Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains
Open the borders; empty the prisons; empower the criminal; violate the the rights of the law-abiding; erase history and heritage and hard-won wisdom.
Above all: Destroy language so that no one can coherently think or speak about the destructive Democrat agenda.
Not just those counted as Covid-19 deaths.
(Point of logic: if an F is counted as a G, it does not follow that the F in question is a G.)
Erase history and you won't be able to learn from it, including the dire consequences of erasing it.
Being parasites, they lose if Trump loses, and being Never Trumpers, they lose if Trump wins. It's a lose-lose situation for these miserable yap-and-scribble irrelevancies.
A lack of self-reflection, of course, is just one of the many fatal character flaws of NeverTrump. What they must not realize is how much they need Trump to stick around in order for them to remain even remotely relevant. NeverTrump is a political parasite: President Trump is their host. Without him, NeverTrump will go back to the political wilderness, loathed by the Right and ignored by the Left.
More and more, I find myself attempting to have difficult conversations with people who hold very different points of view. And I consider our general failure to have these conversations well—so as to produce an actual convergence of opinion and a general increase in goodwill between the participants—to be the most consequential problem that exists. Apart from violence and other forms of coercion, all we have is conversation with which to influence one another. The fact that it is so difficult for people to have civil and productive conversations about things like U.S. foreign policy, or racial inequality, or religious tolerance and free speech, is profoundly disorienting. And it’s also dangerous. If we fail to do this, we will fail to do everything else of value. Conversation is our only tool for collaborating in a truly open-ended way.
[. . .]
. . . conversation is our only hope.
Fascinating and worthy of careful thought. Here are the main points I take Harris to be making.
1. A successful conversation produces a convergence of opinion and an increase in good will between the participants.
2. The failure to have such conversations is the most consequential problem that exists.
3. Apart from violence and other forms of coercion, all we have is conversation with which to influence one another.
4. Our failure to have civil and productive conversations about important matters of controversy is dangerous.
5. If we fail to do this, we will fail to do everything else of value.
Should we agree with any or all of these points?
Ad (1). We shouldn't agree with this. It would not be reasonable to do so. Neither of the two conditions Harris specifies are necessary for a successful conversation. I have had many successful philosophical and other conversations that do not issue in agreement or convergence of opinion. And I am sure you have as well. What these conversations issue in is clarification. The topic becomes clearer, as well as its implications for and relations with other topics, the arguments on both sides get better understood, as well as one's views and one's interlocutor's views. Mutual clarification, even without agreement, even with intractable disagreement, is sufficient for successful conversation. If we come to understand exactly what it is we disagree about, then that is very important progress even if we never come to agree.
In fact, I consider it utopian and indeed foolish to think that one can achieve (uncoerced, rational) agreement on truly fundamental matters. On some matters rational agreement among competent interlocutors is of course possible; but on others just impossible. If this is right, then agreement on all important matters of controversy cannot be an ideal for us, a goal we ought to pursue. Ought implies can. If we ought to pursue a goal, then it must be possible for us to achieve it. If a certain goal is impossible for us to achieve, then we cannot be obliged to achieve it.
A reachable goal is clarity, not agreement; toleration, not consensus.
Consider religion. Is it a value or not? Conservatives, even those who are atheistic and irreligious, tend to view religion as a value, as conducive to human flourishing. Liberals and leftists tend to view it as a disvalue, as something that impedes human flourishing. This is an important, indeed crucially important, question. Does Sam Harris really think that, via patient, civil, mutually respectful conversation, no matter how protracted, he is going to convince those of us who think religion important for human flourishing to abandon our view?
If he thinks this he is naive. I respect Harris, something I cannot say about some other New Atheists. But Harris is out beyond his depth in philosophy and religion. And he has a foolish belief in the power of reason to resolve the issues that are of deepest concern to us. Reason is a magnificent thing, of course, but Harris appears to have no inkling of its infirmity or limits.
As for the other condition, an increase in good will, surely it is not necessary for a successful conversation. The quantity of good will may stay the same in a discussion without prejudice to the discussion's being productive. It may even decrease. Admittedly, without a certain amount of initial good will, no fruitful conversation can take place. But it is false to say that a successful conversation increases good will.
Ad (2). If (1) is false or unreasonable, then so is (2). Suppose I have a conversation with an atheist such as Harris and fail to budge him from his position while he fails to budge me from mine. Such a conversation can be very productive, useful, successful, not to mention transcendently enjoyable. The life of the mind is of all lives the highest and best, and its being these things is not predicated on achieving agreement about the lofty topics that engage our interest while quite possibly transcending our ability to resolve them to our mutual satisfaction. The failure to meet Harris's conditions need be no problem at all, let alone the most consequential problem that exists.
Ad (3). Harris tells us that it is either coercion or conversation when it comes to influencing people. This is plainly a false alternative. One way to non-violently and non-coercively influence people is by setting a good example. If I treat other people with kindness, respect, forbearance, etc., this 'sets a good example' and reliably induces many people in the vicinity to do otherwise. In fact I needn't say a word, let alone enter into a conversation. For example, with a friendly gesture I can invite a motorist to enter my lane of traffic. In doing so, I ever-so-slightly increase the good will and fellow feeling in the world, profiting myself in the process. In this connection, a marvellous aphorism from Søren Kierkegaard, Journals, #1056 comes to mind:
The essential sermon is one's own existence.
But more importantly, there is teaching which in most cases is a non-violent but also a non-conversational mode of influencing people. For example, teaching someone how to change a tire, play chess, use a computer. If I have a skill, I don't discuss it with you, I teach it to you. Much of elementary education is non-violent but also non-conversational. Teaching the alphabet, the moves of the chess men, the multiplication tables, and so on. There is nothing to discuss, nothing to have a conversation about. The elements have simply to be learned. Controversial topics open to debate will arise late on. But there is no point in discussing the Peano axioms if one does not know that 1 + 1 = 2.
What about ethical instruction? Only a liberal fool would advocate conversations with young children about theft and murder and lying as if the rightness or wrongness of these acts is subject to reasonable debate or is a matter of mere opinion. They must be taught that these things are wrong for their own good and for the good of others. Discussion of ethical niceties and theories comes later, if at all, and presupposes ethical indoctrination: a child who has not internalized and appropriated ethical prescriptions and proscriptions cannot profit from ethical conversations or courses in ethics. You cannot make a twenty-year-old ethical by requiring him to take a course in ethics. He must already be ethical by upbringing.
Harris's thesis #3 is plainly false. But this is not to deny that respectful conversation is much to be preferred over coercive methods of securing agreement and should be pursued whenever possible.
Ad (4). Harris tells us that it is "dangerous" to not have civil and productive conversations about important and controversial matters. But why dangerous? Harris must know that even among competent and sincere interlocutors here in the West who share may assumptions and values we are not going to come to any agreement about God, guns, abortion, capital punishment, same-sex 'marriage,' the cluster of questions surrounding 'global warming' and plenty of other economic, political, and social questions. How can it be dangerous to not have interminable, inconclusive conversations? Conversations that go nowhere? That are more productive of dissensus than consensus? That contribute to polarization? Well, I suppose you could say that if we are talking we are not shooting.
Ad (5). Harris is really over the top on this one. Exercise for the reader: supply the refutation.
Conclusion: Conversation is overrated. If it is our only hope we are in very bad shape. We need fewer 'conversations,' not more. And we need more tolerance of opposing points of view. More tolerance and more voluntary separation. We don't need to talk to get along. We need to talk less while respecting boundaries and differences. We need less engagement and more dis-engagement. Everybody needs to back off. Trouble is, totalitarians won't back off. They want a total clamp-down on belief and behavior. And it doesn't matter whether they are 'liberal' totalitarians or Islamist totalitarians.
So there looks to be no way to avoid a fight. Unfortunately, it is reason herself who teaches that it is often the hard fist of unreason that prevails and settles the issue when the appeal to reason is unavailing.
I had the giddy thought of absolute nothingness as a boy; the old man I've become can't quite recapture in full its eldritch quality. But he can rigorously think what the boy could mainly only feel.
The boy reasoned that if God hadn't created anything, then only God would exist. But suppose no God either! And then the strangeness supervened as the boy lay in bed staring at the ceiling. There would then have been nothing, absolutely nothing! How strange!
The giddiness arose by a double subtraction. The boy subtracted creation leaving only God. Then he subtracted God leaving only nothing. The boy was innocent of philosophy and nothing from that field impeded the supervenience of strangeness as he tried to apprehend this 'nothing.'
'Necessary being' was not in the ten-year-old's vocabulary. The nonexistence of God is impossible if God is a necessary being. And surely the ens realissimum, the ens absolutum, the apha and omega of the alphabet of Being, could not be a merely contingent being. That much seems very clear to the old man.
Unfortunately, the divine necessity is not transparent to our intellects. We cannot see into the divine necessity. We have no INsight in this instance. We cannot see with indubitable evidence that God exists and cannot not exist. Why not? I conjecture that it is because of the structure of the discursive intellect.
We think in opposites. In the present case, the opposites are essence and existence. We say that in God, essence entails existence, or essence is (identically) existence, or it is the nature of God to exist. Or perhaps we say, as I recall Saint Bonaventura saying, that if God is God, then God exists: the divine self-identity entails the divine existence. But the sense of these claims rests on the logically prior distinction of essence and existence as two opposing factors that the discursive intellect must keep apart if it is to think clearly. And so the very sense of the claims militates against apodictic insight into their truth.
We cannot help but bring the distinction between essence and existence to God when we try to think about him. This distinction that we cannot help but bring prevents us from rendering the divine necessity transparent to our intellects in such a way that we cannot doubt the existence of God. The objects of the finite intellect are finitized objects in which essence and existence fall asunder. They are objects among objects subject to distinctions among distinctions. God or the ens absolutum cannot but be a finitized object to our ectypal intellects. God himself, however, is nothing finite, no object among objects, no token of a type, no instance of an eidos. We cannot get what want: objective certainty of the existence of the Absolute in which there is such a tight coalescence between the intellect and its Infinite Object that no conceivable logical wedge can be driven between intellect and Object. We want objective certainty! Husserl: Ohne Gewissheit kann ich eben nicht leben!
According to David Hume, "Whatever we conceive as existent, we can also conceive as non-existent." (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion) I would put it this way, trading Latin for plain Anglo-Saxon: no matter what we think of as existing, we can just as easily think of as not existing. This includes God.
Try it for yourself. Think of God together with all his omni-attributes and then think of God as not existing. Our atheist pals have no trouble on this score. The nonexistence of God is thinkable without logical contradiction.
I grant that if God exists, then he necessarily exists. But this concession does not help. For one cannot infer from the divine modal status — necessarily existent if existent — that God exists. For God might be impossible. Necessarily existent if existent, but, contrapositively: impossibly existent if not existent. Anselm's Insight — that than which no greater can be conceived is either necessary or impossible — does not validate Anselm's Argument.
"But surely God is possible!"
How do you know that? There is no apodictic transition from conceivability by a finite mind to possibility in reality. Besides, you cannot mean by 'possible' 'merely possible,' possible but not actual. You must mean that God is possible in a sense of 'possible' that does not exclude actuality. But then your argument begs the question.
I am not maintaining that the ens necessarium (God) does not exist. I am maintaining that we have no insight into God's existence that allays all possible doubts. And so we are left with the seeming possibility of absolute nothingness, and the giddiness or (Heideggerian) Angst that it elicits in some of us.
If God almighty cannot ban the specter of absolute nothingness, or hold it at bay, can anything? Let's see.
The 'thought' that there might have been nothing at all is unthinkable. It is self-cancelling. Here is an argument:
The following are contradictory propositions:
1) Something exists.
2) Nothing exists.
(1) is plainly true. It follows that (2) is false. So much for truth value. What about modal status? Is (1) contingent or necessary? If (1) is contingent, then its negation is possible, in which case it is possible that (2) be true. If (1) is necessary, then it is not possible that (2) be true.
Is it possible that (2) be true, that nothing exist? Is it possible that there be nothing at all? Arguably not, since if there were nothing at all, that would be the case: that would be that obtaining state of affairs, in which case there would be one 'thing,' namely, that state of affairs.
Think about it, muchachos!
Therefore, it is impossible that there be nothing at all. It follows that it is necessary that something (at least one thing) exist. This of course is not a proof of God, but of something rather less impressive, a state of affairs. The state of affairs, There is something, necessarily obtains. It cannot not obtain. And it cannot obtain necessarily without existing necessarily. Not a proof of God, but a starting point for a proof of God; in any case an important result: we seem to have achieved a knock-down proof of the necessary existence of something by sheer thinking. Thought makes certain contact with reality 'by its own power' without the mediation of the senses, or anything else for that matter, including divine revelation. Parmenides vindicatus est.
If this is right, then the thought of absolute nothingness is an unthinkable thought, hence no thought at all, a product of confusion, a 'ghost' to be dispelled by clear thinking. My ten-year-0ld self was perhaps 'spooked' by an unthinkable thought. Hence, the eldritch quality, the strangeness the old man cannot forget. It was perhaps only an emotional state induced by an attempt to overstep the bounds of intelligibility. Perhaps the boy succumbed to a purely subjective emotional state bare of cognitive content, bereft of intentionality, revelatory of nothing. Hence the giddy strangeness, a close cousin to Heidegger's Angst.
Up to this point Father Parmenides would agree.
But then what of the Humean reasoning? Does it not clamor for 'equal time'? An aporia threatens:
(H) Nothing is such that its existence can be seen to be necessary by thought alone.
(P) Something is such that its existence can be seen to be necessary by thought alone.
I don't know how to resolve this contradiction. I am of two minds. Parmenides and Hume are battling for hegemony in my shallow pate.
Can I conceive (think without internal logical contradiction) the nonexistence of what is the case, or a total way things are?
The Humean-Heideggerian part of my mind says Yes: you are thinking the thought of radical contingency. Everything is contingent including there being anything at all. There really might have been nothing at all. And this real possibility is a live one, moment to moment. There is no ultimate metaphysical support anywhere. That there is anything at all is a brute fact, a fact without cause or explanation, and thus a fact wholly unintelligible, hence ab-surd, We are hanging in the Void. Ich habe Angst vor dem Nichts! Heidegger's Angst and Sartre's nausea are revelatory emotions: they reveal, respectively, the ultimate nothingness at the base of all that exists, and the ultimate absurdity or unintelligibility of the existing of what exists.
The Parmenidean part of my mind says No: Thought and Being are 'the same.' You have grasped by sheer thought alone the absolute necessity of there being a way things are, an ultimate context. And so you were indeed 'spooked' as a boy when it seemed you looked into the abyss of utter nothingness and contextlessness.
Across the land the erasure of history via the destruction of monuments and memorials is proceeding apace. The worthless and unaccomplished are attacking the memories of people of great worth and accomplishment. Where are the authorities to whom we have entrusted the preservation of civilization? In abdication, mainly. They lack the will to put a stop to the rampages of dangerous children.
And children they are. Their thinking lacks all depth and nuance. Theirs is an adolescent passion unconstrained by either knowledge or wisdom. And yet adult fools take the likes of Greta Thunberg and A. Ocasio-Cortez seriously, granting them positions of power and influence. This too is a form of abdication.
You know what you have to do come November.
"Clothes make the man!" said the mother to the son.
"If clothes make the man, then the kind of man that clothes make is not the kind of man I want to be," said the son to the mother.
Firm is the distaff grip on the truth of Der Schein regiert die Welt. Listen to your mother if you would advance in this world of seeming.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Race entry:
Racial skepticism holds that because racial naturalism is false, races of any type do not exist. Racial skeptics, such as Anthony Appiah (1995, 1996) and Naomi Zack (1993, 2002) contend that the term race cannot refer to anything real in the world, since the one thing in the world to which the term could uniquely refer—discrete, essentialist, biological races—have been proven not to exist.
This is the most radical theory of the ontological status of races: there are none! There are no races, not even as social constructs. But this leads to absurdity.
For if there are no races, then it is not possible that any race suppress or enslave another. But surely that is possible. Ergo, it is false that there are no races.
'Some blacks enslaved other blacks' and 'Some humans enslaved other humans' differ in their truth conditions. But there cannot be any such difference in truth conditions if there are no races. Ergo, etc.
Whether or not it is true, it makes sense to say that whites owe blacks reparations for slavery. But this would make no sense if there were no races. Ergo, etc.
The expressions 'racial integration' and 'racial segregation' have meaning and differ in meaning. But how could they if there are no races?
And how could Obama be a mulatto if there are no races, or only one race, the human race? Did he not bring whites and blacks together and heal racial divisions? How could have done that marvellous thing if there were no races?
DO NOT come to Arizona! It's just too damned hot here for you snowflakes. And on top of that everybody is packing heat. That's why you don't hear any honking on the highways and byways. "An armed society is a polite society."
We are racist to the core in this rattlesnake-infested inferno which is also home to the scorpion, the gila monster, and other venomous critters no librul would want to tangle with. There is nothing here but hot sand and dirt lightly covered with some dessicated but still prickly-as-hell vegetation such as cat claw. Everything here either sticks, stings, or stinks. Go elsewhere! Oregon and Idaho would love to have you. Or better yet: wallow in the shit you shat. Enjoy the sanctuary that your sanctimonious silliness has built.
A snatch of dialog in illustration of the aporetics of our political predicament:
A. It's a war! Don't say anything bad about our guys! Which side are you on? Don't preface your defense of Trump by conceding that he has these and these negative qualities. Don't give ammo to the enemy! In a gunfight against a home invader would you allow your enemy time to re-load, in the interests of a fair fight? Hell no! He is in the wrong and you are in the right. He is out to kill you. You must stop him, and if that ends up killing him, so be it.
B. But then truth and objectivity go out the window. Onesidedness and blind partisanship rule. Oppositions intensify. Polarization increases. Polarization issues in demonization. We need to come together and work together. Trump is deeply flawed. How can you blind yourself to his flaws?
A. This is a war, not a gentlemanly discussion, or an attempt at an objective personality assessment. You cannot be objective and conciliatory in a war. You must defeat the enemy before he defeats you. Trump is all we have. Can't you see that? Your attempt to be fair and conciliatory and reasonable and 'moral' will be taken as a sign of weakness and will only embolden our enemies on the Left. We cannot 'come together' with them because there is no common ground on which to do so. They do not share out values. The enemy is committed to our destruction.
B. So you are OK with any and all means sufficient to destroy the enemy? Do the ends justify the means? Were the Allied atrocities during World War II justified by the good outcome?
A. I don't like saying yes, yes, and yes, but I fear that I have to. This is the problem of dirty hands. The buck stopped with President Harry Truman. Would you not have ordered the use of nuclear weapons against Japanese population centers? Or, comfortable in your ivory tower, would you have taken the position of Elizabeth Anscombe possibly sacrificing civilization itself to a just war THEORY? Which is better known, the premises on which Just War doctrine depends, or the consequences of Allied defeat and Axis victory?
B. This is scary stuff. Isn't there some alternative to war?
A. And what might that be? I see only three alternatives to war, none of them good. One can attempt to WITHDRAW from the fight. Head for the hills. Build alternative communities and hope to be left alone. Unfortunately, the totalitarians, being totalitarians, won't leave us alone. That's not 'who they are.'
Or one can accept POLITICAL DHIMMITUDE.
Finally, one can attempt the POLITICAL EQUIVALENT OF DIVORCE, whether through secession, partition, a return to federalism, or something else.
B. Those are the only options?
A. As far as I can see.
Related:
When you do, you validate their obfuscatory and question-begging jargon.
For example, leftists believe in something they call 'hate speech.' As they use the phrase, it covers legitimate dissent.
It is foolish for a conservative to say that he is for 'hate speech,' or that 'hate speech' is protected speech. Dennis Prager has been known to make this mistake. We conservatives are for open inquiry and the right to dissent. Put it that way, in positive terms.
If leftists take our dissent as 'hateful,' that is their presumably willful misapprehension. We shouldn't validate it.
Don't let leftists frame the debate. He who controls the terms of the debate controls the debate.
There is a logical gap between coherence and truth.
It comes from the Left. (Does anything good come from the Left?) Required reading.
It is better to relax one's grip on the past than to let it go entirely.
Bill, One final complicating observation: The pacifist interpretation of Matt 5:38-42 has been contested in light of Lk 22: 36-38…
The Kant-Swedenborg relation is more complicated than I thought. https://philarchive.org/archive/THOTRO-12
Ed, Just now read the two topmost articles on your Substack. I’m a Kant scholar of sorts and I recall…
Hi Ed, Thanks for dropping by my new cyber pad. I like your phrase, “chic ennui.” It supplies part of…
Very well put: “phenomenologists of suburban hanky-panky, auto dealerships, and such.” In my student years reading Updike and Cheever was…
Bill, I have been looking further into Matt 5: 38-42 and particularly how best to understand the verb antistēnai [to…
Bill and Steven, I profited from what each of you has to say about Matt 5: 38-42, but I think…
Thanks, Dmitri. Couldn’t find it when I last checked, six months ago.
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
Excellent comments, Vito. Will try to respond tomorrow.