Saul Kripke (1940-2022)

We honor a philosopher best by re-enacting his thoughts, sympathetically, but critically. Amicus Plato sed magis amica veritas.

Here are a couple of entries from my Kripke category:

No Alternative to (Classical) Liberalism

I wrote yesterday, "There can be no peaceful coexistence in one and the same geographical area over the long term except under classical liberalism." But what is classical liberalism? Here I found an adequate characterization:

Fukuyama follows John Gray in defining liberalism in terms of four broad characteristics. It is individualist in asserting the moral primacy of the person over the collective, egalitarian in affording the same legal and political status to all citizens, universalist in viewing all human beings as possessing the same moral dignity, and meliorist in affirming the improvability of all social and political arrangements.

Fukuyama rehearses solid reasons for preferring liberalism to other forms of political association. Liberalism offers a more or less peaceful way of managing diversity in pluralist societies. It protects human dignity and autonomy through the rule of law. And it facilitates economic growth by protecting private property rights and the freedom to buy and sell.

This comports well with what I have been saying over the years.

Individualism. The individual is the locus of value, not the collective, certainly not the state, but also not the tribe or the family, whether extended or nuclear. Families are very important, far more important than leftists could ever understand; but they contribute to human flourishing only to the extent that they nurture strong, resolute, independent, individuals. Individualism fits well with my anti-tribalism. Tribal self-identification is mis-identification. You are not in your innermost essence a token of a type or a member of group but a potential individual charged with the task of self-individuation, the task of becoming a unique individual and thus something much more than an interchangeable token of a type or member of a group. God is the supreme Individual; you are to become God-like. You could subscribe to what I just wrote even if you think God is but a regulative Ideal and not a reality. Self-individuation is a project and a task, not a given; to the extent that tribal and familial identifications impede this project they should be opposed.

Individual persons are morally distinct: I am responsible for what I do and leave undone, and you for what you do and leave undone. People should be judged as individuals and on their merits.

Egalitarianism. People are manifestly not equal, either as individuals or as groups, except formally, that is, as rights-possessors. The classical liberal stands for equal legal and political rights for all citizens.

Universalism. There are natural rights and they are the basis of civil rights. They are not conferred by governments. Well-crafted constitutions codify these rights. Legitimate governments enforce their protection. Among natural rights are rights to life, liberty, and property.

Meliorism. The perfectibility of man is a dangerous leftist illusion that has led to the spillage of oceans of blood in the 2oth century. Classical liberalism is not leftism, and despite what many opine, classical liberalism is not inevitably on the slouch toward hard leftism. Human beings are deeply flawed, so much so that they cannot perfect themselves by any individual or collective effort. Whether or not there is 'pie in the sky,' there is certainly no 'pie in the future' achievable by human effort. The eschaton will not and cannot be immanentized, to adapt a formulation of Eric Voegelin which I take to mean that we cannot achieve, within history, and by purely human means, the summum bonum that religious types envisage as our ultimate end.

All that being said and well understood, we can nevertheless make piecemeal improvements in the human lot. Things don't have to be as horrendously bad as they currently are. There is better and worse in human affairs and with effort and commitment we can better some things somewhat. The meliorist does not allow the unachievable best to become the enemy of the achievable better. His is not an all or nothing attitude. He is neither a revolutionary nor a reactionary.

A Secret Plan to Destroy America

Malcolm Pollack recommends the following. I've reproduced it verbatim. It is that good.

………………………….

Democrat and former Colorado Governor Dick Lamm gave the following speech in Washington, DC in 2003. Originally published on CAIRCO in 2014.

I have a secret plan to destroy America. If you believe, as many do, that America is too smug, too white bread, too self-satisfied, too rich, let’s destroy America. It is not that hard to do. History shows that nations are more fragile than their citizens think. No nation in history has survived the ravages of time. Arnold Toynbee observed that all great civilizations rise and they all fall, and that “an autopsy of history would show that all great nations commit suicide.” Here is my plan:

1. We must first make America a bilingual-bicultural country. History shows, in my opinion, that no nation can survive the tension, conflict and antagonism of two competing languages and cultures. It is a blessing for an individual to be bilingual; it is a curse for a society to be bilingual. One scholar, Seymour Martin Lipset, put it this way: “The histories of bilingual and bicultural societies that do not assimilate are histories of turmoil, tension and tragedy. Canada, Belgium, Malaysia, Lebanon all face crises of national existence in which minorities press for autonomy, if not independence. Pakistan and Cyprus have divided. Nigeria suppressed an ethnic rebellion. France faces difficulties with its Basques, Bretons and Corsicans.”

2. I would then invent “multiculturalism” and encourage immigrants to maintain their own culture. I would make it an article of belief that all cultures are equal: that there are no cultural differences that are important. I would declare it an article of faith that the black and Hispanic dropout rate is only due to prejudice and discrimination by the majority. Every other explanation is out-of-bounds.

3. We can make the United States a “Hispanic Quebec” without much effort. The key is to celebrate diversity rather than unity. As Benjamin Schwarz said in the Atlantic Monthly recently, “The apparent success of our own multiethnic and multicultural experiment might have been achieved, not by tolerance, but by hegemony. Without the dominance that once dictated ethnocentrically, and what it meant to be an American, we are left with only tolerance and pluralism to hold us together.” I would encourage all immigrants to keep their own language and culture. I would replace the melting pot metaphor with a salad bowl metaphor. It is important to insure that we have various cultural sub-groups living in America reinforcing their differences, rather than Americans emphasizing their similarities.

4. Having done all this, I would make our fastest-growing demographic group the least educated. I would add a second underclass, unassimilated, undereducated and antagonistic to our population. I would have this second underclass have a 50 percent dropout rate from school.

5. I would then get the big foundations and big business to give these efforts lots of money. I would invest in ethnic identity, and I would establish the cult of victimology. I would get all minorities to think their lack of success was all the fault of the majority. I would start a grievance industry blaming all minority failure on the majority population.

6. I would establish dual citizenship and promote divided loyalties. I would “celebrate diversity.” “Diversity” is a wonderfully seductive word. It stresses differences rather than commonalities. Diverse people worldwide are mostly engaged in hating each other – that is, when they are not killing each other. A “diverse,” peaceful or stable society is against most historical precedent. People undervalue the unity it takes to keep a nation together, and we can take advantage of this myopia.

Look at the ancient Greeks. Dorf’s “World History” tells us: “The Greeks believed that they belonged to the same race; they possessed a common language and literature; and they worshiped the same gods. All Greece took part in the Olympic Games in honor of Zeus, and all Greeks venerated the shrine of Apollo at Delphi. A common enemy, Persia, threatened their liberty. Yet, all of these bonds together were not strong enough to overcome two factors … (local patriotism and geographical conditions that nurtured political divisions …)” If we can put the emphasis on the “pluribus,” instead of the “unum,” we can balkanize America as surely as Kosovo.

7. Then I would place all these subjects off-limits – make it taboo to talk about. I would find a word similar to “heretic” in the 16th century that stopped discussion and paralyzed thinking. Words like “racist”, “xenophobe” halt argument and conversation. Having made America a bilingual-bicultural country, having established multiculturalism, having the large foundations fund the doctrine of “victimology,” I would next make it impossible to enforce our immigration laws. I would develop a mantra – ”because immigration has been good for America, it must always be good.” I would make every individual immigrant sympatric and ignore the cumulative impact.

8. Lastly, I would censor Victor Davis Hanson’s book “Mexifornia” – this book is dangerous; it exposes my plan to destroy America. So please, please – if you feel that America deserves to be destroyed–please, please – don’t buy this book! This guy is on to my plan.

Is There a Problem with Conservative Nationalism?

I have advocated an American conservatism that includes what I call enlightened nationalism.

But this morning's mail brought notice of an article that decouples conservatism from nationalism. Brion McClanahan writes:

What is “American conservatism”?

[. . .]

But I know one thing that American conservatism is not: nationalism.

That hasn’t stopped modern American “conservatives” for hopping on that train.

Trump bought a ticket and rode it to success in 2016.

[. . .]

In fact, most American “conservatives” have long identified with decentralization, not nationalism.

For example, John C. Calhoun described himself as a “conservative,” and because he was a “conservative” he was a “State’s rights man.”

Translation: that means he wasn’t an American “nationalist.” He was a “Unionist” but never a “nationalist” because Calhoun understood that an American “nation” by a traditional definition never existed.

Here, as elsewhere, much depends on the definition of terms. McClanahan does not inform us as to the "traditional definition" of nationalism. I am all for decentralization, limited government, states' rights, and the Tenth Amendment. Why should anyone think that these are incompatible with enlightened nationalism as I defined it (link above) in broad agreement with Trump's America Firstism?

Beware of Projecting . . .

. . . your values and attitudes into others. We are not all the same 'deep down,' and we don't all want the same things. You say you value peace and social harmony? So do I. But some are bellicose right out of the box. They love war and thrive on conflict, and not just verbally.

It is dangerous to assume that others are like we are. (I am thinking right now of a very loving and lovable female neighbor who makes the dangerous assumption: she has a 'Coexist' sticker affixed to her bumper.)

Liberal 'projectionism' — to give it a name — can get your irenic self killed.

As desirable a desideratum as peaceful coexistence is, it is inconsistent with totalitarian systems. This is why communism and Christianity cannot coexist assuming that they remain true to their defining principles. (Or at least they cannot coexist in one geographical area over the long term.) They are mutually exclusive worldviews. And of course they are not just comprehensive views of the world and the people in it, but practical systems of prescriptions and proscriptions oriented toward the guidance of human action. The actional side is paramount in both systems. Old Karl said that the philosophers had variously interpreted the world when the point was to change it. (Karl Marx, Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach). A serious Christian could say that the philosophers had variously theorized and speculated when the unum necessarium was the salvation of one's immortal soul. "For what doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul?" (Matthew 16-26) A library of learned disquisitions on the nature of the soul is of no avail if one in the end suffers its loss.

Christianity and Islam are also quite obviously mutually exclusive on both doctrinal and practical planes. Note that both in their ideological purity are totalitarian. (Christianity in the West has of course been liberalized to a great extent and is thus no longer ideologically pure.) The two in their pure forms make a total claim on the lives of their adherents. They cannot peacefully coexist in the same geographical area over the long term. The Muslim says to the infidel: either convert to the truth faith, or accept dhimmitude, or be put to the sword. That, for a Christian, is indeed a trilemma: you will be impaled on one of three horns, but you are free to choose which one.

Can classical liberalism, the touchstone of which is toleration, coexist with any totalitarian ideology, religious or secular? No again. The classical liberal can and will tolerate any ideology as long as it respects the principle of toleration; it cannot, however, tolerate the rejection of this very principle, the principle that defines it. The rub, for the totalitarian, is that if he accepts the principle of toleration, he can no longer remain totalitarian: he will have to adjust his tenets in various ways. Classical liberalism and totalitarian systems are mutually exclusive.

So where does this leave us? There can be no peaceful coexistence in one and the same geographical area over the long term except under classical liberalism. For classical liberalism alone is tolerant of deep differences and is alone respectful of our equally deep ignorance of the ultimate truth about the ultimate matters. Why must we be tolerant? Because we do not know. The classical liberal is keenly aware of the evil in the human heart and of the necessity of limited government and dispersed power. So he is justified in making war against fanaticism, onesidedness, and totalitarian systems of government whether theocratic or 'leftocratic.' It would not be a war of extermination but one of limitation. It would also be limited to one's geographical area and not promoted abroad to impose the values of classical liberalism on the benighted tribalists of the Middle East and elsewhere.

Finally, can American conservatism and the ideology of the Democrat Party in its contemporary incarnation peacefully coexist? Obviously not, which is why there is a battle for the soul of America. Either we defeat the totalitarian Left or we face a nasty trilemmatic trident: acquiesce and convert; or accept dhimmitude; or ne cancelled in one livelihood and then eventually in one's life.

Moral Community and Civil War

Malcolm Pollack writes, and I respond in blue:

Visited your blog today . . . and saw this striking passage:

But also: haven't the barbarians forfeited their (normative) humanity to such an extent that they no longer deserve moral consideration? Do they form a moral community with us at all?

I am just asking. Or is inquiry now verboten?

It's not verboten – I think it's pretty clear that the foe has already asked it of our side and found us fit for exclusion. (Joe Biden's "Red Speech" made that plain enough.)

BV: Yes. Biden's 'semi-fascist' is a weasel-word equivalent in meaning to 'fascist,' which itself is an abuse of a legitimate term. The Left's favorite 'F' word is a toxic blend of psychological projection and Orwellian subversion of language. Leftists drain the term of its descriptive meaning so as to employ it as a semantic bludgeon.

But it is chilling, nevertheless, to be asking it in serious immediacy, rather than as a speculative, worst-case example of where we might get to if we aren't careful. It seems though, that now we really are pretty much there, and that is – even for folks like us who have been thinking so hard about the road ahead for so long – a grim mile-post.

BV: Yes, we appear to be reaching a critical juncture at which we will either put the destructive Left in its place and start the long march back to comity, or else advance into hotter and hotter forms of civil war, thereby weakening ourselves over against our geopolitical adversaries who believe we are ripe for collapse if the right shocks are administered. (For example, what has the Biden administration done to protect the power grid? Nothing. The ChiComs could easily knock out most if not all of it. The Biden admin, however, thinks delusionally that the non-threat of 'white supremacy' and the very distant possible threat of 'climate change' are imminent existential threats.)

What makes our predicament so dire is that the worst of the threats to the Republic are not external, but internal, emanating as they do from the extreme ('woke') Left which has infiltrated all of our institutions aided and abetted by a vast number of Useful Idiots who do not understand what is happening.

I have read a great deal in recent years about the history of civil war, and when things get to this point – when large numbers of people begin seriously questioning whether their fellow-citizens have forfeited their claim to moral inclusion (which really is the same as saying they are no longer to be seen as fellow humans) – then a nation is approaching the final exit.

BV: Yes, if you are using 'human' normatively and not merely biologically. I am reminded of someone who when asked how many men he had killed, replied in effect, "Not a one, I killed only communists."

What strikes me here is to look back over your own slow and cautious approach to this point over these many years: always thoughtful, always trying to hang on to the better angels of the American nature, and always wary of the most inflammatory and divisive voices on the Right.

BV: You understand me, Malcolm, and I am deeply appreciative of that fact as well as of your gentlemanly conduct even when I was unduly harsh in my responses to you. You and 'Jacques' [a Canadian academic philosopher who must use a pseudonym to protect himself against the depredatory Left which is apparently even more vicious up there than down here] have had an influence on me.

But here you are. (And so am I.) When those who hate you have branded you as unpersons, and make clear that they want you dead and gone, to keep your own circle expansive enough to include them is just unilateral disarmament, and suicidal folly. Woe that we should have lived to see such times in America.

BV: I should make clear, though, that when I asked in the passage you quoted "whether the barbarians have forfeited their (normative) humanity to such an extent that they no longer deserve moral consideration," I was not asking rhetorically. I was not making a statement but genuinely asking a question. And the same goes for the question whether they, the barbarians, form a moral community with us at all. By barbarians I mean the BLM and Antifa thugs and all who would erase our history and traditions together with the criminal element in which blacks are 'over-represented,' as well as all the civilized-looking enablers of the explicitly barbarous from Biden on down, and let's not leave out the hidden operatives who pull the strings of puppets such as Biden.

As a philosopher, my interest in these questions is not just here-and-now practical, although it is that inasmuch as I cannot do philosophy if I am dead or in prison. I am no Boethius. My interest is also theoretical. We are not just clever land mammals, bits of the Earth's fauna. We are also persons, rights-possessors, and as such equal regardless of race, sex, and other biological differences. Here is a mighty bulwark against the biologism of the (true) fascists. To the extent that the alt-Right moves in that direction I must oppose them.

This bring me to the topic of tribalism. I have been strenuously opposing it. Unfortunately, it appears to be the historical norm (statistically, not normatively). If the reversion to the tribal is inevitable, then I fear that humanity is finished given the existence of WMDs.

Still and all, I have been considering that a pro tempore white tribalism might be necessary, though not in itself desirable, given the vicious assault on Western civilization that we are seeing. We should discuss this, Malcolm, practically and theoretically. What is to be done by people like us who are not about to withdraw into the petty particulars of private life, but want to do our bit to preserve a civilization that has made it possible for us and so many around the world to live long and productive lives. You and I are not about to acquiesce in the suicide of the West or accept dhimmitude, whether of the Islamist, Communist, or 'woke' variety. And so it becomes quite the pressing question whether our political enemies have forfeited their normative humanity and can still be tolerated. Toleration, you have heard me say, is a great value of the classical liberalism of the Founders. But toleration has limits, as I have also repeatedly said. We are approaching those limits, and the patience of patriots is wearing thin.

If the USA, as she was founded to be, collapses, there will be nowhere left to escape to. The rest of the Anglosphere is shot.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: The Wall of Sound

No dark songs this Saturday Night. Some upbeat numbers to take our minds off the depredatory Left and their depredations. Here are some of my favorite Phil Spector productions. It wouldn't have been the 'sixties without him. I avert my eyes from his later misadventures and remember him for his contributions to the Boomer soundtrack, than which, no doubt, no greater can be conceived.

Crystals, Uptown, 1962.

Crystals, He's a Rebel

Ronettes, Be My Baby

Crystals, Da Doo Ron Ron

Curtis Lee, Pretty Little Angel Eyes.

Great dance video. Curtis Edwin Lee, one-hit wonder, hailed from Yuma, Arizona. He died at 75 years of age on 8 January 2015. Obituary here. His signature number became a hit in 1961, reaching the #7 slot on the Billboard Hot 100. When I discovered that the record was produced by the legendary Phil Spector, I understood why it is so good. After the limelight, Lee returned to Yuma for a normal life. This tune goes out to wifey, with love. When I first espied those angel eyes back in '82, I had the thought, "Here she is, man, the one for you. Go for it!" And I did, and its been very good indeed. Forty years and counting.

Ben E. King, Spanish Harlem, 1960.

Crystals, Then He Kissed Me

Beach Boys, Then I Kissed Her. With a tribute to Marilyn M.

Paris Sisters, I Love How You Love Me, 1961.

Ronettes, Walkin' in the Rain

“I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Really? I call 'bullshit' on this saying misattributed to Voltaire.

Substack latest.

‘Depredatory’

The phrase 'depredatory Left' popped into my head this morning. I asked myself whether 'depredatory' is a recognized adjective. Then I thought, "If it isn't, it ought to be, and I shall introduce it." Well it's already in recognized dictionaries, as it ought to be.

Word of the Day: Peritus

Merriam-Webster: "an expert (as in theology or canon law) who advises and assists the hierarchy (as in the drafting of schemata) at a Vatican council."

I was sent to the dictionary by this communication from Tony Flood:

Bill, I remember Lonergan and other Vatican II periti refer[ring] disparagingly (in their writings) to the "theology of the manuals," publications approved for student-seminarian use. The Bruce Publishing Company, Milwaukee, published the 262-page book in question [Renard's Philosophy of Being] , its second edition (mine is the 7th printing, 1950, of a 1943 book). The title page is stamped "St. Charles Seminary Library, Staten Island, N.Y." and the next page bears an Imprimi potest and Imprimatur. [Edward] Feser refers to Renard's The Philosophy of Being as a "textbook." Structurally sound, no marks on any page, but it wears its 70+ years of handling on its cloth cover (no paper cover).

Tony's unloading from his library. I never unload; I just buy more. There's always space for more books. You make space. Commit territorial aggression against your wife's book shelves; invade her capacious closets; get rid of furniture. Books before bread. "Man does not live by bread alone."

Rudyard Kipling

“A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition”

In these trying times, 'lead' is a precious metal.

The Bookman and the Rifleman

You know things are getting bad when a bookman must also be a rifleman if he intends to keep his private library safe from the depredations of leftist thugs who are out to 'de-colonize' it. You cannot reach these evil-doers with arguments, for it is not the plane of reason that they inhabit; there are, however, other ways to each them. The gentle caress of sweet reason must sometimes give way to the hard fist of unreason.

This raises an important moral question. Are there cultural artifacts so precious that violence against humans in their defense is justified? I should think so. For those out to 'cancel' high culture have no qualms about 'cancelling,' i.e., murdering its creators. That is one consideration. But also: haven't the barbarians forfeited their (normative) humanity to such an extent that they no longer deserve moral consideration? Do they form a moral community with us at all?

I am just asking. Or is inquiry now verboten?

‘Democrats’ Aping National Socialists

Excellent commentary here:

In two years, the Nazis went from being a fringe party to having a stranglehold on the German government and people. It was then that they unleashed their previously subdued anti-Semitism, from boycotts to book burnings to de facto discrimination to de jure separation (Nuremberg laws) and, finally, to the Final Solution.

We can be almost sure that, if we asked any German in 1932 whether it would be okay to enslave and murder Jews, he would most certainly have said no. But within two years, Jews would officially be defined as an inferior race and have their political and economic freedoms curtailed. Within a decade, millions would be murdered.

As Martin Niemöller suggests in his 1946 poem “First they came,” the Nazis were able to accomplish their goals by taking baby steps of oppression with little discernible pushback from a willfully gullible public.

So it is that we find ourselves in America in 2022 with fascism ascendant. And unlike what the media would want you to believe, it’s not Donald Trump who’s leading the parade. For just over two years, we’ve seen the evil of fascism take hold as it’s never held sway before. Consider the following:

In the summer of 2020, Democrats rained hell down on America by allowing, encouraging, and funding urban terrorists who destroyed property, attacked citizens and the police, and killed dozens of people.

In 2020 and beyond, despite years of watching Democrats assail election integrity, anyone who questioned the highly unlikely outcome of the 2020 election was branded as an anti-democratic conspiracy nut and accused of supporting insurrection.

The riot that occurred on January 6, 2021, was labeled an “insurrection” and hundreds of citizens who had been welcomed into the US Capital or standing on its grounds were arrested, labeled as terrorists, and thrown in solitary confinement for months without charge or bail. At the same time, among the crowd were provocateurs in whom the FBI was suspiciously uninterested.

By politicizing the Department of Justice, the Biden administration and other Democrats have used the “insurrection” pretense to harass, intimidate, arrest, and jail Trump’s supporters, members of his administration, and his legal team. This harassment eventually led to the unprecedented step of the Justice Department and the FBI raiding the home of the former president and future presidential contender.

Beginning in 2020, in response to COVID, primarily Democrat-run states and municipalities across the country instituted draconian lockdown edicts that eviscerated individual rights, destroyed small businesses, and ostracized or arrested individuals who resisted. Simultaneously teachers’ unions nationwide forced school shutdowns, leading to extraordinary declines in student learning and dramatic increases in youth depression. Those seen questioning the efficacy of or damage from such lockdowns and shutdowns were unconstitutionally muzzled when the administration covertly worked with social media companies to silence and de-platform them.

The Biden administration issued mandates for rapidly developed vaccines of dubious efficacy and unknown danger; then coerced private enterprises to enforce them. Questioning that policy or non-acquiescence with it was seen as a proxy for opposition to the regime, so the government and allied businesses threatened and destroyed livelihoods.

When Americans stood up to school boards, complaining about their children being exposed to sexualization in schools or being accused of being racists because of the color of their skin, Biden’s Justice Department branded them as terrorists.

The Biden administration’s threatening, intimidating, and jailing of its opposition set the backdrop for Joe Biden’s extraordinary speech on September 1, when he stated, “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic.” This was not a campaign speech; this was the President officially addressing American citizens…and calling 70 million of them terrorists.

Continue reading “‘Democrats’ Aping National Socialists”

Free Speech, Censorship, Toleration, and a Lame Libertarian Argument

Your right to free speech entails my duty not to impede your speech; it does not entail a duty on my part to provide you with a platform. "But then you are censoring me!" In a broad and defensible sense, yes. I am tolerant and so I tolerate you and your beliefs. To tolerate, however, is not to approve but to allow, to put up with, to — wait for it — tolerate. Toleration does not extend to an aiding and abetting of views that I, after years of study and due diligence in the formation of my beliefs, consider false or pernicious.

In any case, it is not my censorship you should fear, but that of the State, especially when a regime of anti-constitutional rogues has seized control thereof. The State has non-state adjuncts and allies in the private sphere that serve as their enablers and propaganda arms. They are to be feared as well, extending as they do the State's reach into the private lives of citizens as they hollow out the space of civil society which traditionally served as a buffer between Leviathan and the naked individual. Among the enabling adjuncts and allies: Big Tech, Big Pharma, Mainstream Media.

There is no need for an Orwellian Ministry of 'Truth' within the government when CNN, CBS, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and all the rest serve as propaganda arms of governmental distortion and directives.

At this point a libertarian argument needs to be addressed, one that had some probative force decades ago but in the teeth of current developments is becoming increasingly lame. A libertarian will point out, rightly, that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects the citizen against the government in respect of the following rights: exercise of religion, free speech, peaceable assembly, and the right to petition in redress of grievances. But the amendment says nothing about the protection of the rights of citizens against private-sector entities. The libertarian argument, however, weakens the more the big corporations with enormous economic and cultural clout infiltrate and influence the government thereby merging with it.

The merging of woke-Left capital with woke-Left government puts paid to the libertarian argument which , once lame, is now totally non-ambulatory.

Toleration Misunderstood

Some of my conservative Facebook friends applauded the meme below. Such applause is ill-advised. Toleration (tolerance) in a pluralistic society such as the one we live in is essential if we are to live together peaceably, something we are obviously not doing at present. There are two claims below. The first, that tolerance is not Christian is, if not obviously untrue, not obviously true, and I would have no trouble showing that tolerance, properly understood, is akin to such Christian virtues and attitudes as patience, forbearance, forgiveness, and the like. My present interest, however, is solely in the second claim, or rather suggestion, that a commitment to toleration includes a commitment to the toleration of grave and known evil. This is a mistake that many on the Right make. It shows a failure to understand what toleration is. 'Toleration' is not a dirty word, and that to which it refers is a beautiful thing, the touchstone of the classical liberalism of the Founders. The Founders knew history and knew of the religious wars in which people literally tore one another apart in conflicts over religious practices and beliefs. Thus they enshrined religious liberty — which includes the liberty to have no religion — as a high value in the First Amendment.

Essential to toleration is a tripartite distinction between (a) beliefs and practices consonant with the prevailing orthodoxy, (b) beliefs and practices at odds with this orthodoxy but tolerable by its adherents, and (c) beliefs and practices that are intolerable. (See here.) If you understand (c), you understand that toleration has limits, and that Archbishop Chaput has gone off the rails.

For a deeper understanding of this topic see the following two Substack articles:

On Toleration: With a Little Help from Kolakowski

Toleration Extremism: Notes on John Stuart Mill

Theistic Personalism versus Classical Theism: Response to Roger Pouivet

Professor Roger Pouivet (Université de Lorraine, France) recently subscribed to my Substack series. I wrote to thank him and to request a copy of his Against Theistic Personalism: What Modern Epistemology Does to Classical Theism. He replied promptly and I dove into his article. It proved to be stimulating and I thank him for writing it. Herewith, some comments and questions.

1) Theistic personalism is the view that God is a person and that therefore the relations between God and human creatures are interpersonal. Pouivet argues against this view, taking the classical line of Augustine, Boethius, Anselm, Maimonides, and Thomas according to which God is ontologically simple and thus identical to his attributes. (See my Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry, Divine Simplicity, for details, motivation, criticisms, and references to current literature.*) The simple God of classical theism is wholly devoid of complexity and composition. The distinctions that apply to creatures do not apply to God. Among them: form-matter, act-potency, essence-existence, and individual-attribute. I would add to the list contingency-necessity as standardly understood. Aquinas held that some necessary beings have their necessity ab alio, i.e., from God, whereas God has his necessity in se. The former are creatures because they depend on God for their existence. (A creature is simply anything created by God.) The contingency-necessity ab alio distinction does not apply to God. God is therefore uniquely necessary as he is uniquely unique: he is not a necessary being among necessary beings. This is why, on classical theism, the divine necessity is not properly represented, or fully captured, if you say merely that God exists in all metaphysically possible worlds as theistic personalists such as Alvin Plantinga will say. They think of God as a necessary being among necessary beings.

2) The main question, however, is whether the classical God, the simple God, could be a person. That depends on what a person is taken to be. For Pouivet, no person can be simple: no person is identical to its attributes. It follows straightaway that the simple God cannot be a person. That's one argument. Second, no person is immutable: people change mentally and physically. Whatever changes is in time. To put the point precisely, it is metaphysically impossible that anything undergo intrinsic (non-relational) change unless it is in time. (The eternal God, outside of time, could presumably 'undergo' relational change as when I start and stop thinking about him and his attributes.) So persons are mutable and in time and are thus non-eternal). But the simple God is both intrinsically immutable and eternal. It follows that the simple God cannot be a person.

c) For Pouivet, "A person is a being with an essentially mental life made up of mental states such as thoughts (mental representations) or desires." (p. 3) It seems to follow from this definition that if God is not and cannot be a person, then he cannot have a mental life with thoughts, desires and intentions. But then I will ask Professor Pouivet how, on his view, we can makes sense of the divine omniscience. Classical theism does not exclude omniscience as a divine attribute. But to know is to be in a mental state. So it would seem that God must either possess mental states or something analogous to mental states. Granted, the archetypal intellect's knowing is very different from our ectypal knowing: God knows the object by creating it; we do not. There cannot, however, be an equivocation on 'knows' in 'God knows' and 'Socrates knows' even if there is no univocity of sense. But I found no mention of analogy in Pouivet's article.

The problem also arises with respect to the divine will. Pouivet rightly points out that for Aquinas the simplicity doctrine entails that there is nothing potential in God, that God is actus purus. (7) He then takes aim at Swinburne's view that God is a "superlative person" who is perfectly free, all-powerful, and omniscient. Pouivet objects to Swinburne:

But this has nothing to do with God as pure act . . . . In this [Thomist] tradition, God is not described as a being with intentional power . . . . For theistic personalists, the notion of intentional power is however directly linked to the idea of conscious experience which is also characteristic of human beings. The result is a deeply anthropomorphic account of God. (7-8)

A question for Professor Pouivet: can classical theism do justice to the notion that God freely created the world? It seems to me that there is a tension between divine simplicity (upheld by classical theists) and divine freedom (upheld by theistic personalists) and that Judeo-Christian theism is committed to both.

1) If God is simple, then he is purely actual (actus purus) and thus devoid of unexercised powers and unrealized potentialities. He is, from all eternity, all that he can be. This is true in every possible world because God exists in every possible world, and is pure act in every possible world. As a necessary being, God exists in every possible world, and as a simple being, he is devoid of act-potency composition in every world in which he exists.

2) As it is, God freely created our universe from nothing; but he might have created a different universe, or no universe at all. This implies that any universe God creates contingently exists.

The dyad seems logically inconsistent. If (1) is true, then there is no possible world in which God has unexercised powers. But if (2) is true, there is at least one possible world in which God has unexercised powers. Had God created no universe, then his power to create would have gone unexercised. Had God created a different universe than the one he did create, then his power to create our universe would also have gone unexercised. So if God is both simple and (libertarianly) free, then we get a logical contradiction.

In nuce, the problem is to explain how it can be true both that God is simple and that the universe which God created ex nihilo is contingent. Clearly, the classical theist wants to uphold both. What is unclear, however, is whether he can uphold both.

There are two main ways to solve an aporetic polyad. One is to show that the inconsistency alleged is at best apparent, but not real. The other way is by rejection of one of the limbs.

Many if not most theists, and almost all Protestants, will simply (pun intended) deny the divine simplicity. I myself think there are good reasons for embracing the latter. But how then avoid modal collapse?

Modal Collapse

We have modal collapse just when the following proposition is true: For any x, x is possible iff x is actual iff x is necessary. This implies that nothing is merely possible; nothing is contingent; nothing is impossible. If nothing is merely possible, then there are no merely possible worlds, which implies that there is exactly one possible world, the actual world, which cannot fail to be actual, and is therefore necessary. Modal collapse ushers in what I call call modal Spinozism.

(The collapse is on the extensional, not the intensional or notional plane: the modal words retain their distinctive senses.)

Suppose divine simplicity entails modal collapse (modal Spinozism). So what? What is so bad about the latter? Well, it comports none too well with God's sovereignty. If God is absolutely sovereign, then he cannot be under a metaphysical necessity to create. Connected with this is the fact that if God must create, then his aseity would be compromised. He cannot be wholly from himself, a se, if his existence necessarily requires a realm of creatures. Finally, creaturely (libertarian) freedom would go by the boards if reality is one big block of Spinozistic necessity.

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*Curiously, just yesterday the SEP editors informed me that an updated version is due from me by the end of February, 2023. Readers apprised of the latest literature are encouraged to contact me with their references.)

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