Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

  • Moving from Religion to Philosophy: A Typology of Motives

    People come to philosophy from various 'places.'  Some come from religion, others from mathematics and the natural sciences, still others from literature and the arts.  There are other termini a quis as well.  In this post I am concerned only with the move from religion to philosophy.  What are the main types of reasons for those who are concerned with religion to take up the serious study of philosophy?  I count five main types of motive.

    1. The Apologetic Motive.  Some look to philosophy for apologetic tools.  Their concern is to clarify and defend the tenets of their religious faith, tenets they do not question, or do not question in the main, against those who do question them, or even attack them.  For someone whose central motive is apologetic, the aim is not to seek a truth they do not possess, but to articulate and defend a truth, the "deposit of faith," that they already possess, if not in fullness, at least in outline.

    2. The Critical Motive.  Someone who is animated by the Critical Motive seeks to understand religion and evaluate its claim to truth, while taking it seriously.  To criticize is not to oppose, but to sift, evaluate, assay, separate the true from the false, the reasonable from the unreasonable.  The critic is not out to defend or attack but to understand and evaluate.  Open to the claims of religion, his question is: But is it true?

    3. The Debunking Motive.  If the apologist presupposes the truth of his religion, or some religion, the debunker presupposes the falsehood of a particular religion or of every religion.  He takes the doctrines and institutions of religion seriously as things worth attacking, exposing, debunking, unmasking, refuting.

    The apologist, the critic, and the debunker all take religion seriously as something worth defending, worth evaluating, or worth attacking using the tools of philosophy.  For all three, philosophy is a tool, not an end in itself. 

    The apologist moves to philosophy without leaving religion. If he succeeds in defending his faith with the weapons of philosophy, well and good; if he fails, it doesn't really matter.  He has all the essential truth he needs from his religion.  His inability to mount an intellectually respectable defense of it is a secondary matter.  He might take the following view. "My religion is true. So there must be an intellectually respectable defense of it, whether or not I or anyone can mount that defense."

    The critic moves to philosophy with the live option of leaving religion behind.  Whether or not he leaves it behind depends on the outcome of his critique.  Neither staying nor leaving is a foregone conclusion.

    The debunker either never had a living faith, or else he had one but lost it.  As a debunker, his decision has been made and his Rubicon crossed: religion is buncombe from start to finish, dangerous buncombe that needs to be unmasked and opposed. Strictly speaking, only the debunker who once had a living faith moves from it to philosophy.  You cannot move away from a place where you never were.

    4. The Transcensive Motive.  The transcender aims to find in philosophy something that completes and transcends religion while preserving its truth.  One way to flesh this out would be in Hegelian terms: religion and philosophy both aim to express the Absolute, but only philosophy does so adequately.  Religion is an inadequate 'pictorial' (vortstellende) representation of the Absolute.  On this sort of approach all that is good in religion is aufgehoben in philosophy, simultaneously cancelled and preserved, roughly in the way the bud is both cancelled and preserved in the flower.

    5. The Substitutional Motive.  The substitutionalist aims to find in philosophy a substitute for religion.  Religion, when taken seriously, makes a total claim on its adherents' higher energies.  A person who, for any reason, becomes disenchanted with religion, but is not prepared to allow himself to degenerate to the level of the worldling, may look to invest his energies elsewhere in some other lofty pursuit.  Some will turn to social or political activism.  And of course there are other termini ad quos on the road from religion. The substitutionalist abandons religion for philosophy.  In  a sense, philosophy becomes his religion.  It is in her precincts that he seeks his highest meaning and an outlet for his noblest impulses.

    Some Questions

    A. What is my motive?  (2).  Certainly not (1):  I seem to be constitutionally incapable of taking the religion of my upbringing, or any religion, as simply true without examination.  I can't suppress the questions that naturally arise.  We have it on high authority that "The unexamined life is not worth living."  That examination, of course, extends to everything, including religion, and indeed also to this very examining.  Note  that I am not appealing to the authority of Socrates/Plato since their authority can be validated rationally and autonomously.

    Certainly not (3): I am not a debunker.  Not (4) or (5) either.  Hegel is right: both religion and philosophy treat of the Absolute.  Hegel is wrong, however, in thinking that religion is somehow completed by or culminates in philosophy.  I incline to the view that Athens and Jersualem are at odds with each other, that there is a tension between them, indeed a fruitful, productive tension, one that accounts in part for the vitality of the West as over against the inanition of the Islamic world.  To put it starkly, it it is the tension between the autonomy of reason and the heteronomy of obedient faith (cf. Leo Strauss).  Jerusalem is not a suburb of Athens.

    Nor do I aim to substitute philosophy for religion.  Philosophy, with its "bloodless ballet of categories," is not my religion.  Man does not live by the discursive intellect alone.

    My view is that there are four main paths to the Absolute, philosophy, religion, mysticism, and morality.  They are separate and somehow all must be trod.  No one of them has proprietary rights in the Absolute.  How integrate them?  Integration may not be possible here below.  The best we can do is tack back and forth among them.  So we think, we pray, we meditate and we live under the aegis of moral demands taken as absolute.

    This theme is developed in Philosophy, Religion, Mysticism, and Wisdom. 

    B. Have I left any types of motive out?   

    Bill Vallicella

  • The Art of Life: Among ‘Regular Guys’

    Among regular guys it is best to play the regular guy — as tiring and boring as that can be. Need relief? Strictly limit your time among regular guys. But mix with them a little lest you be hated for being 'aloof,' or 'unfriendly.'

    As long as one is in the world, one must be able to pass as being of the world.

    Almost all socializing is levelling and dispiriting.  It drains one's spiritual sap. But a little socializing is good, like a little whisky. In both cases, however, more is not better.

    In this fallen world, society is the enemy of solitude, and solitude is to be preferred if the good of the soul is a goal.

    But I can imagine a form of sociality superior to solitude. This would be a society of spirits who had passed through the school of solitude and had achieved self-individuation.  But such a society is not to be had here below, if anywhere.

    A qualification is needed. There are rare occasions in rare friendships in which one gets a glimpse of what that sodality of spirit would be like.

    I'll end on a mundane note.  In my experience, a little socializing is often physically stimulating.  On an early morning ramble, I am doing alright.  I encounter an acquaintance. We chat for a few minutes. When I start up again I feel energized. There's a spring in my step and  glide to my stride. I exult, "I feel better than any old man should be allowed to feel."

    RELATED:  Introverts and Inwardness

    Time it took to compose this entry: 35 minutes from 4:00 to 4:35.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Today’s Facebook Shorts

    The comment threads are healthy but you have to go the Land of Zuck to read them.
     
    HOW MANY WHITE SUPREMACISTS DO YOU KNOW?
     
    I don't know any. A white supremacist is someone who denies that whites and non-whites are equal in respect of rights (life, liberty, property, etc.) and are therefore legitimately enslaved or otherwise made subservient to whites for the benefit of whites. If you have a different definition of 'white supremacist,' please tell me what it is and how many of them you know.
     
    CASHLESSNESS AND SOFT TOTALITARIANISM
     
    Some restaurants no longer accept cash payments. Reason? Health concerns. A route to soft totalitarianism. Exaggerate some health threat. Inspire fear in a gullible populace of highly suggestible conformists. Ban cash in the name of public health. Result? Everyone making payments leaves a paper trail. People can be monitored as to where they go, where they shop, what they eat and drink., what they read. Too many visits to Joe's Real BBQ for paleolithic vittles and your social credit score goes down. You get the picture . Alarmist?
     
    BV Comment 1:  Cede control of health care delivery to the gov't and they can tell you how to live, what to eat, drink, ride. Ride a motorcycle? Dangerous activity! Gov't has a reason to ban them if they are picking up the tab for health care.
     
    BV Comment 2: Are we a gullible populace of highly suggestible conformists? Well, look at all the people walking around in the open air wearing masks. Or people driving alone in their cars wearing masks. Etc. Where is the independence of mind? Are we Americans or obedient Germans?
     
    JOEY B.: OUT OF TOUCH AND BEING USED
     
    Joe Biden has been spending too much time with his record player if he thinks that Critical Race Theory is merely a plea that we be sensitive to the feelings of people of other races. I am being charitable, perhaps excessively so. I am suggesting that he is an old man out of touch with current events.
     
    Bill Vallicella

  • Rebel with a Cause

    "The eighty-year-old mystery of the murder of Sheldon Robert Harte, Leon Trotsky’s most controversial bodyguard."

    Jean van Heijenoort was another of the Old Man's bodyguards.  I met van Heijenoort in the mid-70s when he came to Boston College on the invitation of my quondam girlfriend, Charaine H., a student at Brandeis University where van Heijenoort taught.  I had arranged for Robert Sokolowski to come and read a paper on Husserl. Comrade Van attended the talk. By then, however, the political enthusiasms of his youth were a thing of the distant past.  He had given up politics for logic and love. My entry tells the tale of his murder by a crazed lover in Mexico City where Lev Davidovich Bronstein  met his grisly end.

    Moral?  Stick to logic if you want to play it safe. But there is more of life (and death) in politics and love.

    A comment from Joseph:

    I regularly read your blog, but I never comment because I do not know how. Anyway, I wanted to send a note about the Monsignor — what an incredible man. He is one of my personal models for how an academic should be. He is not only brilliant but also patient with students not so gifted (99.99% of them) — and he has quite a knack for teaching to several levels simultaneously. He is also funny (and not just for a priest). I'm glad that you have had the chance to meet him.

    Harte Sheldon R.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Former Students

    Did I help them or harm them? Probably not much of either.  They've forgotten me, and I have forgotten most of them.

    The few excellent students I had made teaching somewhat worthwhile, but the unreality of the classroom bothered me and the unseriousness of teaching those with no desire to learn.  It was like trying to feed the sated or seduce the sexless.  Philosophy, like youth itself, is wasted on the young.

    There were a few older students. They were eager and motivated but their brains had been ossified by the boring repetitiveness of mundane  existence. They wanted to learn, but they were old dogs unreceptive to new tricks. The picture I paint is in dark tones and your experience may differ. I am well aware of that.

    What do I mean by the unreality of the classroom? Compare the dentist's office. You don't want to be there and he'd rather be playing golf. But you want his services, and he is intent on providing them in a professional manner.  It is a serious setting in which money, that universal measure of seriousness and reputation, are on the line. Most students in a required course don't want to be there, and getting them to participate is like pulling teeth. 

    Bill Vallicella

  • How did We get to be so Proud?

    Recalling our miserably indigent origin in the wombs of our mothers and the subsequent helplessness of infancy, how did we get to be so arrogant and self-important?

    In a line often (mis)attributed to St. Augustine, but apparently from Bernard of Clairvaux, Inter faeces et urinam nascimur: "We are born between feces and urine." 

    So inauspicious a beginning for so proud a strut upon life's stage.

    Pride, result of the Fall, comes before a fall — into the grave.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Saturday NIght at the Oldies: The Forgotten and the Underplayed

    Betty Everett, You're No Good, 1963.  More soulful than the 1975 Linda Ronstadt version.

    The Ikettes, I'm Blue, 1962. 

    Lee Dorsey, Ya Ya, 1961.  Simplicity itself. Three chords. I-IV-V progression. No bridge.

    Paul Anka, A Steel Guitar and a Glass of Wine, 1962.

    Carole King, Crying in the Rain, 1963.  The earnest girl-feeling of young Carole makes it better than the Everly Bros.' more polished and better executed version.  

    Don Gibson, Sea of a Heartbreak.  A crossover hit from 1961.  It's a crime for the oldies stations to ignore this great song. Joe Brown's cover is also good.

    Ketty Lester, Love Letters, 1961.  Gets some play, but not enough.

    Eric Clapton, Good Night Irene. This one goes out to Ed Buckner.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Fremont Saddle, Western Superstitions. Weaver’s Needle

    BV Fremont Saddle

    Bill Vallicella

  • Mortalism

    According to Peter Heinegg, mortalism is "the belief that the soul – or spark of life, or animating principle, or whatever — dies with the body. . . ." (Mortalism: Readings on the Meaning of Life,  Prometheus, 2003, p. 9). Heinegg was raised Catholic and indeed was a member of the Jesuit order for seven years. In an essay prefatory to his anthology, he explains why he is a mortalist. Suppose we examine some of his statements.

    That anyone should be a mortalist does not surprise me, but it does surprise me that anyone should consider it an "obvious fact" that death is the "irrevocable end" of a person. But this is what Heinegg holds: "Everybody knows that the soul dies with the body, but nobody likes to admit it." (11) Priests and metaphysicians may prate about immortality, but deep down in the bowels of the body we all know that we are mortal to the core:

         As surely as the body knows pain or delight, the onset of orgasm or
         vomiting, it knows that it (we) will die and disappear. We have a
         foretaste of this every time we fall asleep or suffer any
         diminution of consciousness from drugs, fatigue, sickness,
         accidents, aging, and so forth. The extrapolation from the fading
         of awareness to its total extinction is (ha) dead certain. (13, emphasis added)

    This is as close as Heinegg comes to an argument in his personal statement, "Why I am a Mortalist." (11-14) The argument has but one premise:

       1. We experience the increase and diminution of our embodied
       consciousness in a variety of ways.

       Therefore

       2. Consciousness cannot exist disembodied.

    But surely (2) does not follow from (1). If (2) followed from (1), then it would be impossible for (1) to be true and (2) false. But it is easy to conceive of (1) being true and (2) false. It might be like  this: as long as the soul is attached to the body, its experiences are deeply affected by bodily states, but after death the soul continues  to exist and have some experiences albeit experiences of a different sort than it had while embodied.  Variations in the quality of consciousness would be exactly what one would expect given the soul's embodiment.

    Consider near-death experiences. A man has a massive heart attack and has a profoundly blissful experience of a white light at the end of a tunnel. Would any committed mortalist take such an experience as proving that there is life after bodily death? Of course not. The mortalist would point out that the man was not fully dead, and would use this fact to argue that the experience was not veridical. The mortalist  would point out that no conclusions about what happens after death can be drawn from experiences one has while still alive. By the same token, however, a consistent mortalist should realize that this same principle applies to his experiences of the waxing and waning of his consciousness: he cannot validily infer from these experiences that consciousness cannot exist disembodied.  For his experiences of the augmentation and diminution of of consciousness are enjoyed while the person's body is alive.

    What puzzles me about Heinegg is not that he is a mortalist, but that he is so cocksure about it.  One can of course extrapolate from the fading of consciousness to its total extinction, and not unreasonably; but that the extrapolation is "dead certain" is simply a leap of faith — or unfaith.

    Related post: Near-Death Experiences:  Do They Prove Anything?

    Bill Vallicella

  • Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Thomas Merton

    An activist judge wants to play the legislator. An activist monk wants to play the worldling.  Neither quite understands the nature of his 'job.'

    Bill Vallicella

  • Facebook

    That's where the MavPhil political punch-back is these days until such time as I am de-platformed for my quotidian violation of 'community standards.' I will consider your 'friend' request if I can see from your page that you have the Right stuff.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Can the Existence of God be Proven?

    A reader inquires,

    I was wondering whether you had any direction you could offer for rational arguments for God's existence?

    If you are looking for arguments that are not merely rational, but rationally compelling, I don't believe that there are any.  I also believe that there aren't any such arguments for the nonexistence of God.  A rationally compelling argument for a proposition is a proof; a rationally compelling argument for its logical contradictory is a disproof.  When it comes to God, and not just God, there are no proofs or disproofs. There are arguments, some better than others. That's as good as it gets.

    Note that my claim that this is so is not a proposition that I claim to be able to prove.  I claim merely that it is reasonable to believe.  I do believe it and will continue to believe until someone gives me a compelling reason not to believe it. If I am right, however,  that cannot happen. For my meta-philosophical thesis is substantive, and if I am right, said thesis can neither be proven nor disproven. So the the best you could do would be counter me with the contradictory of my meta-thesis. But then we would be in a stand-off.

    What is it for an argument to be rationally compelling?

    Philosophers make reasoned cases for all manner of propositions, but their colleagues typically do not find these arguments to be compelling.  So a reasoned case need not be a compelling case.  But it depends on what exactly is meant by 'compelling.'  I suggest that a (rationally) compelling argument is one which forces the 'consumer' of the argument to accept the argument's conclusion on pain of being irrational.  (What is it to be irrational? That's a long story I cannot now go into, but the worst form of irrationality would be the acceptance of a logical contradiction.) I will assume that the 'consumer' is intelligent, sincere, open to having his mind changed, and well-versed in the subject matter of the argument.  Now it may be that there are a few arguments that are rationally compelling in this sense, but there are precious few, and surely no arguments for or against the existence of God.
     
    To appreciate this, note first that arguments have premises and that no argument can prove its own premises. (An argument of the form p therefore p is an argument valid in point of logical form in which premise and conclusion are identical, but no one will take an argument of this form as proving that p.)  Now given that no argument can prove its own premises, what reason could one give for accepting the premises of a given argument?  Suppose  deductive argument A has P1 and P2 as premises and that conclusion C follows logically from the premises.  Why accept P1 and P2?  One could adduce further arguments B and C for P1 and P2 respectively.  But then the problem arises all over again.  For arguments B and C themselves have premises.  If P3 is a premise of B, what reason could one give for the acceptance of P3? One could adduce argument D.  But D too has premises, and if you think this through you soon realize that you have brought down upon your head an infinite regress which is vicious.  The regress is vicious because the task of justifying by argument all the premises involved cannot be completed.
     
    To avoid argumentative regress we need premises that are self-justifying in the sense that they are justified, but not justified by anything external to themselves.  Such propositions could be said to be self-evident.  But what is self-evident to one person is often not self-evident to another.  This plain fact forces a distinction between subjective and objective self-evidence.  Clearly, subjective self-evidence is not good enough.  If it merely seems to subject S that p is self-evident, that does not suffice to establish that p is objectively self-evident.  Trouble is, when someone announces that such-and-such is objectively self-evident that too is a claim about how it seems to that person, so that it is not clear that what is being claimed as objectively self-evident is not in the end itself merely subjectively self-evident.
     
    Example.  Suppose an argument for the existence of God employs the premise, 'Every event has a cause.'  Is this premise self-evident?  No.  Why can't there be an uncaused event?  So how does one know that that premise is true?  It is a plausible premise, no doubt, but plausibility is not the same as truth.  And if you do not know that the premises of your argument are true, then your argument, even if logically impeccable in every other way, does not amount to a proof, strictly speaking.  Knowledge entails certainty, objective certainty.
     
    My point is that there are hardly any rationally compelling arguments for substantive theses.  But one can make reasoned cases for theses.  Therefore, a reasoned case is not the same as a compelling argument.
     
    Because people are naturally dogmatic and crave doxastic security, they are unwilling to accept my meta-philosophical thesis that there are hardly any compelling arguments for substantive theses.  They want to believe that their pet beliefs are compellingly provable and that people who do not accept their 'proofs' are either irrational or morally defective.  Their tendency is to accept as sound any old argument for the conclusions they antecedently accept, no matter how shoddy the argument,  and to reject as unsound arguments that issue in conclusions they do not accept.  Their craving for doxastic security swamps and suborns their critical faculties.
     
    One way to refute what I am saying would be by providing a compelling argument for the existence of God, or a compelling argument for the nonexistence of God.  You won't be able to do it. 

    In the absence of compelling arguments, what should one do?

    I don't believe that there can be talk of proof when it comes to God, the soul, and other big topics, assuming you use 'proof' strictly.  After considering all the evidence for and against, you will have to decide what you will believe and how you will live.  The will comes into it. One freedom comes into it. I thus espouse a limited doxastic voluntarism. In the shadowlands of this life there is light enough and darkness enough to lend support to either answer, that of the theist and that of his opposite number.  So it is up to you to decide what you will believe and how you will live.

    For me the following consideration clinches the matter.  Bring the theoretical question back down to your lived life, your Existenz in the existentialist sense.  How will you live, starting right now and for the rest of your days?  Will you live as if you will be utterly extinguished in a few years or will you live as if what you do and leave undone right now matters, really matters? Will you live as if life is serious, or will you live as if it is some sort of cosmic joke?  Will you live as if something is at stake in this life, however dimly descried, or will you live as if nothing is ultimately at stake?  Will you live life as if it has an Absolute Meaning that transcends the petty particular relative meanings of the quotidian round?  Will you take the norms that conscience reveals as so many pointers to an Unseen Order to which this paltry and transient sublunary order is but prelude?

    It is your life.  You decide.  You can drift and not decide, but your drifting in the currents of social suggestion and according to the idols of the age is a deficient  mode of decision. Not to decide is to decide.

    Now suppose that when Drs. Mary Neal and Eben Alexander die the body's death, they become nothing.  Suppose that their phenomenologically vivid paranormal after-death experiences were revelatory of nothing real, that their experiences were just the imaginings of malfunctioning brains at the outer limits of biological life.  What will they have lost by believing as they did?

    Nothing! Nothing at all.  You could of course say that they were wrong and were living in illusion and giving themselves and others false hope.  But no one will ever know one way or the other.  And if the body's death is the last word, then nothing ultimately matters, and so it can't matter that they were wrong if turns out that they were.

    If they were right, however, then the moral transformation that their taking seriously of their experiences has wrought in them can be expected to redound to their benefit when they pass from this sphere. 

    Bill Vallicella

    4 responses to “Can the Existence of God be Proven?”

  • On Lowering Oneself

    He who regularly lowers himself to the level of his companions for the sake of their acceptance is likely to underestimate the damage to his height.  He will not be able to elevate them, but they can easily bring him down.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Sebastian Haffner: Totalitarians Intolerant of Private Life

    Among the dozen or so books I am currently reading is Sebastian Haffner, Defying Hitler: A Memoir (Picador, 2003).  Written in 1939, it was first published in German in 2000. The Third Reich is no more, but the following passage remains  highly relevant at a time when the main forms of totalitarianism are Chinese Communism, the hybrid political-religious ideology Islam, and the hard-Leftism of the Democrat Party in the USA:

    No, retiring into private life was not an option. However far one retreated, everywhere one was confronted with the very thing one had been fleeing from. I discovered that the Nazi revolution had abolished the old distinction between politics and private life, and that it was quite impossible to treat it  merely as a "political event." It took place not only in the sphere of politics but also in each individual private life; it seeped through the walls like a poison gas. If you wanted to evade the gas there was only one option: to remove yourself physically — emigration, Emigration:  that meant saying goodbye to the country of one's birth, language, and education and severing all patriotic ties.

    In that summer of 1933 [the year Hitler seized power] I was prepared to take even this final step.  (219)

    Haffner did emigrate, to England, then a free country. But where will we go when the whole world is under the yoke of the 'woke'?

    Haffner Sebastian

    A review of Haffner's book.

    Addendum. The totalitarianism of the 20th century was hard: enforced by the threat of the gulag, etc.  That of the 21st century, soft. See Rod Dreher, The Coming Social Credit System. Excerpt:

    You think it can’t happen here? As I show in the book, Google, Facebook, and other major corporations already collect tons of data from every one of us, based on how we use the Internet and our smartphones. If you have an Alexa, or any other “smart” device in your home, then whether you realize it or not, you have consented to allow all kinds of personal data to be hoovered up by the device and shared with a corporation. The technological capacity already exists in this country. The data are already being collected. 

    And Covid has pushed the United States much farther down the road to becoming a cashless society.  There is an obvious safety-related reason for this. But banks have a vested financial interest in weaning Americans off of cash:

    “Big Finance is the key driver moving us to a cashless society,” he said. “You’ll notice banks have been slowly closing branches and ATMs and they’re doing so in an effort to nudge us more toward their digital platforms. This saves them labor, it saves them a lot of real estate costs, and it improves their bottom line.”

    What happens when you can’t buy things at stores with cash? It’s already happening now. I’ve been to stores here in Baton Rouge that will only transact business with credit or debit cards, citing Covid, or the inability to make change because of a coin shortage. It’s understandable, but you should be well aware that the move to a cashless society makes each of us completely vulnerable to being shut out of the economy by fiat.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Saturday Night at the Oldies: The Wall of Sound

    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.

    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.

    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

    Bill Vallicella

Latest Comments

  1. The Kant-Swedenborg relation is more complicated than I thought. https://philarchive.org/archive/THOTRO-12

  2. Ed, Just now read the two topmost articles on your Substack. I’m a Kant scholar of sorts and I recall…

  3. Hi Ed, Thanks for dropping by my new cyber pad. I like your phrase, “chic ennui.” It supplies part of…

  4. Very well put: “phenomenologists of suburban hanky-panky, auto dealerships, and such.” In my student years reading Updike and Cheever was…

  5. Bill, I have been looking further into Matt 5: 38-42 and particularly how best to understand the verb antistēnai [to…

  6. Bill and Steven, I profited from what each of you has to say about Matt 5: 38-42, but I think…

  8. Hi Bill Addis’ Nietzsche’s Ontology is readily available on Amazon, Ebay and Abebooks for about US$50-60 https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=addis&ch_sort=t&cm_sp=sort-_-SRP-_-Results&ds=30&dym=on&rollup=on&sortby=17&tn=Nietzsche%27s%20Ontology

  9. It’s unbelievable that people who work with the law are among the ranks of the most sophists, demagogues, and irrational…

  10. https://www.thefp.com/p/charles-fain-lehman-dont-tolerate-disorder-charlie-kirk-iryna-zarutska?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

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