Category: Obituaries

Another ‘Too Late’ Story: Elizabeth Wolgast

Long-time reader Dave Bagwill wrote to tell me that he tried to contact  his old professor at Cal State, Hayward, Elizabeth Wolgast, but was too late. "She was  a very fine woman with a penetrating intellect and a warm heart," Dave recalls.  From Wolgast's obituary:

Elizabeth H. Wolgast
Feb 27, 1929 – Oct 13, 2020
Elizabeth Wolgast, died October 13 from complications following a stroke on October 1: she was 91. Elizabeth was born in Dunellen, NJ in February 1929. In 1936 her family moved to a farm outside Philadelphia run by her mother (a degreed nutritionist) while her father worked in business. She studied water-color painting as a young woman which became a life-long passion for her. She met her husband, Richard, at a drawing class at Cornell University and they married in 1949. Elizabeth went on to earn a PhD in Philosophy at the University of Washington and had a long, distinguished career teaching at the Cal State University at Hayward. She was a trailblazer in her profession being the first tenured female professor in that department. She was still the only one there when she retired. She enjoyed visiting professorships at Dartmouth College, Cambridge (England), West Point, and Abo (Finland). She authored four philosophy texts and numerous journal articles.

Read the rest. Here is her PhilPapers page.

I just now ordered a used copy of  Wolgast's Paradoxes of Knowledge for a paltry $8.34.  You may wish to spring for a new copy for a mere 529 semolians.  

We best honor a philosopher by reading his work and thinking his thoughts, sympathetically, but critically.

As a general rule, you should never buy a book you haven't read. (That sounds like a bit of a paradox itself.) But the Wolgast volume appeared under the Cornell imprint, so it is probably worth reading in part if not in toto. I sense that it will be heavily Wittgensteinian. But a little Wittgenstein never hurt anybody.

Time was, when I had space for books but no money. Now it is the other way around.  I may have to buy a bigger house. Without books would life be worth living?

In these trying times, we who value high culture need to build vast private libraries that cannot be easily marauded by the totalitarian agents of leftist destruction. We also need to lay in righteous supplies of Pb to protect them. 

Theme music: It's Too Late, She's Gone

Wolgast

 

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.

Too Late Again!

Every once in  while I will get the notion to send  'fan mail' to a philosopher whose work I am reading and for whose work I am grateful.  But I am sometimes too late. The search for an e-mail address turns up an obituary. The last time this occurred was when I wanted to congratulate Robert C. Coburn for his excellent The Strangeness of the Ordinary.  I tell the story here and reproduce the obit.

The other day, Ronald Bruzina's Edmund Husserl and Eugen Fink: Beginnings and Ends in Phenomenology 1928-1938 (Yale UP, 2004) arrived. It's a stomping tome of 627 pages. But it reads like a novel to this old Husserl man who spent a year (1976-1977) in Freiburg im Breisgau where he studied unpublished manuscripts in the Husserl archive there.  Every morning I read a few pages of Bruzina's book hugging myself with mental delight as I am reminded of so many details, people, and places.

I wanted to say to Bruzina, "You have written a wonderful book, man, quite obviously a labor of love, and I am having a blast with it."

But too late again.

We all owe a debt of gratitude to friends and strangers alike who have enriched our lives, wittingly or not, in this way or that. Say it and pay it now if you are so inclined.

Heute rot, morgen tot.

Helmuth James Graf von Moltke

Von MoltkeI  sometimes express skepticism about the value of the study of history. If history has lessons, they don't seem applicable to the present in any useful way. But there is no denying that history is a rich source of exemplary lives. These exemplary lives show what is humanly possible and furnish existential ideals. Helmuth James von Moltke was a key figure in the German resistance to Hitler. The Nazis executed him in 1945. Here is his story.  Here is an obituary of his wife, Freya.


Reading Now: Alfred Delp, S. J., Prison Writings

From Thomas Merton's October 1962 introduction:

These are the thoughts of a man who, caught in a well-laid trap of political lies, clung desperately to a truth that was revealed to him in solitude, helplessness, emptiness, and desperation. Face to face with inescapable physical death, he reached out in anguish for the truth without which his spirit could not breathe and survive. The truth was granted him, and we share it in this book . . . . (p. xxi)

Fr. Delp was born on 15 September 1907 and was executed by the Nazis on 2 February 1945 for his association with the Kreisau Circle of Count von Moltke.

We who write in comfort and relative security do well to study those who wrote "in the shadow of the scaffold" bound in cold irons in solitary confinement awaiting a mock trial and then almost certain death.  In such a "boundary situation" (Karl Jaspers), the usual evasions and the flight to the familiar are impossible. We are forced to get serious about the predicament we've been in all along. Anyone who feels secure in this world is living in illusion.

The only gesture of goodwill I have encountered is that the jailor has fastened my handcuffs so loosely that I can slip my left hand out entirely. The handcuffs hang from my right hand so at least I am able to write. But I have to keep alert with one ear as it were glued to the door — heaven help me if they should catch me at work!

And undeniably I find myself in the very shadow of the scaffold. Unless I can disprove the accusations on all points I shall most certainly hang. (p. 9)

Further information here.

Delp. Alfred

Scruton Quits the Sublunary

Sir Roger's earthy tenure lasted a mere 75 years.  Philosophy is an old man's game, as I heard it said in my youth; Sir Roger fell short of the Russellian by 22 years.   Steven Hayward of Powerline:

In the introduction to his book The Meaning of Conservatism, Scruton writes that “Conservatism may rarely announce itself in maxims, formulae, or aims. Its essence is inarticulate, and its expression, when compelled, skeptical.”

Why “inarticulate”? Because, as he explains elsewhere, the liberal has the easy job in the modern world. The liberal points at the imperfections and defects of existing institutions or the existing social order, strikes a pose of indignation, and huffs that surely something better is required, usually with the attitude that the something better is simply a matter of will. The conservative faces the tougher challenge of understanding and explaining the often subtle reasons why existing institutions, no matter how imperfect, work better than speculative alternatives.

Well, an essence cannot be inarticulate, only a person or his literary production.  It would be better to say that the essence of conservatism is not wholly articulable. It cannot be made into a system, and the conservative is indeed skeptical of comprehensive theories. He stands on the terra firma of a gnarly reality which, though intrinsically intelligible, is only partially intelligible to him; a reality independent of human dreams, wishes, and wants.

Hayward goes too easy on the contemporary liberal or 'progressive.'  He should have pointed out that the 'liberal' will tear down what provably works without assurance that anything better can be put in its place. 'Progressives' have shown their willingness to break millions of eggs for an omelet the  possibility of which they have no good reason to believe in. The Left is pointlessly destructive and ever on the slouch toward the big Nihil.

Scruton

Too Late by Five Months! Remembering Robert C. Coburn

This morning I happened to re-read the chapter "Metaphysical Theology and the Life of Faith" in Robert C. Coburn's, The Strangeness of the Ordinary (Rowman and Littlefield, 1990). I first read it in May of 1997.  I was so impressed with it this second time around that I resolved to send Professor Coburn a note of appreciation. But I logged on only to find his obituary. I reproduce it below the fold to save it from the folly and poor judgment of librarians and webmasters.  Too late by five months!

Permalinks ought to be permanent, or at least approximate unto the sublunary 'permanence' of that which, under the aspect of eternity, is impermanent. 

And it testifies to the poor judgment of librarians that my copy of Coburn's book is a library discard. I was going to tell Coburn that story and praise him for his flawless prose that displays the erudition of a technical philosopher wedded to the deep humanity of a serious truth seeker.  As academic philosophy succumbs to leftist infestation, and the humanities dissolve into politically correct nonsense, people of Coburn's depth and breadth of learning are unlikely to be replaced.

Note to Vito C.: you will profit from reading the chapter in question. See if you can find the book in a library. You can access a copy of the chapter's article precursor online, but the fee is ridiculous. If you want, I will send you a photocopy, gratis, if you send me by e-mail your preferred mailing address.

Continue reading “Too Late by Five Months! Remembering Robert C. Coburn”

Robert Spaemann Dies at 91

Professor Robert Spaemann, Philosopher and Advocate of the Traditional Mass, Dies at 91. (HT: Kai Frederik Lorentzen)

See also, Philosophie und Glaube: Vom Tod von Robert Spaemann. Excerpt:

Gott als Grundlage aller Wahrheitsansprüche

Gottesglaube ist weder Bedingung für wahre Urteile noch für Gewissensüberzeugungen. Aber da die Existenz Gottes der ontologische Grund beider und in ihnen impliziert ist, beseitigt die Leugnung Gottes die Grundlage aller Wahrheitsansprüche und aller sittlicher Überzeugungen und damit tendenziell diese Ansprüche selbst.

God as Foundation of all Truth Claims

Belief in God is a condition neither of true judgments nor of convictions of conscience. But because the existence of God is implied by both and is the ontological ground of both, the denial of God does away with the foundation of all truth claims and all moral convictions, and thereby tends to do away with these claims and convictions themselves. (tr. BV)

You don't need to believe in God to make  true statements. Atheists make many true statements. And you don't need to believe in God to have correct moral convictions. Atheists have many correct moral convictions. But if there is no God, then there is no truth including moral truth. If there is no God, there are no truths to state.  Atheists don't need to know that God exists to make true statements, but if there is no God, then they cannot make true statements.

But is it obvious that: no God, no truth?  It is not obvious but it can be persuasively argued. Here is a rough sketch of one such argument.  The laws of logic are not only true, they are necessarily true. As we say in the trade, they are true in all possible worlds. Now finite minds are not to be found in every possible world: there are possible worlds in which there are no finite minds, Furthermore, truth cannot exist outside of a mind: truth resides in minds to the extent that said minds are in contact with extramental reality.   Since the laws of logic are necessarily true, there must be a necessary mind. And this all men call God.

Now that was quick and dirty. I present the argument with considerably more rigor and intellectual cleanliness here.

Mary Midgley (1919 – 2018)

The Guardian reports,

Mary Midgley, who has died aged 99, was an important writer on ethics, the relations of humans and animals, our tendency to misconstrue science, and the role of myth and poetry.

Read it all.

The Telegraph obituary, behind a paywall, begins:

Mary Midgley, who has died aged 99, was one of Britain’s leading moral philosophers, though she was more effective in wielding philosophical objections to other people’s beliefs than promoting a coherent philosophical viewpoint of her own.

That's a bad sentence. Do you see why? Strike 'coherent' and it is just fine.

There are women in philosophy such as Midgley who are much better than many men.  Why then female 'under-representation' in our discipline?

Here are excerpts from a longer piece which is sure to elicit the impotent rage of leftists:

Why are women 'under-represented' in philosophy?  Because women as a group are not as good at it as men as a group, because women as a group are not as interested in it as men as a group, and because the feminine nature is conciliatory and averse to what they perceive as the aggressive, combative, and hostile aspects of philosophical dialectic.  This is surely a large part, if not the whole, of the explanation, especially given the Affirmative Action advantage women have enjoyed over the past half a century.

The hostility often felt by women reflects something about the nature of philosophy, namely, that its very lifeblood is dialectic and argument. Argument can be conducted civilly, often is, and of course ought to be.  But it still looks to the female nature as a sort of 'fighting,' a sublimated form  of the physical combat that men are wont to engage in, even when dialectic at its best is no such thing.  So there is something in the nature of philosophy and something about females that explains their 'under-representation.' Those are sneer quotes, by the way.  Anyone with an ounce of philosophical intelligence can see that the word I am sneering at conflates the factual and the normative.  Therefore  it shouldn't be used without sneer quotes.

[. . .]

Anecdote.  I once roomed with an  analytic philosopher at a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute.  I recall a remark he made about philosophical discussion: "If you are not willing to become a bit of an asshole about it, you are not taking it seriously." The guy was obnoxious, but he was right.  In a serious discussion, things can get a little tense.  The feminine nature shies away from contention and dispute.  

If you deny that, then you have no knowledge of human nature and no experience of life.  Ever wonder why women are 'over-represented' among realtors? It is because they excel men when it comes to conciliation and mediation.  I don't mean this as a snarky put-down of the distaff contingent.  I mean it as praise.  And if females do not take it as praise are they not assuming the superiority of male virtues?

It is a non sequitur to think that if the Xs are 'under-represented' among the Ys, then the Xs must have been the victims of some unjust discrimination.  Men are 'under-represented' among massage therapists, but the explanation is obvious and harmless: men like to have their naked bodies rubbed by women in dark rooms, but women feel uncomfortable having their naked bodies rubbed by men in dark rooms.   It is not as if there is some sort of sexism, 'institutional' or individual, that keeps men out of massage therapy.

Blacks are 'over-represented'  in the NFL and the NBA. Is that because of some racism 'institutional' or individual, that keeps whitey out?  Of course not. Blacks are better than whites at football and basketball. Jews are just terrible.  Chess is their athletics.  Jews dominate in the chess world.  Is that because the goyim have been suppressed?  Is a Jewish conspiracy at work?

Does my talk of blacks and Jews make me a racist and an anti-Semite ?  To a liberal-left dumb-ass, yes. For they are incapable of distinguishing between a statement whose content is race and a racist statement.   

Charles Krauthammer (1950 – 2018)

I cited him often over the years and disagreed with him only once. I admired his penetrating intellect, but more importantly his good judgment. In his personal life he was a profile in courage.

He was a major contributor to the high quality of Fox commentary.

On the debit side, he was perhaps too much of the Washington establishment. He failed to make the right call re: Trump.

A good man who died too young. Let the encomia roll in. 

Last but not least, he worshipped at the shrine of Caissa.

Krauthammer chess

Hugh Hefner Dead at 91

There is so much to say. 

For now, just this: If you have devoted your whole soul to the enjoyment and promotion of the pleasures of the flesh, then you had better hope that the soul dissolves with the dissolution of the body. Contemporaries will think that of course it does, but it is not quite obvious, is it?  

Hef thought of himself as a liberator and good person. But then I think of all the abortions, all the betrayals, all the marriages and families destroyed by the sexual revolution to which Hef was a major contributor.

Guardian article here.

David French, Hugh Hefner's Legacy of Despair