Month: March 2012

Blanshard on Santayana’s Prose Style

Brand Blanshard, On Philosophical Style (Indiana University Press, 1967), pp. 49-50. Originally appeared in 1954. Emphasis added.
   
The most distinguished recent example of imaginative prose in  philosophy is certainly George Santayana. Santayana was no man's copy, either in thought or in style. He consistently refused to
adopt the prosaic medium in which most of his colleagues were writing. To read him is to be conducted in urbane and almost courtly fashion about the spacious house he occupies, moving noiselessly always on a richly figured carpet of prose. Is it a satisfying experience as one looks back on it? Yes, undoubtedly, if one has been able to surrender to it uncritically. But that, as it happens, is something the philosophical reader is not very likely to do. Philosophy is, in the main, an attempt to establish     something by argument, and the reader who reads for philosophy will be impatient to know just what thesis is being urged, and what precisely is the evidence for it. To such a reader Santayana seems  to have a divided mind, and his doubleness of intent clogs the intellectual movement. He is, of course, genuinely intent on reaching a philosophic conclusion, but it is as if, on his journey there, he were so much interested also in the flowers that line the wayside that he is perpetually pausing to add one to his buttonhole. The style is not, as philosophic style should be, so transparent a medium that one looks straight through it at the object, forgetting that it is there; it is too much like a window of stained glass which, because of its very richness, diverts attention to itself.

There is no reason why a person should not be a devotee of both truth and beauty; but unless in his writing he is prepared to make one the completely unobtrusive servant of the other, they are sure to get in each other's way. Hence ornament for its own beautiful irrelevant sake must be placed under interdict. Someone has put the matter more compactly: "Style is the feather in the arrow, not the feather in the hat."

It seems to me that far too much Continental philosophy is plagued by the same "divided mind" and "doubleness of intent."

A Sucker is Born Every Minute

And so is a hustler.  Before you rush out and buy Richard Lustig's book about winning the lottery, ask yourself a simple question: why is this guy hawking a book if he has the winning lottery method?  Writing a book is a lot more work than buying lottery tickets.  His surname smacks of an aptronym: lustig in German means 'merry.'  One imagines him laughing all the way to the bank with his book receipts. 

The lottery is a fool's 'investment,' a self-imposed fool's tax: you willingly fork over money to the government beyond what they coercively take so that they will have even more  wherewithal for all their wise and wonderful projects.  And it is regressive: it affects mainly the the poor and innumerate, thereby insuring that they will remain poor and innumerate.

There are moral questions as well.  It would be nice if we could agree on the principle primum non nocere, first do no harm, and nicer still if we could agree that that applies to the state as well as to individuals. State-run lotteries harm the populace as I have argued many times over the years.  State-run casinos are even worse.  But I know I am but a vox clamantis in deserto in a country filled with idiots becoming stupider and cruder by the minute.

Geach on the Real Distinction II: The Argument from Intentionality

See Geach on the Real Distinction I for some background on the distinctio realis.  This post lays out the argument from intentionality to the real distinction.

A theory of intentionality ought to explain how the objective reference or object-directedness of our thoughts and perceptions is possible. Suppose I am thinking about a cat, a particular cat of my acquaintance whom I have named 'Max Black.' How are we to understand the relation between the mental act of my thinking, which is a transient datable event in my mental life, and its object, namely the cat I am thinking of? What makes my thinking of Max a thinking of Max?  Or perhaps Max is in front of me and I am seeing him.  What makes my seeing a seeing of him?

Here is what Peter Geach has to say, glossing Aquinas:

What makes a sensation or thought of an X to be of an X is that it is an individual occurrence of that very form or nature which occurs in X — it is thus that our mind 'reaches right up to the reality'; what makes it to be a sensation or thought of an X rather than an actual X or an actual X-ness is that X-ness here occurs in the special way called esse intentionale and not in the 'ordinary' way called esse naturale. This solution resolves the difficulty. It shows how being of an X is not a relation in which the thought or sensation stands, but is simply what the thought or sensation is . . . .(Three Philosophers, Cornell UP, 1961, p. 95)

Geach But what the devil does that mean? Allow me to explain. The main point here is that ofness or aboutness is not a relation between a mental act and its object. Thus intentionality is not a relation that relates my thinking of Max and Max. My thinking of Max just is the mental occurrence of the very same form or nature — felinity — which occurs physically in Max. Max is a hylomorphic compound, a compound of form and (signate) matter. Old Max himself, fleas and all, is of course not in my mind. It is his form that is in my mind. But if felinity informs my mind, why isn't my mind a cat? Here is where the distinction between esse intentionale and esse naturale comes in. One and the same form — felinity — exists in two different modes. Its mode of being in my mind is esse intentionale while its mode of being in Max is esse naturale.

Because my thought of Max just is the intentional occurrence of the same form or nature that occurs naturally in Max, there is no problem about how my thought reaches Max. One could call this an identity theory of intentionality.

What if Max were, unbeknownst to me, to cease to exist while I was thinking about him? My thinking would be unaffected: it would still be about Max in exactly the way it was about him before. The Thomist theory would account for this by saying that while the form occurs with esse intentionale in my mind, it does not occur outside my mind with esse reale.

That in a nutshell is the Thomist theory of intentionality. If you can see your way clear to accepting it as the only adequate account of intentionality, then it supplies a reason for the real distinction.  For the account requires that there be two distinct modes of esse, an immaterial mode, esse intentionale, and a material mode, esse naturale. Now if F-ness can exist in two different modes, then it cannot be identical to either and must be really distinct from both. (Cf. "Form and Existence" in God and the Soul, pp. 62-64.)

This argument for the real dstinction is only as good as the Thomist theory of intentionality which in turn rests on the notion of a common nature, felinity, say, which is indifferent to existence inasmuch as it can exist with esse naturale in Max and with esse intentionale in a Max-thinker, but taken in itself  and absolutely is neither material nor mental, neither many nor one.

The aporetics of common natures will be taken up in subsequent posts.

Why Must the Left be Totalitarian?

A reader inquires,

I was wondering if you could expand on a statement you made in Political Correctness and Gender Neutral Language . . . . The statement is as follows: "The Left is totalitarian by its very nature and so it cannot leave any sphere of human concern unpoliticized." I wholeheartedly agree with your statement, but I was wondering if you would explain why the Left must be totalitarian. All I know right now is that it is, and has been from at least the days of Woodrow Wilson and especially FDR.

A huge and daunting topic, but I'll hazard a little sketch.

My statement telescopes two subclaims and an inference. The first subclaim is that the Left is totalitarian, while the second is that it totalitarian by its very nature (as opposed to accidentally). From these two subclaims the conclusion is drawn that the Left cannot (as opposed to does not) leave any sphere of human concern unpoliticized. 

1. Is the Left totalitarian? The answer to this depends on what is meant by 'totalitarian.' The word is derived from the Italian totalitario, meaning complete or absolute. The original connection is with Benito Mussolini and Italian fascism. Mussolini referred to his regime as lo stato totalitario, the totalitarian state. But the term 'totalitarian' came also to be applied to Hitler's National Socialism and to Communism. Roughly, 'totalitarian' characterizes those systems of political organization in which the state recognizes no limits to its authority and aims to regulate every aspect of public and private life. By extension, the term applies to political movements and ideologies.

When I say that the Left is totalitarian, I mean that it is a political movement that moves us away from individual liberty and the unregulated pluralism of civil society toward state control of every aspect of our public and private lives, including state control of the economy. This totalitarian drift is readily discernible in the policies of the Obama administration. For example, the Obama health care initiative, with its so-called 'individual mandate,' will increase government interference in health care delivery and reduce individual options. Individuals will be forced by law to carry medical and dental insurance whether they want it or not, whether they need it or not.   The government, which is not subject to market discipline, will be pitted against private sector health insurers driving up their premiums and driving many of them out of business. The rest of us will be stuck with rationing and inferior care provided by a demoralized corps of doctors who will have no incentive to work hard and long because of government interference with their pay schedules and every other aspect of their professional lives. The drift is toward socialized medicine, i.e., total state control of health care delivery.

Another example is the threat of the reinstatement the Fairness Doctrine or something like it, the aim of which is to squelch dissent in the name of 'fairness.' Examples can be multiplied.

2. But must the Left be totalitarian? Well, what does the Left stand for, and against?

A. It is against religion as against an opiate that promises 'pie in the sky' when 'pie in the future' is attainable, they falsely maintain, by collective human effort orchestrated by a vanguard that sets itself apart from, and above, the masses. Being against religion, the Left is against something that eludes totalitarian control. Religion belongs to private life and so must be opposed as one of the factors that prevent the Left from gaining total control. Leftists in the USA battle religion by way of extermist interpretations of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, and in other ways.

B. The Left is against free enterprise and private property, which are the foundations of individual liberty.

C. The Left is against the family as the fundamental building-block of society.

D. The Left is for uniform indoctrination of the population. E.g., it opposes school vouchers and home schooling.

E. The Left is for central planning 'from the top' by an elite that seeks to equalize by, among other things, redistributing wealth via the tax code. The irony, of course, is that to implement their egalitarian schemes, the elite must be unequal in power and privileges to those beneath them whom they seek to make equal.  Their pursuit of the pseudo-ideal, material equality, is predicated upon an inequality which, of course, will no more 'wither away' than Lenin's Communist state, but will instead become ever more entrenched until it collapses under the weight of its own internal contradictions — which is what  happened to that 'workers' paradise' and hope of humanity, the USSR.

This is a very rough and incomplete sketch. Reams could be written on each of these subtopics.

Words Banned From Tests in NYC Schools

Feel-good liberalism at its best worst:

Divorce. Dinosaurs, Birthdays. Religion. Halloween. Christmas. Television. These are a few of the 50-plus words and references the New York City Department of Education is hoping to ban from the city’s standardized tests.

My astute readers do not need to have it explained to them what is wrong with this.  But it is one more example of the triumph of feelings-based Unsinn over thought and sense on the Left and another reason why you should never vote  for a Democrat.

Of course, there are a few Dems who are not completely unhinged .  But unless you know who they are, it is best to be on the safe side and vote for Republicans and Libertarians.

Seize the Day

Horace advises that we seize the day. "Life ebbs as I speak: so seize each day, and grant the next no credit."  The trouble with this advice is that what we are told to grab is so deficient in entity as to be barely seizable.  The admonition comes almost to this: seize the unseizable, fix the flux, stay the surge, catch the wind. 

I do indeed try to seize the day, and its offerings, day by day, moment by moment.  Walking along the trail I stab my staff into the ground saying "This is it, this is your life, right here, right now, and it is good." Living in tune with this mantram, without wanting to be elsewhere or elsewhen, is obviously better than standing on tiptoes trying to make out the future or looking through memory's rear-view mirror. 

There is no full living  without presence to the present, without mindfulness to the moment.  But mindfulness is ultimately no solution since what one is minding is ultimately empty.

The passing moment is more real than the past and the future, but it is precisely passing and so, ultimately, unreal.  The problem is not that our time is short, but that we are in time at all.  The alternative, however, is present to us only as this blank sense of time's deficiency.

So, with unseeing eyes, we stand on tiptoes after all.

Philosophy: Who Doesn’t Need It?

Who doesn't need philosophy?

People who have the world figured out don't need it.  If you know what's up when it comes to God and the soul, the meaning of life, the content and basis of morality, the role of state, and so on, then you certainly don't need philosophy.  If you are a Scientologist or a Mormon or a Roman Catholic or an adherent of any other religious or quasi-religious worldview then you have your answers and philosophy as inquiry (as opposed to philosophy as worldview) is strictly unnecessary.  And same goes for the adherents of such nonreligious worldviews as leftism and scientism and evangelical atheism. 

He who has the truth needn't seek it.  And those  who are in firm possession of the truth are well-advised to stay clear of philosophy with its tendency to sow the seeds of doubt  and confusion.

Those who are secure in their beliefs are also well-advised to turn a blind eye to the fact of the multiplicity of conflicting worldviews.  Taking that fact into cognizance may cause them to doubt whether their 'firm possession of the truth' really is such.

Desert Light Draws Us into the Mystical

Cathedral RockJust as the eyes are the most spiritual of the bodily organs, light is the most spiritual of physical phenomena. And there is no light like the lambent light of the desert. The low humidity, the sparseness of vegetation that even in its arboreal forms hugs the ground, the long, long vistas that draw the eye out to shimmering buttes and mesas — all of these contribute to the illusion that the light is alive.

 
Light as phenomenon, as appearance, is not something merely physical. It is as much mind as matter. Without its appearance to mind it would not be what it phenomenologically is. But the light that allows rocks and coyotes to appear, itself appears. This seen light is seen within a clearing, eine Lichtung (Heidegger), which is light in a transcendental sense. But this transcendental light in whose light both illuminated objects and physical light appear, points back to the onto-theological Source of this transcendental light. Heidegger would not approve of my last move, but so be it.

Augustine claims to have glimpsed this eternal Source Light upon entering into his "inmost being." Entering there, he saw with his soul's eye, "above that same eye of my soul, above my mind, an
unchangeable light." He continues:

     It was not this common light, plain to all flesh, nor a greater
     light of the same kind . . . Not such was that light, but
     different, far different from all other lights. Nor was it above my
     mind, as oil is above water, or sky above earth. It was above my
     mind, because it made me, and I was beneath it, because I was made
     by it. He who knows the truth, knows that light, and he who knows
     it knows eternity. (Confessions, Book VII, Chapter 10)

Red Mountain'Light,' then, has several senses. There is the light of physics. There is physical light as we see it, whether in the form of illuminated things such as yonder mesa, or sources of illumination such as the sun, or the lambent space between them. There is the transcendental light of mind without which nothing at all would appear. There is, above this transcendental light, its Source.