Power – Maverick Philosopher

Sun Tzu: 21 Principles of the Art of War

Under 15 minutes. May help in the understanding of DJT's modus operandi et dominandi.

The Mighty Tetrad

Money, power, sex, and recognition form the Mighty Tetrad of human motivators, the chief goads to action here below. But none of the four is evil or the root of all evil. People thoughtlessly and falsely repeat, time and again, that money is the root of all evil. Why not say that about power, sex, and recognition? The sober truth is that no member of the Mighty Tetrad is evil or the root of all evil. Each is ambiguous: a good liable to perversion.

Read the rest at Substack.

Plato, Power, and Existence

The return of the Eleatic Stranger.

Substack latest.

Theme music: Barbara Lewis, Hello Stranger

EmmyLou Harris, Hello Stranger

Occasionalism, Omnipotence, and Matthew 23:9

"Secondary causes are mere occasional causes, occasions of the exercise of the causality of the only true productive cause, God."

And call no man your father upon earth, for One is your Father, who is in Heaven. (Matthew, 23:9)

Posted by: Simon Neale | Sunday, February 18, 2024 at 03:21 PM

Before we can evaluate Mr. Neale's suggestion we need to take a step back. Since occasionalism and divine omnipotence are related topics, consider four combinatorially possible views of the latter. What is it for God to be all-powerful?

A) God can do anything at all, and anything at all that gets done is done by God. God is all-powerful (omnipotent) in that (i) God has power over everything, including the laws of logic, and (ii) God alone exercises all the power that is exercised. God is then the only genuine efficient cause, and all so-called 'secondary causes' are not causes stricto sensu, but mere occasions for the exercise of the efficient causality of the one and only 'primary cause.' Accordingly, 'secondary' in 'secondary cause' is an alienans adjective: it 'alienates' or 'others' the sense of 'cause' to such an extent that a secondary cause is not a cause. (Cognate examples: a decoy duck is not a duck; artificial leather is not leather, etc. Leather does not come into kinds, real and artificial, etc. More on this topic in my Adjectives category.))

The above understanding of divine omnipotence is occasionalist and makes God out to be absolutely sovereign: he is lord of all orders, the physical, the spiritual, the logical, the moral, and even the modal. A less extreme version of occasionalism results from the deletion of clause (i). Thus:

B) God cannot do everything, but everything that is doable and gets does is done by God. Thus God cannot do what is logically impossible or command or do what is morally wrong. Nor does his will determine what is merely possible and what is necessary. All the power that is exercisable, which is to say permitted by logic, morality, and modality, is exercised by God alone. This too is occasionalism since it denies that so-called 'secondary causes' are genuine causes.

C) God cannot do everything, and not every exercise of causal power is an exercise of divine power: there are genuine natural or secondary causes. On this non-occasionalist view both God and secondary causes are genuine causes.

D) God can do everything but not everything that gets done is done by God. I don't believe anyone has held this view; I include it only for combinatorial completeness. Having brought it up, I now set it aside.

As for the New Testament verse, I read it as logically consistent with (C) and thus as not logically requiring (entailing) the truth of either (A) or (B). Since the verse does not entail the truth of occasionalism, it is consistent with (A) and with (B).

Why not say the following? My biological father is a real cause (or rather part-cause, along with my mother and various other causal factors) of my coming to exist. If I have a Father in heaven, he too is a real cause, of anything's having come to exist and of anything's remaining in existence. The 'horizontal' causality of natural causes presupposes the 'vertical' causality of the divine cause in that without the causa prima, there would be no causae secundae.

The difference between my two fathers is that the first is natural whereas the second is supernatural. The first is a spiritual animal, whereas the second is a pure spirit. But both are real. The word 'father' is not used univocally in application to both, nor equivocally. It is used analogically, but literally. Thus 'father' is being used literally of God and not metaphorically as when I say that the subversion of language is the mother of all subversion. That use of 'mother' is metaphorical or figurative.

Does this 'hold water'? I fear that my glib explanation hides aporiai. I am not in the clear when it comes to the analogia entis, and the formidable Erich Pryzwara, brilliant and erudite as he is, is too obscure to be of much help.

Erich Przywara, Analogia Entis

The book has been recently translated.

Unfortunately, I find myself in agreement with Josef Pieper as to the 'unreadibility' of the book: "The unfinished, and hardly readable book, Analogia Entis (1932), which he himself declares is the quintessence of his view, in fact gives no idea of the wealth of concrete material he spread out before us in those days."

Of course, the book is not strictly unreadable: I am reading it and getting something out of it. But it has many of the faults of Continental writing and old-time scholastic writing.

To make a really good philosopher you need to start with someone possessing a love of truth, spiritual depth, metaphysical aptitude, and historical erudition. Then some nuts-and-bolts analyst needs to beat on him with the logic stick until he can express himself clearly and precisely. Such a thrashing would have done gentlemen such as E. Gilson and J. Maritain a world of good. Gallic writing in philosophy tends toward the flabby and the florid, and the same goes for many Europeans to the east of France.

Kierkegaard on the Impotence of Earthly Power

Substack latest.

Is the Left Out for Power Alone?

Tucker Carlson and many other conservatives say that the Left is out for power alone, but it is not true. I grant, of course, that leftists love power and will do anything to gain it and maintain it. But why do they want it? Not for the sake of power alone, but to implement their agenda which they believe will be good for them and their clients. It is for the sake of the agenda — the things to be done — that leftists want power.

With their hands on the levers of power, the Democrats can keep the borders open, empty the prisons, defund the police except for the state police, confiscate the firearms of law-abiding citizens, do away with the filibuster, give felons the right to vote while in prison, outlaw home schooling, alter curricula to promote the 'progressive' worldview (by among other things injecting 1619 Project fabrications into said curricula), infiltrate and ultimately destroy the institutions of civil society, pass 'hate speech' laws to squelch dissent, suppress religion, and so on into the abyss of leftist nihilism.

Servility Will Cower to Force

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America:

For my part, I am persuaded that in all governments, whatever their nature may be, servility will cower to force, and adulation will follow power. The only means to prevent men from degrading themselves is to invest no one with that unlimited authority which is the sure method of debasing them. (Quoted in Zbigniew Janowski, Homo Americanus, p. 15)

No man, and no group of men. We need checks and balances all up and down the line.

And yes the people are ovine and servile and will cower to power. That has been amply demonstrated of late by the masses' mindless donning of useless masks. Don we now our fey apparel! Let us signal our specious virtue and adherence to the party line of Lord Fauci and his minions. And when the party line shifts, we shift with it!

The other day I espied a lady, driving alone, windows rolled up, wearing a big black mask. But I was in a charitable mood. I thought to myself, "Well, maybe she just left a doctor's office where entrance required the fashion accessory in question, and she forgot to take it off." But then I waxed rather less charitable. "Is she so oblivious to the mechanics of respiration that she would leave that rag around her face when alone?"

As for Dr. Fauci, RFK Jr. has his number. You all should read his The Real Anthony Fauci. Look it up. Buy it. Study it. The author's an outlier, a decent Dem, like Tulsi Gabbard.

Beware the Ides of March, Vladimir

"They are come, but not yet gone."

Thus spoke the soothsayer to Julius Caesar when the dictator perpetuus said to the soothsayer that the Ides of March had come and he was still alive.

Dictator perpetuus has an overly confident ring to it much like eintausendjähriges Reich.

Some history here.

The Death of Caesar (1798) by Vincenzo Camuccini

Truth and Power

'Speaking truth to power' is a phrase leftists love when they are out of power; in power, they exercise it, and truth be damned. They imbibed mendacity with their mothers' milk.

The Mighty Tetrad: Money, Power, Sex, and Recognition

Read the rest at Substack.

Linked at my Facebook page. You may leave a comment there if you wish, or send me an e-mail message. I have come to refer to Facebook as Furzbuch because its suppression of free speech surely stinks to high heaven.

There I must walk the line. But I won't back down. It's going to be a long twilight struggle* against the forces of darkness, my friends. (Wo)Man up, gear up, but be of good cheer. Long live the Republic!

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*"Now the trumpet summons us again–not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need–not as a call to battle, though embattled we are– but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, 'rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation'–a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself." JFK Inaugural Speech, 1961.

Of the four, tyranny is greatest threat at the present time, the tyranny of the deep state wokesters who control the Democrat Party and pull the strings of the puppet-in-chief, Joe Biden.

Speaking Truth to Power

When a leftist speaks truth to power, it is not out of respect for truth, but out of respect for the power that he hopes to achieve by using truth-telling as a means to his end.

Dura lex, sed lex

"The law is hard, but the law is the law." Not to a leftist, however, for whom the law is but an expression of power. Power knows no moral constraint.

Hospitals and Torture Chambers

We are strangely, insanely, conflicted. We care lovingly, or at least dutifully, for the sick, the injured, and the dying. But we also torture people to death in ways that inspire envy in demons. The belief that humans are inherently good is one of the deepest of human delusions. Paradoxically, those who succumb to it excel in the theory and practice of hell, to borrow a title from Eugen Kogon's unforgettable book.

Limited government and checks and balances across the board help keep power dispersed, the power that goes to the head and makes of the half-way decent moral monsters. Prospects for limited government, however, are themselves limited in a high-tech surveillance society in which soft totalitarianism can be expected to give way to the good old-fashioned hard variety.