Category: Language Matters

Four Senses of ‘Absurd’

Clarity will be served if we distinguish at least the following senses of 'absurd.'  The word is from the Latin surdus, meaning deaf, silent, or stupid.  But etymology can take one only so far and is no substitute for close analysis. And beware the Dictionary Fallacy.

1) Logico-mathematical. The absurd is the logically contradictory or self-contradictory or that which entails a logical contradiction.  Absurdity in this sense attaches to propositions or sets of propositions.  A reductio ad absurdum proof, for example, is a reduction to a contradiction. It is a way of indirectly proving a proposition. One assumes its negation and then derives a logical contradiction thereby proving the proposition.

2) Semantic. The absurd as the linguistically meaningless. Meaningful words can be strung together in meaningless ways, or meaningless words can be strung together. Example of the first: "Quadruplicity drinks procrastination." (Russell)  Example of the second: "The slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe." (Lewis Carroll). There is nothing syntactically or logically wrong with these sentences.

3) Existential.  The absurd as the existentially meaningless, the groundless, the brute-factual, the intrinsically unintelligible.  The absurdity of existence in this sense of 'absurd' is what elicited Sartre's and Roquentin's  nausea.  The sheer, meaningless, disgusting, facticity of the chestnut tree referenced in the eponymous novel, for example, described by Sartre as de trop and as an unintelligible excrescence.

4) Ordinary. The absurd as the manifestly false. To be precise, 'absurd' as it is mostly used in standard English by non-philosophers refers to that which is both factually false and manifestly false. "Pelosi's assertion that there is no border crisis is absurd!" In other words, Pelosi's assertion is factually false, and plainly so.  What is manifestly false as a matter of fact needn't be logically or semantically objectionable.

Item for further rumination: In Christianity construed along Kierkegardian lines, the apparent absurdity of human existence is redeemed by the Higher Absurdity of the God-Man on the cross. 

Cultural note: the hipster depicted below is a parody of the beatniks of the late 'fifties and early 'sixties. It is what Joe Average imagined an 'existentialist' must look like: a goateed cat with a beret, dressed in black, smoking a cigarette, preferably a Gitane or an unfiltered Gaulois.

Autobiographical addendum: Things didn't work out with an early girlfriend. She complained that I was an 'existentialist' who was "down all the time." I did read a lot of Camus and Sartre in those days, but my favorite existentialists were the Dane, Kierkegaard, and the Russian, Nicholas Berdyaev. Lev Shestov came later. Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger are only loosely classifiable as existentialists.

Existentialist Threat

‘A Fetus That Was Born’

More linguistic chicanery from the Left. Obviously, a fetus that was born is no longer a fetus.  To refer to a fetus that was born as a fetus aids and abets the next murderous move: the sanctioning of infanticide as just another form of abortion, post-natal abortion. The 'reasoning' might go like this: The killing of human fetuses is morally acceptable;  a human neonate is a human fetus; ergo, the killing of human neonates is morally acceptable.

But I must also lodge a protest against certain conservative extremists who think 'fetus' a dirty word. They think that the use of this perfectly good word somehow denigrates pre-natal humans or strips them of their right to life.  It does no such thing.

Language matters!  It is the foolish conservative who allows the leftist to hijack the terms of the debate.

Word of the Day: Oubliette

Merriam-Webster: A dungeon with an opening only at the top.
 
Used in a sentence:
Since [Kamala] Harris is now on her way to the political oubliette, however, Schweizer’s discussion of her depredations is of less exigent interest than his discussion of other figures, especially Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders, all, remarkably enough, leading contenders for the Democratic nomination for president. 
French, from Middle French, from oublier to forget, from Old French oblier, from Vulgar Latin *oblitare, frequentative of Latin oblivisci to forget — more at oblivion.
 
Addendum (1/27).  This just over the transom:
I think I've been inside an oubliette, thought I didn't know what it was called at the time. It was quite unsettling. My brother, his son, and I were driving in southern Spain when we saw a ruined castle at the top of a hill. There was no sign or anything, but that's not unusual in Spain, so we hiked to the top of the hill and explored the ruins.
 
The only sign of modern habitation was a fairly recent steel ladder going down into a sort of pit, about twenty feet deep and cylindrical with a diameter of about thirty feet, mostly covered, and with a round opening somewhat larger than a manhole. We couldn't figure out what the pit was, so my nephew climbed down the ladder to look around, then my brother followed.
 
I asked one of them to come back up because it didn't seem safe for all of us to be down there (in case the ladder broke or something). My nephew came back up and I climbed down to look around. It was only moderately creepy until my nephew came back down and all three of us were down there together. No way could we have made a cell phone call from that location, and I had a sudden image of being stuck down in that hole with no way out.
 
For just a moment, I imagine I felt what it would be like to be dropped into such a horrifying prison. It was one of those shocking moments when you really grasp viscerally how evil man can be to man.
Regards,
David Gudeman
OublietteYou had a glimpse of the horror of this life, a glimpse that cut right through the optimistic palaver of the secular humanists. You saw the truth of homo homini lupus, and its finality in a godless universe in which the horrors go unredeemed.   If atheists and naturalists weren't such superficial people they would be anti-natalists.
 
We are spiritual beings, and for a spiritual being the ultimate horror is the sense of utter abandonment by God and man. If Christ was fully man, that is what he experienced in his worst moment on the cross.

Word of the Day: Zaftig

Peter_Paul_Rubens_-_Woman_with_a_Mirror_-_WGA20336-1-e1420157418851Said of a woman. Having a full, shapely figure. Voluptuous. Plump and vigorous. Rubenesque. A Yiddish word. Supposedly from the German saftig, juicy. More here. Trigger Warning! Snowflakes of the distaff persuasion will be offended.

Time was when 'female persuasion' and the like were used figuratively as a kind of joke; after all, one cannot be persuaded to be female or male. Or recruited. One does not join the female club. Nor can one be assigned one's sex at birth. Being female is something biological, not political or social like a party affiliation. But the times they have a'changed. Nowadays everything is a social construction and a matter of arbitrary identification. So, being female is like being a Democrat!

Nowadays there is no sex, only gender. How then can anything be sexist? And if, in reality, there are no races — race being a mere social construct — how can there be racism? Inquiring minds want to know.

‘For’ and ‘Because’: A Linguistic Bagatelle

My sense of the English language tells me that (1) below, but not (2), is good English.

1) On presentism, what no longer exists, does not exist at all. For on presentism, only the present exists.

2) On presentism, what no longer exists, does not exist at all. Because on presentism, only the present exists.

As I see it, (1) is good English because 'for' in a context like this means 'it is because.'

On the Illicit Use of ‘By Definition’

This is an old entry from 2010. It makes a very important point well worth repeating. The battle against language abusers is never-ending.

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What is wrong with the following sentence:  "Excellent health care is by definition redistributional"?  It is from a speech by Donald Berwick,  President Obama's nominee to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, speaking to a British audience about why he favors government-run health care.

I have no objection to someone arguing that health care ought to be redistributional.  Argue away, and good luck! But I object strenuously to an argumentative procedure whereby one proves that X is Y by illicit importation of the predicate Y into the definition of X.  But that is exactly what Berwick is doing.  Obviously, it is no part of the definition of 'health care' or 'excellent health care' that it should be redistributional.  Similarly, it is no part of the definition of 'illegal alien' that illegal aliens are Hispanic.  It is true that most of them are, but it does not fall out of the definition.

This is the sort of intellectual slovenliness (or is it mendacity?) that one finds not only in leftists but also in Randians like Leonard Peikoff.  In one place, he defines 'existence' in such a way that nothing supernatural exists, and then triumphantly 'proves' that God cannot exist! See here.

This has all the advantages of theft over honest toil as Bertrand Russell remarked in a different connection.

One more example.  Bill Maher was arguing with Bill O'Reilly one night on The O'Reilly Factor.  O'Reilly came out against wealth redistribution via taxation, to which Maher responded in effect that that is just what taxation is.  The benighted Maher apparently believes that taxation by definition is redistributional. 

Now that is plainly idiotic: there is nothing in the nature of taxation to require that it redistribute wealth.  Taxation is the coercive taking of monies from citizens in order to fund the functions of government.  One can of course argue for progressive taxation and wealth redistribution via taxation.  But those are further ideas not contained in the very notion of taxation.

Leftists are intellectual cheaters.  They will try to bamboozle you.  Listen carefully when they bandy about phrases like 'by definition.'  Don't let yourself be fooled.

"But are Berwick, Peikoff, and Maher really trying to fool people, or are they merely confused?"  I cannot be sure about those specific individuals, but it doesn't much matter.  The main thing is not to be taken in by their linguistic sleight-of-hand whether intentional or unintentional.

Woman by definition

 

‘Knowingly Lied’

'Knowingly lied' is a pleonastic expression. One cannot lie without intending to deceive. And one cannot intend to do X without knowing that one intends to do X. So one cannot lie without lying knowingly: there is no such thing as an unknowing or unwitting lie. It follows that 'knowingly lied' is a pleonastic or redundant expression.  Good writers avoid pleonasm.

Good writers also know when to break rules in the service of what they want to say.

Amy Wax Interviewed

Here is a taste:

Once again, you’d have to define racism. You’re basically saying any generalization about a group, whether true or false—and we know it doesn’t apply to everybody in the group, because that’s just a straw man—is racist. I mean, we could do “sexist,” right?

We could.

So, women, on average, are more agreeable than men. Women, on average, are less knowledgeable than men. They’re less intellectual than men. Now, I can actually back up all those statements with social-science research.

You can send me links for women are “less intellectual than men.” I’m happy to include that in the piece if you have a good link for that.

O.K., well, there’s a literature in Britain, a series of papers that were done, and I need to look them up, that show that women are less knowledgeable than men. They know less about every single subject, except fashion. There is a literature out of Vanderbilt University that looks at women of very high ability—so, controlling for ability—and, starting in adolescence, women are less interested in the single-minded pursuit of abstract intellectual goals than men. They want more balance in their life. They want more time with family, friends, and people. They’re less interested in working hard on abstract ideas. You can put together a database that shows that. The person who has the literature is a man named David Lubinski, and he shows that intelligence isn’t what’s driving it. It is interest, orientation, what people want to spend their time doing.

Now, is that sexist? We can argue all day about whether it is sexist. We can argue from morning till night. And it is sterile. It is pointless. Let’s talk about the actual findings and what implications they have for policy, for expectations.

[. . .]