Maverick Philosopher

Ah, the wonders of the Internet!

If you are old-school and intellectually and morally disciplined like me, with the old virtues firmly in place, it is a wonderfully useful tool, and not damaging, except perhaps as a bit of a time-sink.  I coined a word in an earlier entry, schlepfussing. Original with me? A search with DuckDuckGo turned up nothing. But a search on schlepfuss (drag-foot) brought me to this entry by James J. O'Meara, There and Then: Personal and Memorial Reflections on Alan Watts (1915-1973)

Alan Watts was a significant contributor to the Zeitgeist of the 1960s.  Just as many in those days were 'turned on' to philosophy by Ayn Rand, others such as myself were pushed toward philosophy by, among other things,  Alan Watts and his writings.  But early on I realized that there was much of the pied piper and sophist about him.  He once aptly described himself as a "philosophical entertainer" as opposed to an academic philosopher.  Entertaining he was indeed.

I heard him speak on 17 January 1973 in the last year of his life .  He appeared to be well into his cups that evening, though in control.  Alcohol may have been a major contributor to his early death at age 58 on 16 November 1973. (See Wikipedia)  Here is a journal entry of mine written 18 January 1973 that reports on the lecture I heard at El Camino Junior College.

What struck me about O'Meara's post was his reference to John N. Deck. From Watts to Deck! Now there's a weird transition.  O'Meara on Deck:

Was Watts, then, a (shudder) “father figure”? Perhaps. Further evidence might lie ahead.

For, after whimsically choosing to attend an unheralded college in provincial Ontario (again, remarkable lack of parental supervision, they being happy as long as it was a Catholic college), I had decided to major in Philosophy, since that seemed to be where Watts’ ideas seemed to have led, and as noted, my parents had no interest in any practical results of my studies.[14] Fortunately, Windsor, in its very backwardness, was more like the sort of seminaries Watts was familiar with, teaching Aristotle and St. Thomas, rather than the modern, analytic schools that Watts loathed, where one “does” philosophy from 9 to 5 and then home to martinis.[15] I did dabble a bit in Asian Studies, and Religious Studies, but not at all in Psychology, but they were clearly as limited to specialists as Watts would have thought.[16]

Besides, since Watts advocated a “no-practice” approach to spirituality,[17] there didn’t seem to be any need, or much point, in undertaking anything but a theoretical path.[18]

And sure enough, though apparently wandering aimlessly and un-guidedly through the venia legendi, I found myself smack dab under the influence of another likely “father figure,” Prof. John Norbert Deck, PhD.[19]

Now Deck, though apparently rather more anti-Semitic than even most of his generation,[20] did show a propensity to create what Kevin MacDonald has called the “Jewish Guru Effect,” the creation of authoritarian study groups around charismatic figures, often involving the creation of private languages to keep outsiders at bay.[21]

Looking like Schopenhauer but dressed as a Trotskyite shop steward, Deck was easily the most oddly charismatic professor around, and I eagerly joined his Neoplatonic cult.[22] In an unprecedented burst of enthusiasm, I completed my coursework in little more two years, and eagerly entered the more private realms of the graduate seminar. Whereupon, the heavy-smoking, heavy-German-food-eating Deck dropped dead, in his mid-fifties.

That’s right, dear readers, two mentors, both almost immediately dead. And I was barely twenty![23]

[18] Deck, in fact, made quite a study of theoria among the Greeks; see his doctoral dissertation, Nature, Contemplation and the One (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967; Burdett, NY: Larson, 1998), Appendix A; while the text of my Introduction to Philosophy class, Josef Pieper’s Leisure: The Basis of Culture (New York: Pantheon, 1952; new translation by Gerald Malsbary, with an Introduction by Roger Scruton, South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 1998) promoted, based on St. Thomas if not Guénon, the need for a caste devoted to pure contemplation. This was an easy transition from Watts, whom a contemporary reviewer considered to be “one of the few contemporary [1953!] philosophers for whom contemplative reflection precedes action in the world.” — Columbus and Rice, p. 7, quoting P. Wheelwright.

[19] It occurs to me that both Watts and Deck had huge families, with over 12 children and grandchildren, although Deck, the more traditional Catholic, had but one, obviously rather put-upon, wife.

And then it dawned on me that this O'Meara is the same O'Meara to whom Anthony Flood links here. Follow the link for more biographical information about Deck, and copies of some of his articles.

For an evaluation of some of Deck's ideas, see the articles in my Deck category.