Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains
Was this pseudo-con ever on it? See here for a meaty extract from his most recent NYT column.
The rejoinder by NT scholar Robert Gagnon is good.
I define my position over against that of French in my hard-hitting Substack entry, David French, Christianity, and Politics.
A Substack warning to foolish conservatives.
How close is the analogy? And what could the analogy be taken to show?
Is there an historian in the house?
E pluribus unum? Out of many, one? It can work, and it did work for a time, although not perfectly. But no longer. Whether a One can be made of Many depends on the nature of the Many.
A viable One cannot be made out of just any Many.
To think otherwise is to succumb to what I call the Integrationist Fantasy. This is the dangerous conceit that people can be brought together peacefully and productively despite deep differences in their languages, religions, cultures, traditions, and values.
To integrate is to bring together into a whole. But a functioning whole, whether political, social, or of any sort, cannot be assembled from any old assortment of parts. In terms of an outworn metaphor from yesteryear, there have to be some constraints on the range of ingredients thrown into the melting pot. Your stew will not be improved by the addition of ground-up spark plugs or enhanced by a liberal dose of WD-40.
Keeping with the gustatory metaphor, wide-open borders is a recipe for disaster.
Is it not folly to go into deep debt to buy something wildly overpriced of little value? And does it not contribute to an unravelling of the moral fiber of the people for a morally obtuse grifter such as Joseph Biden to forgive debts freely incurred, thereby forcing sensible taxpayers to foot the bill?
Here's Hanson.
Top o' the Stack.
Look, Dana, she's not running a political campaign. She's running a movie. She only speaks to voters behind a teleprompter. Everything is scripted. She doesn't have her policy positions out there. She hasn't answered why she wanted to ban fracking, but now she doesn't. She wanted to defund the police, but now she doesn't.
She wanted to open the border, but now she doesn't. She should have to answer for why she presents a different set of policies to one audience and a different set of policies to another audience. And I think that's what President Trump is getting at. This is a fundamentally fake person. She's different depending on who she's in front of.
Spot on. The fatuous fem is a fake, a phony, a fraud. Almost everything out of her mouth is either incoherent or vacuous. Have you ever heard her say anything that was neither? Tell me what it was.
Lanza del Vasto, Principles and Precepts of the Return to the Obvious (Schocken 1974, no translator listed), p. 93:
The Pursuit of the Useful raises an endless staircase in front of men. Whoever climbs it with all his strength and all his thought can but come out of it dead, without even having perceived that he has spent his life fleeing his life. The difficulty, the satisfactions and the regularity of the pursuit lead him to believe that it is fine, reasonable and good to put himself into it heart and soul.
The idolatry of the Useful is indicated by the fact that 'useless' universally carries a pejorative connotation when the truth is that the Useless Things are the Highest Things.
Lanza del Vasto with Simone Weil
'Debby' is the name of that hurricane harassing Florida? Disasters should be named after disasters: 'Hillary,' 'Kamala,' 'Nancy,' 'Gretchen,' . . .
Earl Scruggs and Friends, Foggy Mountain Breakdown
Ella Fitzgerald, Misty. Beats the Johnny Mathis version. A standard from the Great American Songbook.
Jimi Hendrix, Purple Haze. Not from the Great American Songbook. And presumably not about weather conditions. 'Scuse me while I kiss the sky? Or: 'Scuse me while I kiss this guy?
Cream, Sunshine of Your Love
Tom Waits, Emotional Weather Report
Art Garfunkel and James Taylor, Crying in the Rain. Written by Carole King and popularized by the Everly Bros.
Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain. Written by Fred Rose and performed by Roy Acuff in the '40s.
Now my hair is turned to silver
All my life I've loved in vain
I can see her star in heaven
Blue eyes cryin' in the rain.Someday when we meet up yonder
We'll stroll hand in hand again
In a land that knows no parting
Blue eyes crying in the rain.
Allman Bros., Blue Sky
Kansas, Dust in the Wind
Eric Clapton, Let It Rain
Dave van Ronk and the Hudson Dusters, Clouds ("Both Sides Now"). This beautiful version by "The Mayor of MacDougal Street" goes out to Oregon luthier Dave Bagwill who I know will appreciate it. Judy Collins made a hit of it. And you still doubt that the '60s was the greatest decade for American popular music? Speaking of the greatest decade, it was when the greatest writer of American popular songs, bar none, Bob Dylan, made his mark. Some generational chauvinism is justified!
Joan Baez, A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall Could Johnny Mercer write a song like this?
Eva Cassidy, Over the Rainbow. Another old standard from the Great American Songbook.
Tom Waits, On a Foggy Night
Rolling Stones, She's a Rainbow
Dan Fogelberg, Rhythm of the Rain
Cascades, Rhythm of the Rain. The original.
Dee Clark, Raindrops. Manny Mora:
"Raindrops" is a 1961 song by the American R&B singer Dee Clark. Released in April of that same year, this ballad peaked at position 2 on the Hot 100 and at position 3 on the R&B chart. [. . .]
Clark's biggest hit was also his last. [. . .]
Clark had a brief revival in 1975 when his song "Ride a Wild Horse" became a surprise Top 30 hit in the UK Singles Chart, becoming his first chart hit in the UK since "Just Keep It Up." Afterwards, Clark performed mostly on the oldies circuit. By the late 1980s, he was in dire straits financially, living in a welfare hotel in Toccoa, Georgia. Despite suffering a stroke in 1987 that left him partially paralyzed and with a mild speech impediment, he continued to perform until his death on December 7th 1990, in Smyrna, Georgia, from a heart attack at the age of 52. His last concert was with the Jimmy Gilstrap Band at the Portman Lounge in Anderson, South Carolina.
Dave Bagwill sends us to a clip in which Dave van Ronk talks a bit about the days of the "Great American Folk Scare" and then sings his signature number, "Green, Green, Rocky Road."
Philoponus writes,
Is there anywhere in the NT where they argue for an afterlife, or is it an assumption shared by all the authors of the NT? Passages?
Before I answer this question, there are a couple of logically prior questions of considerable interest. First, is there any argumentation at all in the NT? Second, does Jesus argue for anything, or does he just make gratuitous (unsupported) assertions? (If he was, and eternally is, God, that would be his prerogative, right?) The answer to both questions is in the affirmative, as you can see from the following quotation from Dallas Willard's essay, Jesus as Logician:
(2). Another illustrative case is found in Luke 20:27-40. Here it is the Sadducees, not the Pharisees, who are challenging Jesus. They are famous for rejecting the resurrection (vs. 27), and accordingly they propose a situation that, they think, is a reductio ad absurdum of resurrection. (vss. 28-33) The law of Moses said that if a married man died without children, the next eldest brother should make the widow his wife, and any children they had would inherit in the line of the older brother. In the 'thought experiment' of the Sadducees, the elder of seven sons died without children from his wife, the next eldest married her and also died without children from her, and the next eldest did the same, and so on though all seven brothers. Then the wife died (Small wonder!). The presumed absurdity in the case was that in the resurrection she would be the wife of all of them, which was assumed to be an impossibility in the nature of marriage.
Jesus' reply is to point out that those resurrected will not have mortal bodies suited for sexual relations, marriage and reproduction. They will have bodies like angels do now, bodies of undying stuff. The idea of resurrection must not be taken crudely. Thus he undermines the assumption of the Sadducees that any 'resurrection' must involve the body and its life continuing exactly as it does now. So the supposed impossibility of the woman being in conjugal relations with all seven brothers is not required by resurrection.
Then he proceeds, once again, to develop a teaching about the nature of God–which was always his main concern. Taking a premiss that the Sadducees accepted, he draws the conclusion that they did not want. That the dead are raised, he says, follows from God's self-description to Moses at the burning bush. God described himself in that incident as "the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." (Luke 20:35 ) The Sadducees accepted this. But at the time of the burning bush incident, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had been long 'dead', as Jesus points out. But God is not the God of the dead. That is, a dead person cannot sustain a relation of devotion and service to God, nor can God keep covenant faith with one who no longer exists. In covenant relationship to God one lives. (vs. 38) One cannot very well imagine the living God communing with a dead body or a non-existent person and keeping covenant faithfulness with them.
(Incidentally, those Christian thinkers who nowadays suggest that the Godly do not exist or are without conscious life, at least, from the time their body dies to the time it is resurrected, might want to provide us with an interpretation of this passage.)
Luke 20: 27-40 shows three things: there is argumentation in the NT; there is argumentation by Jesus in the NT; and to Phil's query, there is argument about the afterlife in the NT, in the form of argument against and for the resurrection of the dead.
It is now my turn to ask questions inasmuch as I am no scholar of the NT, nor do I play one in the blogosphere.
Q1: Did the Sadducees, in rejecting the resurrection of the body, equate that rejection with the rejection of personal immortality tout court? My guess is yes.
Q2. Did any of the rabbis hold to a personal immortality along Platonic lines? My guess is no.
Nescio ergo blogo.
Finally, was it true that Jesus was a logician? Well he certainly was a not a theorist of logic along the lines of Aristotle or Frege. Nor is Dallas Willard claiming that he was. But Willard succeeds in showing that Jesus did argue and make typical logical moves. The difference is that between logica docens and logica utens if I understand that distinction. It is the difference between logical theory and logical practice.
I first discovered Dallas Willard (1935-2013) as an undergraduate fascinated with Edmund Husserl and his quest to make of philosophy strenge Wissenschaft. Willard was a Husserl man, and a good one. Only much later did I discover that this USC professor was a Christian apologist. May he rest in peace.
Here is my tribute to him.
Substack wanted me to re-post this entry from four years ago.
Share an old post
You originally published "Idolatry and Atheism" 4 years ago. Consider sharing it again with your readers. Sharing relevant old posts is a great way to engage your audience who might not have seen them already without having to create new content.
So I did despite the fact that they miscounted: it was only three years ago. No matter, it still reads well and speaks truth. See if you don't agree.
A Substack meditation on the occasion of Edith Stein's feast day.
August 9th is the feast day of St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross in the Catholic liturgy. She is better known to philosophers as Edith Stein (1891-1942), brilliant Jewish student of and assistant to Edmund Husserl, philosopher in her own right, Roman Catholic convert, Carmelite nun, victim of the Holocaust at Auschwitz, and saint of the Roman Catholic Church. One best honors a philosopher by re-enacting his thoughts, sympathetically but critically. Herewith, a bit of critical re-enactment.
13 hours ago. About 22 minutes long. Penetrating analysis of the recent rollercoaster of events, and excellent advice for Trump if he can rein in his ego sufficiently to take it and act on it.
More: The Harris Flop Would Be Scarier Than Her Flip
No one voted for the Biden-Harris ticket to borrow trillions sparking hyperinflation, to wage war on fossil fuels, to go woke, to welcome in 10 million illegal aliens, to abandon $50 billion in weapons to the terrorist Taliban, and to find America facing existential wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and soon perhaps over Taiwan.
But getting leftists elected requires fooling the American people into thinking their "moderate" campaign veneers will continue into their presidencies — even though they never do.
So, for now, Harris and her new vice presidential candidate, Tim Walz, will smother all their cherished left-wing positions — at least until November.The two left-wing chameleons will assume the temporary identities and policies of "moderates." That is a de facto admission that they know that the public does not want any of their true agendas.
The temporary metamorphosis means that the leftist nominees superficially feign agreement with what most Americans support –energy independence, low taxes, limited government, strong defense, deterrent foreign policy, secure borders, legal-only immigration, and assimilation rather than woke/DEI tribalism.
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are the most brazen and extreme examples of left-wing flip-floppers in memory.
Kamala the chameleon is stupider than Pelosi, more mendacious than Hillary, and farther to the left than Joey. And like him, nothing but a puppet. Her much-vaunted 'joy' is the laughing-gas inanity of an over-grown adolescent ingenue. She is of the ilk of AOC, she of the occasional cortex.
Notes on Merricks. Substack latest.
Three Dreher pieces at the top of his 'Stack.' I am especially interested in comments from U. K. readers.
'A Riot is the Language of the Unheard'
Is the world coming apart or is the world coming apart?
Filed under: Decline of the West
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