Author: Bill Vallicella

The Ersatz Religion of ‘Wokery’: What is to be done?

The short answer is that the cure for an ersatz religion is genuine religion.

Colin Dueck in a review of Joshua Mitchell:

So, what is to be done? Mitchell’s answer in American Awakening is the observation that an essentially theological problem requires a theological solution. If the destructive ersatz religion of left-wing identity politics rests on a mistaken premise of all-encompassing group innocence versus group guilt—as it obviously does—then the answer is to recover that older spiritual awareness and humility that all human beings are flawed sinners as individuals. Here, Mitchell is in the best tradition of leading 20th-century conservative philosophers, who understood that the ideological authoritarian movements of that era could not only be stopped by political method; they also had to be confronted through a deeper understanding of their spiritual roots.  [The idea is better conveyed by replacing 'could not only be stopped by political method' with 'could not be stopped by political method only.']

Why is 'wokery' an essentially theological problem? 

Mitchell says that twenty-first century progressives believe in a kind of hierarchy of human sin and transgression based upon a series of group dichotomies: male versus female, white versus non-white, straight versus gay, Western versus non-Western, and so on. In each pairing, the latter group is the historical victim, and the former group the victimizer. Sin or guilt, like innocence, is therefore assigned by group. For oppressor groups, sin cannot be washed away, other than by apologetics ['apologies' works better here] that never end. For oppressed groups, there is no guilt or transgression in the first place, only the innocence of victimhood.

As Mitchell notes, identity politics removes the traditional religious scapegoat and finds a new one. In the older understanding, the sacrifice of the guiltless Christ—the one true innocent—is needed because all human beings are irredeemably sinful. In the newer progressive understanding, some groups are sinful, and some are not. This unleashes a new form of political activism. To be specific, it encourages a form of politics that is collectivist, utopian, and revolutionary—really an ersatz religion. We have seen their kind before. It does not end well.

As you can see, this article is of high quality. You really should read the whole of it. One quibble, though. On Christianity, human beings are not irredeemably sinful; if that were the case they could not be redeemed. The Christian idea is rather that human beings are all so deeply and originally sinful that they cannot redeem themselves by their own individual or collective effort and so need a divine Redeemer.

Reckless Reparations Reckoning

Another episode in Victor Davis Hanson's chronicling of our wanky descent into unhinged Unsinn.  Here is a choice morsel:

Current racial tribalization obsessions have descended into a nadir that makes Al Sharpton’s 1990s Tawana Brawley/Crown-Heights career start (“If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.”/ “We taught philosophy and astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it.”) look amateurish in comparison. In this context, new calls arise for ludicrous reparations simply because we have become a ludicrous society.

Simone Weil in the Light of Plato

Substack notes on Phaedo 83.

Thomas Merton, Journals, vol. 4, p. 57 (10 October 1960):

The superb moral and positive beauty of the Phaedo.  One does not have to agree with Plato, but one must hear him.  Not to listen to such a voice is unpardonable, it is like not listening to conscience or nature.

Absolutely right.

The writings of Plato are inexhaustible  in their riches. For years I read and taught the Phaedo dialogue, without appreciating the theory of relations contained therein until I read Plato's "Phaedo" Theory of Relations by Héctor-Neri Castañeda.  I spent the summer of 1984 with Hector in Bloomington at Indiana University on an NEH summer seminar grant. Little did I know at the time that Frithjof Schuon, a very different type of philosopher than Hector, and one I admire more than Hector, was living in Bloomington at the same time. An opportunity missed!

Hector was a brilliant man, a creative powerhouse, and most generous in the help he gave his younger colleagues, but his approach to philosophy was merely theoretical; I discerned no spiritual depth in him. Schuon was roughly the opposite: spiritually deep but in need of some analytic discipline.  Plato combined the attributes of spiritual depth and analytic penetration that fall asunder in lesser mortals.

For Weil, Plato "has genius whereas only the word talent applies to Aristotle." ("Human Personality" in Simone Weil, An Anthology, p. 67) 

The Great Blizzard of ’78 Remembered

I had an odd schedule in those days.  I hit the sack at four in the afternoon and got up at midnight.  I caught the last trolley of the night to the end of the line, Boston College station.  Got off, hiked  up the hill to my office where I worked all night on my dissertation while listening to a classical music station out of Waltham, Mass.  Then I prepared my lectures, taught a couple of classes, went for a run, played a game of chess with my old friend and apartment mate,  Quentin Smith,  and was in bed by four again.  That was my schedule early fall '77 to late spring '78, every single day holidays included.

That's how I got my dissertation done. I ruthlessly cut out everything from my life except the essential.  I told  one girlfriend, "See you at my dissertation defense."  She later expressed doubts about marrying a man given to occasional interludes of "hibernation."  Another girlfriend complained that I kept "odd hours."  True enough.  And I still do.  I don't get up at midnight any more.  I get up between 1 and 2 AM.  I've become a slacker.

One  night in early February the snow was coming down pretty thick as I caught the last trolley of the night.  The trip up the hill to my office was quite a slog.  A big drift against the main door to Carney Hall made it difficult to get the door open.  But I made it inside and holed up in my windowless office for two or three days as the Great Blizzard of '78 raged.  I got a lot of work done and finished the dissertation on schedule.

  Blizzard 78

Dylan’s Philosophy of Modern Song

From Variety:

Of the dozens or even hundreds of singers and songwriters that Bob Dylan extols in his new  book, “The Philosophy of Modern Song,” there is one that seems to stand out even more than the others, so effusive is Dylan’s praise. This performer, he writes, is “downright incredible” and “lived in every moment of every song he sang… His performance is just downright incredible. There is nothing small you can say about it… When he stood and sang, he owned the song and he shared it and we believed every single word. What more could you want from an artist?”

The artist in question: Perry Como, naturally.

As a Dylan fan from the early '60s, I can tell you that one can never be sure when Bob is serious and when he is putting us on.

Will I buy this book?  Is the sky blue? I was about to write, "Is the Pope Catholic?" But that doesn't work anymore, with Bergoglio the Benighted at the helm of a sinking ship. 

Addendum (1/24)

'Termitic' and 'benighted' are adjectives I have repeatedly applied to 'Pope' Francis. No doubt some of you find that offensive. I intend no disrespect for the office, but I do have serious moral and intellectual reservations about its current occupant. And you should too. See this Telegraph piece which begins:

Gay “clubs” operate openly in Catholic seminaries, the institutions that prepare men for the priesthood, the late Pope Benedict XVI has claimed in a posthumously published book scathing of Pope Francis’s progressive agenda. 

In a blistering attack on the state of the Catholic Church under his successor’s papacy, Benedict, who died on Dec 31 at the age of 95, said that the vocational training of the next generation of priests is on the verge of “collapse”.

He claimed that some bishops allow trainee priests to watch pornographic films as an outlet for their sexual urges.

Benedict gave instructions that the book, What Christianity Is, should be published after his death.

An Online Catalog of Theistic Arguments

Chad McIntosh writes,

I'd like to let you know about a project I've been working on for the past two years that I have just completed (for now): a fairly comprehensive, organized list and summary of theistic arguments. I hope it will be a useful resource.

https://www.camcintosh.com/theistic/index.html

I've also included at the very end (under META > Cumulative Case) a calculator that allows visitors to come up with their own estimate of the evidential power of the arguments.

The website is a little clunky, but serviceable (it is best as expanded window on desktop). Of course, I've included several of your arguments:

ONTOLOGICAL > Possibility Defenses > Kordig & Vallicella 
METAPHYSICAL > Facts
AXIOLOGICAL > Deontic Value > Modal Axiarchism 

I thought I should take a look at your book A Paradigm Theory of Existence with the intent to summarize it's main argument, but that's a hard book to get a hold of! There's also a similar argument just published by Christoph de Ray called "Existence Exists and it is God," in which he interacts with your book. I may integrate both yours and de Ray's arguments in a future update to the page. 

Great to hear from you, Chad. You've created an interesting and useful resource. The site is a bit clunky but it displays clearly and easily on my desktop and is easy to navigate. Thank you for your references to my work. As for my existence book, I'd send you a copy if I had one to spare. If someone reading this has a copy he would be willing to part with, please contact Chad. I don't recommend that you buy it; it is way overpriced, although on occasion the Amazon pricing algorithm goes haywire and the tome becomes relatively affordable.

Thanks also for referring me to Christophe de Ray, whose article I found here.  I will have to read it.

Let me make two minor comments on the material in the Prolegomena section. You define 'theistic argument' as follows:

Theistic arguments are arguments for (or the rationality of belief in or commitment to) the existence of a being with at least one God-like attribute, such as necessity, God-like power or knowledge, ground of morality, creator or designer of the natural world, and so on.

The first is that you need a second 'for' after 'or' in the parenthesis. The second is substantive. Suppose an entity has exactly one God-like attribute. I wouldn't call an argument for the existence of such an entity an argument for God given your definition of theism:

 Theism is the view that there is a personal God like that worshipped by Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

The Good of Plato, the One of Plotinus, the deus sive natura of Spinoza,  the objevktiver Geist of Hegel, and F. H. Bradley's Absolute, to mention just these five, are each such as to have one or more God-like attributes, but none of them are persons.  I have no objection to your definition of theism; my point is that it does not comport well with your definition of 'theistic arguments.' The latter is easily repaired, but I'll leave that to you.

Comments are enabled and invited.

The Paradox of the Misanthropic Naturalist Animal Lover

Top of the Stack. It concludes:

You may recall the case of  Timothy Treadwell, who camped among grizzlies, and whose luck ran out. 

In an Outside article, the author, Doug Peacock, reports that Treadwell "told people he would be honored to 'end up in bear scat.'" And in his last letter, Treadwell refers to the grizzly as a "perfect animal." There are here the unmistakable signs of nature idolatry. Man must worship something, and if God be denied, then an idol must take his place, whether it be nature with its flora and fauna, or money, or sex, or the Revolution, or  some other 'icon.'

Deny God, devalue man, and end up bear shit. Way to go 'man.' 

Psychiatry as Ideology in the USSR

Sidney Bloch, Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Warneford Hospital, Oxford
Journal of medical ethics, 1978, 4, 126-131

I got the reference from an article on the defenestration of Jordan Peterson.  Commentary on Bloch's paper from the same article:

The Oxford psychiatrist Sidney Bloch’s classic 1977 academic paper “Psychiatry as Ideology in the USSR” demonstrated how psychiatry in Josef Stalin’s Soviet Union actually worked—in an eerily similar way to how it now also works in Justin Trudeau’s Canada. Firstly, whilst only a minority of psychiatrists were full-blown Communist Party members, almost all those in positions of actual authority were, reflecting Stalin’s key principle that loyalty to leftist party ideology was more important than actual professional ability when it came to handing out the top jobs; the Ontario College of Psychologists might agree.

A full 25 percent of Soviet medical students’ curriculum was devoted to studying not actual medicine, but unrelated Marxist-Leninist dogma—more than studying actual surgery. Russia replaced the old Hippocratic Oath with a new one in which medics swore to “in all my actions be guided by the principles of Communist morality” rather than, say, actual medical reality—hence, a “good” psychiatrist might commit an entirely sane political dissident to a mental home just to shut them up, something justified on party grounds, not medical ones.

Victims were accused of suffering from entirely fictional disorders like “sluggish schizophrenia”—whose symptoms, conveniently enough, were so vague they could only be noticed by trained Communist physicians, not the wider public, to whom the patient might appear 100 percent sane, a diagnosis that makes about as much sense as saying someone who is clearly still walking around wide awake has slipped into a symptomless coma. The only real way for patients deliberately misdiagnosed to escape from incarceration was to agree with their doctors that, yes, they really were mad after all, and that their “incorrect” opinions were simply unfortunate symptoms of their insanity, much as Jordan Peterson is expected to admit his own “incorrect” views are symptoms of his own mental unfitness to practice today.

Juvenilia

I pulled out my scribblings from the summer of '66.  Puerile stuff from a half-century ago. Painful in places.  But earnest and sincere with a good line here and there.  The old man honors the adolescent he was.

I wrote for posterity, though I didn't realize it at the time.  And I still do.  The posterity of self. 

BV '66 or '67 Fender Mustang

Reader Asks: What Should I Read?

Nathaniel T. writes,

In the new year, I'm committing to some more regular reading habits. 
 
What serious books would you recommend to someone outside academia who has about half an hour uninterrupted in the morning to read, three times a week? How about a list that would last that person a year? 
 
Here are some additional parameters that might aid in your selection:
 
I went to St. John's College in Annapolis, so I've read many of the "greats" in whole or in part, at least once. I have kept up some serious reading since my graduation in 2012, just irregularly. 
I already pray and read the New Testament and spiritual reading daily. 
 
Thanks for your insight and writing!
 
The best advice I could give anyone  with your background who is committed to the life of the mind is to buy and study a copy of A. G. Sertillanges, O. P., The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods. He explains how to proceed.  It is a classic. He draws upon Aquinas and upon Alphonse Gratry, of whom C. S. Peirce had a very high opinion. So I also recommend Gratry's Logic if you can find a copy. Reference here.
 
I hesitate to offer a list of books on particular topics given the constraints on your time.  But here are a couple that are  short, very clear, and unusually thought-provoking: Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation (make sure to get the Sea Harp Press edition which contains an introduction by C. S. Lewis); Romano Guardini, Jesus Christus (anything by Guardini is worth reading).
 
If perchance you are interested mystical theology, and have already read the great Spanish mystics, Juan de la Cruz and Teresa de Avila, and have the stamina for a long slog, then I recommend Augustin Poulain, The Graces of Interior Prayer: A Treatise on Mystical Theology. Reference and notes here.
 
For more suggestions see my Bibliophilia category.
 
Combox open if anyone has any recommendations.
 
By the way, has St. John's College, Annapolis gone 'woke'?