Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains
My referral list this fine morning alerts me to the fact that Patrick Toner has a blog. He is a very sharp young analytic philosopher, and politically incorrect to boot, one indication of which is an interest in Norman Rockwell. You read that right, boys and girls. Toner's political incorrectness and independence of mind more than make up for his misspelling of 'hylomorphism' as 'hylemorphism.' [grin]
Related:
Yesterday, the Typepad version of Maverick Philosopher shot past the three million page view mark. This, the third main version of MavPhil, commenced operations on 31 October 2008. The first main version took off on 4 May 2004.
To be exact, total page views at the moment are 3,003,886. That averages to 1,290.33 page views per day with recent averages well above that. Total posts come to 5,749, total comments to 7,594.
The two million page view mark was reached on 19 July 2013.
I thank you one and all, man and bot, for your 'patronage.'
My pledge: You will never see advertising on this site. You will never see anything that jumps around in your visual field. You will not be assaulted by unwanted sounds. You will never have to read anything against a black background. I will not beg for money with a 'tip jar.' This is a labor of love and I prize my independence.
I also pledge to continue the fight, day by day, month by month, year by year, against the hate-America, race-baiting, religion-bashing, liberty-destroying, terror-appeasing fascists of the Left. As long as health and eyesight hold out.
I will not pander to anyone, least of all the politically correct.
And I won't back down. Are you with me?
My post, Leftists and Civility, was tagged as post of the day today at Legal Insurrection. I return the compliment by naming it Blog of the Day.
And it isn't even Lent yet. Why?
Two reasons. The first is one I hope anyone can understand: although it has been the most rewarding experience in my writing career, I’ve now been blogging daily for fifteen years straight (well kinda straight). That’s long enough to do any single job. In some ways, it’s as simple as that. There comes a time when you have to move on to new things . . . .
And when a writer stoops to 'kinda,' that too is perhaps an indication that it is time to hang up the keyboard.
The second is that I am saturated in digital life and I want to return to the actual world again. I’m a human being before I am a writer; and a writer before I am a blogger, and although it’s been a joy and a privilege to have helped pioneer a genuinely new form of writing, I yearn for other, older forms. I want to read again, slowly, carefully. I want to absorb a difficult book and walk around in my own thoughts with it for a while. I want to have an idea and let it slowly take shape, rather than be instantly blogged. I want to write long essays that can answer more deeply and subtly the many questions that the Dish years have presented to me. I want to write a book.
Sullivan here touches upon a serious problem, that of time apportionment as between serious writing and blogging, which tends to be scribbling of a more ephemeral sort. (If truth be told, almost everything that almost all of us will ever write is of no lasting significance; so it's almost all of it ephemeral scribbling.)
I think it is possible to balance the two if one is willing to write well and in depth about important topics that transcend the fads, fancies, and fatuities of the moment, and eschew the need to post many times per day or even daily. Some of what I write on this blog gets reworked for serious publication. In this way my blogging aids my serious writing. It also aids it by making it less 'academic.' The blogger is forced by his chosen medium to be pithy and direct.
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.
A reader asked about my comment policy. It is more of an anti-comment policy. I look askance at comments. Ten years of quotidian toil in the 'sphere have supplied me with many arguments. To put it aphoristically,
The best arguments against an open combox are the contents of one.
Scribbler that I am, I have a lot more to say on this and cognate topics under the rubric, Blogging.
In case you missed it, 'abrogation' is in effect in these pages. Thus yesterday's fine entry on the No True Scotsman fallacy– which you really ought to study and think through as opposed to skim — abrogates and supersedes an earlier effort along the same lines from February 2009 which was a bit sloppy.
You are getting philosophy lessons here, muchachos, and for free! Can you beat that?
This site is entirely pro bono, your bonum and mine. My pledge: No advertising! No tip jar. No money-grubbing. And I say that as a conservative who believes, nay, knows, that the only way to go for healthy societies is free markets under the rule of law.
Why is Mexico such a bloody mess? Lack of the rule of law. See article below. Why did the USSR collapse under its own weight? State control of the economy.
First order of the cyberday is the correction of the previous day's typographical errors. I astonish myself at my obliviousness to my own mistakes of typography. Four corrections already this fine morn. Add that to a couple I made yesterday. A variation on the theme that "A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest."
The sense swims before my mind while the fingers limp to catch up, stumbling as they go.
Reposts are the reruns of the blogosphere. If Twilight Zone and Seinfeld episodes are worth viewing more than once, then surely . . . .
I, or rather this site, experienced a surge yesterday: 4,207 pageviews. Why? Beats me. My traffic is usually in the 1600-2000 pageviews per day range. This, the TypePad version of MavPhil commenced operations on Halloween 2008. This third incarnation of MavPhil is closing in on the 3 million total pageview mark. That's nothing to crow about, I know, but I thought you might be interested.
I thank you for your 'patronage.' And remember: triple your money back if not completely satisfied.
Any complaints? Fill out the form below:
UPDATE. The day ended at 5 pm with 2, 298 pageviews.
I headed over to D. G. Myers' high-level literary weblog this afternoon only to find that its penultimate post, dated 22 July, was the last by Myers. The final entry, dated 29 September, by his sister-in-law, records his death.
And then I recalled that Myers had written some friendly but trenchant critiques of my amateur forays into his field. A search revealed that Myers had written five detailed entries addressing posts of mine. Did I ever thank him? If memory serves, I never did, and I deeply regret that now. I probably wasn't aware of some of them.
In any case, here they are.
I hope his weblog stays online for years to come.
In cases of 'Emersonian' inconsistency, later entries of this weblog abrogate earlier ones.
For an explanation of 'Emersonian' inconsistency and its difference from logical inconsistency, see On Diachronic or 'Emersonian' Consistency.
Hilary Putnam took up blogging on 29 May of this year. Well, better late than never. He has entitled his weblog Sardonic Comment. He might also have considered It Ain't Obvious What's Obvious, which is a line he uses somewhere.
In 1976, when I delivered the John Locke Lectures at Oxford, I often spent time with Peter Strawson, and one day at lunch he made a remark I have never been able to forget. He said, "Surely half the pleasure of life is sardonic comment on the passing show". This blog is devoted to comments, not all of them sardonic, on the passing philosophical show.
Unable to contain her curiosity, Pandora opened her box and a multitude of evils escaped into the world. The blogger, unable to contain his curiosity as to the comments he might receive, opens his combox and a multitude of evils _________________. (You finish the sentence.)