Author: Bill Vallicella

Guest Post: Vito Caiati on David Brooks

I asked long-time reader Dr. Vito Caiati, historian, to comment on David Brook's Atlantic article, America is Having a Moral Convulsion.  Vito responded with alacrity and acerbity, and I have thrown in my two cents. Comments enabled.

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1.  The essay is entirely descriptive rather than analytical in that it presents various economic and sociological findings and trends, but nowhere does it offer an explanation for them. Like [Rod] Dreher, Brooks is content to offer merely the symptoms of a deep crisis rather than to explore its causes, which to me seemed inexorably bound up with the nature and motions of contemporary American capitalism.  Thus, he rattles on about the decline in social trust, linking this phenomenon to the upsurge in financial, emotional, identity, and social insecurity among broad sectors of the American population, especially the young and the lower middle class and working class poor; however, all these trends, destructive of social unity and trust, float on thin air, their emergence requiring [Brooks thinks] no elucidation.

To analyze them would require him to delve into the corrosive force that contemporary capitalism, which by its very nature is deleterious to the survival of traditional forms of the family, community, and polity in America.  One has merely, for example, to reflect on the acceleration of social time (technological and social, including rapid social change and the dizzying pace of life), the contraction and distortion of social space (the former expressed in the gutting of small and medium commerce and the export of entire industrial sectors, with the accompanying hollowing out of established modes of life and the latter expressed in the hyper development in privileged geographical enclaves and underdevelopment elsewhere), and the hyper-commodification of sexuality (disastrous for traditional familial and conjugal relations and Judaeo-Christian moral precepts) that are generated by the process of capitalist accumulation today.

In other words, one cannot shy away from a critical examination of what American capital, global in its reach and interests, has done and is doing to our national civic and political institutions.  I have to do a lot more reading in this area, but I am convinced that it is crucial that conservatives abandon their nostalgic romance with capitalism, since the object of their affection, an earlier moment in the history of capital, competitive or at least largely national, has long since passed and has been replaced with something far different in kind and inimical to their interests and values.

BV: This is a very important point: global, 'woke' capitalism is a very different animal from the capitalism celebrated by old-time economic conservatives and libertarians.

I follow your lead and read everything; if some Western Marxists, such as David Harvey or Hartmut Rosa, have something to say on this question that is of value, I take what is valuable and discard the rest.  I admit a critical examination of capitalism today involves all sorts of philosophical and ideological conundrums for us on the Right, but if we wish to defend certain modes of life and thought, I do not see how we can avoid it. The big global corporations and the Leftist elites that own and control them are not our friends, nor are the host of apologists that cover for them.

2.  Brooks implicitly denies the conscious role of human agency in the acute crisis of the last half year, that is, he covers up for the Left, which has purposely pursued the assault on the Constitution, our history, and our basic rights. All his spleen is saved for the usual target of these bien pensant types, Trump, while he nowhere denounces the lies, plots, and violence of the Left, which exploited the health emergency and the isolated death of one man to destabilize the nation. I cannot take seriously a man who writes,

Donald Trump is in the process of shredding every norm of decent behavior and wrecking every institution he touches. Unable to behave responsibly, unable to protect himself from COVID-19, unable to even tell the country the truth about his own medical condition, he undermines the basic credibility of the government and arouses the suspicion that every word and act that surrounds him is a lie and a fraud. Finally, he threatens to undermine the legitimacy of our democracy in November and incite a vicious national conflagration that would leave us a charred and shattered nation.

I sure that you noticed that here Brooks takes all the evident nefarious intentions and acts of the Left and projects them onto the President. Here, we see him happily paying the price to remain among those with respectable opinions.

BV:  I too cannot take Brooks and his political projection seriously. He seems to have degenerated badly. But he always was a pseudo-conservative, a member of the yap-and-scribble bow-tie brigade, along with Bill Kristol, George Will, Mona Charen, Max Boot, and the rest. These types love to write and talk, but when it comes time to act and support a man who has already done so much in the face of vicious opposition to implement conservative policies, they clutch their pearls, straighten their ties, and chicken out.  Like Vito, I get the distinct impression that their main political goal is to remain among the respectable so as to preserve their privileges, perquisites, and invitations to the high-toned soirees of the bien pensant.  They seem to fear nothing more than becoming a persona non grata in the manner of Alan Dershowitz. Accepting something like political dhimmitude, Brooks and the cruise-ship conservative cohort are content to play the role assigned to them by the Left, talk quietly about taxes and such, and allow the Left's culturally Marxist juggernaut to roll on.

Brooks goes on about norms. But he will give either his direct or indirect support to a party that is hell-bent on destroying the norms and institutions of the Republic. The Left has become brazen about what they stand for: packing the Supreme Court, ending the filibuster, eliminating the Electoral College, removing the Second Amendment to the Constitution, tolerating and expanding 'sanctuary' jurisdictions, eliding the distinction between citizen and non-citizen — and I am just warming up.

Like Rod Dreher, Brooks apparently believes that civility and good manners trump every other consideration: better that race-delusional Marxist thugs destroy our cities than that an alpha male punch back against the chaos and defend the American Way.  Trump is boorish, but there is nothing radical about him unlike the Orwellian 'moderate' Joe Biden who is a driverless vehicle or rudderless vessel soon to be piloted by Kamala Harris and the squadristi to hard-Left destinations.

Anyway those are my thoughts on the essay, whatever they are worth. These are really bad times; we must win in November, if only to buy some time, but I am not at all optimistic that we will be able to control either the “soft” or the more and more evident “hard” (for example, the framing of General Flynn and Cardinal Pell and the indictment of the McCloskeys) totalitarianism of the Left.

BV: The indictment of the McCloskey's is particularly troubling.  Can you believe that this is happening in the USA? Violent Marxist thugs, who pay no taxes, break down a gate and threaten the life, liberty, and property of productive, tax-paying citizens. The political authorities, supported by these taxes, take the side of the thugs, bringing no charges against them, but indict the McCloskeys. Don't forget: some of the BLMers were armed, and the McCloskeys were within the law and the Constitution.  And don't fool yourselves: BLM is an avowed Marxist outfit dedicated to the destruction of America as she was founded to be.  The BLMers 'peaceful' protests are nothing but race-baiting means to their nefarious ends.

These are dangerous times. The upcoming election will be a battle for the soul of America.  Curiously, both Trump and Biden say this, and both are right.  The Coalition of the Sane must win in November.  Do your bit — and prepare for the aftermath.  Ignore the polls. Remember 2016?

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Varia

Marlene Dietrich, Die Fesche Lola. 'Fesche' means something like smart, snazzy.

Ich bin die fesche Lola, der Liebling der Saison!
Ich hab' ein Pianola zu Haus' in mein' Salon
Ich bin die fesche Lola, mich liebt ein jeder Mann
doch an mein Pianola, da laß ich keinen ran!

Kinks, Lola. From the days when 'tranny' meant transmission.  

Marlene Dietrich, Muss I Denn

Elvis Presley, Wooden Heart 

Lotte Lenya, Moon of Alabama

Doors, Roadhouse Blues

Tom Petty, Lost Highway. The old Hank Williams tune. "And now I am lost, too late to pray. Lord, I've paid the cost on the lost highway."  This goes out to all you 'deplorables' out there.

Bette Midler, Mambo Italiano.  Video of Sophia Loren.

A Mistake Many Make

They think that what is not immediately intelligible to them is unintelligible, period, or perhaps even a product of willful obfuscation.

The Australian positivist, David Stove, somewhere takes umbrage at a passage from Heidegger and pronounces it gibberish, when the passage is not gibberish at all. The miserable Stove, unwilling to to do his homework, and with no understanding of Heidegger's intellectual antecedents, dismisses as gibberish what is not immediately intelligible to his shallow positivist pate.  He is a trenchant polemicist in some of his writing, so I am simply responding in kind.

I need to find that passage.

But let me say something good about old Stove: he was one formidable opponent of the scourge of political correctness.

There are some interesting materials for and against the curmudgeon in my Stove category.

De mortuis nil nisi bonum? De mortuis bonum et malum.

In a Philosophical Discussion . . .

. . . three's a crowd and four's a cross-conversation. 

One-on-one, back-and-forth, defining and refining, pursuing the point, focusing like a laser, driven by eros for truth but free of polemos under the aegis of philia.  But also under the aegis of 

Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas.

And with no illusions about achieving agreement. An attainable goal here below is clarity about differences. "I will teach you differences." (Shakespeare, King Lear, Wittgenstein.)

Moving from Religion to Philosophy: A Typology of Motives

People come to philosophy from various 'places.'  Some come from religion, others from mathematics and the natural sciences, still others from literature and the arts.  There are other termini a quis as well.  In this post I am concerned only with the move from religion to philosophy.  What are the main types of reasons for those who are concerned with religion to take up the serious study of philosophy?  I count five main types of motive.

1. The Apologetic Motive.  Some look to philosophy for apologetic tools.  Their concern is to clarify and defend the tenets of their religious faith, tenets they do not question, or do not question in the main, against those who do question them, or even attack them.  For someone whose central motive is apologetic, the aim is not to seek a truth they do not possess, but to articulate and defend a truth, the "deposit of faith," that they already possess, if not in fullness, at least in outline.

2. The Critical Motive.  Someone who is animated by the Critical Motive seeks to understand religion and evaluate its claim to truth, while taking it seriously.  To criticize is not to oppose, but to sift, evaluate, assay, separate the true from the false, the reasonable from the unreasonable.  The critic is not out to defend or attack but to understand and evaluate.  Open to the claims of religion, his question is: But is it true?

3. The Debunking Motive.  If the apologist presupposes the truth of his religion, or some religion, the debunker presupposes the falsehood of a particular religion or of every religion.  He takes the doctrines and institutions of religion seriously as things worth attacking, exposing, debunking, unmasking, refuting.

The apologist, the critic, and the debunker all take religion seriously as something worth defending, worth evaluating, or worth attacking using the tools of philosophy.  For all three, philosophy is a tool, not an end in itself. 

The apologist moves to philosophy without leaving religion. If he succeeds in defending his faith with the weapons of philosophy, well and good; if he fails, it doesn't really matter.  He has all the essential truth he needs from his religion.  His inability to mount an intellectually respectable defense of it is a secondary matter.  He might take the following view. "My religion is true. So there must be an intellectually respectable defense of it, whether or not I or anyone can mount that defense."

The critic moves to philosophy with the live option of leaving religion behind.  Whether or not he leaves it behind depends on the outcome of his critique.  Neither staying nor leaving is a foregone conclusion.

The debunker either never had a living faith, or else he had one but lost it.  As a debunker, his decision has been made and his Rubicon crossed: religion is buncombe from start to finish, dangerous buncombe that needs to be unmasked and opposed. Strictly speaking, only the debunker who once had a living faith moves from it to philosophy.  You cannot move away from a place where you never were.

4. The Transcensive Motive.  The transcender aims to find in philosophy something that completes and transcends religion while preserving its truth.  One way to flesh this out would be in Hegelian terms: religion and philosophy both aim to express the Absolute, but only philosophy does so adequately.  Religion is an inadequate 'pictorial' (vortstellende) representation of the Absolute.  On this sort of approach all that is good in religion is aufgehoben in philosophy, simultaneously cancelled and preserved, roughly in the way the bud is both cancelled and preserved in the flower.

5. The Substitutional Motive.  The substitutionalist aims to find in philosophy a substitute for religion.  Religion, when taken seriously, makes a total claim on its adherents' higher energies.  A person who, for any reason, becomes disenchanted with religion, but is not prepared to allow himself to degenerate to the level of the worldling, may look to invest his energies elsewhere in some other lofty pursuit.  Some will turn to social or political activism.  And of course there are other termini ad quos on the road from religion. The substitutionalist abandons religion for philosophy.  In  a sense, philosophy becomes his religion.  It is in her precincts that he seeks his highest meaning and an outlet for his noblest impulses.

Some Questions

A. What is my motive?  (2).  Certainly not (1):  I seem to be constitutionally incapable of taking the religion of my upbringing, or any religion, as simply true without examination.  I can't suppress the questions that naturally arise.  We have it on high authority that "The unexamined life is not worth living."  That examination, of course, extends to everything, including religion, and indeed also to this very examining.  Note  that I am not appealing to the authority of Socrates/Plato since their authority can be validated rationally and autonomously.

Certainly not (3): I am not a debunker.  Not (4) or (5) either.  Hegel is right: both religion and philosophy treat of the Absolute.  Hegel is wrong, however, in thinking that religion is somehow completed by or culminates in philosophy.  I incline to the view that Athens and Jersualem are at odds with each other, that there is a tension between them, indeed a fruitful, productive tension, one that accounts in part for the vitality of the West as over against the inanition of the Islamic world.  To put it starkly, it it is the tension between the autonomy of reason and the heteronomy of obedient faith (cf. Leo Strauss).  Jerusalem is not a suburb of Athens.

Nor do I aim to substitute philosophy for religion.  Philosophy, with its "bloodless ballet of categories," is not my religion.  Man does not live by the discursive intellect alone.

My view is that there are four main paths to the Absolute, philosophy, religion, mysticism, and morality.  They are separate and somehow all must be trod.  No one of them has proprietary rights in the Absolute.  How integrate them?  Integration may not be possible here below.  The best we can do is tack back and forth among them.  So we think, we pray, we meditate and we live under the aegis of moral demands taken as absolute.

This theme is developed in Philosophy, Religion, Mysticism, and Wisdom. 

B. Have I left any types of motive out?   

The Art of Life: Among ‘Regular Guys’

Among regular guys it is best to play the regular guy — as tiring and boring as that can be. Need relief? Strictly limit your time among regular guys. But mix with them a little lest you be hated for being 'aloof,' or 'unfriendly.'

As long as one is in the world, one must be able to pass as being of the world.

Almost all socializing is levelling and dispiriting.  It drains one's spiritual sap. But a little socializing is good, like a little whisky. In both cases, however, more is not better.

In this fallen world, society is the enemy of solitude, and solitude is to be preferred if the good of the soul is a goal.

But I can imagine a form of sociality superior to solitude. This would be a society of spirits who had passed through the school of solitude and had achieved self-individuation.  But such a society is not to be had here below, if anywhere.

A qualification is needed. There are rare occasions in rare friendships in which one gets a glimpse of what that sodality of spirit would be like.

I'll end on a mundane note.  In my experience, a little socializing is often physically stimulating.  On an early morning ramble, I am doing alright.  I encounter an acquaintance. We chat for a few minutes. When I start up again I feel energized. There's a spring in my step and  glide to my stride. I exult, "I feel better than any old man should be allowed to feel."

RELATED:  Introverts and Inwardness

Time it took to compose this entry: 35 minutes from 4:00 to 4:35.

Today’s Facebook Shorts

The comment threads are healthy but you have to go the Land of Zuck to read them.
 
HOW MANY WHITE SUPREMACISTS DO YOU KNOW?
 
I don't know any. A white supremacist is someone who denies that whites and non-whites are equal in respect of rights (life, liberty, property, etc.) and are therefore legitimately enslaved or otherwise made subservient to whites for the benefit of whites. If you have a different definition of 'white supremacist,' please tell me what it is and how many of them you know.
 
CASHLESSNESS AND SOFT TOTALITARIANISM
 
Some restaurants no longer accept cash payments. Reason? Health concerns. A route to soft totalitarianism. Exaggerate some health threat. Inspire fear in a gullible populace of highly suggestible conformists. Ban cash in the name of public health. Result? Everyone making payments leaves a paper trail. People can be monitored as to where they go, where they shop, what they eat and drink., what they read. Too many visits to Joe's Real BBQ for paleolithic vittles and your social credit score goes down. You get the picture . Alarmist?
 
BV Comment 1:  Cede control of health care delivery to the gov't and they can tell you how to live, what to eat, drink, ride. Ride a motorcycle? Dangerous activity! Gov't has a reason to ban them if they are picking up the tab for health care.
 
BV Comment 2: Are we a gullible populace of highly suggestible conformists? Well, look at all the people walking around in the open air wearing masks. Or people driving alone in their cars wearing masks. Etc. Where is the independence of mind? Are we Americans or obedient Germans?
 
JOEY B.: OUT OF TOUCH AND BEING USED
 
Joe Biden has been spending too much time with his record player if he thinks that Critical Race Theory is merely a plea that we be sensitive to the feelings of people of other races. I am being charitable, perhaps excessively so. I am suggesting that he is an old man out of touch with current events.
 

Rebel with a Cause

"The eighty-year-old mystery of the murder of Sheldon Robert Harte, Leon Trotsky’s most controversial bodyguard."

Jean van Heijenoort was another of the Old Man's bodyguards.  I met van Heijenoort in the mid-70s when he came to Boston College on the invitation of my quondam girlfriend, Charaine H., a student at Brandeis University where van Heijenoort taught.  I had arranged for Robert Sokolowski to come and read a paper on Husserl. Comrade Van attended the talk. By then, however, the political enthusiasms of his youth were a thing of the distant past.  He had given up politics for logic and love. My entry tells the tale of his murder by a crazed lover in Mexico City where Lev Davidovich Bronstein  met his grisly end.

Moral?  Stick to logic if you want to play it safe. But there is more of life (and death) in politics and love.

A comment from Joseph:

I regularly read your blog, but I never comment because I do not know how. Anyway, I wanted to send a note about the Monsignor — what an incredible man. He is one of my personal models for how an academic should be. He is not only brilliant but also patient with students not so gifted (99.99% of them) — and he has quite a knack for teaching to several levels simultaneously. He is also funny (and not just for a priest). I'm glad that you have had the chance to meet him.

Harte Sheldon R.