Month: October 2018

October Ends . . .

. . .  and we say farewell once again to Jack Kerouac, cat man and mama's boy, as he prepares to "leave all San Francisco behind and go back home across autumn America" proving once again to his romantic predecessor Thomas Wolfe that one can go back home again where

it'll all be like it was in the beginning — Simple golden eternity blessing all . . . My mother'll be waiting for me glad — the corner of the yard where Tyke is buried will be a new and fragrant shrine making my home more homelike somehow — On soft Spring nights I'll stand in the yard under the stars — Something good will come out of all things yet — And it will be golden and eternal just like that – There's no need to say another word. (Big Sur, 1962, last lines, last page.)

It's a good last word: something good will come of it all: of all of the wandering, all of the searching, all of the pain, and misery, and drunken folly, and lonely nights, and broken dreams.  The vanity will give way to vision.  The beat will taste beatitude.  The road will end and the restless will rest.

Kerouac home in October

More on the Hypostatic Union

I am very impressed with Thomas Joseph White, OP, The Incarnate Lord: A Thomistic Study in Christology, The Catholic University of America Press, 2017, xiv + 534 pp. It deserves to be called magisterial, the work of a magister, a master.  I am presently working through Chapter One, "The Ontology of the Hypostatic Union."

White and I are concerned with the intelligibility of the one person, two natures doctrine. (See yesterday's entry for background.)  Fr. White of course considers the doctrine  to be intelligible while I have my doubts. This entry presents one of the problems I am having.

Christ is one person in two distinct individual natures, the one divine, the other human.  The one person is the Word (Logos), the Second Person of the Trinity.  The Word is eternal, impassible, and necessary. In the patois of possible worlds, the Word exists in every metaphysically possible world. The hypostatic union is the union of the Word with the individual human nature (body and soul) of Jesus where the hypostasis or suppositum is the Word. It is that which has the nature or exists in the nature.  White tells us that this union is not

. . . merely an accidental association of two beings, the man Jesus and the Word of God. Rather the Word subsists personally as man in a human nature. Consequently, Jesus's concrete body and soul are the subsistent body and soul of person of the Word. The person of Jesus simply is the person of the Son existing as man. (113)

We are being told that the person of Jesus is the eternal Word, the Son, not a human person.  There is human nature in Jesus, but no human person in Jesus.  So it not as if there are two persons, the person of the Word and the person of Jesus.  There is only one person, the person of the Word. To think otherwise is the Nestorian heresy.

This raises the following question.

If the Word is a necessary being, and the union of the Word with human nature is not accidental, but essential, are we to conclude that the Word has a concrete human body and human soul in every possible world, and thus at every time?   It would seem so.  If x is united with N essentially, then x is united with N in every possible world in which x exists.  So if x is a necessary being, then x is united with  N in every possible world, period, which is to say that there is no possible world in which x is not united with N. Therefore,

1) If the Word is united to a human nature essentially, then there is no possible world in which the Word is not united to a human nature.

But then how is this consistent with the belief that the Incarnation was an historical event that occurred at a particular time and whose occurrence was contingent, not necessary? God became man to save man from the sin he incurred with Adam's fall, a fall that was itself contingent upon Adam's free choice to violate the divine command.   That is,

2) There are possible worlds in which God does not create at all, and possible worlds in which God creates humans but there is no Fall, no need for Redemption, and thus no need for Incarnation.  

Therefore

3) There are possible worlds in which the Word is not united to a human nature.

Therefore

4) It is not the case that the Word is united to a human nature essentially. (From 1, 3 by modus tollens)

Therefore

5) The Word is united to a human nature accidentally.

But this is contrary to the orthodox view at least as explained by Fr. White who draws upon Thomas.  White tells us that "the humanity of Jesus  is united to the Word as an intrinsic, 'conjoined instrument.' The being of the man Jesus is the being of the Word." (83)  We are also told that the unity is "substantial not accidental." (83)

Why does Aquinas think that the Word must be united to the humanity of Jesus intrinsicaly and essentially as opposed to extrinsically and accidentally? Because he thinks that this is the only way to avoid the Nestorian heresy according to which there are two persons, the person of the Word and the person of Jesus.

The reasoning seems to go like this. In an ordinary man, body and soul form a substantial unity.  If in Jesus body and soul formed a substantial unity, then Jesus would be a different substance and a different suppositum (hypostasis) from the Word, and Nestorianism would be the upshot. To avoid this, the proposal was made that body and soul in Christ do not form a substantial unity as they do in ordinary human beings. Thus on the so-called habitus theory, the third theory of the hypostatic union mentioned in Peter Lombard's Sentences,  ". . . both the body and the soul are said to accrue to the person of the Word 'accidentally' as qualities or properties of the Word, but without subsistence in the Word." (85) This implies that body and soul are accidental to each other, which of course is unacceptable given the background Aristotelian commitments of Thomas.

So while the habitus theory aims to be anti-Nestorian, it ends up in an implicit Nestorianism according to White's Aquinas.  You've got the Word and over against it the body of Jesus and the soul of Jesus as an accidental, not a substantial, unity.  On this scheme the individual humanity (body and soul) of Jesus is accidental to the Word.

My point is that, on the one hand, this is how it should be given the contingency of the Fall and the contingency of the Incarnation.  The Word is not essentially incarnated; it is accidentally incarnated. The humanity of the Word is accidental, not essential.  That would seem to fit nicely with the Christian narrative. But on the other hand, if it is not the substance of the Son who dies on the cross, if it is not God himself who enters history and dies on the cross, if it is a man who is only accidentally and for a time united with the Word, then the debt that only God himslef can pay has not been paid in full.

So I think we can understand why the one person, two natures doctrine was deemed orthodox. But if I am right in my reasoning above, the orthodox doctrine entails the absurdity that the Word has a "concrete body and soul" (113) at every time and in every possible world.

To put it another way, the Incarnation makes no sense unless it is a contingent event, but it cannot be on the radically anti-Nestorian view of  White's Aquinas. 

Facebook Update

I'm on a roll over there as things heat up and the mid-term elections loom. 

Yes, we've spoken of watershed elections before, but this is the Big One, at least until the next one.  If you want to hear me rock, roll, and rant, send me a friend request, but only if you are a member of the Coalition of the Sane. Otherwise I'll unfriend you in a heartbeat. There is also a bit of hard-core philosophy there that doesn't appear here.

I am still drawing the line at Twitter, but Spencer Case has been urging me to sign up for that as well.  

Word of the Day: Demesne

Merriam-Webster:

1: legal possession of land as one's own

2: manorial land actually possessed by the lord and not held by tenants

3a: the land attached to a mansion

b: landed property : ESTATE

c: REGION sense 2, TERRITORY

4: REALM sense 2, DOMAIN

How does one acquire a large vocabulary? The first rule is to read, read widely, and read worthwhile materials, especially old books and essays.  The second rule is to look up every word the meaning of which you do not know or are not certain of: don't be lazy. The third rule is to compile vocabulary lists. The fourth rule is to review the lists periodically and put the words to use.  Use 'em or lose 'em.

If you think you know the meaning of a word, you are well-advised to check your understanding. Even if you really do know the meaning of a word, you probably don't know all of its shades and variants.

If you work steadily at this, then perhaps someday you will have a vocabulary half as extensive as that of your humble correspondent.

Thomas Joseph White on the Hypostatic Union: Questions

Vito Caiati writes, 

I am struggling, in particular, to understand what [Thomas Joseph] White is proposing with regard to the hypostatic union on pages 82-84 [of The Incarnate Lord: A Thomistic Study in Christology, The Catholic University of America Press, 2017].  He follows Aquinas in affirming “a substantial union of God and man. . . . [in which] the two natures remain distinct, without mixture or confusion, and [in which] the union must not occur in the nature of Christ” (82). In this substantial union, “The hypothesis [hypostasis]  of the Word does not replace the human soul of Christ.  . . .  However, just as in man the body is the instrument of the soul, so in the incarnate Word, the human nature of Jesus is the instrument of the Word. . . . [in that] the humanity of Jesus is united to the Word as an intrinsic, ‘conjoined instrument. . .“ (83).

I do not understand what is being affirmed here. If the Word is “united” to the humanity of Jesus “as an intrinsic ‘conjoined instrument’” has not something been done to this humanity that renders it more than human? In other words, can one really hold that in this process of union, the natures remain distinct? I am particularly confused because White appears to argue for precisely this position in affirming that “in Christ there is no autonomous human personhood or human personality. He is the person of the Son and Word made human, subsisting in human nature” (83). Well, if this is so, what import does his human soul have on his thoughts and actions?

White thomas josephThe Word (Logos) is the Second Person of the Trinity.  It is the one person (hypostasis) that has the two natures, the divine nature and the human nature.  Thus there are not two persons, the Second Person and the human person of Jesus; there is only one person, the Second Person of the Trinity.  This latter person is the person of Jesus. If there were two persons, a divine person and a human person, then that would be the Nestorian heresy.  (I could explain later, if you want, why this heresy is a heresy.) In other words, the person of Jesus is the eternal Word, not a human person.  There is human nature in Jesus, but no human person in Jesus.

But this is not to say that the man Jesus merely embodies the Word, i.e., it is not to say that the Word is to Jesus as soul to body. That would be the Apollinarian heresy. The Word in Jesus does not merely assume a body; The Word assumes (the nature of) a fully human man, body and soul.   So while there is no human person in Jesus, there is a human soul in Jesus.  Here, perhaps, we have the makings of trouble for the Incarnation doctrine on White's Thomistic construal thereof, as we shall see in a minute.

In sum, one person, two distinct natures, one divine, the other human. The person is divine.  The natures are individual natures. They are not multiply realizable or multiply instantiable like rational animal which is found in Socrates and Plato equally but not in an ass. (Schopenhauer somewhere quips that the medievals employed only three examples, Socrates, Plato, and an ass. Who am I to run athwart a tradition so hoary and noble?) And yet the individual natures are not themselves self-subsistent individuals. They need a support, something that has the natures. This is part of the meaning of hypostasis.  There has to be something that stands under or underlies the natures.  The hypostatic union is the union of the two natures in one subsistent individual, the Word. (White, p. 113) 

Now this one divine person is united to the (individual) nature of Jesus as to an essential, not accidental, instrument. But this union is not identity. There is no identity of natures or confusion of natures. The divine and human natures remain distinct. They are united, but they are united essentially, not accidentally. 

Caiati asks, " Can one really hold that in this process of union, the natures remain distinct?" Yes, if union is not identity.  So I don't see a problem here.

Caiati also asks, "what import does his human soul have on his thoughts and actions?"  This is a much more vexing question, and I rather doubt that we are going to find a satisfying answer to it within the Aristotelian-Thomistic scheme that Fr. White employs.  

Who is it that is thinking when Jesus thinks?  Suppose he is debating some rabbis. He hears and understands their objections and thoughtfully replies. Is it the Word who is the subject of these mental acts? Is the Word thinking when Jesus thinks?  If yes, then his human soul is not the 'seat' of his intellectual operations.  Suppose Jesus feels hunger or thirst or the excruciating pains of his passion.  Does the Word feel these pains?  How could it if it is impassible?  If it is not impassible and does the feel Jesus' pains, then what role does the human soul in Jesus have to play?  How can Christ be fully human, body and soul, if his human soul plays no role either intellectually or sensorially?

There is also the will to consider. If Jesus is obedient to the end, and does the will of the Father, then he wills what the Father wills. "Thy will be done."  He would rather not undergo the Passion, but "not my will but thine be done." This makes sense only if Jesus has his own will, distinct from the Father's will, a will 'seated' in his human soul.  That is, the faculties of willing have to be different, even if the contents of willing are the same. But then it is not the Word that wills in Jesus.

On the other hand, if the human soul in Jesus is indeed the 'seat' of his intellectual and voluntative and sensitive and affective functions, then the person in him, the Word, is severed from his soul.  But this drains 'person' of its usual meaning which includes soulic functions. The one person in two natures threatens to become a mere substratum or support of the two natures. 

White's view is that the Incarnation, although ultimately a mystery, can be rendered intelligible to the discursive intellect in the Thomistic way.  I doubt it. But there are other ways, and they need to be examined.

Is Assertion External or Internal to Logic? A Note on Irad Kimhi

The main point of Peter Geach's paper, "Assertion" (Logic Matters, Basil Blackwell, 1972, pp. 254-269) is what he calls the Frege point: A thought may have just the same content whether you assent to its truth or not; a proposition may occur in discourse now asserted, now unasserted, and yet be recognizably the same proposition. This seems unassailably correct. One will fail to get the Frege point, however, if one confuses statements and propositions. An unstated statement is a contradiction in terms, but an unasserted proposition is not. The need for unasserted propositions can be seen from the fact that many of our compound assertions (a compound assertion being one whose content is propositionally compound) have components that are unasserted.

To assert a conditional, for example, is not to assert its antecedent or its consequent. If I assert that if Tom is drunk, then he is unfit to drive, I do not thereby assert that he is drunk, nor do I assert that he is unfit to drive.  I assert a compound proposition the components of which I do not assert. I assert a relation between two propositions without asserting either of them.

The same goes for disjunctive propositions. To assert a disjunction is not to assert its disjuncts. Neither propositional component of Either Tom is sober or he is unfit to drive is asserted by one who merely asserts the compound disjunctive proposition.

On one view of logic, it studies propositions and the relations between them  such as entailment, consistency, and inconsistency in abstraction from the concrete mental acts in which the propositions are accepted, rejected, or merely entertained. Logic is thus kept apart from psychology. If so, then assertion, as a speech act founded in the mental act of acceptance, is external to logic.  If this were not the case, then how would one account for the validity of the following obviously valid argument?

a) If Tom is drunk, then Tom is unfit to drive
b) Tom is drunk
Therefore
c) Tom is unfit to drive.

For the argument to be an instance of the valid argument form modus ponendo ponens, the protasis of (a) must be the same proposition as is expressed by (b). But then the assertoric force that (b) carries when the argument is given by someone cannot be part of the proposition. For the assertoric force  is no part of the proposition that is the protasis of (a).

So if formal logic studies propositions in abstraction from the concrete episodes of thinking in which they are brought before minds, then assertion is external to formal logic.

But according to the NYT, a philosopher with a cult following among the cognoscenti rejects the above view:

[Irad] Kimhi argues that this view is wrong, and that the distinction between psychology and logic has led our understanding of thinking astray. Consider that the following statement does not, according to the standard view, constitute a logical contradiction: “It’s raining, but I don’t believe it’s raining.” Why? Because the first part of the sentence concerns a state of affairs in the world (“it’s raining”), whereas the second part concerns someone’s state of mind (“I don’t believe it’s raining”).

Kimhi wants to rescue the intuition that it is a logical contradiction to say, “It’s raining, but I don’t believe it’s raining.” But to do this, he has to reject the idea that when you assert a proposition, what you are doing is adding psychological force (“I think … ”) to abstract content (“it’s raining”). Instead, Kimhi argues that a self-conscious, first-person perspective — an “I” — is internal to logic. For him, to judge that “it’s raining” is the same as judging “I believe it’s raining,” which is the same as judging “it’s false that it’s not raining.” All are facets of a single act of mind.

Kimhi IradI haven't read Kimhi's book, and I am not sure I should trust the NYT account, but Kimhi seems to be recycling Kant in a confused way. At B 132 of Critique of Pure Reason, Kant writes, "It must be possible for the 'I think' to accompany all my representations; for otherwise something would be represented in me which could not be thought at all, and that is equivalent to saying that the representation would be impossible, or at least would be nothing to me." (NKS tr.)

Consider a propositional representation.  One's awareness that it is raining need not be accompanied by an explicit act of reflection, the one expressed by 'I think that it is raining,' but it must be possible that this reflection occur. Thus there is a necessary connection between the propositional representation 'It is raining' and Kant's  transcendental unity of apperception. The latter could be described as " a self-conscious, first-person perspective — an “I” — [that] is internal to logic." But it is a transcendental I, one common to all cognitive subjects, and not the psychological I of a particular cognitive subject. Kimhi seems to be speaking of the latter.

Kant's Ich denke points us back to Descartes' cogito. The Frenchman discovers that while he can doubt many things, he cannot doubt that he is doubting these things. He can doubt the existence of the cat he 'sees' — using 'see' in a strictly phenomenological way — but he cannot doubt the existence of his 'seeing' as a mental act or cogitatio. His doubting is a thinking, but it is not a believing.  The Dubito ergo sum is but a special case of the generic Cogito ergo sum.  His doubting that he has a body is not a believing that he has a body but it is a thinking in the broad Cartesian sense that subsumes all intentional states or mental acts.

Accordingly, the 'I think' that must be able to accompany all my representations does not have the specific sense of 'I believe.' Belief is one type of mental act among many. One who believes does not doubt, and conversely. But both think. The 'I think' expresses an explicit reflection on the occurrent intentional state one is in, whether one is doubting, believing, wishing, hoping remembering, etc.

So there is a defensible sense in which there is an I internal to logic, but this is the transcendental I of the original synthetic unity of apperception, not the I of the psychophysical subject in nature.   If there is an I internal to logic, it is the I of the transcendental prefix,  the 'I think ___' which must be able to accompany all my representation.  But this 'I think ___' of the transcendental prefix does not have the sense of the ordinary language 'I think so' which means 'I believe so.' 

One consequence of Kimhi’s view is that “It’s raining, but I don’t believe it’s raining” becomes a logical contradiction. Another consequence is that a contradiction becomes something that you cannot believe, as opposed to something that you psychologically can but logically ought not to believe (as the traditional cleavage between psychology and logic might suggest). A final consequence is that thinking is not just a cognitive psychological act, but also one that is governed by logical law.

In other words, the distinction between psychology and logic collapses. Logic is not a set of rules for how to think; it is how we think, just not in a way that can be captured in conventional scientific terms. Thinking emerges as a unique and peculiar activity, something that is part of the natural world, but which cannot be understood in the manner of other events in the natural world. Indeed, Kimhi sees his book, in large part, as lamenting “the different ways in which philosophers have failed to acknowledge — or even denied — the uniqueness of thinking.”

The above strikes me as based on a confusion of the transcendental 'I think' with the psychological 'I believe.'  It seems to me that one can have a reflective awareness as of rain falling without believing that rain is falling. What is impossible, and contradictory, is to have a reflective awareness as of rain falling without thinking (in the broad Cartesian sense that subsumes specific types of mental act) that rain is falling. 

The transcendental I's thinking is governed by logical law, but not the thinking of the empirical I in nature. So the distinction between psychology and logic does not collapse. To the extent that I can make sense of what Kimhi is saying on the basis of the NYT article he seems to be trying to naturalizer Kant's transcendental ego.  Good luck with that.

Perhaps talk of a transcendental I is nonsense if it is supposed to be a real entity that thinks; but only a transcendental I could be internal to formal logic.

If anyone has read Kimhi's book, his comments would be appreciated. 

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Varia

Joe Satriani, May This be Love (Waterfall). The Hendrix tune, masterfully done on acoustic guitars.

Doc Watson, Moody River

Dick Dale and the Deltones, Misirlou.  Before Clapton, before Bloomfield, my first guitar hero.   "King of the Surf Guitar."  Pipeline (with Stevie Ray Vaughan).  Nitro (with So Cal scenes).  Let's Go Trippin', 1961.  Not a drug reference. Pre-LSD. The first surf instrumental?

Cowboy Jack Clement, A Girl I Used to Know

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

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

Barbara Lewis, Hello Stranger, 1963. 1963 was arguably the best of the '60s years for pop compositions. 

Emmylou Harris, Hello Stranger. Same title, different song.  This one goes out to Mary Kay F-D. Remember the Fall of 1980, Mary Kay? 

Get up, rounder/Let a working girl lie down/ You are rounder/And you are all out and down.

Carter Family version from 1939.

Joan Baez, Daddy, You've Been on My Mind. The voice of an angel, the words of a poet, and Bruce  Langhorne's guitar.

Joan Baez, It's All Over Now, Baby Blue. The voice of an angel, the words of a poet, and Langhorne's guitar.

Joan Baez, A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall. The voice of an angel, the words of a poet, and Langhorne's guitar. The incredible mood of this version, especially the intro, is made by Langhorne and the bass of Russ Savakus, another well-known session player from those days. I've been listening to this song since '65 and it gives me chills every time. 

Carolyn Hester, I'll Fly Away.  Dylan on harp, a little rough and ragged. Langhorne on guitar? Not sure.

Joan Baez and her sister, Mimi Farina, Catch the Wind. Fabulous.

Joan Baez, Boots of Spanish Leather.  Nanci Griffith also does a good job with this Dylan classic. 

Betty Everett, You're No Good, 1963.  More soulful than the 1975 Linda Ronstadt version.

The Ikettes, I'm Blue, 1962. 

Lee Dorsey, Ya Ya, 1961.  Simplicity itself. Three chords. I-IV-V progression. No bridge.

Word of the Day: Costive

Merriam-Webster:

1a: affected with constipation

b: causing constipation

2: slow in action or expression

3: not generous : STINGY

Where did I find it? In a fine analysis of the concept of charm by Joseph Epstein.  Here is a taste that features the word under definition:

Some people I talked with thought charm was synonymous with “cool.” In fact, the two, charm and cool, are all but opposed. Cool aims for detachment, distance; charm is social, bordering on the intimate. Cool is icy; charm warm. Cool is costive; charm often ebullient. Cool doesn’t require approval; charm hopes to win it. Cool began life in jazz under the great saxophonist Lester Young, who first used the term, but it soon descended to the argot of drugs. Cool gave way to hip and hep. In Dave Frishberg’s song “I’m Hip,” the singer proclaims that he watches “arty French flicks with [his] shades on” and is so hip “I call my girlfriend ‘Man.’ ” Miles Davis was cool, Louis Armstrong charming.

How does one acquire a large vocabulary? The first rule is to read, read widely, and read worthwhile materials, especially old books and essays.  The second rule is to look up every word the meaning of which you do not know or are not certain of: don't be lazy. The third rule is to compile vocabulary lists. The fourth rule is to review the lists periodically and put the words to use.  Use 'em or lose 'em.

On Voting, Discrimination, and My Type of Conservatism

My brand of conservatism includes an admixture of classical liberalism. Thus my conservatism is neither of the 'throne and altar' nor of the 'alternative right' variety. But I am open to challenge from intelligent and good-natured critics to my right. Among the intelligent and civil alt-right critics I include Jacques who writes:

In your recent post on abortion, you quote yourself saying there is "no defensible basis for discrimination against women and blacks when it comes to voting".  I think that's too strong.  I guess it depends on what exactly you mean by "defensible".  But there are certainly some seemingly good reasons for that kind of discrimination.

1) Back in the day, almost all of the people paying taxes and working outside the home and fighting in wars were men.  So it wasn't arbitrary or unfair, arguably, that only men were granted the right to have a say in matters of public policy.  If you are going to be conscripted to fight and possibly die in a war, but your wife isn't, maybe it's reasonable that you play a role in deciding whether to go to war and she doesn't.  

More generally, it seems like the natural order in human life is that men are the leaders and women are the followers.  Obviously that's a very rough approximation of how things naturally work.  But isn't it at least a rough approximation?  Most women don't want to lead their families.  They want to find a man who is a good leader and submit to his authority.  When it comes to public affairs, men have always been the ones who were on the whole the most capable and motivated.  Women on the whole have always been more capable and motivated with respect to personal, domestic and small-scale communal life.  Again, I realize there are many individual exceptions and complications and qualifications; but isn't this basically how things have always worked, and doesn't it seem likely that these patterns are rooted in human nature?  If this is even a rough approximation of the natural order, we have a second reason for allowing only (some) men to vote.  And, of course, everyone accepts that rough approximations can be an adequate basis for social order.  There are some children who are better equipped to participate in politics or drive a car than some adults, but those are rare exceptions, so it's reasonable to deny voting rights to children.  (Mainly because we need general rules and social norms, and we don't have the time or resources to evaluate every single case in great depth.)

The Issue

The issue is whether every adult citizen who satisfies certain minimal requirements, e.g., not being a felon, should be allowed to vote regardless of race, sex, religion, property ownership, etc. I incline to a classically liberal view. Nota bene: classically liberal, not leftist. I'm for 'universal' suffrage.  But of course the suffrage cannot be strictly universal.  Thus I deny that children should have a right to vote (say, via proxy votes given to their parents). If you think children should have the right to vote, then why not  pre-natal children? They too live within our borders and are affected, often drastically, by social policies. And, pace the benighted Jesse Jackson, I deny that felons should be allowed to vote. Felons have shown by their destructive behavior that they cannot order their own lives; why then should they be given any say in how society should be ordered? 

What about cats and dogs? They have interests  and needs. They are affected by public policies. But that does not ground a right to vote via proxies. (The idea would be that if Tom has two cats, a dog, and a baby daughter, then he gets five, count 'em five, votes, one for humself and four proxies.) And of course I am opposed to lowering the voting age, as some cynical Democrats want to do, so that under-18 teenagers can vote. And this despite the fact that some 14-year-olds are better equipped to vote that some 40-year-olds. The law cannot cater to exceptional cases.

Skin-in-the-Game

Jacques is mounting what I will call a  'skin-in-the-game' argument.  I am sympathetic to it.

Those who do not face conscription have no 'skin in the game' with respect to fighting in wars and possibly coming home dead or injured. So why should those who do not face conscription have any say in the matter?  Those who own no real property have no skin in the game when it comes to being liable for taxes on real estate. So why should they have a say on what tax rates should be? Some 45% of Americans pay no individual federal income tax.  Why should they have a say in the determination of federal income tax rates?

Why should college students in Berkeley, California or Madison, Wisconsin be allowed to vote on local matters given that they will  be there for only four years and thus lack a long-term stake in those communities, pay no taxes to speak of, and lack the life experience to make wise decisions? 

Jacques continues: 

(2) All historical experience suggests that blacks and whites behave very differently when it comes to voting.  Blacks vote as a tribal block.  They vote for the person they think will benefit blacks.  Again, there are exceptions, but this is true as a rough approximation.  Whites may have done this to some extent in the past, but now almost none of them do.  Huge numbers of whites will knowingly vote for policies that benefit non-whites at the expense of whites.  Whites generally seem to have a much deeper interest in principles and justice.  They are highly individualistic and low in tribalism compared to blacks.  Does it really make sense to extend equal voting rights to groups that have such different and incompatible understandings of the political process?  Arguably, a healthy democracy requires a very broad basic agreement on principles and aims, a shared culture and historical understanding, etc.  But then it would be reasonable to think that blacks should not vote in white societies.  (Maybe they should have their own societies where they can vote and whites can't.)

The Tribalism Question

I agree that blacks as a group are more tribal than whites as a group at the present time. Their political behavior is driven by their self-identification as blacks. This is a fact, but is it the nature of blacks to be tribal? Or could blacks eventually become less tribal, and perhaps as anti-tribal and individualistic as whites? It cannot be denied that black tribalism is largely a response to various contingent circumstances such as their ancestors having been brought to North America as slaves, and their being a minority.   Minority status is surely a driver of tribal identification among all racial, ethnic, and social  groups. As the contingent circumstances change, one can reasonably expect blacks to become less tribal. 

Also to consider is the fact that there is plenty of tribalism among whites as well, for example, white females, white law professors and trial lawyers who vote as a bloc, white union members who vote as their union bosses tell them, and so on.

In an ideal democracy only some people would be allowed to vote. But there is no practical way to determine all and only those who should be allowed to vote beyond the minimal requirements of citizenship, adulthood, etc.  There is no going back, obviously: the franchise cannot be removed from blacks and females, for example. And in any case there are plenty of blacks and females who are more qualified to cast an intelligent, well-informed, and wise vote than many whites and males.

So I would say that justice demands universal suffrage in the qualified sense I explained above.  I stick to my classically liberal line that "there is no defensible basis for discrimination against women and blacks when it comes to voting."   

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Kerouac Goes Home in October

Jack Kerouac quit the mortal coil 49 years ago tomorrow, securing his release from the samsaric wheel of the quivering meat conception, and the granting of his wish:

The wheel of the quivering meat conception . . . . . . I wish I was free of that slaving meat wheel and safe in heaven dead.  (Mexico City Blues, 1959, 211th Chorus).

The Last Interview, 12 October 1969.  "I'm not a beatnik. I'm a Catholic."  "I just sneak into church now, at dusk, at vespers. But yeah, as you get older you get more . . . genealogical."

As much of a screw-up and sinner as he was, as irresponsible, self-indulgent, and self-destructive, Kerouac was a deeply religious man.  He went through a Buddhist phase, but at the end he came home to Catholicism.  

"Everybody goes home in October." (On the Road, Part I, Ch. 14, Para 1) Here's the whole paragraph:

At dawn my bus was zooming across the Arizona desert — Indio, Blythe, Salome (where she danced); the great dry stretches leading to Mexican mountains in the south. Then we swung north to the Arizona mountains, Flagstaff, clifftowns. I had a book with me I stole from a Hollywood stall, "Le Grand Meaulnes" by Alain-Fournier, but I preferred reading the American landscape as we went along. Every bump, rise, and stretch in it mystified my longing. In inky night we crossed New Mexico; at gray dawn it was Dalhart, Texas; in the bleak Sunday afternoon we rode through one Oklahoma flat-town after another; at nightfall it was Kansas. The bus roared on. I was going home in October. Everybody goes home in October.

 "Pretty girls make graves." (Dharma Bums) 

 Jack Kerouac, Desolation Angels (G. P. Putnam 1965), p. 48:

Outside it's October night in Manhattan and on the waterfront wholesale markets there are barrels with fires left burning in them by the longshoremen where I stop and warm my hands and take a nip two nips from the bottle and hear the bvoom of ships in the channel and I look up and there, the same stars as over Lowell, October, old melancholy October, tender and loving and sad, and it will all tie up eventually into a perfect posy of love I think and I shall present it to Tathagata, my Lord, to God, saying "Lord Thou didst exult — and praise be You for showing me how You did it — Lord now I'm ready for more — And this time I won't whine — This time I'll keep my mind clear on the fact that it is Thy Empty Forms."

. . . This world, the palpable thought of God . . . [ellipsis in original]

Alela Diane, We Are Nothing  

Jack Kerouac, Tristessa (written 1955-56, first published in 1960), p. 59:

Since beginningless time and into the never-ending future, men have loved women without telling them, and the Lord has loved them without telling, and the void is not the void because there's nothing to be empty of.

Henry Mancini, Moon River.  Video with shots of Rita Hayworth. YouTuber comment: indimenticabile Rita, stupenda Rita, vivi nei nostri ricordi, vivi nei nostri cuori. This was Jack Kerouac's favorite song.  Ellis Amburn, Subterranean Kerouac (St. Martin's 1998), p. 324:

One night he [Kerouac, during a 1962 visit to Lowell, Mass.] left a bar called Chuck's with Huck Finneral, a reedy, behatted eccentric who carried a business card that read: "Professional killer . . . virgins fixed . . . orgies organized, dinosaurs neutered, contracts & leases broken."  Huck's philosophy of life was: "Better a wise madness than a foolish sanity."  They drove to a friend's house in Merrimack, New Hampshire, and on the way, Jack sang "Moon River," calling it his favorite song.  Composed by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer, "Moon River" was the theme song of the popular Audrey Hepburn movie Breakfast at Tiffany's.  Sobbed by a harmonica, later swelling with strings and chorus, the plaintive tune's gentle but epic-like lyrics describe a dreamer and roamer not unlike Kerouac.

Indeed they do.  A restless dreamer, a lonesome traveller, a dharma seeker, a desolation angel passing through this vale of mist, a drifter on the river of samsara hoping one day to cross to the Far Shore.  

Jack's GraveJay Farrar and Ben Gibbard, California Zephyr

10,000 Maniacs, Hey Jack Kerouac

Tom Waits, Jack Kerouac on the Road!!

Aztec Two-Step, The Persecution and Restoration of Dean Moriarty

Some readings:

Jack Kerouac, Mexico City Blues, 228th Chorus

Jack Kerouac, Safe in Heaven, Dead.  Good sound quality.  "I wish I was free of that slaving meat wheel, safe in heaven, dead."

Jack Kerouac, Charlie Parker.  "Charlie, Parker, lay the bane off me, and everybody."

It’s About Time

Typepad has finally secured its hypertext transfer protocol. My URL now sports an 's': https.  That's reassuring to me and to you, dear reader. Now they need to work on their on-board back-up utility to expedite the back up of huge blogs like mine.