? Do happy people blow themselves up?

Presentism

Franklin Mason tells me he is a presentist. I would like to see if he and I understand the same thing by the term.

The rough idea, of course, is that the temporally present — the present time and its contents — alone exists. The only items (events, individuals, properties, etc.) that exist are the items that presently exist. Past and future items do not exist. But surely it is trivial and not disputed by any anti-presentist that the present alone now exists. (Obviously, the past does not now exist, else it would not be past, and the future does not now exist else it would not be future.) If the presentist is forwarding a substantive metaphysical thesis then it cannot be this triviality that he is hawking. So what does the thesis of presentism amount to?

It seems obvious that the presentist must invoke a use of 'exist(s)' that is not tensed in order to formulate his thesis. For this is a rank tautology: The only items that exist (present tense) are the items that exist (present tense). It is also tautologous to affirm that the only items that exist (present tense) are the items that presently exist. So it seems that if presentism is to be a substantive thesis of metaphysics, then it must be formulated using a temporally unqualified use of 'exist(s).' So I introduce 'exist(s) simpliciter.' Accordingly:

P. The only items that exist simpliciter are items that presently exist.

(P) is a substantive thesis. The presentist will affirm it, the antipresentist will deny it. Both, of course, will agree about such Moorean facts as that James Dean existed. But they will disagree about whether Dean exists simpliciter. The presentist will say that he does not, while the anti-presentist will say that he does. Again, both will agree that Dean does not exist now. But whereas the presentist will say that he does not exist at all, the anti-presentist will say that he does exist, though not at present. The anti-presentist can go on to say that, because Dean exists simpliciter, there is no problem about how he can stand in relations to things that presently exist, one of these relations being the reference relation. The presentist, however, faces the problem of how the existent can stand in relation to the nonexistent.

My mother is dead. But I am her son. So I stand in the son of relation to my mother. If the dead are nonexistent, then I, who exist, stand in relation to a nonexistent object. But how the devil can a relation obtain between two items when one of them ain't there? This is a problem for the presentist, is it not? But it is not a problem for the anti-presentist who maintains that present and past individuals both exist simpliciter. For then the relation connects two existents.

A second problem for presentism is that it seems not able to accommodate the obvious distinction between actual past items and merely possible past items. Kierkegaard and Regine Olsen are past individuals. Their child Angie, like Schopenhauer's son Will, however, are past merely possible individuals. But what becomes of this distinction if everything past is nonexistent? For the presentist, what was is not. But then what was is indistinguishable from what never was (because merely possible).

No doubt the presentists will have answers to these objections.

The antipresentist, however, needs to tell us what exactly existence simpliciter is, and whether it is the same or different than tenseless existence (whatever that is).

But nota bene: the presentist must also tell us what existence simpliciter is since he needs it to get his thesis (P) off the ground.

In my experience, the problems associated with time are the most difficult in all of philosophy.

Do We Love the Person or Only Her Qualities?

We have been discussing the topic of nonqualitative thisness here, here, and here. The following post gets at the problem from another angle, the love angle.

Here is a remarkable passage from Pascal's remarkable Pensees:

A man goes to the window to see the passers by. If I happen to pass by, can I say that he has gone there to see me? No; for he is not thinking of me in particular. But does he who loves someone for her beauty, really love her? No; for small-pox, destroying the beauty without destroying the person, will put an end to love. And if I am loved for my judgment, for my memory, am I loved? No; for I can lose these qualities without losing myself. Where then is this 'I,' if it resides neither in the body, nor the soul? And how love the body or the soul save for these qualities which do not make the 'me,' since they are doomed to perish? For can one love the soul of a person in the abstract, irrespective of its qualities? Impossible and wrong! So we never love anyone, but only qualities. (p. 337, tr. H. F. Stewart)

This passage raises the following question. When I love a person, is it the person in her particularity and uniqueness that I love, or merely the being-instantiated of certain lovable properties? Do I love Mary as Mary, or merely as an instance of helpfulness, friendliness, faithfulness, etc.?

These are clearly different. If it is merely the being-instantiated of lovable properties that I love, then it would not matter if the love object were replaced by another with the same ensemble of properties. It would not matter if Mary were replaced by her indiscernible twin Sherry. Mary, Sherry, what's the difference? Either way you get the very same package of delectable attributes.

But if it is the person in her uniqueness that I love, then it would matter if someone else with exactly the same ensemble of properties were substituted for the love object. It would matter to me, and it would matter even more to the one I love. Mary would complain bitterly if Sherry were to replace her in my affections. "I want to be loved for being ME, not for what I have in common with HER!"

The point is perhaps more clearly made using the example of self-love. Suppose Phil is my indiscernible twin. Now it is a fact that I love myself. But if I love myself in virtue of my instantiation of a set of properties, then I should love Phil equally. For he instantiates exactly the same properties as I do. But if one of us has to be annihilated, then I prefer that it be Phil. Suppose that God decides that one of us is more than enough, and that one of us has to go. I say, 'Let it be Phil!' and Phil says, 'Let it be Bill!'

This little thought-experiment suggests that there is more to self-love than love of the being-instantiated of an ensemble of properties. For Phil and I have the same properties, and yet each is willing to sacrifice the other. This would make no sense if the being of each of us were exhausted by our being instances of sets of properties. In other words, I do not love myself solely as an instance of properties but also a unique existent individual that cannot be reduced to a mere instance of properties. I love myself as a unique individual. And the same goes for Phill: he loves himself as a unique individual.

Now it is a point of phenomenology that love intends to reach the very haecceity and ipseity of the beloved: in loving someone we mean to make contact with his or her unique thisness and selfhood. It is not a mere instance of lovable properties that love intends, but the very being of the beloved. And what some of us of a personalist bent want to maintain is that this intending or meaning is in some cases fulfilled: we actually do sometimes make conscious contact with the haecceity and ipseity of the beloved. We arrive at the very being of the beloved, not merely at the co-instantiation of a set of multiply instantiable lovable properties. But how is this possible given Pascal's argument?

The question underlying all of this is quite fundamental: Are there any genuine individuals? X is a genuine individual if and only if X is essentially unique. The Bill and Phil example suggests that selves are genuine individuals and not mere bundles of multiply instantiable properties. For each of the twins is acutely aware that he is not the other despite complete agreement in respect of pure properties. Here are some of my theses to be expounded and clarified as the discussion proceeds:

1. There exist genuine individuals.
2. Genuine individuals cannot be reduced to bundles of properties.
3. The Identity of Indiscernibles is false.
4. Numerical difference is numerical-existential difference: the existence of an individual is implicated in its very haecceity.
5. There are no nonexistent individuals.
6. There are no not-yet existent individuals.

Dissecting Leftism

John Jay Ray blogs on year after year and takes no prisoners. I went on ego surfari at his site and pulled up a quotation and a reference for which I thank Dr. Ray:

Good comment from Bill Vallicella: "It is difficult to get lefties to appreciate the moral equivalence of the two totalitarian movements because there is a tendency to think that the Commies had good intentions, while the Nazis did not. But this is false: both had good intentions. Both wanted to build a better world by eliminating the evil elements that made progress impossible. Both thought they had located the root of evil, and that the eradication of this root would usher in a perfect world. It is just that they located the root of evil in different places. Nazis really believed that Judentum ist Verbrechertum, as one of their slogans had it, that Jewry is criminality. They saw the extermination of Jews and other Untermenschen as an awful, but necessary, task on the road to a better world. Similarly with the Commie extermination of class enemies".

Bill Vallicella has a post saying that the Left are insensitive to danger. He says this is why they are always pretending that human nnature is good and ignoring the fact that some people can be evil and dangerous. I think it is a bit worse than that. I think Leftist ideologues don't care about reality at all. That's one reason why they often claim that reality does not exist. They are so preoccupied with puffing up their own image and self-esteem that everything else just has to go hang. And anything that threatens that image will simply be denied. They will do and say ANYTHING in order to sound good. Clinically, it is called "Narcissism" and in more extreme cases, it is part of "Psychopathy".

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Forgotten Psychedelia

How many of these do you remember? If you were too much of the '60s then you probably don't remember anything assuming you still animate the mortal coil; if you were too little of the '60s then you won't remember any of these for a different reason. But among these five are three very beautiful songs from that amazingly creative time.

Fever Tree, The Sun Also Rises
Love, Alone Again Or
Moby Grape, Omaha
H.P. Lovecraft, The White Ship
Quicksilver Messenger Service, Pride of Man

A Failed Defense of Nietzsche’s Perspectivism

Prowling the Web for material on Nietzsche and the genetic fallacy, I stumbled across this passage from Merold Westphal, "Nietzsche as a Theological Resource," Modern Theology 13:2 (April 1997), p. 218:

     Perspectivism need not be presented as an absolute truth; it can be
     presented as an account of how reality looks from where one is
     situated. It does not thereby cease to be of value. The account of
     the game given by the winning coach cannot claim to be THE truth
     about the game: other accounts must be taken into account,
     including those from the losing coach, the players, the
     referees,…. But that does not mean that we do not listen with
     attention to what the winning coach has to say about the game.

Perspectivism is the proposition P: All truths are perspectival. Either (P) applies to itself or it does not. If the former, then one must conclude that (P) is itself perspectivally true. Call this perspectivized perspectivism (PP). If the latter, if (P) is not taken to apply to itself, then (P) is nonperspectivally true. Westphal mentions, but does not take, this tack, so I shall ignore it here. His position appears to be perspectivized perspectivism. Unfortunately, his example shows that he does not understand it. He   confuses (PP) with a quite different doctrine that could be called alethic partialism.

What the latter says is that the whole truth about a subject cannot be captured from any one perspective. Take a quart of 10 W 30 motor oil. From the perspective of a salesman at an auto parts
store, it is a commodity from the sale of which he expects to make a profit. From the perspective of a motorist, it is a crankcase lubricant. From the perspective of a chemist, the oil's viscosity and other such attributes are salient. From the perspective of an eco-enthusiast, it is a potential pollutant of the ground water. And so on. But note that these partial truths add up to the whole truth about the oil. (By a 'partial truth' I do not mean a truth that is only partially true, but a truth that is wholly true, but captures only a part of the reality of what it is about.)

Alethic partialism sounds reasonable. But that is not what the perspectivized perspectivist is saying. What he is saying is that every truth is merely perspectivally true, and that this thesis itself is true only from his, and perhaps some (but not all) other, perspectives. Unfortunately, this allows a nonperspectivist such as your humble correspondent to say: "Fine! Truth is perspectival for you, Fritz, but for me it is absolute, and one of my absolute truths is that you are mistaken in your theory of truth." Clearly, the perspectivized perspectivist is in an uncomfortable position here. He wants to say something that is binding on all, but he cannot given the self-limiting nature of his position, a self-limitation demanded by logical consistency.

Pace Westphal, perspectivism is not "an account of how reality looks from where one is situated," but an account of the nature of truth, an account that implies that there is no reality. For truth is the truth of reality. A truth-bearer (a belief, say) is true just in case it corresponds to what is the case independently of anyone's beliefs, desires, or interests. To speak of truth as perspectival is to dissolve reality along with truth. From this one can see how obtuse Westphal's account of perspectivism his. He fails to grasp its radicality. And failing to grasp its radicality, he fails to appreciate its utter incoherence.

Word of the Day: ‘Pot-Valiant’

If you think I have a large vocabulary, you are right. But despite my voracious reading I have never stumbled upon 'pot-valiant' until just now, in a piece by Mona Charen wherein I found the sentence, "And it's true that some Republicans, like Americans for Tax Reform's Grover Norquist, have fetishized their opposition to taxes to the point where they defend pot-valiantly even tax subsidies such as those for ethanol."

To be pot-valiant is to have the courage that comes from being drunk. Noah Webster puts it this way in his 1828 American Dictionary: "Courageous over the cup; heated to valor by strong drink." See here.

The reason I have a large vocabulary is because I rarely allow myself the luxury of skipping over words I don't know. With few exceptions I look them up and then write them down, either in my journal or on my calendar. Or I 'blog' them. It is no good merely to look them up. You must write them down and then re-read what you have written. Only then will they stick.

Trouble is, in a barely literate society of tweeting twits getting dumber by the minute, you will elicit incomprehension or worse from your fellow citizens if you put your vocabulary to use. Of course, catamite, louche, canaille, desuetude, animadversion, apotropaic and zetetic will be lost on them. But yours will be the pleasure of reading high-grade literature with comprehension.

Introverts and the Internet

Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loner’s Manifesto (New York: Marlowe and Co., 2003), pp. 106-107:

The Internet is, for loners, an absolute and total miracle. It is, for us, the best invention of the last millennium. It educates. It entertains. It transforms. It facilitates a kind of dialogue in which we need not be seen, so it suits us perfectly. It validates. It makes being alone seem normal. It makes being alone fun for everyone.

And so it has its critics. They claim it keeps kids from playing healthy games outdoors. They say it is a procurer for perverts, a weapon in hate crimes. Underlying all of this, of course, is the real reason for their dismay: the Internet legitimizes solitude. The real problem is not that kids don’t play outdoors, but that they do not play with other kids.

I’ve read the whole of this book, and I recommend it. It's not a great book, but it is worth reading. Click on the title above to read some positive and negative reviews.

Future Individuals and Haecceities

According to a wisecrack of Schopenhauer, the medievals employed only three examples: Socrates, Plato, and an ass. In keeping with this hoary if not 'asinine' tradition, I too in my capacity as humble footnoter to Plato shall employ Socrates as my example. To point out the obvious: he stands in for any concrete individual whatsoever, animate or inanimate.

I have been arguing (drawing on the work of the late Barry Miller with whom I was privileged to have enjoyed a lengthy correspondence) that before Socrates came to be there was no such property as identity-with-Socrates. The astute Franklin Mason objects:

If there is no such thing as Socrates' identity before he came to be, it would seem that there's no such thing as his identity after he ceases to be. If we need the man Socrates if we are to speak about him, then we can't do so either before or after he exists. But clearly we can now speak of Socrates though he is long since dead. Thus we don't need the man to speak of the man, and so whatever reason we had to deny the existence of haecceities that predate the things to which they attach collapses.

Socrates came to exist in 470 B.C. So we can say:

1. It is now the case that Socrates did exist.

From this it follows that

2. It was the case (e.g. in 470 B.C.) that Socrates does exist.

Mason seems to think that from (2) one can also validly infer

3. It was the case (e.g.. in 472 B.C.) that Socrates will exist.

But if I am right, the second inference fails. For if I am right, before Socrates came to exist, not only was there no Socrates, there was no singular or de re possibility of Socrates' existing. At most there was the general possibility that someone come to have the properties that Socrates subsequently had.

To appreciate that the inference from (2) is invalid, consider a parallel argument. Suppose I promise Tom that I will buy him a book for his birthday. On the morning of his birthday I spy a first-edition copy of On the Road in a book store and I buy it. Once the purchase has been made we can say:

1*. It is now the case that a copy of OTR was selected for Tom.

From this it follows that

2*. It was the case that a copy of OTR is selected for Tom.

But until I bought the book on the morning of Tom's birthday I had no idea what I would buy. So before I bought the book no one was entitled to say

3*. It was the case that a copy of OTR will be selected for Tom.

The most one would be entitled to say is

4. It was the case that a book will be selected for Tom.

Just as (3*) does not follow from (2*), (3) does not follow from (2).

Only present and past actual individuals are genuine individuals. Future 'individuals,' not having yet come into existence, are not genuine individuals.

REFERENCE: Barry Miller, "Future Individuals and Haecceitism," Review of Metaphysics 45 (September 1991), 3-28, esp. 10-11.

On Private and Public Morality

Many liberals have the bad habit of confusing private and public morality. They think that moral injunctions that make sense in private ought to be carried over into the public sphere. Such liberals are dangerously confused. There are those who, for example, take the Biblical injunction to "welcome the stranger" as a reason to turn a blind eye to illegal immigration. Or consider the NT injunction to "turn the other cheek."

Although it is morally permissible for an individual to "turn the other cheek," "to resist not the evildoer," etc. in the letter and spirit of the New Testament, it is morally impermissible for government officials in charge of national defense and security to do the same. For they are responsible for people besides themselves. Consider the analogy of the pater familias. He cannot allow himself to be slaughtered if that would result in the slaughter of his spouse and children. He must, morally speaking, defend himself and them. With a single person it is different. Such a person may (morally speaking) heed the advice Ludwig Wittgenstein gave to M. O'C. Drury: "If it ever happens that you get mixed up in hand-to-hand fighting, you must just stand aside and let yourself be massacred." (Recollections of Wittgenstein, ed. R. Rhees, p. 149) That was presumably advice Wittgenstein gave himself while a combatant in World War I.

It is a serious mistake, and one oft-made by liberals, to confuse the private and public spheres and the different moralities pertaining to each.

Imagine a society that implements a policy of not resisting (apprehending, trying, convicting, incarcerating, killing) rapists, murderers, foreign invaders, and miscreants generally. Such a society would seal its own death warrant and cease to function. It is a fact of human nature that people, in the main, behave tolerably well only under threat of punishment. People for the most part do not do the right thing because it is the right thing, but out of fear of punishment. This is not pessimism, but realism, and is known to be true by all unprejudiced students of history and society.

As for turning the other cheek, it is a policy that works well in certain atypical circumstances. If a man has a well-formed conscience, and is capable of feeling shame, then turning the other cheek in the face of his affront can achieve a result far superior to that achieved by replying in kind. Nonviolence can work. Gandhi's nonviolent resistance to the British may serve as an historical example. The Brits could be shamed and in any case Gandhi had no other means at his disposal. But imagine what would happen if Israel turned the other cheek in the face of its Islamic enemies who would blow it off the face of the map at the first opportunity?

Once your enemy has reduced you to the status of a pig or a monkey fit only to be slaughtered, then there is no way to reach him, shame him, or persuade him by acts of forebearance and kindness. You must resist him, with deadly force if necessary, if you wish to preserve your existence. And even if you in particular do not care to preserve your existence, if you are a government official charged with a defense function, then you are morally obliged to resist with as much deadly force as is necessary to stop the attacker even if that means targeting the attacker's civilian population.

But is it not better to suffer wrong than to inflict it, as Socrates maintained? Would it not be better to perish than to defend one's life by taking life? Perhaps, but only if the underlying metaphysics and
soteriology are true. If the soul is immortal, and the phenomenal world is of no ultimate concern — being a vale of tears, a place through which we temporarily sojourn on our way to our true home —
then the care of the soul is paramount and to suffer wrong is better than to inflict it.

The same goes for Christianity which, as Nietzsche remarks, is "Platonism for the people." If you are a Christian, and look beyond this world for your true happiness, then you are entitled to practice an austere morality in your private life. But you are not entitled to impose that morality and metaphysics on others, or demand that the State codify that morality and metaphysics in its laws and policies.

For one thing, it would violate the separation of Church and State. More importantly, the implementation of Christian morality would lead to the destruction of the State and the State's ability to secure life, liberty, and property — the three Lockean purposes for which we have a state in the first place. And bear in mind that a part of the liberty the State protects is the liberty to practice one's religion or no religion.

There is no use denying that the State is a violent and coercive entity. To function at all in pursuit of its legitimate tasks of securing life, liberty, and property, it must be able to make war against external enemies and impose discipline upon internal malefactors. The violence may be justified, but it is violence nonethless. To incarcerate a person, for example, is to violate his liberty; it is to do evil to him, an evil necessary for a greater good that can be attained in no other way.

The problem is well understood by Hannah Arendt ("Truth and Politics" in Between Past and Future, Penguin 1968, p. 245):

     The disastrous consequences for any community that began in all
     earnest to follow ethical precepts derived from man in the singular
     — be they Socratic or Platonic or Christian — have been
     frequently pointed out. Long before Machiavelli recommended
     protecting the political realm against the undiluted principles of
     the Christian faith (those who refuse to resist evil permit the
     wicked "to do as much evil as they please"), Aristotle warned
     against giving philosophers any say in political matters. (Men who
     for professional reasons must be so unconcerned with "what is good
     for themselves" cannot very well be trusted with what is good for
     others, and least of all with the "common good," the down-to-earth
     interests of the community.) [Arendt cites the Nicomachean Ethics,
     Book VI, and in particular 1140b9 and 1141b4.] There is a tension
     between man qua philosopher/Christian and man qua citizen.

As a philosopher raised in Christianity, I am concerned with my soul, with its integrity, purity, salvation. I take very seriously indeed the Socratic "Better to suffer wrong than to do it" and the Christian "Resist not the evildoer." But as a citizen I must be concerned not only with my own well-being but also with the public welfare. This is true a fortiori of public officials and people in a position to influence public opinion, people like Catholic bishops many of whom are woefully ignorant of the simple points Arendt makes in the passage quoted. So, as Arendt points out, the Socratic and Christian admonitions are not applicable in the public sphere.

What is applicable to me in the singular, as this existing individual concerned with the welfare of his immortal soul over that of his perishable body, is not applicable to me as citizen. As a citizen, I cannot "welcome the stranger" who violates the laws of my country, a stranger who may be a terrorist or a drug-smuggler or a human-trafficker or a carrier of a deadly disease or a person who has no respect for the traditions of the country he invades; I cannot aid and abet his law breaking. I must be concerned with public order and the very conditions that make the philosophical and Christian life possible in the first place. If I were to aid and abet the stranger's law breaking, I would not be "rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's" as the New Testament enjoins us to do.

Indeed, the Caesar verse provides a scriptural basis for Church-State separation and indirectly exposes the fallacy of the Catholic bishops and others who apparently cannot comprehend the simple distinctions I have tried to set forth.

Of Kitsch and Kinkade

Here is a post of mine on kitsch and Kinkade. Does his mall art (mal-art?) deserve scholarly attention? "Aren't the aesthetics of garbage just another form of garbage?"

San Bancisco: Lefties Gone Wild

Banned in San Francisco: soda, Happy Meals, the selling of pets, circumcision. As California goes, there goes the country. 'Hope' you like the 'change.'