Two Excellent Substack Articles

Keith Burgess-Jackson, The Abortion Pendulum

Michael Robillard, How I Left Academia, or, How Academia Left Me

Ex-Leftist Tells All

I have mentioned Michael Rectenwald (yes, that is how he spells his name) here and here. Tom Woods today tells the story of Rectenwald's move from Marx to Mises. I thank Tony Flood for the link.

Michael Rectenwald, formerly a professor at New York University, spent his life as a leftist — a self-described Marxist, in fact.

When on Twitter he began to turn against the tactics and behavior we see routinely on the left, particularly on college campuses with their win-by-intimidation tactics, you know what happened: his leftist colleagues took it as an opportunity to examine that behavior carefully and open a dialogue with people of different views.

Just kidding.

You know that’s not what happened. That’s never what happens.

Instead, they completely isolated him on campus. Out of one hundred colleagues, perhaps two would say hello to him. People would not even get in the elevator with him.

They exiled him to the Russian department — where, he told me, people were told he was a bad person who was not to be spoken to.

But would he necessarily abandon leftism, just because of bad treatment by leftists? After all, even under the Soviet Union there were plenty of cases of communists condemned to death by the Party who nevertheless continued to believe. “The Party is always right,” they said.

Rectenwald is different.

He spent his career writing in left-wing journals about left-wing ideas. He knows everything there is to know about postmodernism, deconstruction, and all the rest of it. He knows these folks and their ideas inside and out.

And what happened to him at NYU caused him to reexamine all of it.

He’s since been reading Ludwig von Mises and describes himself as a libertarian.

“Three years ago I was writing critiques about the terminal decadence of capitalism,” he told me in one of his appearances on the Tom Woods Show, “and now I’m talking about the terminal decadence of Marxism from a libertarian perspective.”

In response to the Marxist slogan “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” Recentwald observes: “We know what that means: if you need a bullet in the head, you’ll get that.”

“Not Hung Up on the Completion Thing”

In grad school I knew people who fit the above description. I used to joke about them ending up graduate student emeriti. Desultory and undisciplined, and allowed to take incompletes in their courses, they took them in spades. And so the above line from The Big Chill (1983) stuck with me.

William Hurt has died at age 71. Here he is in a memorable scene from that memorable movie.

A Nice Thing about Philosophy

One nice thing about philosophy is that one can often argue in a pleasant and gentlemanly way because little is at stake. It is unlikely that anyone will get up in arms, literally or figuratively, over the East coast versus the West coast interpretation of the noema in the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. I don't expect any blood to be spilt over this.

The Erasure of History at the University of Leicester

Another incident in the suicide of the West. And in England of all places. The battle appears to be lost in the mother country and in the rest of the Anglosphere with the exception of the United States of America. Here is where the West will make its last stand, or else begin to turn the tide.

Is the meaning of 'last stand' such that the defenders, fighting against overwhelming odds, always lose? That is what 'last' implies. Custer's last stand was the end of Custer. He stood no more. Or does the meaning of the phrase allow for the defenders to sometimes prevail? Onkel Ludwig taught us that meaning is use. I take it to be an empirically verifiable lexical point that the phrase is used in both ways. Sometimes linguistic prescriptivists such as your humble correspondent have to acquiesce in the ways of a wayward world. Kicking against the pricks is somethimges pointless. I am tempted to dilate upon 'kicking against the pricks,' but I will resist temptation.

Jillian Becker: A Terrorism Archive Lost:

If one of the primary purposes of a university is to protect and hand on intellectual heritage, commitment to archive preservation is fundamental to that purpose. Perhaps the reason why the University of Leicester did not protect the IST archive was because it is now committed to erasing the past. An indication of this is in reports that the administration wants to “decolonize” the teaching of English literature by eliminating medieval studies (so Chaucer, inter alia, is to be removed from the curriculum), and “focus on ethnicity, sexuality and diversity,”

Ceasing to teach something does not necessarily entail the destruction of materials used for teaching it. Is it likely that a university entrusted with documents of national and international importance would deliberately discard them because they are no longer useful to its teaching? Would it choose to waste the fruits of long, hard, even dangerous effort exerted against a malign force threatening the Western world? Sadly, I suspect it would if it came to believe that the Western world was systemically at fault and needed to be transformed. But if therefore it would no longer protect documents of public importance, should it still be funded with public money?

The loss of an archive, whether by negligence or decision, is a calamity. To lose it by negligence is barbarously callous. To discard it deliberately is an act of intellectual vandalism, the equivalent of book-burning. If, in either case, a university is responsible, the disgrace must leave a permanent stain on its reputation.

Jillian Becker self portrait (early 1970s)

Other photographs of Jillian Becker

Why I Will not Support my Alma Mater: An Open Letter

2 November 2021

Cheryl Mott Smith

Executive Director

Gift Planning

Loyola Marymount University

cheryl.smith@lmu.edu

Dear Cheryl Mott Smith,

I am an LMU graduate, class of '72. I am now in a position to make substantial monetary contributions to causes I deem worthy. LMU will not be on my list. As a classical liberal, I oppose the increasingly leftward lurch of LMU since the '60s and its uncritical embrace of the destructive and culturally-Marxist diversity, equity, and inclusion agenda. I stand for free speech, open inquiry, and the pursuit of truth. This retired philosophy professor will not support the transformation of universities into leftist seminaries. I will post this letter online and encourage others to write similar letters. A copy will be sent to the LMU president.

Sincerely,

Dr. William F. Vallicella

P. S. After composing the above, this outrage came to my attention.

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I hope others will write similar letters to their alma maters. One effective and nonviolent means of opposing the depredations of the destructive culturally-Marxist race-delusional Left is by reducing their funding. You cannot reach them with reasoned discourse: they do not inhabit the plane of reason. But everyone understands money and its withholding.

Speaking out has some value, but one runs the risk of being 'cancelled,' 'doxxed,' and otherwise harassed. But no one needs to know that you are refusing contributions to 'woke-stitutions.' A cute coinage that just now occurred to me. Too cute perhaps.

Cross-posted at my Facebook page where it has snagged 24 likes, 30 comments, and one share, so far.

Not All Academic Philosophers are Leftists!

Dissident Philosophers

Voices Against the Political Current of the Academy

EDITED BY T. ALLAN HILLMAN AND TULLY BORLAND

The book consists of sixteen essays (and an introduction) from prominent philosophers who are at odds with the predominant political trend(s) of academic philosophy, political trend(s) primarily associated with leftism. Some of these philosophers identify explicitly with the political right – an admittedly broad term which ranges from American conservative to British Tory, from religious right to non-religious right, from libertarian to authoritarian. Yet other dissident philosophers eschew the left/right dichotomy altogether while maintaining a firm political distance from the majority of their (left-leaning) colleagues. The primary goal of the volume is to represent a broad constituency of political philosophies and perspectives at variance with the prevailing political sentiments of the academy. Each essay is partly autobiographical in nature, detailing personal experiences that have influenced these philosophers throughout their lives, and partly philosophical, putting forth reflections on the intellectual viability of a right-leaning (or decidedly non-left leaning) political philosophy or some segment of it. The contemporary university is supposed to be the locus of viewpoint diversity, and yet as is evident to professors, students, and virtually anyone else who sets foot within its halls, it most certainly is not – particularly in matters political. Nevertheless, these essays are not instances of special-pleading or grievance incitement. Instead, each article provides a glimpse into the life of an academic philosopher whose views have largely been at odds with peers and colleagues. Furthermore, all of the essays were consciously constructed with the aim of being philosophically rigorous while eschewing technical language and verbose prose. In short, the essays will be enjoyable to a wide audience.

………………………………

My Facebook comments:

Your humble correspondent's contribution is entitled "From Democrat to Dissident." Click on the link to see the Table of Contents and a review. I was planning on buying a number of copies for my friends. But the $120 price tag is somewhat disuassive.

I have carefully read the introductory chapter by Allan Hillman and Tully Borland. Well written, exciting, rigorous, with a delightful soupçon of snark.

The Left gets its collective and collectivist @ss royally kicked by a formidable crew of philosophers. Formidable or not, I am honored to be among them.

Facebook Latest: Princeton Drops Greek and Latin Requirement for Classics Degree

Here

I've been saying it for years: A 'LIBERAL' IS ONE WHO HAS NEVER MET A STANDARD HE DIDN'T WANT TO ERODE. I suppose it is all in pursuit of that beautiful thing they call 'equity,' that is, equality of result or outcome. Mathematics is called 'racist' because blacks as a group are not good at it compared to Asians, Jews, and whites. Could the same motive be operative in this case?

It Pays to Publish, but Don’t Pay to Publish

This came over the transom a while ago:

Dear Colleague,

British Journal of Education, Society & Behavioural Science (ISSN: 2278-0998) is an OPEN peer-reviewed INTERNATIONAL journal. We offer both Online publication as well as Hard copy options. Article Processing Charge is only 100 USD as per present offer. This journal is now publishing Volume 10.

Only 100 semolians? Get out of here, and take your crappy journal with you.

If you need to pay to publish, then you shouldn't be publishing. It is not that difficult to publish for free in good hard-copy outlets. If I can do it, so can you. Here is my PhilPapers page which lists some of my publications. My passion for philosophy outstrips my ability at it, but if you have a modicum of ability you can publish in decent places. When I quit my tenured post and went maverick, I feared that no one would touch my work. But I found that lack of an institutional affiliation did not bar me from very good journals such as Nous and Analysis.

Here are a few suggestions off the top of my head.

1. Don't submit anything that you haven't made as good as you can make it. Don't imagine that editors and referees will sense the great merit and surpassing brilliance of your inchoate ideas and help you to refine them. That is not their job. Their job is to find a justification to dump your paper among the 60-90 % that get rejected.

2. Demonstrate that you are cognizant of the extant literature on your topic.

3. Write concisely and precisely about a well-defined issue. Adhere to the format guidelines. Check for typographical, spelling, and grammatical errors.

4. Advance a well-defined thesis.

5. Don't rant or polemicize. That's what your blog is for. Referring to Brian Leiter as a corpulent apparatchik of political correctness and proprietor of a philosophy gossip site won't endear you to his sycophants one or two of whom you may be unfortunate enough to have as referees.

6. Know your audience and submit the right piece to the right journal. Don't send a lengthy essay on Simone Weil to Analysis.

7. When the paper you slaved over is rejected, take it like a man or the female equivalent thereof. Never protest editorial decisions. You probably wrote something substandard, something that, ten years from now, you will be glad was not embalmed in printer's ink. You have no right to have your paper accepted or even reviewed. You may think it's all a rigged wheel and a good old boys' network. In my experience it is not. Most of those who complain are just not very good at what they do.

Sorry if the above is a tad obvious.

Do I Miss Teaching?

I am enjoying classroom teaching quite a bit now that I no longer do it. With some things it is not the doing of it that we like so much as the having done it.

One day in class I carefully explained the abbreviation ‘iff’ often employed by philosophers and mathematicians to avoid writing ‘if and only if.’ I explained the logical differences among ‘if,’ ‘only if,’ and ‘if and only if.’ I gave examples. I brought in necessary and sufficient conditions. The whole shot. But I wasn’t all that surprised when I later read a student comment to the effect that Dr. V can’t spell ‘if.’

On another occasion I explained that 'When does life begin?' is not the right question to ask in the abortion debate. For one thing, are we talking about life on Earth? Human life on Earth? An individual human life? If the question pertains to an individual human life, then the answer is obvious: at conception. So that can't be the question. The question concerns personhood: when does an individual human life become a person? I then explained descriptive personhood, the criteria of same, normative personhood, the relation between the two and added a bit about rights and duties and their correlativity.

After I was done with these distinctions, a kid raised his hand and asked, "But isn't the question when life begins?"

I was struck once again by the pointlessness of most 'teaching,' but I didn't quit my job then and there. More time had to pass before the 'meaningfulness' of being paid was no longer meaning enough.

It may be a generational characteristic. We Boomers want every moment to be meaningful. I suppose we are spoiled in that regard.

I did have a few good students. A memorable Kant seminar was composed of ten students, eight of whom were outstanding. I would have taught that class for free.

On the Academentia Front: You Have to Read This

Bari Weiss:

If you don’t know about Brearley, it’s a private all-girls school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It costs $54,000 a year and prospective families apparently have to take an “anti-racism pledge” to be considered for admission. (In the course of my reporting for this piece I spoke to a few Brearley parents.)

Gutmann chose to pull his daughter, who has been in the school since kindergarten, and sent this missive to all 600 or so families in the school earlier this week. Among the lines:

In Praise of a Lowly Adjunct

The entry below was written on 18 May 2009 and posted the same day. I had meant to send it to Dr. Loretta Morris, Richard's widow, but couldn't find her e-mail address. The other day I discovered her obituary. So here is another case of too late again.

………………………………….

The best undergraduate philosophy teacher I had was a lowly adjunct, one Richard Morris, M.A. (Glasgow). I thought of him the other day in connection with John Hospers whose An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis (2nd ed.) he had assigned for a course entitled "Linguistic Philosophy." I also took a course in logic from him. The text was Irving Copi's Symbolic Logic (3rd ed.) You will not be surprised to hear that I still have both books. And I'll be damned if I will part with either one of them, despite the fact that I have a later edition of the Copi text, an edition I used in a logic course I myself taught.

I don't believe Morris ever published anything. The Philosopher's Index shows a few citations for one or more Richard Morrises none of whom I have reason to believe is the adjunct in question. But without publications or doctorate Morris was more of a philosopher than many of his quondam colleagues.

The moral of the story? Real philosophers can be found anywhere in the academic hierarchy. So judge each case by its merits and be not too impressed by credentials and trappings.

I contacted Morris ten years ago or so and thanked him for his efforts way back when. The thanking of old teachers who have had a positive influence is a practice I recommend. I've done it a number of times. I even tracked down an unforgettable and dedicated and inspiring third-grade teacher. I asked her if anyone else had ever thanked her, and she said no. What ingrates we are!

So if you have something to say to someone you'd better say it now while you both draw breath.

Heute rot, morgen tot.

My PhilPapers and PhilPeople Pages

I have been hard at work sprucing up these pages, adding content and links for the download of some of my papers, and correcting errors. I still have a lot of work to do. Take a gander if you care to. Most of my reviews are substantial review articles, not book reports. There are a lot of new bells and whistles to play with.

The Joshua Hochschild Affair

The Decline of the West proceeds apace as leftists infiltrate all of our institutions. The universities, for example, have devolved into leftist seminaries in which groupthink reigns and the traditional purposes of the university have been forgotten. Large numbers of contemporary collegians seem to have no appreciation of the classical values of open inquiry and free speech. I now hand off to Jonathan Turley:

There is a campaign to fire Professor Joshua Hochschild who teaches philosophy at Mount St. Mary’s University. We have seen a number of these campaigns against faculty but the effort against Hochschild is striking because he is denounced for attending the protest in Washington on January 6th even though he is not accused of participating in the riot at the Capitol. The effort is part of a building narrative that anyone protesting the election was an insurrectionist even though the vast majority was peaceful and did not enter the Capitol. Hochschild denounced the riot in a column “Once Upon a Presidency” for the The American Mind. However, his acknowledgment of being present at the protest was enough to launch an effort to fire him. The only thing missing is a claim that he is “corrupting the youth” with his dissenting views. In this case, it is not hemlock but discharge that is being sought for the teacher.

Read Hochschild's piece at The American Mind and decide for yourself whether his words are the ravings of an 'insurrectionist.'