Category: Substack

If God Created the World, Who Created the Creator?

Thomas Merton claims that the title question is a good koan. I maintain that it isn’t.  I then give two examples of what I consider to be good Christian koans. Substack latest.

This article is relevant to my ongoing discussion with Tom Carroll. I thank him once again for engaging, as opposed to opposing, my ideas.  Those who think oppositionally in philosophy are not philosophers but ideologues.

After MacIntyre: On Deriving ‘Ought’ from ‘Is’

Are there any (non-trivial) valid arguments that satisfy the following conditions: (i) The premises are all purely factual in the sense of purporting to state only what is the case; (ii) the conclusion is normative/evaluative? Alasdair MacIntyre gives an example (After Virtue, U. of Notre Dame Press, 1981, p. 55) that is plausible but not rationally coercive.

Substack latest.

On Marx

A little sympathy for the devil at the top o’ the Stack.  It begins like this, and then I lay into him.

Physical work is good for body and soul if you are working for yourself and have time for other things. So I have long felt a certain sympathy for a famous passage from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology (ed. C. J. Arthur, New York: International Publishers, 1970, p. 53):

. . . as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.

Tribalism and Diversity

Substack latest.  First two paragraphs with a Study Guide I’ve just now appended.

Tribalism is on the rise while classical liberalism is on the wane. Given this fact, does it make sense to admit into one’s country ever more different tribes? A piety oft-intoned by leftists is that diversity is our strength. An Orwellianism, that, if tribal diversity is at issue.* For that would amount to the absurdity that the more domestic strife, the stronger we become. It is plain, after all, that different tribes do not like each other, and do not see themselves in the other. Tribal identification is other-exclusive. There is no comity without commonality.

I am against tribal identification. I realize, however, that I am sawing against the grain of the crooked timber of humanity. People will continue to identify themselves as members of groups. Classically liberal ideals such as toleration are no match for the ingrained tendency to revert to the tribal. So the realist in me says that immigration policy must favor those who are assimilable to our values and principles and must exclude those who aren’t.

You should be able to explain each of these terms:  tribalism, classical liberalism, Orwellianism, comity, toleration.

Who am I alluding to with the phrase “crooked timber of humanity”?

Disagreement in Philosophy

Substack latest.

That philosophers disagree is a fact about which there is little disagreement, even among philosophers. But what this widespread and deep disagreement signifies is a topic of major disagreement. One issue is whether or not the fact of disagreement supplies a good reason to doubt the possibility of philosophical knowledge. Czech philosopher Jiří Fuchs says it doesn’t. I say it does.