It can be corrosive, but also cleansing.
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Doubt
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Contemplating Suicide?
Are you quite sure that there is a way out? It may be that there is no exit. You can of course destroy your body, and that might do the trick. But then again it might not. Or is it perfectly obvious that you are either identical to your body or necessarily dependent for your existence on its existence? You might want to think about this before making the leap of faith in ultimate nonentity.
It would be fairly easy to give strong arguments why TO BE is not the same as TO BE PHYSICAL. Think of so-called 'abstract objects.' It is much more difficult to argue persuasively that the identity fails in the case of persons. And yet persons are rather remarkable. The ones we are regularly acquainted with are also animals. Sunk in animality as we are, it is easy to think that we are are just highly evolved animals. It is easy to miss the wonder of personhood. But the abyss that separates man from the animal should give one pause.
Bishop James A. Pike's son Jim committed suicide. He supposedly communicated the following message to his father from the Other Side:
I thought there was a way out; I wanted out; I've found there is no way out. I wish I had stayed to work out my problems in more familiar surroundings. (James A. Pike, The Other Side: An Account of My Experiences with Psychic Phenomena, Doubleday, 1968, p. 118.)
If you were around in the '60s and hip to what was happening you will recall Bishop Pike. He was a theological liberal who made quite a splash the ripples of which have long since subsided. The book I have cited is worth reading but best consumed with a mind both open and critical.
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Live Long
There is work to be done, and it may be that it can only be done here.
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Jack Kerouac: Religious Writer?
Beatific October, Kerouac month hereabouts, is at its sad redbrick end once again, but I can't let her slip away without one more substantial Kerouac entry. So raise your glass with me on this eve of All Saint's Day as I say a prayer for Jack's soul which, I fear, is still in need of purgation before it is ready for the ultimate beat vision, the visio beata. We rest at the end of the road, but don't assume that the road ends with death.
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The Kerouac and Friends industry churns on, a recent product being Hard to be a Saint in the City: The Spiritual Vision of the Beats by Robert Inchausti, Shambhala (January 30, 2018), 208 pages.
From Scott Beauchamp's review:
The real tragedy of Kerouac’s reception was that the people who should have known better took the en vogue hedonist reading at face value, writing him off as a word-vomiting miscreant. But that’s a caricature of Kerouac that over-emphasizes the most obvious personal flaws of an intensely spiritual writer. It’s an oversimplification by way of calling someone a simpleton. The truth is more complex and so much more interesting: Kerouac was one of the most humble and devoted American religious writers of the 20th century. Robert Inchausti’s recently published Hard to be a Saint in the City: The Spiritual Vision of the Beats makes an attempt at recognizing the heterodox spiritual focus of the entire Beat oeuvre, but it only points the reader in the right direction. Its simple and hodgepodge construction suggests the vast amount of analysis, particularly of Kerouac’s work, which remains to be done in order to change his reputation in the popular imagination.
I'm a Kerouac aficionado from way back. I love the guy and the rush and gush of his hyper-romantic and heart-felt wordage.* He brings tears to my eyes every October. His tapes and CDs accompany me on every road trip. He was a writer who was religious, but a "religious writer"? It's an exaggeration, like calling Thomas Merton, who was a religious writer, a spiritual master. I love him too, especially the Merton of the journals, all seven of which I have read and re-read, but he was no more a spiritual master than I am. And then there is Bob Dylan, the greatest American writer of popular songs, who added so much to our lives, but deserving of the Nobel Prize in Literature? We live in an age of exaggeration. I submit that Flannery O'Connor is closer to the truth about Kerouac & Co.
Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1979), pp. 336-337, in a letter to Dr. T. R. Spivey dated 21 June 1959:
I haven't read the article in PR [Paris Review?] or the beat writers themselves. That seems about the most appalling thing you could set yourself to do — read them. But reading about them and reading what they have to say about themselves makes me think that there is a lot of ill-directed good in them. Certainly some revolt against our exaggerated materialism is long overdue. They seem to know a good many of the right things to run away from, but to lack any necessary discipline. They call themselves holy but holiness costs and so far as I can see they pay nothing. It's true that grace is the free gift of God but to put yourself in the way of being receptive to it you have to practice self-denial. I observe that Baron von Hügel's most used words are derivatives of the word cost. As long as the beat people abandon themselves to all sensual satisfactions, on principle, you can't take them for anything but false mystics. A good look at St. John of the Cross makes them all look sick.
You can't trust them as poets either because they are too busy acting like poets. The true poet is anonymous, as to his habits, but these boys have to look, act, and apparently smell like poets.This is the only reference to the Beats that I found in The Habit of Being apart from the sentence, "That boy is on the road more than Kerouac, though in a more elegant manner." (p. 373)
Although O'Connor did not read the Beat authors she correctly sensed their appalling side (William Burroughs, for one example) and zeroed in accurately on their lack of discipline and adolescent posturing as 'holy' when they refused to satisfy the elementary requirements of becoming such. But in fairness to Kerouac one should point out that he really did at one time make a very serious effort at reforming his life. See Resolutions Made and Broken, No More Booze, Publishing, or Seminal Emission, Divine Light, Sex, Alcohol, and Kerouac.
And I wonder what Miss O'Connor would say had she lived long enough to read that book by the Holy Goof, Neal Cassady, entitled Grace Beats Karma: Letters from Prison 1958-1960? (Blast Books, 1993) Grace Beats Karma: what a wonderful title, apt, witty, and pithy!
Arguably, the central figure of the Beat movement was not Kerouac (OTR's Sal Paradise) but Neal Cassady (OTR's Dean Moriarty).
Lucky me, to have been both in and of the '60s. And to have survived.
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*'Wordage' to my ear embodies a sense between the pejorative 'verbiage' and the commendatory 'writing.' I am reminded of Truman Capote's anti-Kerouac jab, "That's not writing; it's typewriting!"
Addendum. Vito Caiati writes,
I read with interest your post “Jack Kerouac, Religious Writer?” and it struck me that, with a bit of editing, Flannery O’Connor’s remark on “the true poet” might be applied to the too worldly Merton: “The true monk is anonymous, as to his habits, but this boy has to look, act, and apparently smell like a monk” I feel that Merton’s superiors, who failed to check his wanderings of one kind or another, harmed his rich spiritual potential, which is most evident in the early journals. As the protagonist of Georges Bernanos’ Journal de un cure de la campagne observes, when speaking of monks extra muros, “Les moines sont d’incomparables maitres de la vie intérieur, . . . mais il en est de la plupart of ces fameux ‘traits’ comme des vins de terroir, qui doivent se consommer sur place. Ils ne supportent pas le voyage. ” Monks are incomparable masters of the interior life, . . . but most of these famous ‘traits’ [that they possess] like the terroir wines, must be consumed in place, They do not support the trip.”Vito,Very good observation.While deeply appreciative of monasticism with its contemptus mundi, Merton, desirous of name and fame, was wide open to the siren song of the world, which became irresistibly loud when the '60s came along. Had he been our age, would he have become a monk at all? Had he lived beyond the age of 53, would he have remained a monk?I love his Journals. That is where you will find the real Merton. As in Kerouac, a deep sincerity of the heart to break the heart.I am familiar with Bernanos' The Diary of a Country Priest, which is both theologically penetrating and of high literary value. (I would not say that Kerouac's novels are of high literary value, but on the other hand, they are not trash like those of Bukowski.)There are superb passages on prayer, sin, lust, and confession in Bernanos which I may post.But I haven't found the passage you cite. Where is it roughly? Near the beginning, middle, end? I don't imagine you have an English trans.It is always good to hear from you.
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Route 66 and Kerouac’s Favorite Song
Jack Kerouac in a letter from 17 January 1962: "Everybody is making money off my ideas, like those "Route 66" TV producers, everybody except me . . . ." (Selected Letters 1957-1969, ed. Charters, Viking 1999, p. 326; see also p. 461 and pp. 301-302.) Here is the Nelson Riddle theme music from the TV series. And here is part of an episode from the series which ran from 1960-1964. George Maharis bears a striking resemblance to Jack, wouldn't you say? And notice Maharis is riding shotgun. Kerouac wasn't a driver. Neal Cassady was the driver.
Now dig Bobby Troup. And if that's too cool for you, here is Depeche Mode. Behind the Wheel for good photos of the Mother Road. Chuck Berry, the Rolling Stones, Dr. Feelgood, and others such as Asleep at the Wheel have covered the tune.
Jack's Favorite Song
Ellis Amburn, Subterranean Kerouac (St. Martin's 1998), p. 324:
One night he [Kerouac, during a 1962 visit to Lowell, Mass.] left a bar called Chuck's with Huck Finneral, a reedy, behatted eccentric who carried a business card that read: "Professional killer . . . virgins fixed . . . orgies organized, dinosaurs neutered, contracts & leases broken." Huck's philosophy of life was: "Better a wise madness than a foolish sanity." They drove to a friend's house in Merrimack, New Hampshire, and on the way, Jack sang "Moon River," calling it his favorite song. Composed by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer, "Moon River" was the theme song of the popular Audrey Hepburn movie Breakfast at Tiffany's. Sobbed by a harmonic, later swelling with strings and chorus, the plaintive tune's gentle but epic-like lyrics describe a dreamer and roamer not unlike Kerouac.
Indeed they do. A restless dreamer, a lonesome traveler, a dharma seeker, a desolation angel passing through this vale of tears and mist, a pilgrim on the via dolorosa of this dolorous life, a drifter on the river of samsara hoping one day to cross to the Far Shore.
Another 'river' song in the same plaintive vein is Chase Webster's Moody River from 1961. It has been covered by such artists as Pat Boone, John Fogerty, and Doc Watson.
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Are You a Gray Man?
Substack latest.
Exercise your rights, but don't flaunt them.
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The Concept GOD as a Limit Concept
The concept GOD is the concept of a being that cannot be constituted in consciousness in Husserl's sense of 'constitution,' a being that cannot be a transcendence-in-immanence, but must be absolutely transcendent, transcendent in itself, not merely for us. It follows that there cannot be a phenomenology of God. At best, there can be a phenomenology of such of our experiences as purport to be of or about God.
We know that the concept GOD is the concept of something absolutely transcendent, and we know this by purely conceptual means. We have the concept GOD and we analyze it: we simply unpack its meaning. Whatever the origin of this concept, it is there in us and available for analysis. Of course, we cannot learn by conceptual analysis that God exists, but we can know something about what God cannot be like, if he does exist. We can know, for example, that God, if he exists, is not a concept. No surprise here, and nothing that distinguishes God from my chair, since my chair is not a concept either. (One cannot sit on a concept.) The difference between the concept CHAIR and the concept GOD is the difference between an ordinary concept and a limit concept (Grenzbegriff).*
This is the distinction between those concepts that can capture (mirror, represent) the essences or natures of the things of which they are the concepts, and those concepts that cannot. Call the first type ordinary concepts and the second limit concepts. Thus the concept CUBE captures the essence of every cube, which is to be a three-dimensional solid bounded by six square faces or sides with three meeting at each vertex, and it captures this essence fully. The concept HELIOTROPIC PLANT captures, partially, the essence of those plants that exhibit diurnal or seasonal motion of plant parts in response to the direction of the sun. Concepts are mental representations. Essences are extra-mental.
Now the concept GOD cannot be ordinary since this concept cannot capture the essence of God. For (i) in God essence and existence are one, and (ii) there is no ordinary concept of existence.
Ad (i). That in God essence and existence are one follows from the fact that nothing could count as the Absolute if it were a composite of essence and existence. And we know by conceptual analysis that God is the Absolute: the concept GOD is the concept of 'something' absolute. This is the case whether or not God exists.
Ad (ii). When I say that there is no ordinary concept of existence, I mean that there is no ordinary (non-limit) concept that is adequate to existence. (There are bogus concepts of existence such as Quine's.) There is no ordinary (non-limit) concept of existence because the existence of a thing, as other than its essence, cannot be conceptualized. Why not?
This is because each existing thing has its own existence. Thus the existence of Al is Al's existence, the existence of Bob is Bob's, and the existence of Carla is Carla's. For the existence of a thing is that which makes that very thing exist. Existence cannot be a property like being human, being sentient, being sunburned. These properties are multiply instantiable; existence, however, is not multiply instantiable. There are no instances of existence.
Now if each thing has its own existence, then existence is implicated in the irreducible singularity of each existing thing. Irreducible singularity, in turn, cannot be conceptualized by minds like ours which trade only in the general and multiply instantiable. It's an Aristotelian point. If Aristotle wrote in Latin it would go: individuum qua individuum ineffabile est. The individual as such, the singular as such, is ineffable and cannot be conceptualized. The Peripatetic tells us that science is never of the particular as particular but only of the particular as exhibiting general or repeatable features. The particular as such is unrepeatable. But of course there are no individuals (particulars) bare of properties. Every finite individual is a this-such. This is a law of metaphyica generalis. So, while the individual as individual cannot be conceptualized, the individual as bearer of properties can be conceptualized as an instance of those properties. If I think of Mary as an instance of lovable properties, then I abstract from the haecceity (thisness) that makes her different numerically from her indiscernible twin Sherry. So if I love Mary precisely and only as an instance of lovable properties, then it will make no difference to my so loving her whether Mary or Sherry is its object. It will, however, make a difference to Mary. "I want that you should love me for what makes me me, and not for what I have in common with her!" I explain this all in great detail in Do We Love the Person or Only Her Qualities?
The crucial point here is that when we think of an individual as an instance of properties, we abstract from (leave out of consideration) the individual's thisness and its existence. I am not saying that the existence and the thisness of a concrete individual are one and the same; I am saying that that they go together as a matter of metaphysical necessity.
Ad (i + ii). In God there is no real distinction between existence and nature. That was the first point. The second was that no ordinary (non-limit) concept captures the individuality of the thing of which it is the concept. Therefore, since God is (identically) his nature, there can be no ordinary concept of God, whence it follows frat GOD is a limit concept.
There is, then, a clear sense in which God is unconceptualizable or unbegreiflich: he cannot be grasped by the use of any ordinary concept. But it doesn't follow that we have no concept of God. We do. The concept GOD is a limit concept: it is the concept of something that cannot be grasped using ordinary concepts. Our cognitive architecture is such that we can grasp only the general, the repeatable, but never the irreducibly singular. The concept GOD, however, is the concept of 'something' absolutely and irreducibly singular. God is one without a second, one without even the possibility of a second. Any god that doesn't satisfy this metaphysical exigency just isn't worth his salt.
The concept GOD is the concept of something that lies at the outer limit of discursive intelligibility, and indeed just beyond that limit. We can argue up to this Infinite Object/Subject, but then discursive operations must cease. We cannot penetrate the divine essence since this essence is one with existence, and existence cannot be conceptually penetrated. We can however point to God, in a manner of speaking, using limit concepts. The concept GOD is the concept of an infinite, absolute and wholly transcendent reality whose realitas formalis so exceeds our powers of understanding that it cannot be taken up into the realitas objectiva of any of our ordinary concepts.
Now if you have followed that, then you are in a position to see that the following objection is a 'cheap shot' easily dismissed. "You contradict yourself. You say that God cannot be conceptualized but at the same time you operate with a concept of God as unconceptualizable." But no contradiction arises once we distinguish ordinary from limit concepts.
If the critic accuses me of inventing a distinction ad hoc to save the ineffability and transcendence of God, then my reply will be that there are numerous other examples of limit concepts. See the aptly appellated category, Limit Concepts.
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*The term Grenzbegriff first enters philosophy in 1781 in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Curiously, he uses the term only once in the works he himself published. The term surfaces a few more times in his Nachlass. The sole passage in the published works is at A255/B311 where Kant remarks that the concept noumenon is a Grenzbegriff.
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Against Spiritual Self-Help
Because we are spiritual beings, we pray. Because we cannot be lamps unto ourselves, we need to.
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Logical Barbarity
One encounters it in leftists for whom what is not a mere opinion is a 'checkable fact' — hence 'fact-checking.' These chucklewits lack the category of the considered opinion. Considered opinions lie between mere opinions and known facts.
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Reason’s Ultimate Purpose
Karlfried Graf Durckheim, Absolute Living, p 127: ". . . reason's ultimate purpose is to clear the way for something that transcends it . . . ."
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Self-Discipline and Self-Indulgence
To the self-disciplined, the satisfactions of self-discipline far outweigh the pleasures of self-indulgence. If you don't agree, then I will presume you to be self-indulgent.
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A Foolish Notion
Foolish is the notion that the truth must not be spoken if it could possibly be used to harm someone or hurt his feelings.
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The Leftist as Denier of Distinctions
The 'woker' the leftist, the broader the scope of the denial of distinctions necessary for clear thought and rationally informed action. Here are just some of them:
- citizen-noncitizen
- asylum-illegal entry
- legal immigration-illegal immigration
- immigration-emigration. This distinction elided by talk of 'migrants.'
- hate-dissent
- sex-gender
- dissenting speech-violence
- tax-penalty
- buy back-confiscation
- et cetera ad nauseam.
Bill and Steven, I profited from what each of you has to say about Matt 5: 38-42, but I think…