Category: Varia

John Pepple’s Last Post and a Look Back

I stopped by John Pepple's place this evening and found not his latest, but his last, post. A twinge of nostalgia tinged with sadness ensued. We bloggers form a loose fellowship and when one of us moves on, whether by quitting the blogosphere, or, more drastically, by quitting the sublunary, certain emotions arise.  So long, John, it's been good to know you.  What follows is my first mention of his weblog, dated 13 July 2010:

JOHN PEPPLE WANTS A NEW LEFT

During our lazy float down the Rio Salado today, Mike Valle and I had a lot to talk about. He mentioned a new blog he had come across entitled I Want a New Left. The author, John Pepple, aims to develop a self-critical leftism.  Now, having read quickly through most of his posts, I am a bit puzzled by the same thing that puzzles Mike:  why does Pepple hang on to the 'leftism' label?

But labels aren't that important.  What is important are the issues and one's stances on them. On that score, conservatives like me and Mike share common ground with Pepple.  In his biographical statement he says that in college he majored in mathematics and took a lot of physics courses. "But this was during the late 60s and early 70s, when much questioning was occurring, and I ended up as a grad student in philosophy."  Sounds very familiar!  The 'sixties were a heady time, a time of ferment, during which indeed "much questioning was occurring."  I started out in Electrical Engineering at the same time but also "ended up as a grad student in philosophy."  I did, however, have a bit more luck career-wise and didn't experience the same difficulties getting into print.

Why did so many of us '60s types end up in philosophy?  Because we were lost in a strange land, traditional understandings and forms of world-orientation having left us without guidance, and we needed to ascend to a vantage point to reconnoiter the terrain, the vantage point that philosophy alone provides.

Political change, a species of the genus doxastic change, is a fascinating topic.  I recently stumbled upon an effort by a distaff blogger who documents her transition from a comfortable enclave of mutually reinforcing Democrats to the more open world of contemporary conservatism, and the hostility with which her turncoat behavior was rewarded.  She calls her blog Neo-Neocon.

I Kill a Bug

And when I do, I apologize to him: "Sorry, man, nothing personal; but just one of my thoughts is worth more than your entire life."

But if the insect is no distraction and can be easily dispatched to the outdoors, that is where he goes, or is sent. Sentience as such, no matter how low its level, is marvellous and mysterious and deserving of respect. 

But not just sentience elicits my awe. I took my rest on a rock atop Miner's Saddle in the Western Superstitions. It had been a hard climb. Endorphins released, contemplative repose supervened. A fly landed on my arm. The lambent light of the desert Southwest illuminated its intricacy. What a piece of engineering! What a beautiful specimen of designedness!    

The above is a nice introduction to The Concept of Design.

……………………………

Vito Caiati writes,

“But if the insect is no distraction and can be easily dispatched to the outdoors, that is where he goes, or is sent. Sentience as such, no matter how low its level, is marvelous and mysterious and deserving of respect.”

Good for you, Bill! I faced a similar situation recently, one which involved a more evolved form of sentient life, a little mouse that had come in from my garden as the weather turned colder. He had been trapped at the bottom of my kitchen garbage bin, under the removal container, by my two cats. Removing them from the room, I lifted up the container and discovered him there, looking up at me. He, like your insect, was “dispatched” to the garden, rather than killed. These are small acts of mercy, but to arrive at them requires a good deal of humility and wisdom. I recall Henry Beston’s observation regarding animals, in The Outermost House, with which you may partially agree: “In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”

It is always a pleasure to hear from you, Vito. And as I think of you now, a pun occurs to me, In Vito veritas!

I begin with a linguistic bagatelle. I see that when you quoted me you replaced my 'marvellous' with the more usual 'marvelous.' Why do I write 'marvellous' and 'tranquillity'? Being a linguistic conservative, I try to keep etymology in mind as far as I can given my limited erudition; the Latin is tranquillitas, and so to honor that origin I write the English counterpart with the double 'l.' Similarly with 'marvellous,' which is from Middle English merveillous, borrowed from Anglo-French, from merveille MARVEL entry 1 + -ous (Merriam-Webster).  You may call me an idiosyncratic pedant, but I am not, at least in these cases, aping the British spelling, although I am in conformity with it.

I enjoyed the mouse story. A mouse, of course, is 'more human' in the sense of more anthropo-morphic than a fly or spider, and I would not have killed the little guy especially after his having been terrorized by your cats. And then I thought of the 'mouse passage' near the beginning of Jack Kerouac's Visions of Gerard which I re-read back in October. 

One day he [Gerard] found a mouse caught in Scoop's mousetrap outside the fish market on West Sixth Street — faces more bleak than envenomed spiders, those who invented mousetraps [. . .] The hungjawed dull faces of grown adults had no words to praise or please little trying-angels like Gerard working to save the mouse from the trap [. . .] the little mouse, thrashing in the concrete, was released by Gerard [. . .] Took it home and nursed it, actually bandaged it, held it, stroked it, prepared a little basket for it, as Ma watched amazed . . . . 

The beautiful quotation from Henry Beston resonates with me, especially when he writes that animals "move finished and complete."  I had a similar thought recently: "Cats are perfect as they are, or rather, a healthy non-defective cat is perfect as it is: it does not seek, or need to seek, wholeness or integration." That is part of a longer meditation which I am tempted to write up and post.  I suspect you will like it.

Who is Caius?

Robert Paul Wolff here replies with wit and lefty snark to a charming request by one Pamela N., a personal assistant, who wants to know who Immanuel Kant is referring to when he writes, "Caius is a man; man is mortal; therefore, Caius is mortal."  Pamela confesses,

I will admit, I have not read Kant's works. I have, however, spent the last couple of hours combing through post after post after post about this particular quote from the book and cannot find a single soul who would say who they think Caius is.

In reading these many posts, I have come to the conclusion that Kant is probably referring to Pope Caius as he has been venerated by the Catholic Church as a Saint. Given that title, and the fact that Saint's [sic] are given to [sic] a quasi-immortal status [sic], I have ascertained that this is who Kant is most likely referring to. My question for you is, do you think that my assumption is correct? or do you have a deeper insight into who he is referring to?

My Ideal Reader

A lover of language, precise in its use, respectful of its mothership* of our thoughts, analytic but not conceptually myopic, out for the Sellarsian big picture, non-dogmatic and therefore skeptical in the best sense, which is to say, an inquirer, but not a worldling mesmerized by the sublunary, and therefore spiritually oriented. And his attitude toward academic or professional philosophy? At once both respectful and critical.  And similarly with respect to every institution and everything institutionalized:  respectful but critical.

Where would we be without institutions? And yet they are like the houses around here: they either have termites or will get them.  The right attitude: we fumigate, not demolish, edifices infested with termites.  The Roman Catholic Church, for example, and the universities. And others as well. 

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*A neologism, apparently, one that just occurred to me, crafted in parallel to 'fathership,' a word recognized by Merriam-Webster.  And you call me a sexist? And you think conservatives are stick-in-the-muds opposed to everything new?

Another ‘Too Late’ Story: Elizabeth Wolgast

Long-time reader Dave Bagwill wrote to tell me that he tried to contact  his old professor at Cal State, Hayward, Elizabeth Wolgast, but was too late. "She was  a very fine woman with a penetrating intellect and a warm heart," Dave recalls.  From Wolgast's obituary:

Elizabeth H. Wolgast
Feb 27, 1929 – Oct 13, 2020
Elizabeth Wolgast, died October 13 from complications following a stroke on October 1: she was 91. Elizabeth was born in Dunellen, NJ in February 1929. In 1936 her family moved to a farm outside Philadelphia run by her mother (a degreed nutritionist) while her father worked in business. She studied water-color painting as a young woman which became a life-long passion for her. She met her husband, Richard, at a drawing class at Cornell University and they married in 1949. Elizabeth went on to earn a PhD in Philosophy at the University of Washington and had a long, distinguished career teaching at the Cal State University at Hayward. She was a trailblazer in her profession being the first tenured female professor in that department. She was still the only one there when she retired. She enjoyed visiting professorships at Dartmouth College, Cambridge (England), West Point, and Abo (Finland). She authored four philosophy texts and numerous journal articles.

Read the rest. Here is her PhilPapers page.

I just now ordered a used copy of  Wolgast's Paradoxes of Knowledge for a paltry $8.34.  You may wish to spring for a new copy for a mere 529 semolians.  

We best honor a philosopher by reading his work and thinking his thoughts, sympathetically, but critically.

As a general rule, you should never buy a book you haven't read. (That sounds like a bit of a paradox itself.) But the Wolgast volume appeared under the Cornell imprint, so it is probably worth reading in part if not in toto. I sense that it will be heavily Wittgensteinian. But a little Wittgenstein never hurt anybody.

Time was, when I had space for books but no money. Now it is the other way around.  I may have to buy a bigger house. Without books would life be worth living?

In these trying times, we who value high culture need to build vast private libraries that cannot be easily marauded by the totalitarian agents of leftist destruction. We also need to lay in righteous supplies of Pb to protect them. 

Theme music: It's Too Late, She's Gone

Wolgast

 

Do not go maskless . . .

. . . into that open air.

Or leave your house at night.

But rage, rage against the pusillanimity of your fright.

Your soul's a pussy that cannot take a dare.

So rage, rage against those who masklessly enjoy the open air.

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Addendum (3/7). Is there an etymological connection between 'pussy and 'pusillanimous'? Here is the answer.

Substack

I opened an account yesterday. Only one entry so far, and less than ten subscribers. It's free.  Go here and do a search on my name.

If you are a good writer and impecunious, you can turn a buck on this site.  On second thought, you can do so whether or not you are impecunious.  The quality of the writing on Substack and the standing of many of the authors suggests to me that the latter-day book burners will probably keep their hands off of it.