Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Personalism

  • Do We Love the Person or Only Her Attributes?

    Substack latest. Gleanings from a passage from Pascal. This supplements and deepens the recent discussion of subjective and objective views of death.

  • J. P. Moreland on Human Persons and the Failure of Naturalism

    Substack latest. Apart from what Alvin Plantinga has called creative anti-realism, the two main philosophical options for many of us in the West are some version of naturalism and some version of Judeo-Christian theism. As its title indicates, J. P. Moreland’s The Recalcitrant Imago Dei: Human Persons and the Failure of Naturalism (SCM Press, 2009) supports the…

  • Who Am I?

    Personal versus political identity. Top o' the Stack.

  • The Relative Unreality of Social Transactions

    An excerpt from  a journal entry dated 21 July 1985 followed by a comment. There is often little or no personal reality in human relationships. They are often nothing more than formulaic transactions. When I saw C.T.K. on Friday I told him, sincerely, that he looked good, healthy. He felt obliged to return the compliment…

  • Minimalist and Maximalist Modes of Holiday Impersonality

    'Tis the season for the letter carriers of the world to groan under their useless burdens of impersonal greetings.   Impersonality in the minimalist style typically takes the form of a store-bought card with a pre-fabricated message to which is appended an embossed name. A step up from this is a handwritten name. Slightly better…

  • Theistic Personalism versus Classical Theism: Response to Roger Pouivet

    Professor Roger Pouivet (Université de Lorraine, France) recently subscribed to my Substack series. I wrote to thank him and to request a copy of his Against Theistic Personalism: What Modern Epistemology Does to Classical Theism. He replied promptly and I dove into his article. It proved to be stimulating and I thank him for writing it. Herewith,…

  • Dreher contra Buchanan on “All men are created equal.”

    Rod Dreher quotes Patrick J. Buchanan: “All men are created equal” is an ideological statement. Where is the scientific or historic proof for it? Are we building our utopia on a sandpile of ideology and hope? Dreher responds: With that, Buchanan repudiates not only the founding principle of our Constitutional order, but also a core teaching of…

  • Who Am I? Personal Identity versus Political Identity

    Preliminary note: what has been exercising me lately is the question whether there is a deep common root to the political identitarianism of the Left and the Right, and if there is, what this root is. Nihilism, perhaps? I wrote: . . . my identity as a person trumps my identity as an animal. Part…

  • Death, Consolation, and ‘Life Goes On’

    Transhumanist fantasies aside, we will all die.  Faced with the inevitable, one naturally looks for consolation.  Some console themselves with the thought that 'life goes on.'  In the words of the great Laura Nyro song, And When I Die: And when I dieAnd when I'm goneThere'll be one child born in this worldTo carry on,…

  • Equality is a Norm, not a Fact. Does it Have a Ground or is it Groundless?

    As a matter of empirical fact, we are not equal, not physically, mentally, morally, spiritually, socially, politically, or economically.  By no empirical measure are people equal.  We are naturally unequal.  And yet we are supposedly equal as persons.  This equality of persons as persons we take as requiring equality of treatment.  Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), for…

  • Dreher contra Buchanan on “All men are created equal”

    Rod Dreher quotes Patrick J. Buchanan: “All men are created equal” is an ideological statement. Where is the scientific or historic proof for it? Are we building our utopia on a sandpile of ideology and hope? Dreher responds: With that, Buchanan repudiates not only the founding principle of our Constitutional order, but also a core…

  • Sullivan is Right: Universalism Hasn’t Been Debunked

    Andrew Sullivan is down with a very bad case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. But he hasn't lost his mind entirely. He is hip to the absurdity of leftist talk about cultural appropriation.  After wading through yet another load of his anti-Trump hyperventilatory hysteria, I came upon these reasonable words of his: I love the phrase…

  • Do We Love the Person or Only Her Qualities?

    The following ruminations belong among the metaphysical foundations of debates about tribalism, racism, and the differences between my brand of conservatism and the neo-reactionary variety.  For example, I say things like, "We should  aspire to treat individuals as individuals rather than reduce them to tokens of types or members of groups or instances of attributes." …

  • A ‘No’ to ‘No Self’

    Dale Tuggy is in town and we met up  on Thursday and Friday.  On Good Friday morning I took him on a fine looping traipse in the Western Superstitions out of First Water trail head to Second Water trail to Garden Valley, down to Hackberry Spring, and then back to the Second Water trail via…

  • J. P. Moreland on Human Persons and the Failure of Naturalism (Part One)

    (The following review will be crossposted shortly at Prosblogion.  Comments are closed here, but will be open there.) Apart from what Alvin Plantinga calls creative anti-realism, the two main philosophical options for many of us in the West are some version of naturalism and some version of Judeo-Christian theism. As its title indicates, J. P.…