Varia – Page 13 – Maverick Philosopher

Blasted Typos!

I am astonished at my poor ability to spot typographical errors despite my assiduous exercise of what is pleonastically referred to as 'due diligence.' I see what I bloody well want to see. I read the following a good dozen times and failed to see the mistake:

Astinence is no mark of a rounder

which I just now corrected to

Abstinence is no mark of a rounder

which is my response to Jeff Hodges'

Absinthe makes the heart go founder.

But I can't hold a candle to my old friend Monterey Tom, the undisputed master of the typo, as he demonstrates here.

Jim Ryan’s Truths

Jim Ryan posts infrequently but thoughtfully. His latest entry is a list of truths he considers self-evident. I don't consider them all self-evident, but I do consider them all true.

Another Zimmerman: The Plagiarist Jára Cimrman

You've heard of Robert Zimmerman, better known as Bob Dylan, and the 'white-Hispanic' George Zimmerman whose nomen has proven to be one bad omen indeed. (Would we have heard about him at all had his name been Jorge Ramirez?)

Permit me to introduce you to Jára Cimrman whose Czech surname, if I am not badly mistaken, is pronounced like 'Zimmerman' when the latter is pronounced as it is in German.

Cimrman is quite a character with many noteworthy accomplishments to his credit. One of them is authorship of the philosophy of non-existentialism. As one reputable source has it:

Long before anyone had heard about Camus or Sartre, in 1886, Cimrman wrote pieces like 'The Essence of the Existence', which became the basis for his "Cimrmanism" philosophy, also referred to as "non-existentialism" (the main premise of this philosophy is that: "Existence cannot not exist").

But if truth be told, this Cimrman is a plagiarist. He stole the idea from me! In Does Existence Itself Exist? I defend the thesis that existence does indeed exist, and necessarily. The despicable Cimrman passed off my idea as his own and tried to hide his crime by packaging my thesis under the verbally different but logically equivalent 'Existence cannot not exist' He then falsely claimed to have developed his theory in 1886 long before my birth.

Ohne Fleiß Kein Preis

Loosely translated: No pain, no gain. Der Fleiß (Fleiss) is German for diligence. Thus 'Heidi Fleiss' is a near aptronym, diligent as she was in converting concupiscence into currency.

Another interesting German word is Sitzfleisch. It too is close in meaning to diligence, staying
power. Fleisch is meat and Sitz, seat, is from the verb sitzen, to sit. One who has Sitzfleisch, then, has sitting meat. Think of a scholarly grind who sits for long hours poring over tome after tome of arcana.

And that reminds me of a story. Max Scheler and Nicolai Hartmann were German philosophers of high repute, though Scheler was more the genius and Hartmann more the grind. As the story goes, Scheler once disparaged Hartmann thusly, "My genius and your Sitzfleisch would make a great philosopher!"

Getting back to Heidi Fleiss, she is in the news again. This time her diligence has taken a turn toward the cultivation of the noble weed, some 400 plants worth, without a license. But the long arm of the law has 'smoked' her out.

No vice, no Fleiss. From madam to mary jane.

William Lane Craig to Debate Lawrence Krauss

In Australia, soon, details here. Topic: Why is there something rather than nothing? Poor Krauss is going to get slaughtered, and deservedly so. Debating Craig is like getting into a gun fight with Doc Holliday. I would never debate him on anything, even if I thought debate was philosophically worthwhile. He has been honing his skills since high school.

According to the linked site, Krauss' A Universe from Nothing is being translated into 20 languages. Well, that is the way of the world. A piece of garbage becomes a best seller and is translated into 20 languages while books worth reading fall still-born from the press.

Spencer Case

I was relieved to hear today that Spencer Case, long-time friend of MavPhil, and Middle Eastern correspondent, is once again safely Stateside after a nine month stint in Cairo as a Fulbright fellow researching Islamic philosophy. I say 'relieved' because of the Andrew Pochter case. Spencer tells me that he writes a monthly column for a conservative collegiate publication, The College Fix. His latest column is Bipartisan Efforts to Hasten Elections in Egypt Bad Policy.

Welcome home, Spencer!

On Criticizing Something for Being What It Is

If a person or institution is essentially F, then to criticize it for being F is equivalent to criticizing it for existing. (If x is essentially F, then x cannot exist without being F. If x is F, but not essentially, then x is accidentally F: capable of existing without being F.) Let's test this thought against some examples.

1. Its core doctrines are essential to the Roman Catholic Church; to demand that it abandon one or more of them is to demand that it cease to exist.

2. The rejection of capitalism is essential to communism. Therefore, to demand that a communist embrace capitalism is to demand that he cease to be a communist.

3. The moral legitimacy of killing the other side's combatants in times of war is an essential commitment of the miltary. To demand that the military be pacifistic, that the Marine Corps become the Peace Corps, for example, is to demand that the military cease to exist.

4. If marriage is essentially between one man and one woman, then to demand same-sex marriage is to demand that marriage cease to exist.

Time to Fire Up the BBQ

But before I do, I'll wish my American readers a happy and healthy Fourth of July to the strains of Johnny Horton's The Battle of New Orleans.

July 4th Twilight Zone Marathon

Starts tomorrow, muchachos. Begins at 8 AM Eastern and runs until 6 AM July 5th. Schedule here.

My eyes glued to the set, my lovely wife invariably asks, "Haven't you seen that episode before?" She doesn't get it. I've seen 'em all numerous times each. Hell, I've been watching 'em since 1959 when the series first aired. But the best are inexhaustibly rich in content, delightful in execution, studded with young actors and actresses who went on to become famous alongside the now forgotten actors of yesteryear, replete with period costumes and lingo, and sprinkled with allusions to the politics of the day. Timeless and yet a nostalgia trip. A fine way to celebrate Independence Day.
Could popular art of this caliber have been produced in the Soviet Union? Of course not. So if you are an American, celebrate your freedom tomorrow while bemoaning how much of it we have lost 'thanks' to the liberal-left fascists.

To see how much philosophical juice can be squeezed out of a Twilight Zone episode, see here.

The original series ran from 1959 to 1964. In those days it was not uncommon to hear TV condemned as a vast wasteland. Rod Serling's work was a sterling counterexample.

The hard-driving Serling lived a short but intense life. Born in 1924, he was dead at age 50 in 1975. His four pack a day cigarette habit destroyed his heart. Imagine smoking 80 Lucky Strikes a day! Assuming 16 hours of smoking time per day, that averages to one cigarette every twelve minutes. He died on the operating table during an attempted bypass procedure.

But who is to say that a long, healthy life is better than a short, intense one fueled by the stimulants one enjoys? That is a question for the individual, not Hillary, to decide. To hell with you nanny-staters.

Next stop, the Twilight Zone.

Hippo Swallows Man Who Lives to Tell Tale

If a hippopotamus swallows a man, does the man become a part of the hippo's body? Might this be relevant to the Woman's Body Argument?

Dog Shoots Man

What the hell's going on in Florida? The other day an oven shot a woman, and now a dog has shot a man, with an 'unloaded' gun no less.

Tragedies like these show the need for Dog Control. Members of the Dog Lobby such as Duane LaRufus of the National Hound Association will scream in protest, but moral cretins like him and Leroy Pooch of Dog Owners of America are nothing but greedy shills for the Canine Industrial Complex. They routinely oppose all sensible Dog Control measures. Follow the money!

Reason dictates that all dogs must be kept muzzled at all times, and when transported in a vehicle containing a gun, must be kept securely locked in the trunk. Assault dogs, whose only purpose is to kill and maim, such as Doberman Ass Biters and Pit Bulls, must be banned. Such breeds are inherently evil and no one ouside of law enforcement and the military has any business owning them. Food magazines for all breeds must be kept strictly limited lest any dog become too rambunctious. Dog owners should be 'outed' and their names published in the paper. Special taxes must be levied on all things canine to offset the expenses incurred by society at large in the wake of the rising tide of dog violence.

Such reasonable measures will strike extremists as draconian, but if even one life can be saved, then they are justified. We must do something and we must do it now so that tragedies like the one in Florida never happen again.

Woman Shot By Oven

She didn't know a friend stored his ammo there.

Will liberals call for oven control? Or perhaps demand that ovens come with warning labels: Do not store ammunition in ovens! Or perhaps: Remove all ammo, fuels, cats and babies before preheating!

Is there anything so stupid that some liberal won't jump to embrace it?

That last sentence is an example of a rhetorical question, which I define as follows. A rhetorical question is an interrogative form of words utterance of which is used to make a statement or issue a command. For example, suppose you are the father of a teenage daughter. It gets back to you that she was texting while driving. You utter this grammatically interrogative sentence: 'Do you have to text while you drive?' You are not, logically, asking a question or making a statement. You are, logically, issuing a command: Do not text while driving! Depending on the proclivities of the lass you might add: And do not 'sext' while driving!

'Is there anything so stupid that some liberal won't jump to embrace it?' is grammatically interrogative but logically declarative.

Snow Here Now

But it is a very wet snow that does not survive its contact with the ground. A nasty cold front has arrived from the Left Coast. Can we blame this on libruls too?

Snow had the Grapevine closed for a spell. And that puts me in mind of Johnny Bond, 1960, Hot Rod Lincoln:

We left San Pedro late one night/ The moon and stars were shining bright/Everything went fine up the Grapevine Hill/ We were passing cars like they were standing still.

On Light

Today I preach on a text from Joseph Joubert:

Light. It is a fire that does not burn. (Notebooks, 21)

Just as the eyes are the most spiritual of the bodily organs, light is the most spiritual of physical phenomena. And there is no light like the lambent light of the desert. The low humidity, the sparseness of vegetation that even in its arboreal forms hugs the ground, the long, long vistas that draw the eye out to shimmering buttes and mesas — all of these contribute to the illusion that the light is alive. This light does not consume, like fire, but allows things to appear. It licks, like flames, but does not incinerate. ('Lambent' from Latin lambere, to lick.)

Light as phenomenon, as appearance, is not something merely physical. It is as much mind as matter. Without its appearance to mind it would not be what it, phenomenologically, is. But the light that allows rocks and coyotes to appear, itself appears. This seen light is seen within a clearing, eine Lichtung, which is light in a transcendental sense. But this transcendental light in whose light both illuminated objects and physical light appear, points back to the onto-theological Source of this transcendental light.

Augustine claims to have glimpsed this eternal Source Light upon entering into his "inmost being." Entering there, he saw with his soul's eye, "above that same eye of my soul, above my mind, an unchangeable light." He continues:

It was not this common light, plain to all flesh, nor a greater light of the same kind
. . . Not such was that light, but different, far different from all other lights. Nor was it above my mind, as oil is above water, or sky above earth. It was above my mind, because it made me, and I was beneath it, because I was made by it. He who knows the truth, knows that light, and he who knows it knows eternity. (Confessions, Book VII, Chapter 10)

'Light,' then, has several senses. There is the light of physics, which is but a theoretical posit. There is physical light as we see it, whether in the form of illuminated things such as yonder mesa, or sources of illumination such as the sun, or the lambent space between them. There is the transcendental light of mind without which nothing at all would appear. There is, above this transcendental light, its Source.

One could characterize a materialist as one who is blind to the light, except in the first of the four senses lately mentioned.

12/12/12

Numerology is buncombe.