Philosopher’s Calendar

Camus, Virtue, and its Exhortation

Albert Camus died on this date in 1960.

Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959, tr. Ryan Bloom, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2010, p. 72:

Virtue is not hateful. But speeches on virtue are. Without a doubt, no mouth in the world, much less mine, can utter them. Likewise, every time somebody interjects to speak of my honesty . . . there is someone who quivers inside me.

This entry betrays something of the mind of the leftist. Leftists are deeply suspicious of anything that smacks of 'preaching.' Theirs is the hermeneutics of suspicion. Nothing is what it manifestly is; there is always something nefarious at work below the surface. Too much enamored of the insights of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, leftists failed to achieve a critical stance toward them where a critical stance allows for a separation (krinein) of the true from the false, the coherent from the incoherent.

Surely Camus goes entirely too far in the above entry. If speeches are hateful, then so are sermons and exhortations. Civilization and its transmission are impossible, however, without appeals to our higher natures.

To a leftist, preaching can only be 'moralizing' and 'being judgmental.' It can only be the phony posturing of someone who judges others only to elevate himself. The very fact of preaching shows one to be a hypocrite. Of course, leftists have no problem with being judgmental and moralizing about the evil of hypocrisy. When they make moral judgments, however, it is, magically, not hypocritical.

And therein lies the contradiction. They would morally condemn all moral condemnation as hypocritical. But in so doing they condemn themselves as hypocrites.

We cannot jettison the moral point of view. Marx tried, putting forth his theories as 'science.' But if you have read him you know that he moralized like an Old Testament prophet.

Husserl, Knight of Reason

Edmund Husserl was born on this date in 1859. How do we honor a philosopher? By re-enacting his thoughts, sympathetically, yet critically. Amicus Plato sed magis amica veritas.

Ich muss meinen Weg gehen so sicher, so fest entschlossen und so ernst wie Duerers Ritter, Tod und Teufel.

"I must go my way as surely, as seriously, and as resolutely as the knight in Duerer's Knight, Death, and Devil."

Edmund Husserl, Persönliche Aufzeichnungen, tr. MavPhil

Note the castle on the hill, the hour glass in the devil's hand, the serpents entwined in his headpiece, and the human skull on the road.

Time is running out, death awaits, and a mighty task wants completion. An Adversary stands in the way with temptations galore.

Husserl, like Ludwig Wittgenstein, was a serious man. I have no time for the unserious. Something is at stake in life, difficult as it is to say what it is. Related: What I Like About Wittgenstein.

My Husserl category.

Dissertation Advice on the Occasion of Kant’s Birthday

Immanuel Kant was born on this day in 1724. He died in 1804. My dissertation on Kant, which now lies 40 years in the past, is dated 22 April 1978. But if, per impossibile, my present self were Doktorvater to my self of 40 years ago, my doctoral thesis might not have been approved! As one's standards rise higher and higher with age and experience one becomes more and more reluctant to submit anything to evaluation let alone publication. One may scribble as before, and even more than before, but with less conviction that one's outpourings deserve being embalmed in printer's ink. (Herein lies a reason to blog.)

So finish the bloody thing now while you are young and cocky and energetic. Give yourself a year, say, do your absolute best and crank it out. Think of it as a union card. It might not get you a job but then it just might. Don't think of it as a magnum opus or you will never finish. Get it done by age 30 and before accepting a full-time appointment. And all of this before getting married. That, in my opinion, is the optimal order. Dissertation before 30, marriage after 30.

Now raise your glass with me in a toast to Manny on this, his 294th birthday. Sapere aude!

Related: Right and Wrong Order

On this Date in 1844

Friedrich Nietzsche was born on this date in 1844. He died on 25 August 1900. You must attend to him if you would understand our current spiritual/cultural situation. His great aphorism, "Some men are born posthumously" applies to him, and I am sure that when he penned it he was thinking of himself.

What makes it a great aphorism? Economy of expression; penetrating insight; literary quality. An aphorism must be short, but not merely clever: it has to set a truth before us. And it has to do that in an arresting and memorable way.

Some men die before they are dead

is good but does not achieve quite the same level. For one thing, it is derivative as the converse of the Nietzschean saying.

Aphoristic discourse is not argumentative discourse. Like a thunderbolt that does not bring in its train any explanation, a good aphorism is an assertion bare of reasons. It is fitting that Nietzsche should aphorize given his aversion to dialectics:

With Socrates, Greek taste changes in favor of dialectics. What really happened there? Above all, a noble taste is thus vanquished; with dialectics the plebs come to the top. Before Socrates, dialectic manners were repudiated in good society: they were considered bad manners, they were compromising. The young were warned against them. Furthermore, all such presentations of one's reasons were distrusted. Honest things, like honest men, do not carry their reasons in their hands like that. It is indecent to show all five fingers. What must first be proved is worth little. Wherever authority still forms part of good bearing, where one does not give reasons but commands, the dialectician is a kind of buffoon: one laughs at him, one does not take him seriously. Socrates was the buffoon who got himself taken seriously: what really happened there?

One chooses dialectic only when one has no other means. One knows that one arouses mistrust with it, that it is not very persuasive. Nothing is easier to erase than a dialectical effect: the experience of every meeting at which there are speeches proves this. It can only be self-defense for those who no longer have other weapons. One must have to enforce one's right: until one reaches that point, one makes no use of it. The Jews were dialecticians for that reason; Reynard the Fox was one — and Socrates too? (Twilight of the Idols, "The Problem of Socrates.")

Mark Anderson kindly sent me his book, Zarathustra Stone.

I am impressed by how sympathetically he has entered into Nietzsche's mind and spirit.

Fragment of an Open Letter to Edmund Husserl on His Birthday

Edmund Husserl was born on this date in 1859.

Philosophy was the mission of my life. I had to philosophize otherwise I could not live in this world. (Here)

Dear Husserl,

It may be that the truth we need cannot be known in a way that satisfies modern scruples. Not everything worth knowing can be validated conclusively and with certainty within the confines of one's own subjectivity. It may be that one pays a high price to satisfy the modern scruples . . . .

Friedrich Nietzsche was born on this date in 1844. He died on 25 August 1900. His great aphorism, "Some men are born posthumously" applies to him, and I am sure that when he penned it he was thinking of himself.

Mark Anderson writes to tell me that his book, Zarathustra Stone, has been published.