Author: Bill Vallicella

Carl Schmitt on Compassion

Glossarium: Aufzeichnungen der Jahre 1947-1951, p. 284, entry of 20 December 1949:

Mitleid beruht auf Identifikation; daraus machen die Mystiker des Mitleids, Rousseau und Schopenhauer, eine magische Identität. Aber das Mitleid, dessen man sich bewußt ist, kann nur Selbstmitleid sein und ist deshalb nur Selbstbetrug.

Compassion rests upon identification; the mystics of compassion make of it a magical identity. The compassion of which one is conscious, however, can only be self-compassion and is therefore only self-deception. (tr BV)

The old Nazi's cynical thought is that one deceives oneself when one thinks one is feeling compassion for another. What one is feeling, in truth, is compassion for oneself.

The Enmity Potential of Thought

Carl Schmitt, Glossarium: Aufzeichnungen der Jahre 1947-1951, hrsg. v. Medem (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1991), S. 213 (14. I. 49):

Das Feindschaftpotential des Denkens ist unendlich. Denn man kann nicht anders als in Gegensätzen denken. Le combat spirituel est plus brutal que la bataille des hommes.

The enmity potential of thought is infinite. For one cannot think otherwise than in oppositions. Spiritual combat is more brutal than a battle of men. (tr. BV)

There is something to this, of course. Philosophy in particular sometimes bears the aspect of a blood sport. But thinking is just as much about the reconciliation of oppositions as it is about their sharpening. A good thinker is rigorous, precise, clear, disciplined. These are virtues martial and manly. But there are also the womanly virtues, in particular, those of the midwife. Socratic maieutic is as important as ramming a precisely formulated thesis down someone's throat or impaling him on the horns of a dilemma. The Cusanean coincidentia oppositorum belongs as much to thought as the oppositio oppositorum.

There is more to philosophy than "A thing is what it is and not some other thing." There is also, "The way up and the way down are the same."

But it is no surprise to find the unrepentant Nazi onesided on the question. We shall have to enter more deeply into the strange world of Carl Schmitt.

He Was a Friend of Mine

John F. Kennedy was assassinated 45 years ago today.  Here is The Byrds' tribute to the slain leader. They took a traditional song and redid the lyrics.  The young Bob Dylan here offers an outstanding interpretation of the old song.

I was in the eighth grade when Kennedy was gunned down. We were assembled in an auditorium for some reason when the principal came in and announced that the president had been shot. The date was November 22, 1963. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was seated behind my quondam inamorata, Christine W. My love for her was from afar, like that of Don Quixote for the fair Dulcinea, but at the moment I was in close physical proximity to her, studying the back of her blouse through which I could make out the strap of her training bra . . . .

By the way, if you want to read a thorough (1,612 pages with notes on a separate CD!) takedown of all the JFK conspiracy speculation, I recommend Vincent Bugliosi, Reclaiming History: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy.

It was a tale of two nonentities, Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby. Both were little men who wanted to be big men. Oswald, acting alone, shot Kennedy. Ruby, acting alone, shot Oswald. That is the long and the short of it. For details, I refer you to Bugliosi.

An Ambiguous Translation from Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837)

Nessun maggior segno d'essere poco filosofo e poco savio, che volere savia e filosofica tutta la vita.

There's no greater sign of being a poor philosopher and wise man than wanting all of life to be wise and philosophical. (Giacomo Leopardi, Pensieri, tr. W. S. Di Piero, Baton Rouge: Lousiana State University Press, 1981, p. 69)

Do you see how the translation imports an ambiguity that is not present in the Italian original? 'Poor philosopher and wise man' could mean either (poor philosopher) and wise man or poor philosopher and poor wise man.  There is no such ambiguity in the original since poco qualifies both filosofo and savio.

I will be told that the aphorism as a whole makes clear the intended meaning.  Indeed, it does, but I have just wasted time on disambiguation.  Why not write it right the first time so that the reader needn't puzzle over the meaning?  It is relevant to point out that a philosopher is not the same as a wise man. A philosopher is a lover, not a possessor, of wisdom. 

"You, sir, are a pedant."  And proud of it.  We could use more scrupulosity in all areas of life.

What is Language? Tool, Enabler, Dominatrix?

I have spoken before, romantically no doubt, of the mother tongue as our alma mater, our dear mother to whom we owe honor. Matrix of our thoughts, she is deeper and higher than our thoughts, their sacred Enabler.

So I was pleased to come across a similar, albeit more trenchant, observation in Karl Kraus' Beim Wort Genommen, pp. 134-135:

Ich beherrsche die Sprache nicht; aber die Sprache beherrscht mich vollkommen. Sie ist mir nicht die Dienerin meiner Gedanken. Ich lebe in einer Verbindung mit ihr, aus der ich Gedanken empfange, und sie kann mit mir machen, was sie will. Ich pariere ihr aufs Wort. Denn aus dem Wort springt mir der junge Gedanke entgegen und formt rueckwirkend die Sprache, die ihn schuf. Solche Gnade der Gedankentraechtigkeit zwingt auf die Knie und macht allen Aufwand zitternder Sorgfalt zur Pflicht. Die Sprache ist eine Herrin der Gedanken, und wer das Verhaeltnis umzukehren vermag, dem macht sie sich im Hause nuetzlich, aber sie sperrt ihm der Schoss.

I do not dominate language; she dominates me completely. She is not the servant of my thoughts. I live in a relation with her from which I receive thoughts, and she can do with me what she will. I follow her orders. For from the word the fresh thought springs, forming retroactively the language that created it. The grace of language, pregnant with thought, forces me to my knees and makes a duty of my expenditure of trembling conscientiousness. Language is a mistress of thought. To anyone who would reverse the relationship, she makes herself useful but denies access to her womb.

I might have translated Herrin as dominatrix if I wanted to accentuate the masochistic tone of the passage. 'Mistress' is obviously to be read as the female counterpart of 'master.'

Karl Kraus on the Two Kinds of Writers

Karl Kraus (1874-1936), Beim Wort Genommen (Muenchen: Koesel Verlag, 1955), p. 111:

Es gibt zwei Arten von Schriftstellern. Solche, die es sind, und solche die es nicht sind. Bei den ersten gehören Inhalt und Form zusammen wie Seele und Leib, bei den zweiten passen Inhalt und Form zusammen wie Leib und Kleid.

There are two kinds of writers, those who are and those who aren't. With the first, content and form belong together like soul and body; with the second, content and form fit together like body and clothing. (tr. BV)

Having It Both Ways

Karl Kraus, Beim Wort Genommen, p. 194:

Wenn einer sich wie ein Vieh benommen hat, sagt er: Man ist doch nur ein Mensch! Wenn er aber wie ein Vieh behandelt wird, sagt er: Man ist doch auch ein Mensch!

A person who has behaved in a beastly manner excuses himself by saying, "I am only human!" But when he is treated in a beastly manner, he protests, "I too am a human being!" (trans. BV)

In Sartrean terms, we invoke either our facticity or our transcendence depending on which serves us better at the moment. Well, our nature is metaphysically dual; we may as well get some use out of that fact.

Infinite Regresses: Vicious, Benign, Virtuous?

I haven't yet said anything particularly illuminating about the criteria of viciousness, the criteria that would allow us to sort infinite regresses into the vicious and the non-vicious. I should address the problem of criteria.  But in this installment I want to suggest that we may need to make a tripartite distinction among vicious, benign, and virtuous regresses.  If a regress is not vicious, then it is non-vicious. But it may be that non-vicious regresses come in two kinds, the benign and the virtuous.  Here is a crude analogy.  Fearing cancer, I have a certain growth checked out by a medico.  It is determined that the growth is not malignant, but benign. But no one will say that the growth serves a useful purpose.  If something is harmless, it does not follow that it is helpful.  And if something is not vitiating, it does not follow that it is 'empowering.'

Thus I am suggesting that we not refer to non-vicious regresses as virtuous, as some writers do.  For if a regress is merely benign or harmless or innocuous, it does not follow that it is explanatorily useful or helpful.  And it may be that there are some infinite regresses that serve an explanatory purpose.  These would deserve to be called virtuous.  But we need some examples.

I don't endorse the following example, but it is worth thinking about.  Suppose we want to explain why the universe exists, and we want to do so without recourse to anything transcendent of the universe: we seek a satisfactory immanent explanation.  Suppose further, contrary to current cosmology, that the universe always existed.  Let's also assume that to explain the parts of a whole is to explain the whole.  To adapt an example of Paul Edwards, suppose the Three Stooges are hanging out at the corner of Hollywood and Vine on a certain afternoon.  To explain why the boys are there at that time it suffices to explain why Larry is there, why Moe is there, and why Curly Joe is there.  Having explained why each is there, one has explained why the trio is there.  It would be senseless to demand an explanation of why the trio is there after one has been given satisfactory explanations of why each member of the trio is there.  The trio is not something over and above its members.

Applying this Hume-Edwards principle — the principle that to explain the parts of a whole is to explain the whole — to the universe, one could say that to explain why the universe exists it suffices to explain why each phase of the universe exists, so that, if each phase of the universe has an explanation, then eo ipso the universe has an explanation.  Now if the universe is temporally infinite in the past direction, and each phase of the universe is caused by an earlier phase, then every phase of the universe has a causal explanation in terms of an earlier phase.  Since no phase, no temporal part, of the universe lacks an explanation, and since the universe as process just is the whole of these temporal parts, and since to explain the parts of a whole is to explain the parts, it seems to follow that the universe is self-explanatory, that its existence can be accounted for in wholly immanent terms. It looks as if a beginningless universe could be causa sui. Let us assume arguendo that this very bad argument I have just inflicted on you is not bad.

In this argument it appears that the infinite regress of causes does positive explanatory work.  For if there were a temporally first event, or a temporally first phase of the universe, then one could demand an explanation of it, and this demand could not be immanently satisfied.  But if every event or phase has an explanation in terms of an earlier event or phase, then this demand cannot be made.  What we have then is a putative example of an actually infinite regress that is not merely harmless, but positively helpful unto explanation.

Hence my suggestion:  we ought to make a three-fold distinction among vicious, benign (harmless), and virtuous (helpful) infinite regresses.  And thus we ought not conflate benign regresses with virtuous regresses.  Virtuous regresses are a proper subset of benign regresses (since every explanatorily hepful regress is explanatorily harmless), which implies that there are benign regresses that are not virtuous.

Now the example I gave of a virtuous infinite regress is not a very convincing one, or at least it is not convincing to me.  Are there better examples of virtuous infinite regresses, infinite regresses that do positive explanatory work?

What say you, Jan?  Francesco?

World Philosophy Day

Seldom Seen Slim apprised me of the fact that today is World Philosophy Day.  BBC story here.  I got a kick out of this:

As Princeton philosopher David Lewis once said: "When philosophers follow where argument leads, too often they are led to doctrines indistinguishable from sheer lunacy."

This from a philosopher whose mad dog modal realism is itself hard by the boundary of lunacy.  Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!

 

 

Vicious and Benign Regresses Again

What is the difference between a vicious and a benign infinite regress?  We ought to look at a number of examples.  Here is one.  An entailment of a proposition p is any proposition that is a logical consequence of p.  Now consider

1. Every proposition has entailments.

2. To know a proposition one must know its entailments.

(1) gives rise to infinite series.  The entailments of a proposition are themselves propositions, so that if every proposition has entailments, then for every proposition there is an infinite series of propositions.  For example, p entails ~~P, which entails ~~~~P, and so on ad infinitum. There is nothing problematic here.

(2), however, engenders a vicious infinite regress.  For if to know a given proposition I must know its entailments, then to know a given proposition I must know infinitely many propositions.  But I cannot know infinitely many propositions.  So (2) implies that I cannot know any proposition. 

What makes the regress vicious in the second case?  What does viciousness consist in? It has to do with (2)'s being explanatory.  (2) proposes a philosophical explanation: one knows a proposition by knowing its entailments.  (2) proposes a theory as to what knowing a proposition consists in.  But the explanation is faulty.  Suppose p entails q which entails r which entails s, and so on.  The theory proposes that in order to know p, I must know q. But to know q I must know r, and so on.  This implies the impossibility of my knowing p.  Viciousness, then, is the property of being explanatorily unsuccessful.

Perhaps we can hazard the following general formulation. A vicious infinite regress is an infinite regress that arises in the context of an attempted philosophical explanation when the explanation given permits the question that was to be answered to arise at successively higher levels ad infinitum.  In the above example, to know that p one must know p's entailments, but to know them, one must know their entailments, and so on endlessly.

Now consider this pair:

3. Every event has a cause.

4. To explain an event one must explain its causes.

(3) engenders an infinite series: if every event has a cause, and causes are events, then there is an infinite regress of events. But the regress is benign.  (4), however, is the answer to a philosophical question about the nature of explanation: What is it to explain an event?  (4) proposes a philosophical explanation of explanation, namely, that to explain an event one must explain its causes.  But this theory leads to a vicious infinite regress.  Suppose z has y as a cause.  The theory implies that to explain z one must explain y.  But y is an event, so to explain it one must explain its cause x, and so on infinitely.  The regress is vicious because it sets an impossible standard of explanation: if to explain an event one must explain every event in its causal ancestry, then no event can be explained. So (4) is false.

 

Infinite Regresses: Vicious and Benign

The peripatetic (not Peripatetic) Kevin Kim once asked me:

Are all infinite regresses (regressions?) vicious? Why the pejorative label? Of the many things I don’t understand, this must be near the top of my list, and it’s an ignorance that dates back to my undergrad Intro to Philosophy days. When I first read the Thomistic cosmological proofs, I found myself wondering why Aquinas had such trouble countenancing the possibility that, as the lady says, “it’s turtles all the way down.”

Without a first, there can’t be a second… so what? It doesn’t follow that there must be a first element to a series. What makes a temporally infinite series (of moments, causes/effects, etc.) impossible?

Here is the answer I gave him, considerably expanded and updated:

1. No, not all infinite regresses are vicious. Some are, if not ‘virtuous,’ at least benign. The term ‘benign’ is standardly used. The truth regress is an example of a benign infinite regress. Let p be any proposition. And let ‘T’ stand for the operator ‘It is true that ( ).’ Clearly, p entails T(p). The operation is iterable. So T(p) entails T(T(p)). And so on, ad infinitum or ad indefinitum if you prefer. The resulting infinite series is wholly unproblematic. Whether you call this a progression or a regression, it doesn’t cause any conceptual trouble.

Continue reading “Infinite Regresses: Vicious and Benign”