Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

  • A Putative Paradox of Forgiveness

    This is another topic that I discussed with Mike Valle, Brian Bosse, and Dale Tuggy when the latter came to town on 29 March.

    ……………………….

    It is morally objectionable to forgive those who will not admit wrongdoing, show no remorse, make no amends, do not pay restitution, etc.  But if forgiveness is made conditional upon the doing of these things, then what is to forgive?  Conditional forgiveness is not forgiveness.  That is the gist of the putative paradox.

    I fail to see a genuine problem here.   The first limb strikes me as self-evident: it is indeed morally objectionable to forgive those who will not admit wrongdoing, etc.  But I reject the second limb. I admit that once the miscreant has paid his debt, he is morally in the clear.  His guilt has been removed.  But I can still forgive him because forgiveness does not take away guilt, it merely alters the attitude of the one violated to the one who violated him.

    Suppose you take money from my wallet without my permission.  I catch you at it and express my moral objection.  You give me back my money and apologize for having taken it.  I  forgive you.  My forgiving you makes perfect sense even though you have made restitution and have apologized.  For I might not have forgiven you: I might have told you to go to hell and get out of my life for good.

    By forgiving you, I freely abandon the justified negative attitude toward you that resulted from your bad behavior.  This works a salutary change in me, but it also does you good, for now you are restored to my good graces and our mutual relations become once again amicable.

    So I see no paradox.  The first limb is self-evidently true while the second is false.  Only conditional forgiveness is genuine forgiveness. 

    It is of course possible that I am not thinking deeply enough!

    Bill Vallicella

  • A Critique of Edward Feser’s Defense of Presentism, Part I

    Ed Feser very kindly sent me a copy of his latest book, Aristotle's Revenge: The Metaphysical Foundations of Physical and Biological Science (Editiones Scholasticae, 2019).  As I noted in my journal: 

    Synchronicity. Feser's latest book, with its section on time and its defense of presentism, has arrived at just the right time — as I am immersed in my chapter on time for my metaphilosophy book. A mere coincidence, no doubt!?

    Herewith, some critical commentary by way of a 'thank you' to Ed for his ongoing generosity.

    Feser AristotleAccording to Feser, "The classical form taken by the A-theory [of time] is presentism, according to which only the present is real, with past events no longer existing and future events not yet existing (237-238) Let's focus on the past and not worry about the future. With respect to the past, the presentist idea is not adequately captured by saying that wholly past items no longer exist, since all who understand English will agree to that.  The presentist idea is that wholly past items do not exist at all. John F. Kennedy's assassination, for example, is a wholly past event.  (A wholly past event is one that doesn't overlap the present.)  Standard presentism implies that this event does not exist at all. It is not just that it does not exist at present — which is trivially true — but that it does not exist, period. As Feser himself says, on presentism, "there are no past events," (300) and "past things and events do not exist."(301)  These latter are accurate formulations.  But note carefully that the second formulation is accurate only if 'exists' is not read as present-tensed, in which case the formulation is tautological, but as 'exists simpliciter,' in which case it is not.  What exactly it means to 'exist at all' or to 'exist 'simpliciter' is part of the problem of formulating a coherent version of presentism that can withstand close scrutiny. For present purposes we will assume that we understand well enough what these phrases mean.

    But then a certain 'grounding problem' or 'truth-maker problem' arises that very much impresses me, but leaves Feser unfazed: "it seems to me unimpressive." (300)  Here is my formulation of the grounding problem, so-called because it is the problem of providing ontological grounds for grammatically past-tensed truths.  Truth-makers, if there are any, are ontological grounds of true truth-bearers, whether declarative sentences, statements, propositions, whatever you deem to be the primary truth-bearers or vehicles of the truth-values.

    1) There are contingent past-tensed truths.

    2) Past-tensed truths are true at present.

    3) Truth-Maker Principle: contingent truths need truth-makers.

    4) Presentism: Only (temporally) present items exist.

    The limbs of this aporetic tetrad, although individually plausible, appear to be collectively inconsistent. 'Kennedy was assassinated' is contingent, past-tensed, true, and known to be true. So (1) is true.  The sentence is also true at present.   It IS the case that JFK WAS assassinated.  So (2) is true.   

    (3) is an exceedingly plausible principle, especially if restricted to contingently true affirmative singular propositions. Consider ' I am seated' assertively uttered by BV now as he sits in front of his computer. The sentence is (or expresses) a contingent truth.  Now would it be at all plausible to say that this sentence is just true?  Define a brute truth as a contingent truth that is just true, i.e., true, but not in virtue of anything external to the truth. The question is then: Is it plausible that 'I am seated' or the proposition it expresses be a brute truth?

    I say that that is implausible in the extreme. There has to be something external  to the truth-bearer that plays a role in its being true and this something cannot be anyone's say-so. At a bare minimum, the subject term 'I' must refer to something extra-linguistic, and we know what that has to be: the 200 lb animal that wears my clothes.  So at a bare minimum, the sentence, to be true, must be about something, something that exists, and indeed exists extra-mentally and extra-linguistically.

    Without bringing in truth-making facts or states of affairs, I have said enough to refute the notion that 'I am seated' could be a brute truth.  So far so good.

    Now if 'I am seated' needs a truth-maker (in a very broad sense of the term), then presumably 'Kennedy was assassinated' does as well.  It can no more be  a brute truth than 'I am seated' could be a brute truth. 

    Now Feser does not oppose truth-makers tout court.  He appears to be proposing a revision of  the truth-maker principle as formulated in (3). Could the truth-makers for past-tensed truths be different in kind from those for present-tensed truths? This is what Feser appears to be proposing: “. . . the truthmaker for the statement that Julius Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March is simply the fact that Julius Caesar actually was assassinated on the Ides of March, and nothing more need be said.” (Feser 2019, 301)  A little farther down, he writes, 

    The whole point of presentism, after all, is that the past and future don't have the same kind of reality that the present does. Hence it shouldn't be surprising if the truthmakers for statements about the past and future are unlike the truthmakers for statements about the present. (301)

    Feser seems to be proposing the following. In the case of the present-tensed 'BV exists,' the truth-maker is BV. But when BV is no more and it is true that BV existed, the truth-maker of the past-tensed truth will be the fact that BV existed and will not involve BV himself.

    As it seems to me, this proposal betrays a failure to appreciate the difference between a fact construed as a true proposition, and a truth-maker, which cannot be a (Fregean or abstract) proposition. A truth-bearer cannot serve as a truth-maker. On one common use of 'fact,' a fact is just a true (abstract) proposition. We may refer to such facts as facts that. A fact that cannot serve as a truth-maker. Facts that need truth-makers. 'It is a fact that Venus is a planet' says no more and no less than 'It is true that Venus is a planet.' The factuality of a fact that is just its being true; if an item is true, however, it must be a truth-bearer and cannot be a truth-maker.

    Now just as we can sensibly ask what makes it true that Venus is a planet, we can sensibly ask what makes it a fact that Venus is a planet. The answer must make reference to Venus itself which is neither a proposition nor a fact that, but a massive chunk of the physical world. What we need as a truth-maker is a fact of. What we need is the concrete state of affairs or fact of Venus' being a planet, a state if affairs which has as a constituent Venus itself. Therefore, nothing is accomplished by saying that what makes it true that Caesar was assassinated is the fact that Caesar was assassinated. That amounts to saying that what makes it true that Caesar was assassinated is the truth that he was assassinated. Obviously, no truth-maker has been specified. A truth-bearer cannot serve as a truth-maker.

    Here is a second problem. Read again the second quotation:

    The whole point of presentism, after all, is that the past and future don't have the same kind of reality that the present does. Hence it shouldn't be surprising if the truthmakers for statements about the past and future are unlike the truthmakers for statements about the present. (301)

    The second problem is that on standard presentism, there is no distinction between kinds of reality. The claim is not that the wholly past and the wholly future have a different kind of reality or existence than the present, but that the past and future are not real or existent at all. On presentism, what no longer exists, does not exist at all. It passes out existence entirely; it does not retain a lesser kind of existence or exist in a looser sense of 'exist.'  As Feser himself says, “But the presentist holds that past things and events do not exist.” (301) 

    I conclude that Feser hasn't appreciated the depth of the grounding problem. 'Caesar was assassinated' needs an existing truth-maker. But on presentism, neither Caesar nor his being assassinated exists. It is not just that these two items don't exist now; on presentism, they don't exist at all. What then makes the past-tensed sentence true?  This is the question that Feser hasn't satisfactorily answered. He wants to hold both to presentism and the truth-maker principle, but he hasn't shown how this is possible. Feser tells us that what makes it true that Caesar was assassinated is the fact that Caesar was assassinated, and that nothing more  need be said.  But obviously this won't do. The past-tensed truth cannot serve as it own truth-maker.  

    Bill Vallicella

  • A Frustrating Discussion with a Non-Philosopher about Stephen Hawking

    Ed reports on a recent trip to Africa:

    I didn’t run into any philosophers, but there was a chap I met over dinner who was banging on about Stephen Hawking. I have a strict rule never to discuss philosophy with anyone who has no obvious training in the subject, but he was insistent, and I gave way. A brief summary which may appeal to you:

    He asked me if I had read any Hawking and I said I hadn’t, as I was not particularly interested in modern physics, and particularly not interested in those with an undoubted aptitude in some scientific or technical subject, but with doubtful philosophical expertise. Philosophers with no training in physics should not write about physics, likewise physicists without training in philosophy should not write about philosophy.

    He demurred. Hawking was writing about physics, but then we looked up some chapters of his last work Brief Answers To The Big Questions, one of which was about the existence of God, et habui propositum.

    He then said that everyone has a right to their opinion. I agreed, but I also had a right not to read their opinion. Equally I had a right to say anything about astrophysics, without him having the obligation to read it.

    He said I should not dismiss Hawking’s work without having read it. I objected that there are hundreds of thousands of books in print, and life is short. This is why we have book reviews. I had read reviews of Hawking’s work by people I respected, suggesting it was not worth reading him, so I didn’t. The principle of taking opinions on trust is a well-established one, and mostly useful, though not infallible.

    He got very upset by this point, saying that Hawking was one of the most brilliant men who had ever existed, one had a duty to read him etc. I was about to launch into a discursus on brilliant people throughout the ages, some of whom had considered precisely the arguments that Hawking had put forward as his own (e.g. Hawking argues that there are only three types of matter, and nothing else exists, ergo God does not exist), but Fiona, seeing the glint in my eye and the lust for a kill, wisely said we had to be up early the next morning, and we departed.

    Wittgenstein: ‘[the physicist Sir James Jeans] has written a book called The Mysterious Universe and I loathe it and call it misleading. Take the title…I might say that the title The Mysterious Universe includes a kind of idol worship, the idol being Science and the Scientist.’

    I may look at the Hawking, notwithstanding.

    Have a look, but Hawking's philosophical books are bad.  I offer my opinion here; I quote Tim Maudlin's negative judgment here.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Parents

    Honor them for what was honorable in them. As for the rest, forgive and forget, or at least forgive. Honor the honorable; forgive the rest.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Eyes in the Mirror

    The eyes you see in the mirror when you look at yourself are not seeing eyes, but seen eyes. It is strange but true: your seeing eyes are and must remain invisible.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Mirror Meditation

    Neither admire the handsome face that looks back at you, nor be troubled by the inevitable signs of aging as the face gives way to a meatless, brainless skull.

    Bill Vallicella

  • The Psalms

    I find in the Psalms too much praising of a tribal god and not enough seeking of the hidden God. But both are there.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Review of Mary Gordon, On Thomas Merton

    The review is by Gary WILLS, not Willis. It is well worth reading. But, as someone who has read all seven volumes of Merton's Journals, I find this unfair:

    In 1965, to keep him [Merton] on the vast grounds of the abbey, the abbot approved a state of virtual secession within the monastery. Merton could live in his own hermitage, distant from the main house, where he asked that other monks not visit him. He said that he wanted more solitude, but he told the truth in his journal, that he wanted “all the liberty and leeway I have in the hermitage.” It gave admiring outsiders easier access to him and let him slip off the grounds to make unmonitored phone calls to them.

    Merton was conflicted, no doubt, but his commitment to the eremitic life was genuine.

     
    [Reviews] Shallow Calls to Shallow by Garry Willis | Harper's Magazine
    Discussed in this essay: On Thomas Merton, by Mary Gordon. Shambhala. 160 pages. $22.95. 

    Bill Vallicella

  • How Close Are We to Civil War? A Pessimistic View

    The following view is pessimistic, but current events give me no good reason to be optimistic.  A bad moon's rising and trouble's on the way. A house divided cannot stand. Don't say that Trump has divided us. The division was well-entrenched long before he came on the political scene. He merely gave voice to the conservative side in a way that the bow-tie boys of Conservatism, Inc. could not and would not. In so doing, he enraged the Left forcing them to show their true colors and reveal themselves for what they were all along. So, far from being the Great Divider, Trump has proven to be the Great Clarifier.  You will have to work out for yourself how best to weather the storm that's coming. The wise hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.  Emphases below are my addition.

    E. M. Cadwaladr:

    We and the Left are now two nations within one country.  This is undeniable.  We are now so different that we cannot even agree on what a country is, or on the merits of a country having a border.  The number of people who still say, "I just don't care about politics" dwindles.  It is still possible to hate both sides — but it is getting hard to be indifferent and still be breathing.  How many people can just take or leave infanticide?  How many people are entirely flexible about the idea of the government having authority over anything and everything, to experimenting with our fundamental demographics, or to giving up fossil fuels cold turkey?

    The author is right. 

    . . .  We have our breaking point, and they have theirs.  Our two nations hang suspended over war's abyss, kept in mid-air temporarily by a tug-of-war of pundits, politicians, and overpaid attorneys.  Our "leaders" are not quite ready to repudiate the only instruments of power they know how to wield, but in their cynical maneuvering, they have broken the very foundations of the rule of law itself.  We have seen the two-tiered legal system and found it unworthy of respect.  We have watched in quiet horror as a federal judge in Hawaii stuck his dainty legal foot in front of Trump's immigration order — but that's exactly how the game is played.  You and I hold our breath, waiting for the shambling Frankenstein's monster of formalities to eventually keel over and drop dead.  We wait for our side to finally draw a line and say, "Enough!" — or for their side to dig in and openly proclaim, "We won't be bound by a constitution written by old dead white men anymore!"

    Consider the National Popular VoteInterstate Compact that a dozen states have now passed into law.  These states have agreed to sign their citizens' electoral votes over to whatever presidential candidate wins the popular vote.  In one sense, this may be constitutional.  The framers allowed each state to determine for itself how its electors would be assigned.  In another sense, such laws are clearly anti-constitutional.  The framers quite explicitly intended to preserve the sovereignty of the less populous states, and a National Popular Vote Interstate Compact accomplishes just the opposite end.  Such laws are nothing less than attempts by California and New York to nullify the interests of whole regions of the country.  If the National Popular VoteInterstate Compact movement succeeds in achieving its golden number of 270 votes, will the state of Oklahoma, or Alabama, or Alaska, be content to have its votes made moot?  At what point does such a clever lawyer's trick make secession less objectionable than the alternative?

    The abyss looms large beneath us.  We are stretched closer and closer to our limits.

    The people who are eager for a civil war are fools.  They don't understand the catastrophe they're begging for.  But the people who believe that a civil war is now a real possibility are neither fools nor wild-eyed alarmists. Moreover, the people who believe that, grim though the prospect may be, war might be the lesser of two evils have a daily strengthening case. The Left has shown itself to be dedicated to the destruction of Western civilization itself.  We have not been faced with such an existential threat since European armies threw the Turks back from Vienna in 1529.  The fascists of the mid–2oth century, for all their loathsome policies, were not the kind of threat to the fabric of our society that we face now.  Bad as they were, they did not seek the destruction of Europeans as a people, or of European culture as a living, breathing thing.  Progressivism does.  What could be more worthy of, if you will forgive the word, "resistance"?

    We conservatives have let this ideological cancer metastasize for far too long for its excision to be simple or painless.  For too long, we have been patient with outrages we should have fought to reverse.  We have let our opponents secede incrementally from us for decades.  We have been tolerant and patient.  In our tolerance and patience, we have given up our civil society, our political representation, and our freedoms one by one.  Our maladies won't be fixed by delicate adjustments now — half-heartedly performed by yet another generation of narcissistic government planners and invisible elitist bureaucrats.  Intellectuals like George Will and think-tanks like the Heritage Foundation have done us little good.  Our condition demands a radical, unflinching surgery if we, as a nation, are to survive.  Either the cancer wins, and kills us all, or we defeat it — and we accept the scars.  Let us not pretend they would not be hideous scars.  And let us not pretend it would not be a deeply barbarous and bitter surgery.

    Toleration is a high value, but it has limits. One cannot tolerate the intolerant. And let's be clear that only some are culturally equipped to appreciate the high value of toleration, the touchstone of classical liberalism, which is not to be confused with leftism or progressivism or contemporary 'liberalism.'  Muslims as a group are not so equipped, which is presumably why leftists encourage their immigration.  Leftists think that they can use sharia-supporting Muslims, whose values are antithetical to Western values, to undermine American values.

    Virtues can vitiate when taken to extremes. Our toleration has weakened us.  The author is right about this.

    Another strength that has weakened us is our understanding that the political does not exhaust the real and important. I call this The Conservative Disadvantage. If you care to know what I mean, bang on the hyperlink.

    The truth is that we, as individuals, have rather few decisions left to make.  The titanic nations of the Left and right are rising en masse — flexing their muscles and snorting menacingly at one another.  We cannot get out of their way.  There is no safe part of the country, nor any genuinely safe haven left in any other country.  This is a global conflict.  We have run out of frontiers.  There is only so much "prepping" one can do for an upheaval of this magnitude.  We Americans have not seen such a calamity on our soil for six generations.  What our ancestors knew, we have forgotten.  The Civil War of our history has become a dim and comfortable myth.  A new war leers at us like the devil, but we talk about it like a football game.  We may learn as human beings have always learned — the hard way.

    Let's hope that the author is overstating his case.  But hope is not enough.  Every sane, decent American has to do his bit to help defeat the destructive Left and to do so politically if possible. Resort to extra-political means is the last resort, not to be hoped for, but for which we must be prepared.

    Bill Vallicella

  • D. G. Myers on Kurt Vonnegut

    I admit to never having read any Kurt Vonnegut. But I have just read a gushing article in The Atlantic about his Slaughterhouse-Five, now 50 years old. So I thought I'd see what D. G. Myers has to say about Vonnegut.  Some excerpts from No on Vonnegut:

    The Library of America has made the weird and unpardonable decision to release an omnibus volume of fiction by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. The volume covers ten years of writing from 1963 to 1973, the period during which the novels Cat’s Cradle, God Bless You, Mr Rosewater, Slaughterhouse-Five, and Breakfast of Champions and the story collection Welcome to the Monkey House were published. Although I have been unable to confirm the exact contents, Vonnegut’s books are short enough that the Library of America volume is likely to include all five.

    There is no possible justification for Vonnegut’s enshrinement in the Library of America, which exists “to preserve the nation's cultural heritage by publishing America’s best and most significant writing in authoritative editions. . . .” Even one of his champions—James Lundquist, in a 1977 single-author study—classifies his fiction as “ ‘naive’ literature because [Vonnegut] makes so much use of expected associations and conventions for the purpose of rapid communication with its readers.”

    [. . .]

    Until 1969, his most famous book was Cat’s Cradle, a silly fable that college students all over the country seemed to be reading in unison. Then came Slaughterhouse-Five, his novel about the Allied firebombing of Dresden during the last year of the Second World War. As in all his books, Vonnegut was careful to spell out the Message: “I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee.” It is difficult to understand how anyone could experience the rush of moral knowledge while reading that sentence, but perhaps a certain kind of young reader feels something like personal unification—a delirious sense that his rebellion against the adult world is finally taking the firm shape of settled conviction—when swallowing Vonnegut’s books.

    A recent critic calls Vonnegut, who lived through the firebombing of Dresden as a POW, “the war’s second most famous survivor,” after Elie Wiesel. (Francine Prose based an entire novel on the empty posturing behind such a claim.) Perhaps, though, this remark provides the key to his fiction, if not a reason to reprint it in an authoritative edition. The survivors of massacres and holocausts are indemnified against ordinary criticism, but also against the ordinary expectations—of subtlety, memorable characterization, layered prose—that readers bring to a work of literature.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Self-Made Meaning is Unmeaning

    One can bake bread, buy bread, or beg bread. Can one bake for oneself the bread of meaning? Or must one ask for it? (One cannot buy it.) Some say that the only meaning a life has is the meaning the liver of the life gives it.  This is a mistake as I will argue in painful detail in a separate entry. For now I merely invoke the authority of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, trs. Foster and Miller, Ignatius Press, 1969, p. 73, orig. publ. in German in 1968:

    Meaning that is self-made is in the last analysis no meaning. Meaning, that is, the ground on which our existence as a totality can stand or live, cannot be made but only received.

    To which I add: if there is no meaning there to be received, then there is no meaning.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Meaning as Bread

    As an addendum to yesterday's Platonizing entry on "Give us this day our daily bread," I draw upon Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, trs. Foster and Miller, Ignatius Press, 1969, p. 73, orig. publ. in German in 1968:

    Meaning is the bread on which man, in the intrinsically human part of his being, subsists.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Yes, I Repeat Myself

    Leftists constantly repeat their lies in the hope that they will be eventually taken for truths. So we of the Coalition of the Sane need to constantly repeat truths.  Not our truths, for there is  no such thing as 'our' truth or 'my' truth or 'your' truth.'  Truth is not subject to ownership. If you have it, you have it without possessing it.   

    So speak the truth and speak it often.  Don't be afraid of repeating yourself. Living well is impossible without repetition. All learning, all teaching, all physical culture, all musicianship require repetition. No mastery of anything, no improvement in anything, is possible without repetition.  Can you play that riff the same way every time? If not, keep practicing. 

    By practicing blows, whether verbal or physical, you learn how to land effective ones.

    Bill Vallicella

  • “Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread”

    This is another topic that it would have been great to discuss with Dale Tuggy during his visit thereby bringing my supposed 'gnosticism' into collision with his supposed 'spiritual materialism.'  The problems are very difficult and I do not claim to have the answers.  The first thing and the main thing, as it seems to me, is to cultivate a deep appreciation of the issues and their difficulty.

    ………………………………………….

    I tend to look askance at petitionary prayer for material benefits. In such prayer one asks for mundane benefits whether for oneself, or for another, as in the case of intercessory prayer. In many of its forms petitionary prayer borders on idolatry and superstition, and in its crassest forms it crosses over. A skier who prays for snow, for example, makes of God a supplier of mundane benefits, as does the person who prays to win the lottery.  Worse still is one who prays for the death of a business rival.  When Paul Tibbets, Jr. took off in the Enola Gay on his mission to Hiroshima in August of 1945, a Catholic priest blessed his mission, petitioning God for its success.  I'll leave you to think about that.

    Perhaps not all petitionary prayer for mundane benefits is objectionable.  Some of it simply reflects, excusably,  our misery and indigence.  Did not Christ himself engage in it at Gethsemane?  But much of it is objectionable.  What then should I say about the "Our Father," which, in the fourth of its six petitions, appears precisely to endorse petitionary prayer for material  benefits?

    The other five petitions in the Pater Noster are either clearly or arguably prayers for spiritual benefits.   In a spiritual petition one asks, not for physical bread and such, but for things like acceptance, equanimity, patience, courage, and the like in the face of the fact that one lacks bread or has cancer. "Thy Will be done." One asks for forgiveness and for the ability to forgive others. One prays for a lively sense of one's own manifold  shortcomings, for self-knowledge and freedom from self-deception. One prays, not to be cured of  cancer, but to bear it with courage. One prays for the ability to see one's tribulations under the aspect of eternity, or at least with the sort of detachment with which one contemplates the sufferings of others. 

    The fourth petition, "Give us this day our daily bread," translates the Biblia Vulgata's Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie which occurs at Luke 11:3.

    At Matthew 6:11, however, we find Panem nostrum supersubstantialem da nobis hodie, "Give us this day our supersubstantial bread." 'Supersubstantial' suggests a bread that is supernatural, beyond all sublunary substances, and beyond all creatures. To ask for this heavenly bread is to ask for a 'food' that will keeps us spiritually alive.

    For a long time I perhaps naively thought that 'daily bread' had to refer to physical bread and the other necessities of our material existence.  So for a long time I thought that there was a tension, or even a contradiction, between 'daily bread' and 'supersubstantial bread.'  A tension between physical bread and meta-physical bread. 

    Cassianus_portretBut one morning I stumbled upon what might be the right solution while reading St. John Cassian.  The same bread is referred to by both phrases, and that same bread is spiritual or supersubstantial, not physical.  'Supersubstantial' makes it clear that 'bread' is to be taken metaphorically, not literally, while 'daily' "points out the right manner of its beneficial use." (Selected Writings, p. 30)  What 'daily' thus conveys is that we need to feed upon spiritual bread every single day.  On this reading, the fourth petition is as spiritual as the others, and the whiff of superstition and idolatry that I found offensive is removed.*

    This reading also has the virtue of cohering nicely with Matthew 4:4 according to which man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.  Man lives, not by physical bread, but by meta-physical 'bread.'

    "Give us this day our daily bread" is thus a request that we be supplied on a daily basis with spiritual bread that we need every day.  And since we need it every day, we must ask for it every day. But who needs it?  Not the bodily man, but the "inner man" says Cassian.  The inner man is the true man. 'Inner man' is a metaphor but it indicates a literal truth: that man is more than an animal. Being more than an animal, he needs more than material sustenance. 

    Addendum on the Literal and the Metaphorical

    Here is a question that vexes me.  Are there literal truths that cannot be stated literally but can only stated or gotten at metaphorically?  Can we state literally what a man is if he is more than an animal? Or must we use metaphors?

    "Man is spirit."  Isn't 'spirit' a metaphor?  "Man has a higher origin."  'Higher' is metaphorical.  "Man is made by God in his image and likeness."  Aren't 'made,' 'image,' and 'likeness' metaphors?

    I once heard a crude and materialistic old man say that if man is made in God's image, then God must have a gastrointestinal tract.  I tried to explain to the man that 'image' is not to be taken in a physical sense but in a spiritual sense.  But I got nowhere as could have been expected:  anyone who doesn't understand right away the spiritual sense of 'made in God's image' displays by that failure to understand an incapacity for instruction.  It is like the student who doesn't get right away what it means to say that one proposition follows from another, and thinks that it refers to a temporal or a spatial relation. 

    The question is whether the spiritual sense can be spelled out literally.

    ___________________

    *  For Simone Weil, "Christ is our bread." We can have physical bread without eating it; we cannot have spiritual bread without  'eating' it: the having is the 'eating' and being nourished by it. This nourishing is the "union of Christ with the eternal part of the  soul." (Waiting for God, p. 146) The fourth petition of the Pater Noster, then, is the request for the union of Christ with the eternal part of the soul. It has nothing to do with a crass and infantile demand to be supplied with physical food via a supernatural means.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Joe Biden: Creep, Clown, Opportunist, and Ignoramus

    As as all of those things, a 'worthy' representative of the contemporary hard-Left Democrat party. Ben Shapiro has his number:

    More importantly, however, Biden's characterization of "English jurisprudential culture" as "white man's culture" is profoundly disturbing. English jurisprudential culture is rooted in the belief in the rule of law, due process of law, equal rights under law; English jurisprudential culture is responsible for preserving the natural rights we hold dear, rights which were imperfectly but increasingly extended over time to more and more human beings, particularly minorities. No less a leftist figure than Barack Obama explained just that in 2009, saying he sought a system at Guantanamo Bay that "adheres to the rule of law, habeas corpus, basic principles of Anglo-American legal system."

    Protection of individual rights — and in particular, minority rights — lies at the heart of English jurisprudence. Yet Biden boiled down those rights to racial privilege. And the attempt to reduce the fundamental principles of our civilization to a mask for racial hierarchical power is both false and frightening. It suggests that those principles ought to be undermined for purposes of disestablishing that supposed hierarchy. Get rid of English jurisprudential law, presumably, in order to fight racism.

    townhall.com
     
    When You Don't Appreciate Your Civilization
    Last week, former Vice President Joe Biden spoke at the Biden Courage…

    Bill Vallicella

Latest Comments

  2. And then there is the Sermon on the Mount. Here is a list of 12 different interpretations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sermon_on_the_Mount

  9. Bill, One final complicating observation: The pacifist interpretation of Matt 5:38-42 has been contested in light of Lk 22: 36-38…

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

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