Month: November 2012

A Reader Wants an Introduction to Philosophy

M. T. writes,

I've followed your blog for a few months now.  I feel compelled to say thank you for the content of your posts.  They are usually trenchant, always interesting, and occasionally they lead me to delve into topics and categories that I have never explored previously.

Some background: I'm an Arabic linguist for the Navy.  I currently live in Georgia, but was born and reared in Florida.  I pretty much agree with everything you've said on political topics.

A question for you: I didn't study philosophy, but am extremely well read in history and politics (particularly ancient history).  You obviously were a academician, but if I wanted to get grounded in the current state of philosophy, where do I start?  The field is so vast, so opaque and confusing.  Am I better off just reading Plato and perhaps William James?

Again, thank you for a wonderful blog.  I always try to learn something new every day, and your writing makes it easier for me to accomplish that task.

I of course appreciate the kind words, and the regular arrival of letters like this in my mail box is emolument aplenty for my pro bono efforts.

First of all, I wouldn't worry too much about the current state of philosophy because much that is current is ephemeral and even foolish.  I would concern myself more with an introduction to the perennial problems of philosophy.  To understand the sometimes strange things that philosophers say one  must first understand the questions that perplexed them and the problems they were trying to solve.  With that in mind I recommend two short well-written books, the first from 1912 and the second from 1987:  Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy; Thomas Nagel, What Does It All Mean?  I commend the following advice to you from p. 4 of Nagel's book:

The center of philosophy lies in certain questions which the reflective human mind finds naturally puzzling, and the best way to begin the study of philosophy is to think about them directly.  Once you've done that, you are in a better position to apprecdiate the work of others who have tried to solve the same problems.

Sage advice.  There is no point in studying philosophy unless there are some questions that 'bug' you and to which you want and need answers. Think about them directly, and try to answer them for yourself.  Then test your answers against the answers more experienced thinkers have proposed.

For example, suppose you are interested in the question of the freedom of the will.  Formulated as a problem, it is the problem of reconciling the freedom of the will presupposed by ascriptions of moral responsibility with the apparent determinism of the natural world of which the agent is a part.  So you think about it. You don't get very far on your own, so you seek help.  You turn to Schopenhauer's magisterial On the Freedom of the Will for orientation.  You get that and more: data, distinctions, the history of the problem and the various solutions, and Schopenhauer's own solution.  And so it goes.

The ComBox is open in case anyone wants to suggest titles for my reader. 

Kevin Kim on the Mourning of the Morning After

Kevin Kim has been following me since late 2003 before I was a proper blogger commencing 4 May 2004 and only a mere slogger (slow blogger without the proper software: I'd upload batches of short posts to a website that I have long since taken down).

In his Conservatives Mourn, Kevin links to me, Malcolm Pollack, and Bill Keezer, and then asks:

Come on, gents– surely you saw this coming?

Well, I didn't for a second think that there would be a landslide in favor of Romney, and I was puzzled by the cocksure pronunciamentos of Dick Morris and others who made up for their lack of crystal balls by displaying their brass balls.  But no, I didn't think the Obama win was inevitable, especially after his miserable showing in the first debate.  I thought Romney had a good chance of winning given all the objective considerations that condemn Obama, the litany of which I will not again recite.  If I was naive, it was because I foolishly underestimated the foolishness of the electorate and how it has been dumbed-down and stupefied by the flim-flam man and his empty rhetoric and outright lies and promises of all sorts of goodies that he is going to get the rich bastards to pay for.

Bill Keezer, whom I have met in the flesh a couple of times and who truly deserves (as does Pollack) the epithet 'gentleman,' speaks in his post of civil war:

If you go back through my blogs for the past few months, you will see the prediction of a coming civil war.  The differences in the red vs. the blue states is now so fundamental, that I think civil war is quite possible.  I also think the red states will win, hands down.  They still have the values that make for effective soldiering.   Imagine street gangs against disciplined, seasoned fighters.  There will be no contest, and if the red states take mercy on the blue, woe to both.  It is time for justice.  (A concern of the last couple of blog posts, which is not moot.)

God help us if Bill is right and the present war of words and votes ramps up into a shooting war. Leftists need to be careful.  If push comes to shove, and shove to shoot, the Red Staters will clean your clock.    After all, they have the guns.

How can we avoid tearing ourselves apart?  My recommendation is a return to federalism.  But of course the Left, which is totalitarian from the ground up, won't allow that.  And so we may be in for some 'excitement.'

Addenda:

1. Obama wins, gun stocks soar.

2. Ed Feser joins the mourning and adds some recrimination in his meaty post, Chief Justice Ockham.  Be sure to follow the internal "Razor Boy" link.

3. Malcolm Pollack points us to a couple posts of his more substantial than the one linked to above. Here and here. 

Bread, Circuses, and Decline

This from an English reader commenting on my owl of Minerva post:

America's fondness for bread and circuses is by no means singular and all may be well for a while, as Theodore Dalrymple observed, at least as long as the bread holds out. Yet the twilight quickly becomes darkness and after the owl of Minerva takes off, what then? Some sort of apocalypse seems overdue – but I rather feebly hope not in my lifetime.

Philosophers, for the time being, have their consolations; but when the multitude howls for 'bread' and at the same time burns down the bakeries, for how long will gentlemen and scholars be permitted the peace and quiet in which to enjoy their books, music, and speculations? 

I'm glad that I'm on my way out rather than on my way in because the decline of American civilization will affect the whole world.

Best Wishes from one depressed. . . .

A genuine apocalypse, that is, a revelation ab extra of a Meaning hitherto hidden and inaccessible to us, might be a good thing.  Nur ein Gott kann uns retten, said Martin Heidegger in his Spiegel interview near the end of his life.  But I fear all we will get is a descent into brutality and chaos.  There is, I agree, consolation for the old: I am very happy to be 62 rather than 26.  One can hope to be dead before it all comes apart.  Fortunately or unfortunately, I am in the habit of taking care of myself and could be facing another 25 years entangled in the mortal coil.  When barbarism descends this will be no country for old men. 

In the earlier entry I wasn't reflecting on the possibility of the utter collapse of the U.S. but on the more likely possibility of decline to the level of a European welfare state whose citizens come increasingly to resemble Nietzsche's Last Men.

I fully agree that Minervic flights and the consolations of philosophy cannot be enjoyed when the barbarians are at the gates of one's stoa.  The owl of Minerva is a tough old bird, but no phoenix capable of  rising from its ashes.

I myself have argued more than once in these pages that conservatives, especially those of them given to contemplative pursuits,  need to make their peace with activism in order to secure and defend the spaces of their quietism.  

Libertarians are the Ralph Naders of the Conservative Side

I just heard Dennis Prager say that on his radio show.  Exactly right.  The point is to do good, not feel good about yourself by making some meaningless, ineffectual, narcissistic, self-congratulatory, adolescent 'statement.'  It is a futile gesture to 'stand on principle' and 'vote your conscience' when the candidate representing your principles is unelectable.  Politics is not about theoretical purity but about practical efficacy.

I would add to Prager's thought that, even if libertarian ideas were better than conservative ideas — and they are not inasmuch as what is good in libertarianism is already included in conservatism – it would remain foolish to vote for libertarians.  It would be a case of letting the better and the best become the enemy of the good.  If you vote for the unelectable candidate with better ideas  over the electable candidate with good ideas, then you have done something manifestly foolish.

There is another side to this argument, however.  The following is from Andrew P. Napolitano, a man I respect:

Can one morally vote for the lesser of two evils? In a word, no. A basic  principle of Judeo-Christian teaching and of the natural law to which the  country was married by the Declaration of Independence is that one may not  knowingly do evil that good may come of it. So, what should a libertarian  do?

If you recognize as I do that the Bush and Obama years have been horrendous  for personal freedom, for the soundness of money and for fidelity to the  Constitution, you can vote for former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson. He is on the  ballot in 48 states. He is a principled libertarian on civil liberties, on  money, on war and on fidelity to the Constitution. But he is not going to be  elected.

So, is a vote for Johnson or no vote at all wasted? I reject the idea that a  principled vote is wasted. Your vote is yours, and so long as your vote is  consistent with your conscience, it is impossible to waste your vote.

On the other hand, even a small step toward the free market and away from the  Obama years of central economic planning would be at least a small improvement  for every American’s freedom. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single  step. That is Romney’s best argument. I suspect it will carry the day next  Tuesday.

I am afraid the good judge does not understand the phrase 'lesser of two evils' in this context.  It does not imply that the candidates are evil, but that, while both are imperfect, the one is better than the other.  Both Romney and Obama are highly imperfect.  In an ideal world, the choice would not be between them. (Indeed, in an ideal world there would be no need for government at all, and no need to choose any candidates for any offices.)  But one candidate (Romney) is less imperfect than the other.  In this sense, Romney is the lesser of two evils, i.e., the least imperfect of two imperfect candidates. 

But this sense is consistent with the principle that one may not knowingly do evil that good come of it.

Napolitano claims that it is impossible to waste one's vote as long as one votes one's conscience.  But this ignores the point I have repeatedly made, namely, that voting and politics generally is a practical business: it is about accomplishing something concrete in the world as it actually is.  It is about doing good, not feeling good about yourself.  Once that is understood, it is crystal clear that to vote for an unelectable candidate is to waste one's vote.

This is especially obvious when Republicans lose to Democrats because Libertarians voted for unelectable Libertarians instead of electable Republicans.  There were a couple of cases like that in yesterday's election.  Such Libertarians not only wasted their votes, they positively made things worse.

The Owl of Minerva Spreads its Wings at Dusk

Obama won, conservatism lost, and a tipping point has been reached in America's decline. Our descent into twilight and beyond is probably now irreversible.  The economy is bad, the opposition fought hard and well, and the incompetent leftist won anyway.  Why? The Left promises panem and the culture's circenses have kept the masses distracted from higher concerns and real thought.  That's the answer in a sentence.

Should any of this trouble the philosopher? Before he is a citizen, the philosopher is a "spectator of all time and existence" in a marvellous phrase that comes down to us from Plato's Republic (486a).  The rise and fall of great nations is just more grist for the philosopher's mill.  His true homeland is nothing so paltry as a particular nation, even one as exceptional as the USA, and his fate as a truth-seeker cannot be tied to its fate.  Like the heavenly Jerusalem, the heavenly Athens is not bound to a geographical location.

National decline is not just grist for the philosopher's mill, however, it is also perhaps a condition of understanding as Hegel suggests in the penultimate paragraph of the preface to  The Philosophy of Right:

When philosophy paints its grey on grey, then has a shape of life grown old.  By philosophy's grey on grey it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood.  The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only at the falling of the dusk.

Daughter of Jupiter, Minerva in the mythology of the Greeks is the goddess of wisdom.  And the nocturnal owl is one of its ancient symbols.  The meaning of the Hegelian trope is that understanding, insight, wisdom  arise when the object to be understood has played itself out, when it has actualized and thus exhausted its potentialities, and now faces only decline.

When a shape of life has grown old, philosophy paints its grey on grey.  The allusion is to Goethe's Faust wherein Mephisto says

Grau, teurer Freund, ist alle Theorie,
Und grün des Lebens goldner Baum.

Grey, dear friend, is all theory
And green the golden tree of life.

Philosophy is grey, a "bloodless ballet of categories" (F. H. Bradley) and its object is grey — no longer green and full of life.  And so philosophy paints its grey concepts on the grey object, in this case America on the wane.   The object must be either dead or moribund before it can be fully understood.  Hegel in his famous saying re-animates and gives a new meaning to the Platonic "To philosophize is to learn how to die."

In these waning days of a great republic, the owl of Minerva takes flight.  What we lose in vitality we gain in wisdom.

The consolations of philosophy are many.

My Campaign Sign

IMG_0877
Subtle, eh?  I thought of placing two such chairs side by side, the second to signify the vacuity of the benighted and mendacious Joe Biden, but then I thought that might confuse people.

Did you vote?  Of course, I don't want any of you liberal knuckleheads to vote thereby canceling out the thoughtful votes of conservatives, but I do defend your right to vote.

Is voting a civic duty?  Think of it this way.  You have benefited all your life from the rule of law and from living and flourishing in a relatively well-ordered society.  And you don't feel any obligation to do your bit to preserve and protect that order?

Does it matter whether you vote?  Well, does it matter who the sheriff of your county is, or which judges are retained? 

In the Event of an Obama Victory

How can Dick Morris and other conservative pundits be so cocksure that Romney will win big?  Do they have crystal balls?  It's more a case of brass balls.  Do they think that by confidently predicting a Romney landslide they will energize the conservative base?  Why wouldn't it have the opposite effect?  ("If Romney's going to win in a landslide, there's no need for me to head for the polls.") There is something I am not understanding here.

I am preparing for the disaster of an Obama victory.  Lawrence Auster speaks of the "horror" of such a thing:

Why horror? To repeat: For America to re-elect a president who has presided over an economic and fiscal disaster and who has made it crystal clear that he intends to keep following the same policies in his second term, would mean that America has become in the full sense of the word a parasitical leftist country. Meaning, a country which believes, as Obama believes, that the conditions making possible the production of all the goods of society can be ignored, because somehow the goods of society will always be there, like rocks and stars, no matter how much we condemn and punish those who provide them, and therefore all we need to do is appropriate and distribute the goods—more and more and more of them—to the unfortunate and the oppressed, with the unfortunate and oppressed including such as groups as woman who lack totally free contraceptives; blacks who have been deprived by white racism of an education that will turn them into the intellectual and economic equals of whites; and blacks who have been deprived by America’s racist geography of full access to the white tax base.

Although I consider Auster an extremist in some ways, the above statement eloquently expresses the fundamental  and deeply pernicious ignorance of human nature and of economics at the root of Obama's vision.

If Obama wins, what then?  We soldier on, of course.  We continue the fight but without falling into the totalitarian error of leftists for whom politics is everything.  But of course this is why it is so difficult to defeat them.  They seek and find their very meaning in the political sphere.  Politics is their religion.  Curiously, it's a religion without any morality: they will do anything to win.  This puts us at  a two-fold disadvantage: we don't bring the full measure of our energy and commitment to the fight, and we have moral scruples.    I call it The Conservative Disadvantage.

Addendum:  I just found the following at Keith Burgess-Jackson's weblog:

Why do almost all Romney supporters think he will win, and why do almost all
Obama supporters think he will win? It would be refreshing, from time
to time, to hear a representative of possibility 2 or possibility 4. I, for
example, want Romney to win, but I believe that Obama has a good chance of
winning. I won't go as far as to say that Obama will win, since I have
no basis for such a decisive judgment, but I won't be surprised if he does.

Is this evidence that great minds think alike?

Vote Libertarian, Waste a Vote

Did you perchance vote for Gary Johnson for president? Then you wasted your vote on an unelectable candidate and helped Barack Obama's re-election.

The truth of a view does not depend on its popularity.  But the political implementation of a view does depend on the electability of the candidate or candidates who represent it.  If politics were merely theoretical, merely an exercise in determining how a well-ordered state should be structured, then implementation would not matter at all.  But politics is practical, not theoretical: it aims at action that implements the view deemed best.  Someone who votes for an unelectable candidate demonstrates by so doing that he does not understand the nature of politics.

Even if Johnson is electable in the sense of (i) satisfying the formal requirements for being president, and (ii) being worthy of the office, he is not electable in the specific sense here in play, namely, possessing a practical chance of winning.

When one votes for any unelectable candidate one merely squanders one's vote.  If you are a libertarian, then your views are closer to those of Romney than to those of Obama.  By voting for the unelectable Johnson, you help someone win whose views are diametrically opposed to your own instead of helping one whose views are partially consonant with your own.  Now that is stupid, is it not?  It shows a lack of practical sense.

If you won't vote for an candidate that does not perfectly represent your views, then either

A. you are a utopian who fails to understand that politics is about action, not theory, in the world as it is, as opposed to some merely imagined world; or

B. you falsely think there is no difference between the major party candidates.

The same reasoning applies to those who vote for Jill Stein.  You are wasting your vote on an unelectable candidate.  You are making a statement all right, but nobody cares and it won't matter.  But I hope you lefties do vote for her: you will be helping Obama lose.

Ten Reasons Not to Vote Democrat

The Dems are the left-wing party in the U. S. Almost all Dems nowadays are leftists or liberals — there is no practical difference at present.  It's not 1960 any more and you geezers out there with your sentimental attachment to the 'Democrat' label need to wise up.  So any reason to oppose liberals is a reason to oppose Dems.

1. Liberals lack common sense. As witness their lunatic stand on photo ID at polling places.  I have written several posts on this topic.  Here is one.

2. Liberals play the race card every chance they get.  Evidence here, but see also my Race and Leftism categories for plenty more.

3. Liberals are anti-liberty.  As witness Obamacare's  individual mandate, to give just one example.

4. Liberals have a casual attitude toward crime.  See Britain and the Barbarians and other posts in the Crime and Punishment Category.  Liberals are opposed to  capital punishment even though this is exactly what justice demands in certain cases.  With their unhealthy love of underdogs as underdogs, liberals will champion the scum of the earth with shoddy arguments while ignoring the concerns of decent citizens.

5. Liberals smear their opponents and then issue hypocritical calls for 'civility.'  What passes for argument among liberals is the hurling of SIXHRB epithets: sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, racist, bigoted. (acronym via Dennis Prager)  For example, if you oppose illegal immigration then you are a xenophobe; if you carefully argue against Obamacare then you a racist; if you give reasons why marriage is between a man a woman you are dismissed as a bigot.  If you oppose the slaughter of innocent human beings which is abortion you are waging war against women and interfering with their 'health' and 'reproductive rights.'   If you point out the very real threat of radical Islam, then you are dismissed as an  'Islamaphobe' with a mental illness.

6. Liberals are weak on national defense and naive about foreign policy.

7. Liberals are fiscally irresponsible.  Unlike his predecessor, Obama made no attempt to put the existing entitlements on a sound fiscal basis.  Instead, he started up a new one!

8. Liberals are anti-religion. 

9. Liberals have  no proper appreciation for the Second Amendment.

10. Liberals have no proper appreciation of the Tenth Amendment and the notion of federalism.

Addendum (6 Nov):  Tony H. writes to say that I forgot one:

11. Liberals are economic illiterates.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703561604575282190930932412.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

True.  Of course, I wasn't trying to give a complete list of reasons to oppose Obama and his gang.  There are a lot more reasons than ten.  How about this one:

12. Liberals are linguistic hijackers.  They routinely distort the English language for their ideological purposes.  This is actually worse than lying.  To lie successfully one must use language properly, in accordance with the going conventions.  Misuse of language  is a subversion of the rules of the communicative game.  There are examples in my Language Matters category.

One particularly egregious example is the use of 'voter suppression' to refer to common-sense demands for proper ID procedures at polling places.  This shows that the scumbags of the Left will do anything to win. 

For even more reasons, see the Constructive Curmudgeon who has worked himself into a fine, and justified, lather over Obama's abominations.  See here, for example.

Subsidiarity and the Left’s Assault on Civil Society

You say you're Catholic and you are going to vote for Obama? Are you stupid?  Apart from the fact that the Dems are the abortion party, the Obama administration's attack on civil society is at odds with Catholic social teaching which rests on the principle of subsidiarity.  David A. Bosnich, The Principle of Subsidiarity:

One of the key principles of Catholic social thought is known as the principle of
subsidiarity. This tenet holds that nothing should be done by a larger and more
complex organization which can be done as well by a smaller and simpler
organization. In other words, any activity which can be performed by a more
decentralized entity should be. This principle is a bulwark of limited
government and personal freedom. It conflicts with the passion for
centralization and bureaucracy characteristic of the Welfare State.

The principle of subsidiarity strikes a reasonable balance between statism and collectivism as represented by the manifest drift of the Obama administration, on the one hand,  and the libertarianism of those who would take privatization to an extreme, on the other.  By the way, one of the many mistakes Rick Santorum made in his campaign was to attack all government-sponsored education.  He was right to question whether the Federal government has any legitimate role to play in education, but to question the role of state and local government in education was a foolish extremism that befits a libertarian, not a conservative.

Subsidiarity also fits well with federalism, a return to which is a prime desideratum and one more reason not to vote for Obama.  'Federalism' is another one of those words that does not wear its meaning on its sleeve, and is likely to mislead.  Federalism is not the view that all powers should be vested in the Federal or central government; it is the principle enshrined in the 10th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Whether or not you are Catholic, if you accept the principle of subsidiarity, then you have yet another reason to oppose Obama and the Left.  The argument is this:

1. The Left encroaches upon civil society, weakening it and limiting it, and correspondingly expanding the power and the reach of the state.  (For example, the closure of Catholic Charities in Illinois because of an Obama administration adoption rule.)

2. Subsidiarity helps maintain civil society as a buffer zone and intermediate sector between the purely private (the individual and the familial) and the state.

Therefore

3. If you value the autonomy and robustness of civil society, then you ought to oppose Obama and the Left.

The truth of the second premise is self-evident.  If you wonder whether the Left does in fact encroach upon civil society, then see my post Obama's Assault on the Institutions of Civil Society.

Addendum:  This just over the transom from an old sparring partner of mine from the early days of the blogosphere, Kevin Kim:

Thank you for your recent post on the Catholic principle of subsidiarity, which I had never heard of despite years of dealing with Catholics.  I had a good chuckle when I read this:

"This tenet holds that nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization which can be done as well by a smaller and simpler organization."

And this from a gigantic, thoroughly hierarchized organization!

But what really burbled to the surface of my mind was the thought that, for a supposedly Catholic principle, subsidiarity sounds remarkably Protestant.  Heh.

But isn't it obvious what the Catholic response would be?  The church is in the business of mediating salvation.   What the church does cannot be done as well by a smaller and simpler organization.  Nulla salus extra ecclesiam, where the church in question is the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church founded by Christ himself on St. Peter as upon a rock and presided over by the Holy Spirit.  It might also be argued that the principle of subsidiarity is a secular or temporal political principle and not one that has any bearing on soteriology.  For the same reason there is nothing Protestant about it.

Theism on Secular Grounds

A reader inquires:

Can one reason from secular premises to a theistic conclusion? Or is any argument that concludes to God's existence non-secular by nature?

The reader liked yesterday's abortion post in which I used non-religious (and in that sense secular) premises to support a conclusion which, though not religious, would be accepted by most religionists and rejected by most secularists.

To answer the reader's question, yes, one can reason from secular premises to a theistic conclusion.  Indeed, the traditional arguments do precisely that.  For example, cosmological arguments proceed a contingentia mundi, from the contingency of the world, and they attempt to show that there must be a necessary being responsible for the world's existence.  That the universe exists and that it exists contingently are secular starting points  — in one of its meanings saecula just means 'world' — and not deliverances of revelation or churchly doctrines to be taken on faith. 

Now the same goes for the rest of the theistic arguments, the ontological, the teleological, the moral, and indeed for all of the twenty or so arguments that Plantinga lists.

The reader has a second question.  Can a person sincerely  pray in a secular way?  Suppose a person comes to believe by some combination of the arguments mentioned that there must be a being, external to the universe, on which it depends for its existence and nature.  Suppose the person prays to this God.  Is the person engaged in a secular act?

No. Prayer is a specifically religious act.  The theistic arguments operate on the discursive plane to satisfy a theoretical need.  Indeed they are often denigrated on the ground that the God they prove is a mere 'God of the philosophers' and not 'the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.'  Even the great Pascal makes this mistake.  See Pascal and Buber on the God of the Philosophers. 

There can't be two or more gods, but there can be two or more ways of approaching one and the same God.  I count four: philosophy (reason), religion (faith), mysticism (intellectual intuition), and morality (conscience).

To sum up.  From secular starting points one can reason to something 'out of this world.'  But to come into relation with this Something requires religious and mystical and moral practices that cannot be called secular. 

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Varia

Simon and Garfunkel, The Dangling Conversation.  A lovely song, if a bit pretentious.  Paul Simon was an English major.

Beatles, We Can Work it Out.  Listen for the time signature change from 4/4 to 3/4.

Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, You Really Got a Hold on Me

Barbara Lynn, You'll Lose a Good Thing.  Her moves and appearance are reminsicent of Jimi Hendrix — or the other way around.  Check out how she strums that left-handed Telecaster.

EmmyLou Harris, Save the Last Dance for Me.  That's one big guitar.

Marty Robbins, Blue Spanish Eyes.  What a wimpy guitar!

Dalida, O Sole Mio.  Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan!

Melina Mercouri, Never on Sunday.  Ditto!

Nana Mouskouri, Farewell Angelina.  One of Bob Dylan's most haunting songs.

Freddy Fender, Cielito Lindo.  Tex-Mex version of a very old song.

Marty Robbins, La Paloma.  Another old song dating back to 1861. 

What Does Abortion Have to Do with Religion?

The abortion question is almost always raised in the context of religion.  The Vice-Presidential debate provides a good recent example.  The moderator  introduced the topic with these words: “We have two Catholic candidates, first time, on a stage such as this. And I  would like to ask you both to tell me what role your religion has played in your  own personal views on abortion.”  Why didn't the moderator just ask the candidates to state their positions on abortion?   Why did she bring up religion?  And why the phrase "personal views"?  Are views on foreign policy and the economy also personal views?  Below the surface lies the suggestion that opposition to abortion can only rest on antecedent religious commitments of a personal nature that have no place in the public square. 

A question that never gets asked, however, is the one I raise in this post:  What does the abortion issue have to do with religion?  But I need to make the question more precise.  Is the abortion question tied to religion in such a way that opposition to abortion can be based only on religious premises? Or are there good reasons to oppose abortion that are nor religiously based, reasons that secularists could accept?  The answer to the last question is plainly in the affirmative.  The following argument contains no religious premises.

1. Infanticide is morally wrong.
2. There is no morally relevant difference between (late-term) abortion and  infancticide.
Therefore
3. (Late-term) abortion is morally wrong.

Whether one accepts this argument or not, it clearly invokes no religious premise. It is therefore manifestly incorrect to say or imply that all opposition to abortion must be religiously-based. Theists and atheists alike could make use of the above argument. 

And as a matter of fact there are pro-life atheists. Nat Hentoff is one. In The Infanticide Candidate for President, he takes Barack Obama to task:

But on abortion, Obama is an extremist. He has opposed the Supreme  Court decision that finally upheld the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban  Act against that form of infanticide. Most startlingly, for a professed humanist, Obama — in the Illinois Senate — also voted against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act. I have reported on several of those cases when, before the abortion was completed, an alive infant was suddenly in the room. It was disposed of as a horrified nurse who was not necessarily pro-life followed the doctors' orders to put the baby in a pail or otherwise get rid of the child.

Return to the above argument.  Suppose someone demands to know why one should accept the first premise.  Present this argument:

4. Killing innocent human beings is morally wrong.
5. Infanticide is the killing of innocent human beings.
Therefore
1. Infanticide is morally wrong.

This second argument, like the first, invokes no specifically religious premise.  Admittedly, the general prohibition of homicide – general in the sense that it admits of exceptions — comes from the Ten Commandments.  But if you take that as showing that (4) is religious, then the generally accepted views that theft and lying are morally wrong would have to be adjudged religious as well.

But I don't want to digress onto the topic of the sources of our secular moral convictions, convictions that are then codified in the positive law.  My main point is that one can oppose abortion on secular grounds. A second point is that the two arguments I gave are very powerful.  If you are not convinced by them, you need to ask yourself why.

Some will reply by saying that a woman has the right to do what she wants with her own body.  This is The Woman's Body Argument:

1. The fetus is a part of a woman's body.
2. A woman has the right to do whatever she wants with any part of her body.
Therefore
3. A woman has the right to do whatever she wants with the fetus, including having it killed.


For this argument to be valid, 'part' must be used in the very same sense in both premises. Otherwise, the argument equivocates on a key term.  There are two possibilities. 'Part' can be taken in a wide sense that includes the fetus, or in a narrow sense that excludes it.

 If 'part' is taken in a wide sense, then (1) is  true. Surely there is a wide sense of 'part' according to which the fetus is part of its mother's body. But then (2) is reasonably rejected. Abortion is not relevantly like liposuction. Granted, a woman has a right to remove unwanted fat from her body via liposuction. Such fat is uncontroversially part of her body. But the fetus growing within her is not a part in the same sense: it is a separate individual life. The argument, then, is not compelling. Premise (2) is more reasonably rejected than accepted.

If, on the other hand, 'part' is taken in a narrow sense that excludes the fetus, then perhaps (2) is acceptable, but (1) is surely false: the fetus is plainly not a part of the woman's body in the narrow sense of 'part.'

I wrote "perhaps (2) is acceptable" because it is arguable that (2) is not acceptable. For a woman's body is an improper part of her body; hence if a woman has a right to do anything she wishes with her body, then she has a right to kill her body by blowing it up, say. One who has good reason to reject suicide, however, has good reason to reject (2) even when 'part' is construed narrowly. And even if we substitute 'proper part' for 'part' in the original argument, it is still not the case that a woman has a right to do whatever she wishes with any proper narrow part of her body. Arguably, she has no right to cut out her own heart, since that would lead to her death.

I am making two points about the Woman's Body Argument.  The first is that  my rejection of it does not rely on any religious premises.  The second is that the argument is unsound. 

Standing on solid, secular ground one has good reason to oppose abortion as immoral in the second and third trimesters (with some exceptions, e.g., threat to the life of the mother).  Now not everything immoral should be illegal.  But in this case the objective immorality of abortion entails that it ought to be illegal for the same reason that the objective immorality of the wanton killing of innocent adults requires that it be  illegal.

Of course it follows that you should not vote for the abortion party, a.k.a. the Dems.  And if you are a Catholic who votes Democratic then you are as foolish and confused as the benighted Joe Biden.

Asceticism

A reader writes,

I am a philosopher and a conservative (in many ways) and I enjoy your blog very much. One thing I find rather puzzling (and interesting), though, is your extreme asceticism. Recently, you said:
"Well, we know that drinking and dancing won't get us anywhere.  But it is at least possible that thinking and trancing will."
I guess I wonder just _where_ it is that you are trying to get and what is so great about being there such that it is better than enjoying some drinking and dancing (in moderation, of course).
Well, if I am an extreme ascetic, then what was Simeon Stylites?  I am not now, and never have been, a pillar-dweller exposed to the elements.
 
'Asceticism' is from the Greek askesis meaning 'self-denial.'  On a spectrum from extreme self-indulgence on the left to extreme self-denial on the right, I would place myself somewhere in the middle, moving on my better days right-ward and on the others left-ward.  So you could say that I am a mild-to-moderate ascetic.  I believe in the value of self-denial and self-control in thought, word, and deed.  That self-control with respect to words and deeds are essential to human flourishing I take to be well-nigh self-evident.  Control of thought, however, is also essential to happiness which is why one ought so spend some time each day in formal meditation.  (More on this in Meditation and Spiritual Exercises categories.)
 
But not only is control of thought conducive to, and indeed a necessary condition of, happiness, it is morally obligatory to control and in some cases eliminate some thoughts.  I argue that out in Can Mere Thoughts be Morally Wrong? and Thoughts as Objects of Moral Evaluation: Refining the Thesis.
 
Moderate asceticism is good and is enjoined by all the major religions and wisdom traditions.  It is perfectly obvious that many of the problems we face today result from the lack of self-control.  Obesity, for example.  Debt, both at the personal level and at the level of government, is fundamentally a moral problem with at least one of its roots sunk deep in lack of self-control.
 
 
If you are running credit card debt, you are doing something very foolish.  Why do you buy what you can't afford with money you don't have?  You must know that you are wasting huge amounts of money on interest.  Why doesn't this knowledge cause you to be prudent in your expenditures?  Because you never    learned how to control yourself.  Perhaps you were brought up by liberals who think the summum bonum is self-indulgence and 'getting in touch with your feelings.'  By the way, this in another powerful argument against liberalism.  There is no wisdom on the Left.  The last thing you will learn from liberals are the virtues and the vices and the seven deadly sins.  For liberals, these are topics to joke about.

No one preaches self-denial anymore. We have become a nation of moral wimps. We need a taste of
the strenuosity of yesteryear, and who better to serve it up than our very own William James, he of the Golden Age of American philosophy:

Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than its difficulty, so that, when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test. Asceticism of this sort is like the insurance which a man pays on his house and goods. The tax does him no good at the time, and possibly may never bring him a return. But, if the fire does come, his having paid it will be his salvation from ruin. So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of
concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.

We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never-so-little scar. The drunken Rip Van Winkle, in Jefferson's play, excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, "I won't count this time!" Well, he may not count it, and a kind Heaven may not count it; but it is being counted none the less. Down among his nerve-cells and fibres the molecules are counting it, registering and storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation.

Back to drinking and dancing and the reader's question.  Everything depends on what one considers to be the purpose of life.  To me it is clear that we are not here to have a 'good time.'  For me philosophy is not an academic game but a spiritual quest for the ultimate truth.  The quest involves rigorous, technical philosophy, but it also involves non-discursive spiritual exercises.  These are impossible without a certain amount of moral purification and ascesis.  They are also best pursued in the early hours before dawn.  So right here  is an excellent reason not to waste the evening hours in idle talk, drinking and dancing.  These activities are not conducive to spiritual progress.  That is why some of us avoid them.