Author: Bill Vallicella

Hypocrisy, the Seven Deadly Sins, and the Left

If, per impossibile, there were such a catalog as the Seven Deadly Sins as seen from the Left, hypocrisy would be in first place. Why?  Although some who identify themselves as liberals or leftists can be counted among the religious, the dominant note of the Left from at least 1789 on has been anti-religious.  Couple this with the fact that perhaps the most egregious forms of hypocrisy are found among religionists, especially the televangelical species thereof, and you have the beginning of an explanation why liberals and leftists find hypocrisy so morally abhorrent.  That men of the cloth and their followers exhibit the worst forms of hypocrisy is captured in standard dictionary definitions of 'hypocrisy.'  My Webster's shows, "a feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not; esp.: the false assumption of an appearance of virtue or religion."  One reads something similar in the OED. 

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“He Sank Beneath Your Wisdom Like a Stone”

Leonard Cohen, Suzanne.

And Jesus was a sailor
When he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching
From his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain
Only drowning men could see him
He said "All men will be sailors then
Until the sea shall free them"
But he himself was broken
Long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human
He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone
And you want to travel with him
And you want to travel blind
And you think maybe you'll trust him
For he's touched your perfect body with his mind.

Advice for the Disputatious

Louis Lavelle, The Dilemma of Narcissus, tr. W. T. Gairdner (New York: Humanities Press, 1973), p. 156:

We must refrain from every dispute in which the victory counts for more than what one wins by it. If the defeat of our enemy is also the defeat of the truth, it is our defeat too. It follows that battles over ideas are more to be feared than any other, for they stimulate men's amour-propre [self-love, high opinion of oneself] in the very domain where it is our especial duty to subdue it. Every dispute darkens the inner light: the wise man perceives this light precisely because he preserves his soul in peace. And if he is wrong, he finds more happiness in giving way than he would have found in a triumph; for in the latter case he merely keeps what he already had, in the former he gains something new.

This passage approaches perfection in both content and style. To comment on it would be to sully it — or invite disputation.

Life’s Fugacity

Here the point is very cleverly made:

I turned 52 yesterday. The first decade of my life took 20 years. The second decade took 15 years. The third decade took a decade. The fourth decade took five years. The past dozen years took 12 minutes. At this rate, I'll be dead in less than half an hour.

As we age, the passage of time seems to accelerate.  This is a mere seeming since, if time passes at all, which itself may be a mere seeming, time presumably passes at a constant rate.  When we are young, the evanescence of our lives does not strike us.  But to us midstreamers the fluxious fugacity of this life is all too apparent.

Why does time's tempo seem to speed up as the years roll on?  Part of the explanation must be that there is less change and more stasis from decade to decade.  Dramatic changes in body and mind and environment occur in the first two decades of life.  You go from being a helpless infant to a cocky youth.  Your horizon expands from the family circle to the wide world.  In the third decade, biological growth over with,  one typically finishes one's education and gets settled in a career.  But there are still plenty of changes.  From age 20 to 30, I lived in about 15 different places In California, Massachusetts, Ohio, Austria, and Germany, studied at half a dozen universities, and worked as a guitar player, logger, tree planter, furniture mover, factory worker, mailman, taxi driver, exterminator, grave digger, and philosophy professor.  But from 30 to 40, I lived in only five different places with exactly one job, and from 40 to 50 in three places,  and from ages 49 to 59 I have had exactly one permanent address.  And it won't be long, subjectively speaking, before I have exactly one address that is permanent in the absolute as opposed to the relative sense.

Tempus?  Fugit!

Is Religion the Problem? Why Isn’t Belief As Such the Problem? The Special Pleading of Some Atheists

One of the arguments against religion in the contemporary atheist arsenal is the argument that religious beliefs fuel war and terrorism. Rather than pull quotations from such well-known authors as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, I will quote a couple of passages from one of the contributors to Philosophers Without Gods, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong. His piece is entitled "Overcoming Christianity." After describing his movement from his evangelical Christian upbringing to a quietistic rejection of Christianity, Sinnott-Armstrong tells us how he became an evangelical atheist:

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Tax Advice for Philosophers

Philosophers should be sure to avail themselves of the Transcendental Deduction this year as it has been increased.  But to take it they will need the Platonic Form.  Be advised that attempts to copy the Platonic Form have been known to cause the glitch commonly referred to as the Third (Tax) Man.

On Comments

There are different blogging styles.  Some of my friends in the blogosphere allow all manner of trash to be dumped into their Comment Boxes sight unseen.  At the other end of the spectrum, one of my oldest blogging acquaintances, Keith Burgess-Jackson, allows only prescreened comments to appear.  My approach is a bit less draconian but still rather choosy.  At present my configuration is 'wide open' but I delete the substandard and block the offender.  Why should I tolerate rubbish?  If a man's home is his castle, his blog is his cybercastle.  And just as I don't allow any riff raff through my physical door, I don't allow any through my cyberdoor.

Your first comment is your letter of introduction.  On the basis of that I decide whether you are worth interacting with.  I am not interested in increasing my traffic as I get enough.  And I don't want a lot of comments.  I want a few good comments from people who are sincere and intelligent and basically agree with me on fundamentals.  Fruitful discussion and fruitful disagreement is possible only on the basis of broad agreement.  All the rest is polemics — and philosophy is not polemics.

Let's say you are a PoMo idiot who denies the existence of truth.  What then could be the point of any discussion?  To get closer to (nonexistent) truth?  You say it's all power at bottom?  Then I will exercise my blocking power with respect to you and your idiocy.  Or perhaps you are a stupid leftist who thinks that 'religion is the problem' while making an exception for radical Islam.  Then you are not only stupid but contemptible and cowardly to boot. Discussion is not what you need; you need therapy.  Or perhaps you are an eliminativist in the philosophy of mind: you deny the existence of beliefs and desires.  Then I believe you are beneath refutation and I desire that you go away.  Or maybe you a sophistical qualia-denier like Daniel Dennett.  Pinch yourself and then report back.  Or adopt the 'intentional stance' with respect to yourself and self-ascribe some intelligent thoughts.

Can Mere Thoughts Be Morally Wrong?

We begin by provisionally distinguishing  among thoughts, words, and deeds.  I will assume that most deeds and some words are justifiably morally evaluable, justifiably evaluable as either morally right or morally wrong.  The question I want to raise is whether mere thoughts (thoughts that do not actually spill over into words or actions, though they possess the potential to do so) are justifiably morally evaluable.  In a comment, I wrote:

With respect to MT 5.27-28, a married man who has a sexual outlet, but who yet entertains (with hospitality) the thought of having sex with another woman is lustful in a morally objectionable way even though he does not act on his desire and is no lecher.

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Kant’s Paean to Sincerity

As a prelude to forthcoming posts on hypocrisy  as seen by Kant and Hegel, here is a Kantian hymn of praise to sincerity.  From Immanuel Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone (trs. Greene & Hudson), p. 178, n. 2:

 O sincerity! Thou Astraea, that hast fled from earth to heaven, how mayst thou (the basis of conscience, and hence of all inner religion) be drawn down thence to us again? I can admit, though it is much to be deplored, that candor (in speaking the whole truth which one knows) is not to be found in human nature. But we must be able to demand sincerity (that all that one says be said with truthfulness), and indeed if there were in our nature no predisposition to sincerity, whose cultivation merely is neglected, the human race must needs be, in its own eyes, an object of the deepest contempt. Yet this sought for quality of mind is such that it is exposed to many temptations and entails many a sacrifice, and hence calls for moral strength, or virtue (which must be won); moreover it must be guarded and cultivated earlier than any other, because the opposed propensity is the hardest to extirpate if it has been allowed firmly to root itself. And if now we compare with the kind of instruction here recommended our usual mode of upbringing, especially in the matter of religion, or better, in doctrines of faith, where fidelity of memory in answering questions relating to these doctrines, without regard to the fidelity of the confession itself (which is never put to the test) is accepted as sufficient to make a believer of him who does not even understand what he declares to be holy, no longer shall we wonder at the lack of sincerity which produces nothing but inward hypocrites.

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Defining Lust

Before we can ask whether there is anything morally wrong with lust we have to know what we are talking about. What is lust? Here is a start:

The inordinate craving for, or indulgence in, the carnal pleasure which is experienced in the human organs of generation.

But this won't do as it stands since it mixes desire and satisfaction in the same definition. It also fails to distinguish between lust as an occurrent state and lust as a disposition or propensity. Suppose we distinguish:

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The Punctum Pruriens of Metaphysics

Man is a metaphysical animal. He does not live by bread alone, nor by bed alone, and he does not scratch only where it physically itches. He also scratches where he feels the metaphysical itch, the tormenting lust to know the ultimate why and wherefore. And where is that punctum pruriens located? What is it that arouses his intellectual eros?

. . . das Böse, das Uebel und der Tod sind es, welche das philosophische Erstaunen qualificiren und erhöhen: nicht bloß, daß die Welt vorhanden, sondern noch mehr, daß sie eine so trübsälige sei, ist das punctum pruriens der Metaphysik, das Problem, welches die Menschheit in eine Unruhe versetzt, die sich weder durch Skepticismus noch durch Kriticismus beschwichtigen läßt.

. . . it is wickedness, evil, and death that qualify and intensify philosophical astonishment. Not merely that the world exists, but still more that it is such a miserable and melancholy world, is the punctum pruriens of metaphysics, the problem awakening in mankind an unrest that cannot be quieted either by scepticism or criticism. (Schopenhauer, WWR II, 172, tr. Payne)

A Fool Such as I

This one goes out to Diane L. in recollection of our date on this day 31 years ago in Cambridge, Mass. "Now and then there's a fool such as I." Part of the folly, no doubt, is in keeping alive these memories of past inamorata. Here is Bob Dylan's quirky but satisfying version from the Basement Tapes circa 1970.

Fool, Philosopher, Sage

The fool is never satisfied with what he has, but is quite satisfied with what he is. The philosopher is never satisfied with what he is, but is satisfied with what he has. The sage is satisfied with both. Unfortunately, there are no sages, few philosophers, and a world full of fools.

Dissembling in the Barber’s Chair

My barber today asked me if I had done any travelling  since last I saw him.  I lied and said that I hadn't, when in fact I had been to Geneva, Switzerland.  If I had told the truth, then that truth would have led to another and yet another.  "And what did you do in Geneva?"  "I was invited to a conference on Bradley's Regress."  And thus would I have had to blow my cover as regular guy among regular guys in that quintessential enclave of the regular guy, the old-time barber shop.  I might have come across as self-important or as a braggart.  I might have come across as I come across to some on this weblog.

Lies often lead to more lies, but truth-telling can get you in deep too. Life in this world of surfaces and seemings often goes down easier with a dollop of mendacity.  In a world phenomenal and phony a certain amount of phoniness is forgivable.  But how much?