Am I an Intellectual Glutton? Evdokimov, Jackson, Precepts, and Counsels

Study everything! proclaims the first half of my masthead motto.  I live by it. Am I an intellectual glutton? The self-critical and conflicted Tom Merton asked himself that very question in a journal entry. I put the question to myself.

Example. I am up from a nap and enjoying an iced coffee. I will soon be banging on all eight. As part of the afternoon start-up I am reading back-to-back, and back-and-forth, Paul Evdokimov (The Sacrament of Love: The Nuptial Mystery in the Orthodox Tradition, St. Vladimir's Press, 1985, orig. published in 1980 as Sacrement de L'Amour), and the Blake Bailey biography of Charles Jackson, the alcoholic, married-to-woman,  homosexual who achieved minor literary fame as the author of the thinly-veiled autobiographical booze novel, The Lost Weekend (1944).  Jackson died at age 65 having destroyed himself with drugs and alcohol.

I have long been fascinated by the utterly wild diversity of human types. There is nothing like it it the animal world, and yet we too are animals. We are in continuity with the animals but an incomprehensible rupture, saltation, jump, metabasis eis allo genos, occurred at some point in the evolutionary process that gave rise to man who is, paradoxically, both an animal and not an animal. Heidegger is right; there is an abysmal/abyssal (abgruendig) difference between man and animal. An abyss yawns between the two. Heidegger  is echoing Genesis but going deeper, and some would say, off the deep end, with his talk of man as Dasein, the Da of Sein/Seyn. More on Heidegger when I dig into Dugin.

And then there is Paul Evdokimov (1901-1970). I have Merton to thank for bringing him to my attention. Here is a passage that struck me:

There is no reason . . . to call one path [the marital state] or the other [the monastic state] the preeminent Christianity, since what is valid for all of Christendom is thereby valid for each of the two states. The East [unlike the RCC] has never made the distinction between the "precepts" and the "evangelical counsels." The Gospel in its totality is addressed to each person; everyone in his own situation is called to the absolute of the Gospel. Trying to prove the superiority of the one state over the other is therefore useless . . . The renunciation at work in both cases is as good as the positive content that the human being brings to it: the intensity of the love of God. (Evdokimov, p. 65)

For the Roman Catholic distinction between precepts and counsels of perfection that Evdokimov is rejecting, see here. "It has been denied by heretics in all ages, and especially by many Protestants in the sixteenth and following centuries . . . "

Self-Admonition: Do Your Best!

Do the best you can for as long as you can with your life's allotment of materials, tools, and talents. The best you can do won't be the best, but your best, the personal best, unique to you, unrepeatable, and incommunicable to any other. Your uniqueness distinguishes your best from the bests of all the rest. Tread the path of self-individuation and become the unique individual only you can become — or fail to become out of  slackery and inanition.

Look up to your superiors in the hierarchies of achievement and endowment. You are not their equal and you never, or only rarely, will be. If you can move up a rung or two, do so. Emulate where that is possible. But don't confuse emulation with imitation: the former includes but is more than the latter. Look up, but without envy. Their lot and their allotment is not yours.  They will be held to a higher standard, and judged the more harshly the more they have buried their talents. Their boons are burdens, their blessings bonds. And so are yours to a lesser measure. Much will be demanded from those to whom much has been given. Your task is yours alone: to work the materials of your allotment with your tools and talents in your time and place the best you can for as long as you can.

If comparison breeds envy, drop comparison.  To feel diminished by another's success or well-being either is, or is the near occasion of, a deadly sin. Be your incomparable self. There is and can be only one of you just as there is and can be only one One by which all beings are beings.

If admiration of the other sires denigration of self, drop admiration. 

The strenuous life is best by test. We are here to battle the hebetude of the flesh and the sluggishness of the mind. 

The New Politics: A Battle of Billionaires

Some cynics (Moldbug?) will say that it has always been like that: the essence of the political is captured in the Golden Rule: Those with the gold, rule.  If that is so, let the battle proceed. I am glad we have Trump and Musk on our side.

You don't defeat transgender Unsinn with calm arguments and appeals to reason, but by Musk-et.  

RINOs are Worse than Democrats!

Thus spake Leo Terrell on Mark Levin's show on Saturday night. True. Here's my two cents.

Trump's unification of the Republication Party must include the purging of the RINOs. Start with Loony Liz and Milquetoast Mitt.

Not so long ago the 'circular firing squad' was an apt metaphor for the behavior of Republicans among themselves, and 'circling the wagons' among the Democrats. Now it's the other way around. The times they are a'changin.'

And so I permit myself a descent into  Schadenfreude as the Dems implode. The fools are doing it to themselves. May they bring their folly to fruition.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Songs of Freedom and Liberty

Tread notMetallica, Don't Tread on Me

Rascals, People Got to Be Free

Tom Petty, I Won't Back Down

Johnny Cash, I Won't Back Down

Merle Haggard, The Fightin' Side of Me

The Who, Going Mobile

Richie Havens, Freedom

Cream, I Feel Free

The Band, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down

Arlo Guthrie, City of New Orleans

Highwaymen, City of New Orleans

My Country 'tis of Thee, Sweet Land of Liberty

Long live the Republic!

A Quote of Note from J. D. Vance’s RNC Speech

Here is the part of Vance's speech Thursday night that impressed me the most.  It also impressed Cathy Young at The Bulwark, but for opposite reasons. It sounds Blut-und-Boden to her: "I think it’s fair to say that this portion of Vance’s speech had overtones of blood-and-soil nationalism." Fair? Or scurrilous?

You know, one of the things that you hear people say sometimes is that America is an idea. And to be clear, America was indeed founded on brilliant ideas, like the rule of law and religious liberty. Things written into the fabric of our Constitution and our nation. But America is not just an idea. It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation.

Now, it is part of that tradition, of course, that we welcome newcomers. But when we allow newcomers into our American family, we allow them on our terms. [I would add: ONLY on our terms.] That’s the way we preserve the continuity of this project from 250 years past to hopefully 250 years in the future.

Now in that cemetery, there are people who were born around the time of the Civil War. And if, as I hope, my wife and I are eventually laid to rest there, and our kids follow us, there will be seven generations just in that small mountain cemetery plot in eastern Kentucky. Seven generations of people who have fought for this country. Who have built this country. Who have made things in this country. And who would fight and die to protect this country if they were asked to.

Now that’s not just an idea, my friends. That’s not just a set of principle[s]. Even though the ideas and the principles are great, that is a homeland. That is our homeland. People will not fight for abstractions, but they will fight for their home. And if this movement of ours is going to succeed, and if this country is going to thrive, our leaders have to remember that America is a nation, and its citizens deserve leaders who put its interests first. (Emphasis added.)

Perhaps I will explain myself tomorrow if  Typepad behaves itself.

……………………

OK. It is now 'tomorrow.' (Memo to self: write a post on the use and abuse of temporal indexicals.)

There is a distinction between ethnic and civic nationalism. The former is rooted in blood and soil, language and tradition, the particular. The latter is based on ideas and propositions that purport to be of universal validity.  American nationalism is not wholly civic.  Indeed, it is hard to imagine any nation that could be wholly civic, wholly 'propositional' or wholly based on a set of beliefs and values.  And yet the United States is a proposition nation: the propositions are in the founding documents. This cannot  be reasonably denied. You should now pull out your copy of the Declaration of Independence and carefully re-read its second paragraph. There are plenty of propositions, presuppositions, principles and values there for you to feast your mind on. 

I also don't see how it could be reasonably denied that the discovery and articulation and preservation of classically American principles and values was achieved by people belonging to a certain tradition grounded proximally in our founding documents and ultimately in our Judeo-Christian and Graeco-Roman heritage. 

This has consequences for immigration policy. I take it to be axiomatic that immigration must be to the benefit of the host country, a benefit not to be  defined in merely economic terms. I also take it to be axiomatic that there is no right to immigrate any more than anyone has a right to invade one's domicile and set up camp there. This is why immigrants must be vetted and why the distinction between legal and illegal immigrants must be upheld, along with the related distinction between citizens and non-citizens.  Only those who accept our principles, values, and the like should be let in. 

Although we are, collectively, in steep cultural decline, normative American culture is superior to plenty of other cultures I could mention. If you don't believe that, you are free to leave. Just as there is no right to immigrate, there is no obligation to stay. So there is a sense in which I am for open borders: they ought be be open in the outbound direction.  This is why it is perfectly asinine to liken a southern border wall to the Berlin Wall as more than one prominent Democrat has done. It is entirely fitting that the totemic animal for this once-respectable party  is the jackass. 'Asinine' from L. asinus = ass.  The word is polyvalent, a fact I will exploit in a moment.

We have a culture to restore and defend. There is only one man who is in a position to lead us forward. You know who he is.  So get off your sorry ass and join the fight.  

As for Cathy Young, she is doing what hate-America leftist scum regularly do: she is playing the Nazi card, a card they never leave home without.

Caiati on Feser on the GOP Platform re: Abortion

This just in from Dr. Vito Caiati:

I am wondering if you have been following the ongoing, intense debate on the GOP platform that has taken place on X and in several conservative online journals, which was ignited by Edward Feser and other social conservatives, who are strongly critical of the removal of long-standing planks supporting a national ban on abortion and in favor of the traditional definition of marriage, viewing both as fundamental capitulations to the increasingly hegemonic secular ideology of the Left. (Feser on X: “The Left will force us into the catacombs, while the Right will tell us that going into the catacombs voluntarily is the most politically realistic way to keep the Left from forcing us to go there”).

Yesterday, Feser posted a short piece on his blog, “Now is the time for social conservatives to fight,” that references his tweets on X and several articles on this matter (https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/). I think what we are seeing here is the populist nature of the MAGA movement, headed by Trump, ever more openly differentiating itself from the traditional conservatism of the GOP, and I am curious to know your thoughts about this leftward cultural shift. I myself think that Feser makes some excellent points and see no reason for him and others not to fight for their moral and social ideals within the party, but also that, given the grave crisis of the nation, these do not justify any hesitation about aggressively supporting Trump/Vance.

We've discussed this before, Vito.  See, for starters, Abortion and Last Night's GOP Debate (24 August 2023).  There I wrote:

The overturning of Roe v. Wade returned the abortion question to the states. That means that each state is empowered to enact its own laws regulating abortion. Some states will permit abortion up to the moment of birth. Others will not. Different states, different laws.

What then are we to make of Mike Pence and Senator Tim Scott and their call for a Federal law that bans abortion (apart from the usual exceptions) during the last 15 weeks of pregnancy? 

Am I missing something? (When I write about political and legal issues, I write as a concerned citizen and not as an expert in these areas.) It strikes me as obvious that if the abortion issue is for the states to decide, then there cannot be any federal abortion laws. 

[. . .]

The precise question is: How is a federal abortion restriction consistent with the states' right to decide the abortion laws? ND Governor Doug Burgum alone seemed to understand the problem, but his fleeting remark failed to set it forth clearly.

The answer to the precise question is that the federal restriction is not consistent with states' rights. It is unconstitutional.

This is not a very satisfying answer given that abortion is a moral abomination. (See my Abortion category for arguments.) But arguments, no matter how good, cut no ice in the teeth of our concupiscence. This is explained in my Substack article, Abortion and the Wages of Concupiscence Unrestrained.

In the Comments, you agreed with me:

“The precise question is: How is a federal abortion restriction consistent with the states' right to decide the abortion laws?”

Like you, Bill, I am no expert in constitutional law, but I believe that such a restriction would not be consistent with the right of the states to determine the law on this matter. The confusion of Pence and Scott appears to arise from their understanding of the wording of the Supreme Court in the Dobbs Case, in which the majority held: “The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives” (https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf). Specifically, they seem to interpret the phrase “returned to the people and their elected representatives” as one that permits the federal legislature, the Congress, to establish a national ban on abortion during the last 15 weeks of pregnancy, save for unusual cases. However, I think that such an interpretation contradicts the Tenth Amendment, which decrees that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Of the enumerated or expressed powers granted to the United States, i.e., the federal government, none include that of regulating abortion, nor is such regulation proscribed to the states; therefore, such power resides with the latter. Moreover, an attempt to utilize the Fourteenth Amendment, which protects the rights of individuals granted by the Constitution, would not permit federal intervention, since the Court found in Dobbs that it does not grant such a right.

Posted by: Vito B. Caiati | Friday, August 25, 2023 at 02:58 AM

I responded:

Vito's comment above is a model of how a good comment is constructed.

Note that he deals directly with the question I raised. He does not go off on a tangent, or change the subject to a topic that interests him but is not germane to my entry. He engages what I said and he lets me know whether he agrees or disagrees. As it is, he agrees.

He then supplements what I said in two ways. He points out the relevance of the Tenth Amendment to the question I posed. That had occurred to me, but I failed to mention it. Governor Burgum alluded to it near the end of that segment of the debate when he whipped out his pocket Constitution.

But what I found most useful in Vito's comment is his explanation of the confusion of Pence and Scott. Vito: >>Specifically, they seem to interpret the phrase “returned to the people and their elected representatives” as one that permits the federal legislature, the Congress, to establish a national ban on abortion during the last 15 weeks of pregnancy, save for unusual cases.<<

So the mistake that Pence and Scott made was to confuse the people of the U.S. with the people of a particular state. Here is 10A again: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Now I don't think one has to be a Constitutional scholar to know what that means. "The people" refers to the people of a given state, such as North Dakota or Massachusetts, not to all the people of the U.S.

Posted by: BV | Friday, August 25, 2023 at 02:02 PM

See also: More on the Politics of Abortion: Ron Paul and Subsidiarity.  (26 September 2023)  This entry is relevant to Feser's position inasmuch as he is a traditional Catholic who, I expect,  accepts the principle of subsidiarity.

Also relevant to Feser's position is his integralism. Another prominent integralist is Adrian Vermeule who refers to his integralism as political Catholicism. According to integralism, traditional Roman Catholic abortion doctrine could be justifiably imposed by the state. 

As I recall, you accepted my rejection of integralism.

You say, " . . . Feser makes some excellent points and [I] see no reason for him and others not to fight for their moral and social ideals within the party . . . ."

What are these points, Vito, and how could Feser fight for his abortion convictions within the American political system, given the Dobbs decision?

I suspect that something much deeper is at issue here. I suspect that what conservatives such as Feser are ultimately opposing is our constitutional system of government, as she was founded to be, with its commitment to religious liberty and federalism.  What he wants is a different sort of political order than the one the Founders bequeathed to us. 

One thing you and I and Feser all agree on: abortion is in almost all cases a moral abomination from the moment of conception on.  And if this is so, it it so always and everywhere. But SCOTUS has spoken and the issue is now one for the states.  Some states will enshrine the abomination, so to speak, others will not. We don't like that, but we have to accept it. I can think of only two alternatives: either change our system of government or convince people to rein in their concupiscence. Neither of these alternatives has much chance of success.