Category: Substack

Bad Stuff: Badiou

Top o' the Stack.

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On 03/03/2023 17:29, William F. Vallicella from Philosophy in Progress wrote:

And I say this as someone who has read practically all of Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Gadamer, a crapload of Derrida (who, according to John Searle, gives bullshit a bad name) and plenty of others besides. I know Continental philosophy from the inside.

Dear Bill,

thanks for giving me a laugh-out-loud moment on a Friday evening! Maybe Searle is too concretist and therefore dismissive of everything that even smells wrong, but he's the world's great reality check . . . .

Reading through that list again, it seems that the chronological order of those philosophers (I think they are in order either of birthdate or of major works) corresponds to the declining coherence of their thinking and its connection to reality?

Thomas Beale
Health IT blog | Culture blog | The Objective Stance | ORC-ID
 
Thank you, Thomas.  May all be well with you. I made use of your note, with attribution. If you don't want me to mention you by name, just say so, and I won't.

 
It's Saturday. Tonight I shall have me a shot of Jaegermeister. Ever try this stuff?
 
Yes, the philosophers are listed in order of birth and of major works. And yes, the later Continentals can't hold a candle to the earlier ones. As for Searle, he is a brilliant critic of other philosophers' views, but his own views — I am thinking primarily of his philosophy of mind — are rather less impressive.
 
There is plenty of interesting material about the man and his thought in my Searle category. His outsized ego and unrestrained concupiscence landed him in some hot water.
All fine by me.
 
I had forgotten about the fall of JS … possibly I skimmed it on your blog back when you noted it, but not all the details. It is interesting how even some of the greatest minds lack what others would consider the most basic self-awareness. Still, I like much of his writing since he cuts through crap in a similar way to Scruton (Searle has a wrecking ball, Scruton arguably a flamethrower, which can be aimed with more precision, also funnier), and so saves one some time. I doubt very much if every single thing he designates as crap really is crap (and that's before we get to atheism – e.g. phenomenology), but then that's why we have you!
 
Jaegermeister is a bit too sweet for my liking so only very occasionally. I am more of wine-drinker + occasional whiskey and even sometimes Grappa, a drink that makes no sense, except when it does.
If you know what Grappa is, then you probably know what Aperol is. Try mixing the latter with tequila, say, 2/3 tequila + 1/3 Aperol. The combo is delicious in my humble opinion and an excellent synaptic lubricant.

I will try it. I have some tequila lurking in the den of iniquity (= top of wine fridge).

BTW was just scanning your various entries on Husserl, who does interest me a lot (and more to the point, pro philosophers in my field, medical informatics). I've read some original (well, in English) matierial, pretty readable, even despite the 'continental' flavour. Anyway, your various dissections are very nice. I need to spend more time on them. I may be back with some discussion points . . . .

Fire away, when you are ready!

God as Human Projection?

Substack latest

Del Noce deciphered; Feuerbach refused.

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Update (3/3): Substack informs me: "After 24 hours, your public post has had

2,234 views." (Note that if a reader accesses my post n times (n > 1), that counts as one view.)

Curious, in that I have at present only 1,200 subscribers. And why should this calmly argued post on a non-political topic be so bloody interesting when others of a more polemical nature are not? 

Running as Equalizer?

Top o' the Stack.

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Malcolm Pollack comments:

I liked your brief post on running-as-equalizer, and how stubbornly our natural inequalities will always dash our hope of sweeping them under the rug. ("Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.")
 
There's even another natural inequality you didn't touch on, namely the difference between those who have the fiber to get off their asses to go running in the first place, and those who won't – between those who do, and don't, have the will and wisdom to suffer consciously to improve their future selves. 
That, in my (insufficiently) humble opinion, is likely the most important inequality of all.
 
A stimulating comment. Now for some commentary on the comment.
 
A. Life is hierarchical by any measure in all dimensions including physical, mental, moral, and spiritual.  We are not equal as individuals. And the same goes for groups. The 'woke' attempt to enforce 'equity' is bound to fail.  There will never be equality of outcome.  Merit will inevitably find a way of asserting itself.  In the short term, the institutionalized assault on merit will be disastrous for the vast majority while profiting the oligarchic enforcers of 'equity.' In the long term, the enforcers too will suffer. For as Malcolm, points out, "reality doesn't go away." 
 
Not only is the attempt to enforce 'equity' bound to fail, it cannot count as a value in any sound value hierarchy. For 'equity' is unjust.
 
Note also that the enforcement of 'equity' is selective: Is there 'equity' in professional sports? For that matter, are professional sports the home of  'diversity' and 'inclusion'? The questions answer themselves.  In the NBA and the NFL qualifications matter.  Real qualifications, not 'woke qualifications.'  No DEI there! Examples of  'woke qualifications' include being black, being female, and being lesbian as in the case of the current presidential press secretary. The point is not that being black, being female, and being lesbian, whether taken singly or  'intersectionally,'  should disqualify anyone from a government job;  the point is that they cannot count — to a sane and reasonable person — as qualifications sans phrase. 
 
Equity' is (or was) a perfectly good word that leftists have hijacked and re-defined to mean equality of outcome/result. Linguistic hijacking has proven to be an effective  leftist tactic. Leftists are subversive of right reason and natural order and the mother of all subversion is the subversion of language. Hence the wokester predilection for Orwellianisms, e.g., "Abortion is health care." 
 
B.  In Malcolm's concluding sentence he alludes to humility and the questions it raises in the present context. He suggests that he himself is insufficiently humble. Is humility then something good? I was put in mind of a couple of lines from a poem by Goethe:
 
Zitat-nur-die-lumpen-sind-bescheiden-brave-freuen-sich-der-tat-johann-wolfgang-von-goethe-111215

This is not easy to translate, but the thought is that only the worthless are modest; the good celebrate the deed.  The good are not humble, but accomplished; they are made happy by and celebrate their accomplishments. The couplet has a Nietzschean, and thus anti-Christian flavor. Here political theology enters the picture.
 
Suppose the Christian God exists. Then we all are equal, and not just in the eyes of the law, or by abstraction from our positions in the various hierarchies mentioned above, or via some such conceit as John Rawls' Original Position behind the Veil of Ignorance.   We are equal not just de jure but de facto. We are equal in fact as sons and daughters of one and the same eternal Father. The fact is not empirical but metaphysical. The equality is a function of the infinite distance between the all-perfect God and mortal man with his manifold imperfections.  The natural hierarchies that so impress us here below are nothing to God: all the empirical differences of physical prowess, IQ, etc. shrink to nothing from the divine point of view.
 
One unavoidable question is whether the political equality of persons can be maintained without a theological foundation. Suppose there is no Judeo-Christian God. What could possibly support the manifestly anti-empirical belief in equality? After all, it is a plain fact that we are not equal in the ways mentioned above.   If reality is exhausted by the natural (space-time and its material contents) and is thus in principle empirically accessible 'all the way down and up,'  then what possible basis could belief in equality of person have?  What would make this belief non-illusory?
 
I would say that if you are not an anti-wokester, if you do not reject the DEI agenda and all the depredatory absurdities that follow in its train, such as the assault on merit, then you are not sane and reasonable.  Does it follow that the anti-wokester who is an atheist and a naturalist must also be a rejector of equality in all its senses? To specify and sharpen the question: Is there any rational justification, on the assumption of atheism and naturalism,  for holding, as I in fact do, that slavery is a grave moral evil?
 
ComBox now open.

Simone Weil in the Light of Plato

Substack notes on Phaedo 83.

Thomas Merton, Journals, vol. 4, p. 57 (10 October 1960):

The superb moral and positive beauty of the Phaedo.  One does not have to agree with Plato, but one must hear him.  Not to listen to such a voice is unpardonable, it is like not listening to conscience or nature.

Absolutely right.

The writings of Plato are inexhaustible  in their riches. For years I read and taught the Phaedo dialogue, without appreciating the theory of relations contained therein until I read Plato's "Phaedo" Theory of Relations by Héctor-Neri Castañeda.  I spent the summer of 1984 with Hector in Bloomington at Indiana University on an NEH summer seminar grant. Little did I know at the time that Frithjof Schuon, a very different type of philosopher than Hector, and one I admire more than Hector, was living in Bloomington at the same time. An opportunity missed!

Hector was a brilliant man, a creative powerhouse, and most generous in the help he gave his younger colleagues, but his approach to philosophy was merely theoretical; I discerned no spiritual depth in him. Schuon was roughly the opposite: spiritually deep but in need of some analytic discipline.  Plato combined the attributes of spiritual depth and analytic penetration that fall asunder in lesser mortals.

For Weil, Plato "has genius whereas only the word talent applies to Aristotle." ("Human Personality" in Simone Weil, An Anthology, p. 67) 

The Paradox of the Misanthropic Naturalist Animal Lover

Top of the Stack. It concludes:

You may recall the case of  Timothy Treadwell, who camped among grizzlies, and whose luck ran out. 

In an Outside article, the author, Doug Peacock, reports that Treadwell "told people he would be honored to 'end up in bear scat.'" And in his last letter, Treadwell refers to the grizzly as a "perfect animal." There are here the unmistakable signs of nature idolatry. Man must worship something, and if God be denied, then an idol must take his place, whether it be nature with its flora and fauna, or money, or sex, or the Revolution, or  some other 'icon.'

Deny God, devalue man, and end up bear shit. Way to go 'man.'