Author: Bill Vallicella

Theodor Haecker on Literary Style and a Comparison with Karl Kraus

Theodor Haecker, Tag- und Nachtbücher, 1939-1945, hrsg. Hinrich Siefken, Innsbruck: Haymon-Verlag, 1989, S. 212:

Der persönliche und gute Stil eines Schriftstellers ist die — oft durch große Kunst erreichte — natürliche Einheit zweier Naturen — der Natur des Schriftstellers und der Natur der jeweiligen Sprache, in der er schreibt, denn diese beiden Naturen sind nicht identisch, und die Einheit ist meist nur durch gegenseitige Kompromisse zu erreichen. Es kann einer einen reizvollen persönlichen Stil schreiben, der nur sprachlich gesehen, schlecht ist, weil er die Natur der Sprache im allgemeinen und im besonderen vergewaltigt, und ein braver Schüler kann einen guten Stil schreiben, ohne etwas Persönliches zu verrraten. Der große Schriftsteller ist aber der, in dessen Stil beide Naturen eins geworden sind, die wieder auseinanderzulegen keinem mehr möglich ist.

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Some Aphorisms of Otto Weininger

Otto Weininger, Ueber die Letzten Dinge (Wien und Leipzig: Wilhelm Braumueller Verlag, Neunte Auflage, 1930), pp. 65-72. Translations by BV.

Grundzug alles Menschlichen: Suchen nach Realitaet. Wo die Realitaet gesucht and gefunden wird, das begruendet alle Unterschiede zwischen den Menschen.

The quest for reality is a fundamental characteristic of human beings. Where reality is sought and found, however, explains all differences among them.

Der gute Aphoristiker muss hassen koennen.

The good aphorist must be able to hate.

Der Transzendentalismus ist identisch mit dem Gedanken, dass es nur eine Seele gibt, und dass die Individuation Schein ist. Hier widerspricht der Monadologische Charakter der kanstischen Ethik schnurgerade der "Kritik der reinen Vernunft."

Transcendentalism is identical with the thought that there is only one soul, and that a plurality of souls is an illusion. Here the monadological character of Kant's ethics straightaway contradicts the Critique of Pure Reason.

A fruitful thought, though roughly expressed. But what do you want for an aphorism? The idea is that there is a tension between the Critique of Practical Reason, which presupposes the thinkability, if not the knowability, of a plurality of metaphysically (and thus transcendently) real noumenal selves capable of acting freely, and the Critique of Pure Reason in which the subject of experience and phenomenal knowledge is a mere transcendental (not transcendent) subject, a consciousness in general (Bewusstsein ueberhaupt to use a phrase later made famous by neo-Kantians) that is neither mine nor yours but common to us all. It is a crude approximation, however, to refer to this transcendental subject as a soul, as Weininger does. This aphorism would have made a good motto for my doctoral dissertation, which deals with similar problems.

Advice for Those in Despair

Theodor Haecker, Tag- und Nachtbuecher 1939-1945 (Haymon Verlag, 1989), p. 115, entry of 4 October 1940:

Ich habe einmal einem Verzweifelnden den Rat gegeben, zu tun, was ich selber in aehnlichen Zustaenden getan habe, in kurzen Fristen zu leben. Komm, sagte ich mir damals, eine Viertelstunde wirst du es ja noch aushalten koennen!

I once advised a person in despair to do what I myself have done in similar circumstances, namely, to live in short periods. I told myself at the time: surely you can hold out for another quarter of an hour! (tr. BV)

Long before I read this Haecker passage, I had a similar thought which I expressed in the following aphorism:

Can you get through the next hour? The present can always be borne – if sliced thinly enough – and it is only the present that must be borne.

Günther Anders

I'm rereading portions of Günther Anders' posthumous Über Heidegger. Like Adorno's it is a critique from the Left. Here is a worthwhile webpage on Anders put together by Herbert Marcuse's grandson, Harold Marcuse.

Anders was Hannah Arendt's first husband, but apparently his pessimism was too much for her. They were married from 1929-1937. Anders was born with the surname Stern. "When a Berlin editor with too many writers named Stern on his staff suggested he name himself 'something different,' he responded 'then call me 'different' (anders)."

If any American philosophers are aware of Anders, it is probably due to his article, "On the Pseudo-Concreteness of Heidegger's Philosophy" in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 3, 1948.

Political Action and the Principle of Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien

Attributed to Voltaire. "The best is the enemy of the good."

Meditation on this truth may help conservatives contain their revulsion at their lousy choices. Obama, who has proven that he is a disaster for the country, got in in part because of conservatives who could not abide McCain.

Politics is a practical business. It is always about the lesser of evils, except when it is about the least of evils. It is not about being ideologically pure. It is about accomplishing something in a concrete situation in which holding out for the best is tantamount to acquiescing in the bad. Political choices are forced options in roughly William James' sense: he who abstains chooses willy-nilly. His not choosing the better amounts to a choice of the worse.

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Eric Hoffer on the ‘Root Causes’ of Crime

Eric Hoffer as quoted in James D. Koerner, Hoffer's America (Open Court, 1973), p. 57:

Poverty causes crime! That is what they are always shoving down our throats, the misbegotten bastards! What crap! Poverty does not cause crime. If it did we would have been buried in crime for most of our history . . . .

Why is common sense like this incomprehensible to liberals? Poverty no more causes crime than wealth causes virtue.

Eric Hoffer on Contentment

Eric Hoffer as quoted in James D. Koerner, Hoffer's America (Open Court, 1973), p. 25:

I need little to be contented. Two meals a day, tobacco, books that hold my interest, and a little writing each day. This to me is a full life.

And this after a full day at the San Francisco waterfront unloading ships.  And we're talking cheap tobacco smoked after a meal of Lipton soup and Vienna sausage in a humble apartment in a marginal part of town.  Hoffer, who had it tough indeed, had the wisdom to be satisfied with what he had.  Call it the paradox of plenty: those who had to struggle in the face of adversity developed character and worth, while those with opportunities galore and an easy path became slackers and malcontents and 'revolutionaries.'   Adding to the paradox is that those who battled adversity learned gratitude while those who had it handed to them became ingrates.

Good Old Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer, The True Believer, p. 161: "In the eyes of the true believer, people who have no holy cause are without backbone and character — a pushover for men of faith."

The True Believer was published in 1951. I read chunks of it in the '60s and returned to it in December of 2003. Hoffer had Osama bin Laden and his fatal mistake pegged fifty years before the events of 9/11/01. The prescience of this autodidactic stevedore is truly remarkable. Has there ever been a more independent independent scholar?

Proof that I am a Native American

A while back, a front page story in the  local rag of record, The Arizona Republic, implied  that one is either a native American, a Black, or an Anglo. Now with my kind of surname, I am certainly no Anglo. And even though I am a 'person of color,' my color inclining toward a sort of tanned ruddiness, I am undoubtedly not Black either.

It follows that I am a native American. This conclusion is independently supported by the following argument:

1. I am a native Californian
2. California is in America
3. If x is native to locality L, and L is within the boundaries of M, then x is a native M-er.
Therefore
I am a native American.

Note that (2) is true whether 'America' is taken to refer to the USA or to the continent of North America.

When Does A Human Life Begin?

This from a reader:

I enjoy reading Maverick Philosopher even though I seldom agree with the conservative viewpoint.  The thing that I find most interesting about your articles on abortion is that they really do not address what I consider to be the central issue and that is when does human life begin.  Zygote, blastomere, embryo, fetus?  I would be interested in your ideas. 

Well, I did address this question on the old blog.  But in philosophy one is never done revising and re-thinking, so let me take another stab at this.

1. Note first that your question — When does human life begin? — is not exact.  Presumably, what you are asking is: When does a human life begin?  Our concern is with the origin of particular human lives, not human life in general.  Even so, the question remains unclear.  Here are two possible disambiguations of 'When does a human life begin?' given that the context is the morality of abortion:

Q1. When does a life become human in a sense of 'human' that justifies ascription of the right to life?

Q2.  When does a life become human in the biological sense of 'human'?

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Middle-Sized Happiness

Life can be good. Middle-sized happiness is within reach and some of us reach it. It doesn't require much: a modicum of health and wealth; work one finds meaningful however it may strike others; the independence of mind not to care what others think; the depth of mind to appreciate that there is an inner citadel into which one can retreat at will for rest and recuperation when the rude impacts of the world become too obtrusive; a relatively stable economic and political order that allows the tasting of the fruits of such virtues as hard work and frugality; a political order secure enough to allow for a generous exercise of liberty and a rich development of individuality; a rationally-based hope that the present, though fleeting, will find completion either here or elsewhere; a suitable spouse whose differences are complementations rather than contradictions; a good-natured friend who can hold up his end of a chess game. . . .

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Ambition and Age

Lack of ambition in the young is rightly seen as a defect. But here is an old man still driven by his old ambitions, none of which were of too lofty a nature. Is he not a fool? For his old ambitions, appropriate as they were in youth, have become absurd in old age.

His upbringing was hard and his circumstances straitened. He early resolved to better himself economically, and he succeeded. Hard work and the old-time virtues brought him wealth. But having 'arrived,' he did not know what to do with his arrival except to keep on piling up loot. Loot, however, is but a means to end, and our old man's ends are, like he himself, coming to an end.

It is time for him to abandon ambition and fly into the arms of fair Philosophia, there to meditate on such truths as: One cannot tow a U-Haul with a hearse. But death, the muse of philosophy, will catch him long before it a-muses him. The Reaper's scythe will cut him down before it moves him to thought.

Ambition and Happiness

Viewed in one way, ambition is a good thing, and its absence in people, especially in the young, we consider to be a defect. Without ambition, there can be no realization of one's potential. Happiness is connected with the latter. We are happy when we are active in pursuit of choice-worthy goals that we in some measure attain. On the other hand, there is no happiness without contentment, which requires the curtailing of ambition. There is thus a tension between two components of happiness. It is a tension between happiness as self-actualization and happiness as contentment.

To actualize oneself one must strive. One strives for what one doesn't have. Striving is predicated upon felt lack. But one who lacks what he desires is not content, not at peace, and so is unhappy in one sense of the term. One who longs for what is permanently out of reach will be permanently unhappy, always striving, never arriving. Not only will he not get what he wants, he will fail to appreciate what he has.

To be happy one must strive for, and in some measure attain, choice-worthy ends. That requires ambition. But the attaining is not enough; one must rest in and enjoy what one has attained. That requires the curtailing of ambition.