25 things you might want to know know about Dylan. Excellent, except for the introductory claim that he is "rock's greatest songwriter." A better description is "America's greatest writer of popular songs." Bar none. We can discuss the criteria later, and consider counterexamples. Maybe this Saturday night. His earliest four or five albums are not in the rock genre. I'll permit quibbling about #5, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), but Bob Dylan (1962), The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963) , The Time's They Are A'Changin' (1964), and Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964) are better classified as folk, not that they sit all that comfortably in this niche.
These early albums are studded with lasting contributions to Americana. This is music with meaning that speaks to the mind and the heart. No Rat Pack crooner Las Vegas lounge lizard stuff here.Two lesser-known compositions both from The Times They Are a'Changin':
North Country Blues. Written from the point of view of a woman and so appropriately sung by the angel-throated Joan Baez.
D. A. Pennebaker on the making of Don't Look Back. I saw it in '67 when it first came out. I just had to see it, just as I had to have all of Dylan's albums, all of his sheet music, and every article and book about him. I was a Dylan fanatic. No longer a fanatic, I remain a fan.
May he die with his boots on. It ain't dark yet, but it's gettin' there.
In graduate school I was friends for a time with a New York Jew who for the purposes of this memoir I will refer to as 'Saul Peckstein.' A red diaper baby, he was brought up on Communism the way I was brought up on Roman Catholicism. Invited up to his room one day, I was taken aback by three huge posters on his wall, of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin.
There is a distinctive quality of personal warmth that many Jews display, the quality conveyed when we say of so-and-so that he or she is a mensch. It is a sort of humanity, hard to describe, in my experience not as prevalent among goyim. Peckstein had it. But he was nonetheless able to live comfortably under the gaze of a mass murderer and their philosophical progenitors.
One day we were walking across campus when he said to me, "Don't you think we could run this place?" He was venting the utopian dream of a classless society, a locus classicus of which is a famous passage from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology (ed. C. J. Arthur, New York: International Publishers, 1970, p. 53):
. . . as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.
The silly utopianism seeps out of "each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes." Could Saul Kripke have become a diplomat or a chauffeur or an auto mechanic if he wished? Pee Wee Herman a furniture mover or Pope? Woody Allen a bronco buster? Evel Knievel a neurosurgeon? And if Marx has actually done any 'cattle rearing,' he would have soon discovered that he couldn't be successful at it if he did it once in a while when he wasn't in the mood for hunting, fishing, or writing Das Kapital.
On another occasion Peckstein asked, "After the Revolution, what will we do with all the churches?" Like so many other commies he cherished the naive expectation that 'the revolution is right around the corner' in a phrase much bandied-about in CPUSA circles. And in tandem with that naivete, the foolish notion that religion would just wither away when material wants were satisfied and social oppression eliminated, a notion that betrays the deep superficiality of the materialist vision of man and his world.
One night we ate at an expensive restaurant, Anthony's Pier Four at the Boston harbor. Peckstein paid with a bad check. After all, it was an 'exploitative' capitalist enterprise and the owners deserved to be stiffed. But he left a substantial tip in cash for the servers. As I said, he was a mensch.
A few of us graduate students had been meeting to discuss Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. One day I announced that the topic for the next meeting would be the Table of Categories. Peckstein quipped, "Is that table you can eat on?" The materialist crudity of the remark annoyed me.
And then there was the time he wondered why people thank God before a meal rather than the farmers.
We were friends for a time, but friendship is fragile among those for whom ideas matter. Unlike the ordinary non-intellectual person, the intellectual lives for and sometimes from ideas. They are his oxygen and sometimes his bread and butter. He takes them very seriously indeed and with them differences in ideas. So the tendency is for one intellectual to view an ideologically divergent other intellectual as not merely holding incorrect views but as being morally defective in so doing.
Why? Because ideas matter to the intellectual. They matter in the way doctrines and dogmas mattered to old-time religionists. If one's eternal happiness is at stake, it matters infinitely whether one 'gets it right' doctrinally. If there is no salvation outside the church, you'd better belong to the right church. It matters so much that one may feel entirely justified in forcing the heterodox to recant 'for their own good.'
The typical intellectual nowadays is a secularist who believes in nothing that transcends the human horizon. But he takes into his secularism that old-time fervor, that old-time zeal to suppress dissent and punish apostates. It is called political correctness.
And as you have heard me say more than once: P.C. comes from the C. P.
I'm sensitive, you're touchy. I'm firm, you are pigheaded. Frugality in me is cheapness in you. I am open-minded, you are empty-headed. I am careful, you are obsessive. I am courageous while you are as reckless as a Kennedy. I am polite but you are obsequious. My speech is soothing, yours is unctuous. I am earthy and brimming with vitality while you are crude and bestial. I'm alive to necessary distinctions; you are a bloody hairsplitter. I'm conservative, you're reactionary. I know the human heart, but you are a misanthrope. I love and honor my wife while you are uxorious. I am focused; you are monomaniacal.
In me there is commitment, in you fanaticism. I'm a peacemaker, you're an appeaser. I'm spontaneous, you're just undisciplined. I'm neat and clean; you are fastidious. In me there is wit and style, in you mere preciosity. I know the value of a dollar while you are just a miser. I cross the Rubicons of life with resoluteness while you are a fool who burns his bridges behind him. I do not hide my masculinity, but you flaunt yours. I save, you hoard. I am reserved, you are shy. I invest, you gamble. I am a lover of solitude, you are a recluse.
I have a hearty appetite; you are a glutton. A civilized man, I enjoy an occasional drink; you, however, must teetotal to avoid becoming a drunkard. I'm witty and urbane, you are precious. I am bucolic, you are rustic. I'm original, you are idiosyncratic. I am principled, you are doctrinaire. I am precise, you are pedantic.
And those are just some of the differences between me and you.
What follows are two posts written by Dennis Monokroussos from his first-rate chess weblog, The Chess Mind. For purposes of comparison, here are the United States Chess Federation ratings of four, actually five, chess playing philosopher friends. For detailed stats click on the names. Dennis Monokroussos: 2385. Timothy McGrew: 2196. Victor Reppert: 1912. Ed Yetman: 1800. Bill Vallicella: 1543. (My highest rating was 1726)
Part of my point is that life is unfair. Why should I have a trap named after me, when nothing chessic is named after my above-listed philosophizing chess betters? Perhaps it shows that even a patzer can have a good idea now and again. Why should I get to join Franz Brentano in the annals of chess? (The Brentano Defense in the Ruy Lopez is named after him: 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 g5)
Am I comparing myself to Brentano? Well, yes: anything can be compared to anything.
If anyone has any idea as to Brentano's playing strength, shoot me an e-mail.
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The Famous Vallicella Trap?! (posted 8 May 2008)
I was browsing IM Jovanka Houska's 2007 book Play the Caro-Kann, and while looking through the introductory section on the Panov/Botvinnik Attack I read something incredible. In a subsection called 7th move sidelines, I came across this:
1 e4 c6 2 d4 d5 3 exd5 cxd5 4 c4 Nf6 5 Nc3
5 Nf3 is known as Vallicella's Caro-Kann trap – Black has to watch out for one big trick. Best is simply to play 5…Nc6, transposing to the main line after 6 Nc3, but 5…Bg4? would be a mistake after 6 c5! Nc6 7 Bb5. The point is that Black has big difficulties defending the c6 point; for example, 7…e6 8 Qa4 Qc7 9 Ne5 Rc8 10 Bf4 and White is winning! [p. 76]
There's nothing objectionable about the analysis*; rather, what struck me was the reference to Vallicella's Caro-Kann trap, as if this was standard lore in treatments of the Caro-Kann. How did Bill Vallicella, an outstanding philosophical blogger but a 1500-1700 club player not engaged in publicizing his games, suddenly achieve such fame? I had come across his trap either from an email by him or on a post on his predominantly philosophical blog, but when did a move he may have played but a single time turn into an idea requiring mention in a pretty major new theoretical work?
Houska doesn't cite a source, and I certainly didn't recall seeing it in any published materials, so naturally it was off to Google. Entering "Vallicella Caro-Kann", I discovered the main source, conveniently entitled "Vallicella's Caro-Kann Trap"…and you can, too – just click here. Then laugh.**
* Actually, while I wouldn't disagree with her positive suggestion, I don't believe 5…Bg4 is in fact a mistake; the real error comes later. After, e.g. 7…e5 I don't see a White advantage after 8.dxe5 Ne4 or 8.Qa4 Bxf3 9.Bxc6+ bxc6 10.Qxc6+ Nd7 11.gxf3 exd4, and even the arguably best 8.Nc3 promises little or nothing after 8…Nd7 9.dxe5 Bxf3 (10.Qxf3 d4; 10.gxf3 a6).
** If anyone knows IM Houska personally, please ask her to write me – I'd like to trace the path from Vallicella's idea to her book.
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Vallicella's Caro-Kann Trap (posted 27 August 2005)
After 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.exd5 cxd5 4.c4 Nf6, the usual follow-up is 5.Nc3, when Black has three standard replies:
(A) 5…e6, when White plays 6.Nf3, (B) 5…g6, when White plays 6.Qb3, and (C) 5…Nc6, when White can either accede to the pin after 6.Nf3 Bg4, or else play the sharper but less reliable 6.Bg5.
Instead, the Maverick Philosopher has been utilizing the tricky 5.Nf3. It looks slightly clumsy, welcoming the Black bishop to g4 right away, but his idea is revealed after 5…Bg4 6.c5 Nc6 7.Bb5 e6 8.Qa4 Qc7 9.Ne5 Rc8 10.Bf4, when between the pin on c6, the threat of various discoveries involving the Bf4/Ne5/Qc7, and other, lesser but still significant problems with the Black position, White is winning.
Where did Black go wrong? I've already addressed this to some extent in a post on my previous blog, but as the move order examined there was a bit different than what we find in this game, I'll offer some new comments.
First, on move 5, Black can respond with the three normal anti-5.Nc3 options: 5…e6, 5…Nc6, and 5…g6. Should he do so, I don't see any advantage to be had by 5.Nf3, and there is a possible disadvantage. After 5.Nc3 g6, White's best try for an advantage is 6.cxd5 Bg7 7.Qb3 O-O 8.Be2 Nbd7 9.Bf3 Nb6 10.Nge2, but this variation is obviously impossible once White has placed the knight on f3. After 5.Nf3 g6 6.Nc3 Bg7 7.cxd5 O-O 8.Bc4 Nbd7 9.O-O Nb6 10.Bb3 both 10…Nbxd5 and 10…Nfxd5 have scored very well for Black.
Second, after 5.Nf3 Bg4 6.c5 Nc6 7.Bb5, the confrontational 7…e5 seems to give Black equal chances after 8.dxe5 Ne4 9.b4 Be7 10.O-O O-O 11.Bxc6 bxc6 12.Qd3 a5 13.Nd4 Bd7.
Third, as mentioned in my earlier blog post (linked above), after 7…e6 8.Qa4, the pawn sac 8…Bxf3 9.Bxc6+ bxc6 10.Qxc6+ Nd7 11.gxf3 leaves Black some compensation for the pawn in the form of White's numerous pawn weaknesses and the lack of an obvious refuge for the White king.
In sum, I think 5.Nf3 is objectively inferior to 5.Nc3. However, it doesn't seem that much weaker, and it does come with a nice positional trap, making it a reasonable surprise weapon for the odd game.
The variations above, and a bit more, can be replayed here.
This old man busted his hump for a solid three hours this morning shoveling a ton and a half of 3/4" Madison gold landscaping rock onto his property. I paid $91 for the rock and $45 to have it delivered. Here in the Sonoran desert water-wasting lawns are frowned upon; xeriscapes are de rigueur. The existing rock was wearing thin. Since I keep myself in shape with weight-lifting and such, I was up for the job, though by 10 AM with Old Sol beating done mercilessly I was righteously fagged out and ready for the old man nap. Since I arise at two ante meridian, by ten I have already put in an eight hour day.
Physical work is good for the soul if you are working for yourself and have time for other things. So I have long felt a certain sympathy for a famous passage from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology (ed. C. J. Arthur, New York: International Publishers, 1970, p. 53):
. . . as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.
With all due respect to Dennis Prager, Marx did not envisage a society in which people do no work, but one in which their work was non-alienating and fulfilling. If you have ever worked a factory job where you are required to perform a mindless repetitive task for low wages for eight or more hours per day, then you should be able to sympathize somewhat with Marx. But the sympathy is not likely to survive a clear recognition of the absurdity of what Marx is proposing above.
First of all, it is is silly to say that "each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes." Could Saul Kripke have become a diplomat or a chauffeur or an auto mechanic if he wished? PeeWee Herman a furniture mover or Pope? Einstein a general? Patton a physicist? Woody Allen a bronco-buster? Evel Knievel a neurosurgeon? And if Marx had actually done any 'cattle rearing,' he would have soon discovered that he couldn't be successful at it if he did it once in a while when he wasn't in the mood for hunting, fishing, or writing Das Kapital.
So despite my sympathy, I judge that what we have above is utopian, reality-denying nonsense. Dangerous, murderous, leftist nonsense. Incoherence: dictatorship of the proletariat, classless society, worker's paradise. Cuba? North Korea? Communist China? Dictatorship of the dictator (Stalin, Mao, Fidel . . .). Classlessness by reduction of the people to one class, that of the impoverished and oppressed, lorded over by apparatchiks vastly UNEQUAL in power, perquisites, and pelf to those they lord over. So in the end two classes: oppressed and oppressors.
The incoherence of socialism in a nutshell: The achievement of the desired-for equality requires the suppression of dissidents and the the inequality of the revolutionary vanguard who, once enjoying a taste of their unequal power, will never give it up, until the whole house of cards collapses as did the USSR.
But this leaves us with the problem of the millions of Americans who work repetitive, boring jobs for lousy pay. One thing that could be done that would drive up the pay scale is something that RINOs and liberals refuse to do, namely, stop the influx of illegal aliens. RINOs want cheap labor while the liberal scum want to alter the demographics of the nation in such a way as to assure the permanent ascendancy of the Left. These two unsavory groups are in tacit cahoots. To hell with them both.
So here you may have a reason to support Trump, as awful as he is.
"Van Inwagen on Fiction, Existence, Properties, Particulars, and Method," Studia Neoaristotelica: A Journal of Analytical Scholasticism, vol, 12, no. 2 (2015), pp. 99-125. This is a long review article on Peter van Inwagen's Existence: Essays in Ontology, Cambridge University Press, 2014.
"Facts: An Essay in Aporetics" in Francesco F. Calemi, ed., Metaphysics and Scientific Realism: Essays in Honour of David Malet Armstrong, Walter de Gruyter, 2016, pp. 105-131.
This volume also includes contributions by Matthew Tugby, Francesco F. Calemi, Peter van Inwagen, Peter Simons, Anna-Sofia Maurin, Javier Cumpa, Kristie Miller, Stephen Mumford, Andrea Borghini, Michele Paolini Paoletti, Tuomas E. Tahko, D. H. Mellor, Francesco Orilia, and Paolo Valore.
If I had had outstanding teachers, perhaps I would not have been able to gain and sustain the self-confidence that saw me through. And if not for lousy colleagues I might not have been hired when I was pretty lousy too.
This, the third main incarnation of MavPhil, commenced operations on Halloween, 2008. Since then it has racked up 3,501,215 page views. Daily average: 1,321.21. Total posts: 6,357. Total comments: 8,775.
Will I ever hang up the keyboard? I've been at this, almost daily, since May of 2004.
I can't see myself quitting as long as health and eyesight hold out. Blogging is just too deeply satisfying.
For one thing it satisfies the need to teach of someone who hated most classroom teaching. Philosophy is a magnificent, beautiful, and noble thing, but it is wasted on the typical undergraduate. In a class of 35, five might be worth teaching. And I taught at good schools. That is one of the reasons I resigned a tenured position at the age of 41. If you are reading this, you want to be here, and I'm glad to have you.
Second, blogging attracts the like-minded. Isolation is relieved and friendships are made, the genuine friendships of spiritual affinity as opposed to the superficial ones of mere propinquity. Ralph Waldo Emerson would have been a blogger for sure. "The good of publishing one's thoughts is that of hooking you to like-minded men, and of giving to men whom you value . . . one hour of stimulated thought." (Bliss Perry, The Heart of Emerson's Journals, p. 94.)
Third, blogging is superior to private journal writing because the publicity of it forces one to develop one's ideas more carefully and more thoroughly.
Fourth, the blogger has a reach that far exceeds that of the person who publishes in conventional ways.
Like many conservatives, I didn't start out as one. My background is working class, my parents were Democrats, and so was I until the age of 41. I came of age in the '60s. One of my heroes was John F. Kennedy, "the intrepid skipper of the PT 109" as I described him in a school essay written in the fifth grade. I was all for the Civil Rights movement. Musically my heroes were Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. I thrilled to his Blowin' in the Wind and other civil rights anthems.
As I see it, those civil rights battles were fought and they were won. But then the rot set in as the the party of JFK liberals became the extremists and the destructive leftists that they are today. For example, Affirmative Action in its original sense gave way to reverse discrimination, race-norming, minority set-asides, identity politics and the betrayal of Martin Luther King's dream that people be judged "not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
As liberals have become extremists, people with moderate views such as myself have become conservatives. These days I am a registered Independent.
David Rodriquez sent me the following shot of some participants in an event at Biola University in the spring of 2014. Ed Feser read a paper and I commented on it. I am the guy in the dark glasses with his arm around Ed Feser. The tallest man is David Limbaugh To my right is Adam Omelianchuk. I apologize to the others for not remembering their names.
Wife will go, I won't. She goes every year, I beg off every year. Angel that she is, she doesn't begrudge me my nonattendance. I'd rather think and trance than drink and dance.
Why? Well, we know that drinking and dancing won't get us anywhere. But it is at least possible that thinking and trancing will.
Fond are the memories of my years in Boston as a graduate student in the mid-70s, '73-'78 to be exact, with a year off to study in Freiburg im Breisgau of Husserl and Heidegger fame. Even after securing a tenure-track post in the Midwest in '78 I would return to Boston in the summers, '79-'81. What a great town for running, for philosophy, for love. A wonderful compact town to be young and single in. Young, supported by a teaching fellowship, on the dole (food stamps!), not owning any real property and hence paying no real estate taxes, not making enough money to pay income tax, no car, no stereo, not TV, not even a radio, owning nothing outside books and some battered pots and pans, sharing houses and apartments to keep expenses down . . . . it was a rich and exciting if impecunious existence along the banks of the river Charles in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
But when it comes time to make money and own things and pay taxes and begin the transition from liberal foolishness and student sans-souci to adult Sorge and conservative Good Sense, the charms of Boston-on-the-Charles begin to fade, the Commonwealth takes on the guise of the People's Republic of Taxachusetts, and it is time to head West — but not so far West that you end up on the Left Coast — and land in some beautiful place like Arizona where one can afford to buy a house.
Is buying a home house around Boston worth it any more? (You can't buy a home, the bullshit of realtors notwithstanding.)
The real estate data company Zillow recently reported the Boston metro area is one of the most expensive places to own in the United States. “You’re talking twice the national average for the Greater Boston area,” says Svenja Gudell, Zillow’s chief economist. “And Boston itself is even more expensive.” The firm reports that the median cost of basic expenses around here, including things like insurance, taxes, and utilities, tops $9,400 a year. That’s before mortgage payments— and homeowners spend nearly 22 percent of their annual income on those.
Renters have it even worse, according to Zillow, giving almost 35 percent of their income to landlords who may or may not fix leaky faucets or respond to complaints about the loud dog in Unit 3. In New Orleans, by comparison, homeowners spend less than 16 percent of their income on mortgages. And life in Cincinnati, the Queen City, is even easier, with homeowners on average allotting just 11 percent of their income to monthly mortgage payments.
Check out this H-D promotional video. A celebration of individuality by people who dress the same, ride the same make of motorcycle, and chant in unison.
"Some of us believe in the Man Upstairs, but all of us believe in stickin' it to the Man Down Here."
But without the Man Down Here there would be no roads, no gasoline, no science, no technology, no motorcycles, no law and order, no orderly context in which aging lawyers and dentists could play at stickin' it to the Man on the weekends. The Man is discipline, self-denial, repression, deferral of gratification, control of the instinctual. The Man is civilization, discontents and all. Without the Man there would be no one to stick it to, and nothing to stick it to him with. Adolescents of all ages need the Man to have someone to rebel against.
Still and all, after watching this video, what red-blooded American boomer doesn't want to rush out and buy himself a hog? Get your motor runnin', head out on the highway . . . .
Personal anecdote: A few years back I took a three-day motorcycle course, passed it, and got my license. I was about ro rush out and buy myself a hog when Good Sense kicked in. So I rushed out and bought myself a Jeep Wrangler instead.
When he was a young man he travelled around the country with On the Road, the 'Bible of the Beat Generation,' in his rucksack, just as Kerouac had with Dwight Goddard's ABuddhist Bible in his. Now the young man is old. Now when he travels he carries a different light paperback, the plain old Bible.
And he says a prayer for the soul of a lonesome traveller who quit the via dolorosa on this date 46 years ago thereby securing his release from the samsaric meat wheel and the granting of his wish:
The wheel of the quivering meat conception . . . . . . I wish I was free of that slaving meat wheel and safe in heaven dead. (Mexico City Blues, 1959, 211th Chorus).
