Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains
I sing the praises of Joseph Joubert, but here is a very bad aphorism of his:
The style is the thought itself. (Notebooks, p. 44)
This is an exaggeration so absurd that not even a Frenchman should be allowed to get away with it. Much, much better is this brilliancy from the pen of Schopenhauer:
Style is the physiognomy of the mind.
Here, by James Lesher. Sample:
Ex vi terminorum: preposition + the ablative feminine singular of vis/vis(‘force’) + the masculine genitive plural of terminus/termini (‘end’, ‘limit’, ‘term’, ‘expression’): ‘out of the force or sense of the words’ or more loosely: ‘in virtue of the meaning of the words’. ‘We can be certain ex vi terminorum that any bachelors we encounter on our trip will be unmarried.’
Uncle Bill advises,
When it comes to Latin, and not just Latin, don't throw it if you don't know it.
One alone has 'skin in the game' of one's own life. This helps explain why the advice of others, however well-intentioned, is often useless or worse. Listen to the advice of others, but at last keep one's own counsel.
I'm on a Kolakowski binge. I've re-read Metaphysical Horror (Basil Blackwell, 1988) and Husserl and the Search for Certitude (U. of Chicago, 1975). I purchased the first at Dillon's Bookstore, Bloomsbury, London, near Russell's Square in late August, 1988. Auspicious, eh? I was in the U. K. to read a paper at the World Congress of Philosophy in Brighton. Both of the aforementioned books are outstanding even if the translations are inadequate. But knowing the ideas, I can figure out how the translation should have gone.
Kolakowsi is erudition on stilts. The man's range is stunning. While some of his essays are sketchy, he can be scholarly when he wants to be, as witness his magisterial three-volumed Main Currents of Marxism.
Kolakowski began as a communist but soon saw through the destructive ideology. For the great sin of speaking the truth, he was stripped of his academic post and prohibited from teaching in Poland. He found refuge in Canada, The U. S. A. and the U.K. When the Left takes over the West, where will dissident truth-tellers go? Here is what Kirkus has to say about the exciting book I am now reading:
GOD OWES US NOTHING: A BRIEF REMARK ON PASCAL'S RELIGION AND ON THE SPIRIT OF JANSENISM
A provocative critique of the Jansenist movement and of its celebrated proponent Blaise Pascal, from internationally renowned scholar Kolakowski (The Alienation of Reason, 1968, etc.; Committee on Social Thought/Univ. of Chicago). Jansenism, the powerful 17th-century heresy condemned by Rome, has often been called the Catholic form of Calvinism. Inspired by the writings of Bishop Cornelius Jansen of Utrecht, the Jansenists claimed to be orthodox disciples of St. Augustine and taught that salvation was gratuitous in a way that ruled out any human cooperation. Since those whom God had freely predestined would inevitably be saved, Jesus Christ died only for the elect; all others would be justly condemned to eternal torments, irrespective of whether they were good or bad, including unbaptized babies. Human nature was totally corrupted by sin, especially original sin. Kolakowski gives us a detailed account, with copious quotations, both of St. Augustine and of the positions of Jansen and his followers, and he guides us through the central questions of the debate. He devotes the second half of his study to the writings of Pascal, whose profound pessimism he sees as embodying the Jansenists' world-denying ideals. The arts, free intellectual inquiry, and even hugging one's children had no place in what Kolakowski calls Pascal's religion of unhappiness. The author rarely refers to other studies of this great controversy. He is surely being malicious when he holds that Rome's rejection of Jansenism was a compromise with the world and a de facto abandonment of the Church's tradition, since he presents the latter in an overly Augustinian form, choosing to ignore, for example, the Eastern Fathers, Aquinas, and the basic doctrine that the human person, endowed with free will, is made in the image of God. Brilliantly cynical presentation of an unpopular but still influential religious outlook.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-226-45051-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Univ. of Chicago
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1995
Categories: PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION
In contemporary Internet lingo, a gray man is typically a prepper who seeks to be unobtrusive and to blend in. He is 'gray' in that he tries not to call attention to himself, his beliefs, and his stock of guns, ammo, food, and other survival supplies that he hopes will see him and his family through a collapse of the social order. His 'bug-out bag' is at the ready should he need to split for his hideaway. He worries whether he can make his escape without drawing attention to himself.
It is the old Aesop tale of the Ant and Grasshopper revived and updated. The Grasshopper spends the summer in the pleasures of the moment, dancing and singing, giving no thought to the future. Comes the winter he must beg the Ant for provender, whereupon the And delivers a stern rebuke, telling the Grasshopper to dance the winter away.
The latter-day Grasshopper does not beg; he demands, in concert with others of his shiftless ilk. He cannot be reached by any rebukes or sermonizing. He is a dangerous hombre who poses a lethal threat. The latter-day Ant appreciates the threat and seeks to meet it by being both armed and unobtrusive.
He who provokes an evil-doer bears some responsibility for his evil-doing.
The gray man is the opposite of the 'tacti-cool' dude who foolishly flaunts his preparedness and advertises his tools. His truck sports NRA, Sig Sauer, and other decals. A bumpersticker reads, "I'm your huckleberry." The 'tacti-cool' dude carries open or with inadequate concealment. His T-shirt is tight so that you can admire his marvellous pectorals, but he 'prints' like crazy. If questioned, he insists on his Second Amendment rights. He is right to do so, but nonetheless imprudent. 'Liberals' have no respect for the rights he invokes, and there is no reaching them by any appeal to reason.
Imprudent advertising leads to pointless conversations and worse. Years ago, a man questioned my open carry deep in the Superstition Wilderness, claiming that guns are illegal in a National Park. I pointed out that we were in a National Forest. I don't think I got through to the idiot. But I did marvel at his foolishness in arguing with an armed man in the middle of nowhere.
There are foolish people who don't know what 'brandish' means. They see a man with a gun strapped to his belt and they call the cops claiming that some guy is 'brandishing' a firearm. This can lead to an unpleasant encounter with law enforcement. The wise man, understanding human nature, avoids contacts with cops, knowing full well their propensity for arrogance and overreach. Power corrupts. Power suborns moral sense. I say this as a hard-assed law and order conservative who believes in the death penalty. I believe that said penalty is not only morally permissible, but also in some cases morally obligatory.
And then there are the bad guys who, seeing an armed man, will calculate whether they can take his weapon from him. Or they may be planning an attack of some sort. The armed citizen, seen to be armed, will be the first target.
So I advise a certain grayness in these and related matters. Exercise your rights, but do not flaunt them. Stand on principles, but don't sacrifice prudence to principles.
Wikipedia, The Ant and the Grasshopper:
Because of the influence of La Fontaine's Fables, in which La cigale et la fourmi stands at the beginning, the cicada then became the proverbial example of improvidence in France: so much so that Jules-Joseph Lefebvre (1836–1911) could paint a picture of a female nude biting one of her nails among the falling leaves and be sure viewers would understand the point by giving it the title La Cigale. The painting was exhibited at the 1872 Salon with a quotation from La Fontaine, Quand la bise fut venue (When the north wind blew), and was seen as a critique of the lately deposed Napoleon III, who had led the nation into a disastrous war with Prussia.
One man steals from another. The thief is caught, the thievery is proven, and the penalty required by law is demanded. It turns out that the thief's attorney is a philosophy Ph.D., a presentist in the philosophy of time, who could not find a job in academe. So he went to law school, and here he is in court. He argues on behalf of his client that, since the present alone exists, the past and its contents do not exist. So the act of thievery does not exist.
Now a person cannot be justifiably punished for what he does not do. Since the act of thievery, being wholly past, does not exist, the criminal case against the man in the dock should be dismissed. A man cannot be justifiably punished in the present for nonexistent past deeds any more than he can be punished in the present for nonexistent future deeds. Or so argues the defense.
The prosecutor, who is also a presentist, objects that, while the particular act of theft in question does not exist, it did exist, and that this past-tensed truth suffices to render the punishment just. Both defense and prosecution agree that the past-tensed truth that Smith stole Jones' car is a brute truth, that is, a contingent truth that has no truthmaker, no ontological ground of its being true.
The defense attorney replies that the past-tensed truth, being brute and groundless, is just words, an empty representation that does not represent anything, and this for the simple reason that the event does not exist. He adds that a man cannot be justifiably punished because of a string of words, even if the words form a sentence, and even if the sentence is true. For if there is nothing in reality that makes it true, the brute truth's being true is irrelevant. The defense further argues that a contingent sentence that lacks a truthmaker cannot even be true.
Our penal practices presuppose the reality of the past. But how can presentism uphold the reality of the past? The past is factual, not fictional; actual, not merely possible; something, not nothing.
The past is an object of historical investigation: we learn more and more about it. Historical research is discovery, not invention. We adjust our thinking about the past by what we discover. It is presupposed that what happened in the past is absolutely independent of our present thinking about it.
In sum, historical research presupposes the reality of the past. If there is a tenable presentism, then it must be able to accommodate the reality of the past. I'd like to know how. If only the present exists, then the past does not exist, in which case it is nothing, whence it follows that it is no object of investigation. But it is an object of investigation, ergo, etc.
People say that such-and-such is 'unthinkable.' An electromagnetic pulse, for example, one that destroys the power distribution grid, would be a calamity in comparison to which the current pandemic would pale into insignificance. This is said to be 'unthinkable.' And yet we are now thinking about it. What one thinks about can be thought about, and is therefore thinkable. So the calamity in question is precisely not 'unthinkable.' Nor is it 'unimaginable.' I can imagine it and so can you.
People use these expressions because they thoughtlessly repeat what they hear other people say. That's my explanation. Do you have a better one?
Not every test is a litmus test. So why do people refer to any old test as a litmus test? Same explanation.
I could continue with the examples. And you hope I won't. Don't be a linguistic lemming. Think. The mind you save may be your own.
Language matters. Walter approves of this message.
"Plague in an Ancient City" by Michiel Sweerts (1618-1664 AD) is believed to depict the Plague of Athens (430-427 BC). Oil on canvas. Painted c. 1652-1654 AD. 118.7 cm (46.7 in) x 170.8 cm (67.2 in). (Courtesy of Los Angeles County Museum of Art)
Now read the outstanding essay by Victor Davis Hanson, The Scab and the Wound Beneath
I maintain that in the following conditional, the consequent (2) does not follow from the antecedent (1).
(*) If (1) X ceases to be temporally present by becoming wholly past, then (2) X ceases to exist.
The Londoner replies
You claim that the truth of the antecedent (1) is consistent with the falsity of the consequent (2), i.e. consistent with X not having ceased to exist. But that claim implies that both “X still exists” and “X has ceased to exist” could be false.
I don’t follow.
Consider a spatial analog. I am in a meeting with some people. I then leave the room. In so doing I cease to be spatially present to those people and the space they occupy. But no one will conclude that I have ceased to exist by leaving the room.
Why not? Well, where a thing is has no bearing on whether it is. If you can grasp that, then it ought to be at least conceivable that when a thing is has no bearing on whether it is. And if that is conceivable, then you ought to be able to grasp that (2) does not follow from (1). An item can become wholly past without prejudice to its existence.
Now obviously 'existence' here refers to tense-free existence. That the Londoner is not grasping this is shown by his use of 'still exists.' The claim is not the logically contradictory one that an item that has become wholly past still exists. For if a thing still exists, then it exists (present tense). The claim is that it is conceivable that what has become wholly past has not been annihilated: it has not become nothing. For (2) to follow from (1), presentism would have to be brought in as an auxiliary premise. But on presentism, that which has become wholly past has become nothing at all.
Does when a thing is determine whether it is? This is not obvious. For it could be — it is epistemically possible — that when a thing is has no bearing on whether it is. Two views. On one view, temporal location determines whether or not a thing is or exists. Presentism is one type of this view. On presentism, all and only that which is located in or at the temporal present exists. This implies that items not so located — those that are wholly past or wholly future — do not exist.
On the second view, temporal location does not determine whether or not a thing is or exists. 'Eternalism' as it is known in the trade — the term is a bit of misnomer but let that pass — is a type of this view. On eternalism, past, present, and future times and the items at those times (e.g. events) all exist equally, i.e., in the same sense of 'exists.'
Now it should be perfectly obvious that this sense must be tense-neutral, or tense-free, or tenseless. And I have no desire to paper over the considerable problems that arise when we try to specify exactly what this tense-neutral use of 'exists' comes to. But that is not our present topic.
Here, by Tim Hsiao. (HT: Elliot Ruffin Crozat)
This essay offers a comprehensive defense of the position that Luke 22:36 endorses the carrying of weapons for personal self-defense. I address in detail every objection to this view that I have been able to find.
Can one get tired of Dylan? That would be like getting tired of America. It would be like getting to the point where no passage in Kerouac brings a tingle to the spine or a tear to the eye, to the point where the earthly road ends and forever young must give way to knocking on heaven's door. The Bard's been at it a long, long time, and his body of work is as vast and as variegated as America herself. We old fans from way back who were with him from the beginning are still finding gems unheard as we ourselves enter the twilight where it's not dark yet, but getting there. But it is a beautiful fade-out from a world that cannot last.
Remember Me. With beautiful shots of Suze Rotolo. See Suze Rotolo and the Songs She Inspired.
High Water. (For Charley Patton)
High water risin', risin' night and day
All the gold and silver are being stolen away
Big Joe Turner lookin' East and West
From the dark room of his mind
He made it to Kansas City Twelfth Street and Vine
Nothing standing there
High water everywhere
High water risin', the shacks are slidin' down
Folks lose their possessions and folks are leaving town
Bertha Mason shook, it broke it
Then she hung it on a wall
Says, "You're dancin' with whom they tell you to Or you don't dance at all"
It's tough out there High water everywhere
I got a cravin' love for blazing speed got a hopped up Mustang Ford
Jump into the wagon, love, throw your panties overboard
I can write you poems, make a strong man lose his mind
I'm no pig without a wig I hope you treat me kind
Things are breakin' up out there
High water everywhere.
High water risin', six inches 'bove my head
Coffins droppin' in the street Like balloons made out of lead
Water pourin' into Vicksburg, don't know what I'm going to do
"Don't reach out for me," she said "Can't you see I'm drownin' too?"
It's rough out there.
High water everywhere
Well, George Lewis told the Englishman, the Italian and the Jew
"You can't open your mind, boys To every conceivable point of view"
They got Charles Darwin trapped out there on Highway Five
Judge says to the High Sheriff "I want him dead or alive
Either one, I don't care."
High Water everywhere
Well, the cuckoo is a pretty bird, she warbles as she flies
I'm preachin' the word of God I'm puttin' out your eyes
I asked Fat Nancy for something to eat, she said, "Take it off the shelf
As great as you are a man,
You'll never be greater than yourself"
I told her I didn't really care.
High water everywhere
I'm getting' up in the morning I believe I'll dust my broom
Keeping away from the women
I'm givin' 'em lots of room
Thunder rolling over Clarksdale, everything is looking blue
I just can't be happy, love
Unless you're happy too
It's bad out there
High water everywhere.
David French maintains that Christians cannot, if they are to remain true to Christian teachings, support Donald Trump:
The proper way for Christians to engage in politics is a rich subject . . . but there are some rather simple foundational principles that apply before the questions get complex. For example, all but a tiny few believers would agree that a Christian should not violate the Ten Commandments or any other clear, biblical command while pursuing or exercising political power.
But of course we see such behavior all the time from hardcore Christian Trump supporters. They’ll echo Trump’s lies. They’ll defend Trump’s lies. They’ll adopt many of his same rhetorical tactics, including engaging in mocking and insulting behavior as a matter of course.
Farther down:
I fully recognize what I’m saying. I fully recognize that refusing to hire a hater and refusing to hire a liar carries costs. If we see politics through worldly eyes, it makes no sense at all. Why would you adopt moral standards that put you at a disadvantage in an existential political struggle? If we don’t stand by Trump we will lose, and losing is unacceptable. (Emphasis added.)
French has just touched upon the deepest issue in this debate. He is right that it makes no sense for conservative Christians not to support Trump if politics is seen through worldly eyes. The question, however, is whether one can avoid doing so. Can one see politics and pursue it through unworldly eyes? Can one participate in politics at any level, and especially at the higher levels, while adhering strictly and unwaveringly to Christian principles and precepts and while practicing Christian virtues? Can one combine contemptus mundi with political action?
I don't believe that this is possible.
Christian precepts such as "Turn the other cheek" and "Welcome the stranger" make sense and are salutary only within communities of the like-minded and morally decent; they make no sense and are positively harmful in the public sphere, and, a fortiori, in the international sphere. The monastery is not the wide world. What is conducive unto salvation in the former will get you killed in the latter. And we know what totalitarians, whether Communists or Islamists, do when they get power: they destroy the churches, synagogues, monasteries, ashrams, and zendos. And with them are destroyed the means of transmitting the dharma, the kerygma, the law and the prophets.
An important but troubling thought is conveyed in a recent NYT op-ed (emphasis added):
Machiavelli teaches that in a world where so many are not good, you must learn to be able to not be good. The virtues taught in our secular and religious schools are incompatible with the virtues one must practice to safeguard those same institutions. The power of the lion and the cleverness of the fox: These are the qualities a leader must harness to preserve the republic.
The problem referenced in the bolded sentence is very serious but may have no solution. That's the aporetician in me speaking.
The problem as I see it is that (i) the pacific virtues the practice of which makes life worth living within families, between friends, and in such institutions of civil society as churches and fraternal organizations are essentially private and cannot be extended outward as if we are all brothers and sisters belonging to a global community. Talk of global community is blather. The institutions of civil society can survive and flourish only if protected by warriors and statesmen whose virtues are of the manly and martial, not of the womanish and pacific, sort. And yet (ii) if no extension beyond the private of the pacific virtues is possible. then humanity would seem to be doomed in an age of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. Besides, it is unsatisfactory that there be two moralities, one private, the other public.
I say that we need to face the problem honestly.
Consider the Christian virtues preached by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. They include humility, meekness, love of righteousness, mercy, purity of heart, love of peace and of reconciliation. Everyone who must live uncloistered in the world understands that these pacific and essentially womanish virtues have but limited application there. Indeed, their practice can get you killed. (I am not using 'womanish' as a derogatory qualifier.)
You may love peace, but unless you are prepared to make war upon your enemies and show them no mercy, you may not be long for this world. Turning the other cheek makes sense within a loving family, but no sense in the wider world. (Would the Pope turn the other cheek if the Vatican came under attack by Muslim terrorists or would he call upon the armed might of the Italian state?) My point is perfectly obvious in the case of states: they are in the state (condition) of nature with respect to each other. Each state secures by blood and iron a civilized space within which art and music and science and scholarship can flourish and wherein, ideally, blood does not flow; but these states and their civilizations battle each other in the state (condition) of nature red in tooth and claw. Talk of world government or United Nations is globalist blather that hides the will to power of those who would seize control of the world government. United under which umbrella of values and principles and presuppositions?
What values do we share with the Muslim world? Do they accept the Enlightenment values enshrined in our founding documents? Obviously not. Christianity has civilized us to some extent. Has Islam civilized them? Their penology is barbaric as is their attitude toward other cultures and religions.
The Allies would not have been long for this world had they not been merciless in their treatment of the Axis Powers.
Israel would have ceased to exist long ago had Israelis not been ruthless in their dealing with Muslim terrorists bent on her destruction.
This is also true of individuals once they move beyond their families and friends and genuine communities and sally forth into the wider world.
The problem is well understood by Hannah Arendt ("Truth and Politics" in Between Past and Future, Penguin 1968, p. 245):
The disastrous consequences for any community that began in all
earnest to follow ethical precepts derived from man in the singular
— be they Socratic or Platonic or Christian — have been
frequently pointed out. Long before Machiavelli recommended
protecting the political realm against the undiluted principles of
the Christian faith (those who refuse to resist evil permit the
wicked "to do as much evil as they please"), Aristotle warned
against giving philosophers any say in political matters. (Men who
for professional reasons must be so unconcerned with "what is good
for themselves" cannot very well be trusted with what is good for
others, and least of all with the "common good," the down-to-earth
interests of the community.) [Arendt cites the Nicomachean Ethics,
Book VI, and in particular 1140b9 and 1141b4.]
There is a tension between man qua philosopher/Christian and man qua citizen. As a philosopher raised in Christianity, I am concerned with my soul, with its integrity, purity, salvation. I take very seriously indeed the Socratic "Better to suffer wrong than to do it" and the Christian "Resist not the evildoer." But as a citizen I must be concerned not only with my own well-being but also with the public welfare.
This is true a fortiori of public officials and people in a position to influence public opinion, people like Catholic bishops many of whom are woefully ignorant of the simple points Arendt makes in the passage quoted. So, as Arendt points out, the Socratic and Christian admonitions are not applicable in the public sphere.
What is applicable to me in the singular, as this existing individual concerned with the welfare of his immortal soul over that of his perishable body, is not applicable to me as citizen. As a citizen, I cannot "welcome the stranger" who violates the laws of my country, a stranger who may be a terrorist or a drug smuggler or a human trafficker or a carrier of a deadly disease or a person who has no respect for the traditions of the country he invades; I cannot aid and abet his law breaking. I must be concerned with public order. This order is among the very conditions that make the philosophical and Christian life possible in the first place. If I were to aid and abet the stranger's law breaking, I would not be "rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's" as the New Testament enjoins us to do.
Indeed, the Caesar verse provides a scriptural basis for Church-State separation and indirectly exposes the fallacy of the Catholic bishops and others who confuse private and public morality.
David French is such a one.
Londoner in Lockdown writes,
Excellent comments, Vito. Will try to respond tomorrow.
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
Perhaps a spatial analog of (1) will help convey what I mean:
Now (1*) is not idiomatic English, but the thought is clear. And the thought is trivially true. Suppose the boundaries of the spatially present are given by the dimensions of my lot. So when I say 'here' I refer to the area of my lot together with all its sub-areas. Suppose a cat that is wholly within the boundaries of my lot trespasses onto your adjacent lot thereby becoming wholly elsewhere. Max was wholly here in my yard, but now he is wholly there in yours. Spatial translations such as this one typically occur without prejudice to the existence of the moving item. Thus the cat does not cease to exist by moving from my property onto your property. (Nor does the cat suffer any diminution of its degree of existence, if there are degrees of existence, or any change in its mode of existence, if there are modes of existence.)
In short, Max the cat exists just as robustly in your yard as in mine. Spatial translation is existence-neutral. No one is a spatial presentist. No one holds that all and only what exists here, exists.
Surely it is conceivable — whether or not it is true — that becoming wholly past is existence-neutral. It is conceivable that something that becomes wholly past not be affected in its existence by its becoming wholly past. On this understanding of (1), (1) does not straightaway — i.e., immediately, without auxiliary premises — entail (2). (1) and the negation of (2) are logically consistent.
Now if you insist that (1) entails (2), then I will point out that this is so only if you assume that all and only the temporally present exists.
Do my sparring partners now see that there is a genuine question here? The question is whether it makes sense to maintain that, among the items that exist in time, some are non-present. I say that it does make sense, whether or not in the end it is true; consequently, tenseless theories of time cannot be simply dismissed out of hand. A corollary of this is that presentism is not obviously true, or even more outrageously, a matter of common sense as some have the chutzpah to say.