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.
Professor X was a good teacher and colleague. Affable and self-effacing, he was well-liked by all. He was quick with a joke and to light up your smoke — at least back in the good old days when some of us smoked in our offices and the American Philosophical Association hosted a 'Smoker' at their annual conventions. But as the years wore on, Professor X, bereft of the stimulation of first-rate minds, became lazy and given to resting on his laurels. An early book, based on his dissertation, showed considerable promise, but a fair judge would have to conclude that he buried his talents rather than using them. He published nothing in the professional journals, sometimes opining that no one read them anyway. Like many, he became too comfortable. Tenure, often advertised as a bulwark of academic freedom, became in his case, as in so many others, an inducement to inactivity. He never progressed much beyond the level of his dissertation.
His real life was elsewhere, in family and friends and such hobbies as woodworking. Once, emerging from a year-long sabbatical cushioned on both ends by long summers with no teaching, he had nothing to show for his release time except a fine bookcase he had built. Like many of the long-tenured and unproductive, he was given to professional envy. When the distinguished philosopher Y came and read a paper for a paltry $200 honorarium, X questioned whether Y was worth so much especially given that this was a paper Y had read before other departments. X's scholarly inactivity was not for the sake of service elsewhere in the academic community: he had a knack for avoiding administrivia and such other academic chores as commenting on papers at conferences.
But now he has passed from our midst, and who among us does not have faults and limitations? Professor X's kindness and collegiality will surely remain in our memories. He will be missed.
Being a nice guy covers a multitude of sins. I find it impossible not to feel sad over the passing of the gentlemanly and mild-mannered Alan Colmes who died at age 66. But he really was a foolish and benighted leftist. Better Right than nice. From a 2010 post of mine:
This [the racism charge] is now the party line of the Dems and toe it they will as witness the otherwise somewhat reasonable and mild-mannered Alan Colmes in this segment, Political Hatred in America, from The O'Reilly Factor. Colmes begins his rant around 6:07 with the claim that "what is driving this [the Tea Party protests] is racism." It looks as if Colmes is under party discipline; otherwise, how could so intelligent and apparently decent a man say something so blatantly false and scurrilous? That something so silly and vicious should emerge from the mouth of a twit like Janeane Garofalo is of course nothing to wonder at. What idiocies won't HollyWeird liberals spout? But Alan Colmes? If we remember that for the Left the end justifies the means, however, things begin to fall in place. The Left will do anything to win. Slanders, smears, shout-downs . . . all's fair in love and war. Leftists understand and apply what I call the Converse Clausewitz Principle: Politics is war conducted by other means.
UPDATE (2/24). A Slate leftard attacks the dead man:
Colmes was the most absurd, useless, and mocked television personality in America for many years, precisely because he was nice. In the context of Fox News, being a nice guy—and a “liberal” nice guy at that—meant being a buffoon, and a patsy. Colmes not only played the part to perfection—he defined it.
I have been a fan of Nat Hentoff ever since I first read him in the pages of Down Beat magazine way back in the '60s. He died at 91 on January 7th. My tribute to him is a repost from 4 June 2012:
A Prime Instance of Political Correctness: The Blackballing of Nat Hentoff
Nat Hentoff is a civil libertarian and a liberal in an older and respectable sense of the term. He thinks for himself and follows the arguments and evidence where they lead. So what do contemporary politically correct liberals do? They attack him. His coming out against abortion particularly infuriated them. Mark Judge comments:
Hentoff's liberal friends didn't appreciate his conversion: "They were saying, 'What's the big fuss about? If the parents had known she was going to come in this way, they would have had an abortion. So why don't you consider it a late abortion and go on to something else?' Here were liberals, decent people, fully convinced themselves that they were for individual rights and liberties but willing to send into eternity these infants because they were imperfect, inconvenient, costly. I saw the same attitude on the part of the same kinds of people toward abortion, and I thought it was pretty horrifying."
The reaction from America's corrupt fourth estate was instant. Hentoff, a Guggenheim fellow and author of dozens of books, was a pariah. Several of his colleagues at the Village Voice, which had run his column since the 1950s, stopped talking to him. When the National Press Foundation wanted to give him a lifetime achievement award, there was a bitter debate amongst members whether Hentoff should even be honored (he was). Then they stopped running his columns. You heard his name less and less. In December 2008, the Village Voice officially let him go.
When journalist Dan Rather was revealed to have poor news judgment, if not outright malice, for using fake documents to try and change the course of a presidential election, he was given a new TV show and a book deal — not to mention a guest spot on The Daily Show. The media has even attempted a resuscitation of anti-Semite Helen Thomas, who was recently interviewed in Playboy.
By accepting the truth about abortion, and telling that truth, Nat Hentoff may be met with silence by his peers when he goes to his reward. The shame will be theirs, not his.
The third American into space, and the first to orbit the Earth, John Glenn is dead at 95. In those days American greatness was evident. America can become great again. President-Elect Trump's speech last night at the Iowa rally on his 'thank you' tour referenced Glenn and the need to revitalize the space program. A hopeful sign and nothing one could expect from a decadent Dem like Obama or Hillary.
John F. Kennedy was assassinated 53 years ago today. Here is The Byrds' tribute to the slain leader. They took a traditional song and redid the lyrics. Here Willie Nelson does a great job with the traditional song. You Dylan aficionados will want to give a listen to young Bob's rendition of the old song.
I was in the eighth grade when Kennedy was gunned down. We were assembled in an auditorium for some reason when the principal came in and announced that the president had been shot. The date was November 22, 1963. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was seated behind my quondam inamorata, Christine W. My love for her was from afar, like that of Don Quixote for the fair Dulcinea, but at the moment I was in close physical proximity to her, studying the back of her blouse through which I could make out the strap of her training bra . . . .
Since those far-off and fabulous days of 'Camelot,' we have learned a lot about Kennedy's dark side. But every man has his 'wobble,' and who among us would want to be exposed to the full light of day? He was a boyhood hero of mine, "the intrepid skipper of the PT 109," as I described him in a school essay. My assessment of him has been dialed downward over the years, but there were traces of greatness about him. He was a resolute commie fighter and a lifetime member of the NRA and Second Amendment defender. In those days, a decent, patriotic American could be a Democrat.
And if it weren't for his inspiration we wouldn't have beaten the Evil Empire in the space race.
It was a tale of two nonentities, Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby. Both were little men who wanted to be big men. Oswald, acting alone, shot Kennedy. Ruby, acting alone, shot Oswald. That is the long and the short of it. For details, I refer you to Bugliosi.
And let's not forget that it was a commie who murdered Kennedy.
Professor Dale Jacquette died suddenly and unexpectedly at his home in August of this year at the age of 63.
I remember Dale from the summer of 1984. We were fellow seminarians in Hector-Neri Castañeda's National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar at Indiana University in Bloomington. Dale struck me at the time as a classic introvert who spoke little but thought much. He made for a welcome contrast with some overconfident others who were of the opposite disposition.
He earns high praise in Nicholas Rescher's obituary. Other details in this local notice.
For a philosopher to die at 63 is to die young. May his passing remind us of philosophy's muse. For "Death is the true inspiring genius, or muse of philosophy." (Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation)
A somewhat belated notice. Professor McCann, a noted contributor to the philosophies of action and religion, died on 22 February 2016. He was born on 27 December 1942.
We honor a philosopher by studying his works, thinking his thoughts, and building upon them.
It is good that McCann lived long enough to publish his magisterial Creation and the Sovereignty of God (Indiana University Press, 2012).
My "Hugh McCann on the Implications of Divine Sovereignty" appeared in American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 88, no. 1, Winter 2014, pp. 149-161.
On March 13, America lost one of the greatest philosophers this nation has ever produced. Hilary Putnam died of cancer at the age of 89. Those of us who had the good fortune to know Putnam as mentees, colleagues, and friends remember his life with profound gratitude and love, since Hilary was not only a great philosopher, but also a human being of extraordinary generosity, who really wanted people to be themselves, not his acolytes. But it's also good, in the midst of grief, to reflect about Hilary's career, and what it shows us about what philosophy is and what it can offer humanity. For Hilary was a person of unsurpassed brilliance, but he also believed that philosophy was not just for the rarely gifted individual. Like two of his favorites, Socrates and John Dewey (and, I'd add, like those American founders), he thought that philosophy was for all human beings, a wake-up call to the humanity in us all.
John Lennon was gunned down this night in 1980 by Mark David Chapman. I remember that night well: a student of mine called me in the middle of it to report the slaying. Lennon was my least favorite Beatle due to his silly utopianism, as expressed in the lyrically inane 'Imagine,' but this tune of his from the 1965 Rubber Soul album is a gem, and more than fit to remember him by.
And I believe he penned Tomorrow Never Knows from the Revolver album, the best song I know of about meditation. It gives me goose bumps still, almost 50 years later.
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.
Until he hung hanged himself, that is. Williams, that is.
I knew who Williams was, though I have seen only two of his films, The Dead Poets' Society and Mrs. Doubtfire. From what I know of the others I have no desire to see them. The gushing over celebrities at their passing is as tolerable as it is predictable. One only wishes that people had better judgment about who is really worthy of the highest accolades and encomia.
Here is the memorable carpe diem scene from The Dead Poets' Society. I think Dalrymple would appreciate it.
A ninety year old woman died in her home in Auburn. She had decomposed through the floor before she was found six months later. The diaries found in her belongings shed light on this lonely and brilliant mind. Watch the documentary above, and read further excerpts from her diaries below.
