Maverick Philosopher – Page 592 – Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Chauvinism and Male Chauvinism

In her President Obama's Silly, Sexist Defense of Susan Rice, Kirsten Powers writes,

It's absurd and chauvinistic for Obama to talk about the woman he thinks should be Secretary of State of the United States as if she needs the big strong man to come to her defense because a couple of Senators are criticizing her.

Powers' article is good and I have no problem with its content. But her misuse of 'chauvinistic' is a good occasion for a language rant.

A chauvinist is someone who believes his country is the best in all or most respects. The word derives from 'Chauvin,' the name of an officer in Napoleon Bonaparte's army. This fellow was convinced that everything French was unsurpassingly excellent. To use 'chauvinist' for 'male chauvinist' is to destroy a perfectly useful word. If we acquiesce in this destruction, what then are we to call Chauvin? A 'country-chauvinist'?

Whether Obama is a male chauvinist, I don't know. But he surely isn't a chauvinist!

Note also that Chauvin was himself a male chauvinist in that he was both a male and a chauvinist. Thus 'male chauvinist' is ambiguous, having different meanings depending on whether we take 'male' as a specifying adjective or as a sense-shifting (alienans) adjective. Taken the first way, a male chauvinist is a chauvinist. Taken the second way, a male chauvinist is not a chauvinist any more than artificial leather is leather. Think about it.

This distinction between specifying and sense-shifting adjectives is an important one, and one ought to be aware of it. See my Adjectives category for more examples of alienans constructions. It's fun for the whole family.

While we are on this chauvinist business, there was a time when 'white chauvinist' was in use. Those were the days before leftists seized upon 'racism' as their bludgeon of choice. Vivian Gornick in The Romance of American Communism (Basic Books 1977, p. 170) tells the tale of a poor fellow who was drummed out of the American Communist Party in the 1950s on charges of 'white chauvinism.' His crime? Serving watermelon at a garden party! And you thought that Political Correctness was something new?

PC originated with the CP.

Epicurus Has Some Sex Advice for General Petraeus, et al.

Epicurus (circa 341-271 B.C.) wrote the following to a disciple:

I understand from you that your natural disposition is too much inclined toward sexual passion. Follow your inclinations as you will provided only that you neither violate the laws, disturb well-established customs, harm any
one of your neighbors, injure your own body, nor waste your possessions. That you be not checked by some one of these provisos is impossible; for a man never gets any good from sexual passion, and he is fortunate if he does not receive harm. (Italics added, Letters, Principal Doctrines, Vatican Sayings, trans. R. M. Geer, Macmillan, 1987, pp. 69-70)

Had Bill Clinton heeded this advice, kept his penis in harness, and his paws off the overweight intern, he might have left office with an impressive legacy indeed. But instead he will schlep down the centuries tied to Monica like Abelard to Heloise — except for the fact that he got off a lot easier than poor Abelard.

Closer to home is the case of Robert Blake whose lust led him into a tender trap that turned deadly. He was very lucky to be acquitted of the murder of Bonnie Lee Bakeley. Then there was the case of the dentist whose extramural activities provoked his dentist wife to run him down with the family Mercedes. The Bard had it right: "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."

More recently, Dominique Strauss-Kahn has secured himself a place in the annals of libertinage while wrecking his career. Ah, those sophisticated Frenchmen.

And let's not forget Eliot Spitzer and now Generals Petraeus and Allen.

This litany of career-ending, family-destroying woe can be lengthened ad libitum. My motive is not
Schadenfreude, but a humble desire to learn from the mistakes of others. Better that they rather than I should pay my tuition in the school of Hard Knocks.

Heed me, muchachos, there is no more delusive power on the face of the earth than sex. Or as a Turkish proverb has it, Erkegin sheytani kadindir, "Man's devil is woman."

And conversely.

Bob Koepp Update

Small world. I just now ran across a note at John Pepple's place wherein he reports that Robert V. Koepp was a roommate of his in the mid-'70s and reminisces a bit.

The Academic Job Market and the Gentrification of the Professoriate

John Pepple makes a good point about gentrification, one that I didn't mention in my recent job market post.

Academic Malpractice: The Case of Grover Furr

If you are not reading Ron Radosh, you should be. In this piece, he refutes a fool who denies the crimes of Stalin.

No Fool Like an Old Fool

It is a foolish old man who fails to make use of his waning libido to achieve the spiritual and moral progress that he couldn't make when it was in full flood.

More Reasons Not to be a Libertarian: Abortion and Guns

This from the Libertarian Party Platform:

1.4 Abortion

Recognizing that abortion is a sensitive issue and that people can hold good-faith views on all sides, we believe that government should be kept out of the matter, leaving the question to each person for their conscientious consideration.

1.5 Crime and Justice

Government exists to protect the rights of every individual including life, liberty and property. [. . .]

The contradiction fairly jumps off the page. Government should be kept out of the abortion matter, we are told, and yet we are also told that government exists to protect the rights of every individual, including the right to life. This is contradictory. Consider a third-trimester healthy human fetus. If it is an individual, then government exists to protect its right to life by (1.5). But by (1.4) government has no role to play. Contradiction.

Will you reply that the fetus is not an individual? What is it then, a universal? Will you say it is not a human individual? What is then, a canine or bovine or lupine individual? Will you say that the fetus is not alive? What is it then, dead? Or neither alive nor dead? Will you say that it is not a biological individual, but a clump of cells or mere human genetic material? Then the same is true of you, in which case either you have no right to life, or both you and the fetus have a right to life. Will you say that the fetus is guilty of some crime and deserves to die? What crime is that, pray tell?

Will you say that a woman has a right to do anything she wants with her body? But the fetus is not her body. It is a separate body. Will you say it is a part of her body? But it is not a part like a bone or a muscle or an organ is a part. Nor is it a part like hair or mucus or the contents of the GI tract. Is it a part like a benign or pre-cancerous or cancerous growth? No. Granted, the fetus is spatially inside the mother, but that does not suffice to make it a part of her. I am spatially inside my house, but I am not a part of my house.

A fetus is a separate biological individual with its own life and its own right to life. The general prohibition against the killing of innocent human beings cannot be arbitrarily restricted so as to exclude the unborn. I could go on but I have said enough about this topic in other posts in the Abortion category.

Now consider this:

1.6 Self-Defense

The only legitimate use of force is in defense of individual rights — life, liberty, and justly acquired property — against aggression. This right inheres in the individual, who may agree to be aided by any other individual or group. We affirm the individual right recognized by the Second Amendment to keep and bear arms, and oppose the prosecution of individuals for exercising their rights of self-defense. We oppose all laws at any level of government requiring registration of, or restricting, the ownership, manufacture, or transfer or sale of firearms or ammunition.

This is basically on the right track and vastly superior to what your typical knee-jerk liberal gun-grabber would spout. Second Amendment rights are very important. And of course they are individual rights, not collective rights, as even SCOTUS came to appreciate. But the formulation is objectionable on the ground of extremism. Look at the last sentence: "We oppose all laws at any level of government requiring registration of, or restricting, the ownership, manufacture, or transfer or sale of firearms or ammunition.

This is just ridiculous. It implies that felons should be able to purchase guns. Felons should no more be allowed to buy guns than they should be allowed to vote. It implies that the sale of guns and ammo to children is permissible. It implies that there should be no safety laws regulating the manufacture of guns and ammo. It implies that citizens should be permitted to enter post offices with grenade launchers and machine guns.

The Danger of Appeasing the Intolerant

What follows is a slightly redacted post from three years ago whose message bears repeating, especially since Barack the Appeaser, Barack the Bower-and-Scraper, has been reelected.

………….

Should we tolerate the intolerant? Should we, in the words of Leszek Kolakowski,

. . . tolerate political or religious movements which are hostile to tolerance and seek to destroy all the mechanisms which protect it, totalitarian movements which aim to impose their own despotic regime? Such movements may not be dangerous as long as they are small; then they can be tolerated. But when they expand and increase in strength, they must be tolerated, for by then they are invincible, and in the end an entire society can fall victim to the worst sort of tyranny. Thus it is that unlimited tolerance turns against itself and destroys the conditions of its own existence. (Freedom, Fame, Lying, and Betrayal, p. 39.)

Read that final sentence again, and again.

Kolakowski concludes that "movements which aim to destroy freedom should not be tolerated or granted the protection of law . . . " (Ibid.) and surely he is right about this. Toleration has limits. It does not enjoin suicide. The U. S. Constitution is not a suicide pact.

And just as we ought not tolerate intolerance, especially the murderous intolerance of radical Muslims, we ought not try to appease the intolerant. Appeasement is never the way to genuine peace. The New York Time's call for Benedict XVI to apologize for quoting the remarks of a Byzantine emperor is
a particularly abject example of appeasement.

One should not miss the double-standard in play. The Pope is held to a very high standard: he must not employ any words, not even in oratio obliqua, that could be perceived as offensive by any Muslim who might be hanging around a theology conference in Germany, words uttered in a talk that is only tangentially about Islam, but Muslims can say anything they want about Jews and Christians no matter how vile. The tolerant must tiptoe around the rabidly intolerant lest they give offense.

Has there been a NYT editorial censuring Ahmadinejad for his repeated calls for the destruction of the sovereign state of Israel?

On Suing Gun Manufacturers

Suppose I sell you my car, transferring title to you in a manner in that accords with all the relevant statutes. It is a good-faith transaction and I have no reason to suspect you of harboring any criminal intent. But later you use the car I sold you to mow down children on a school yard, or to violate the Mann Act, or to commit some other crime. Can I be held morally responsible for your wrongdoing? Of course not. No doubt, had I not sold you that particular car, that particular criminal event would not have occurred: as a philosopher might put it, the event is individuated by its constituents, one of them being the car I sold you. But that does not show that I am responsible for your crime. I am no more responsible than the owner of the gas station who sold you the fuel for your spree.

Suppose I open a cheesecake emporium, and you decide to make cheesecake your main dietary item. Am I responsible for your ensuing health difficulties? Of course not. Being a nice guy, I will most likely warn you that a diet consisting chiefly of cheesecake is contraindicated. But in the end, the responsibility for your ill health lies with you.

The same goes for tobacco products, cheeseburgers, and so on down the line. The responsibility for your drunk driving resides with you, not with auto manufacturers or distilleries. Is this hard to understand? Not unless you are morally obtuse or a liberal, terms that in the end may be coextensive.

The principle extends to gun manufacturers and retailers. They have their legal responsibilities, of course. They are sometimes the legitimate targets of product liability suits. But once a weapon has been legally purchased or otherwise acquired, the owner alone is responsible for any crimes he commits using it.

But many liberals don't see it this way. What they cannot achieve through gun control legislation, they hope to achieve through frivolous lawsuits. The haven't had much success recently. Good. But the fact that they try shows how bereft of common sense and basic decency they are.

There is no wisdom on the Left.

It’s the Welfare State, Stupid

When one reads a piece by Robert Samuleson, one feels oneself in the presence of a clear, penetrating, and honest intellect:

By all means, let's avoid the "fiscal cliff": the $500 billion in tax increases and federal spending cuts scheduled for early 2013 that, if they occurred, might trigger a recession. But let's recognize that we still need to bring the budget into long-term balance. This can't be done only by higher taxes on the rich, which seem inevitable. Nor can it be done by deep cuts in defense and domestic "discretionary" programs (from highways to schools), which are already happening. It requires controlling the welfare state. In 2011, "payments for individuals," including health care, constituted 65 percent of federal spending, up from 21 percent in 1955. That's the welfare state.

Compare Samuelson to the leftist ideologue, Paul Krugman:

It’s not just the fact that the deficit scolds have been wrong about everything so far. Recent events have also demonstrated clearly what was already apparent to careful observers: the deficit-scold movement was never really about the deficit. Instead, it was about using deficit fears to shred the social safety net.

From Samuelson, we learn something. We get facts, figures, cogent arguments. From Krugman, we get an ad hominem attack. The fiscal hawks, we are in effect told, are motivated by a dastardly desire to "shred the social safety net," not by any objective economic considerations. Krugman impugns their motives while ignoring their arguments.

I am not opposed to the impugning of motives in all cases. It is legitimate to do so when the other side has no arguments or has transparently worthless ones. In earlier posts I impugned the motives of those who oppose photo ID at polling places, but only after I carefully argued for such ID procedures and refuted the flimsy 'arguments' of the oppostion.

Go read the two articles in question and decide for yourself who is talking sense.

Robert Reich on the New American Civil War

Robert Reich bemoans the New American Civil War as he calls it:

I know families in which close relatives are no longer speaking. A dating service says Democrats won’t even consider going out with Republicans, and vice-versa. My email and twitter feeds contain messages from strangers I wouldn’t share with my granddaughter.

What’s going on? Yes, we’re divided over issues like the size of government and whether women should have control over their bodies. But these aren’t exactly new debates. [. . .] And we’ve had bigger disagreements in the past – over the Vietnam War, civil rights, communist witch hunts – that didn’t rip us apart like this.

Part of the reason that there is a 'civil war' is because of people like Reich and their inability to fairly present the issues that divide us.

He mentions the abortion issue. It is not about whether women should have control over their bodies. Of course they should. It is about whether the fetus growing inside a woman is a part of her body in a sense of 'part' that would permit her to dispose of it the way she would dispose of unwanted fat through liposuction. Reich is not unintelligent: he is capable of understanding the issue. But he is intellectually dishonest: he does not present the issue objectively and fairly. He distorts it like the typical leftist ideologue he is. (See here for my refutation of the 'woman's body' argument.)

He does the very same thing with his talk of "communist witch hunts." That phrase implies that there was no communist infiltration of the U. S. government. But that was precisely the question. The phrase he employs is a question-begging epithet. Why? Well, there are no witches. So if you call something a witch hunt then you are implying that it is a hunt for something that doesn't exist. There is also the implication that the people conducting this search have some ulterior motive such as the desire to suppress all dissent.

The same goes for the phrase 'Red Scare' beloved of the Left. The phrase implies that there was no threat to our gvernment posed by communists. But again that was the very question, a question that is begged by the use of the phrase 'Red Scare.' As a matter of fact, it was not a mere scare, but a real threat. So 'Red Threat' is the proper phrase. After all, we now know that the Rosenbergs were Soviet spies and that Alger Hiss was a communist.

My point is that Reich is not intellectually honest. He understands the issues but he refuses to present them objectively and fairly. He is nothing but a leftist ideologue. And notice the tone of his piece. It begins with a gratuitous smear against Sarah Palin.

The piece ends with Reich's playing of the race card. So typical.

So while bemoaning the 'new American civil war,' he fuels it by his own contemptible behavior.

Why We are Headed for a Fiscal Cliff

A short video. It explains the difference between discretionary and mandatory spending and why not even mandatory spending is covered by tax revenues. Mandatory spending comprises the entitlements and the interest on the national debt. A balanced budget is not possible given the way the government is currently structured. A re-design is needed. It must begin by a posing of the question: What is the proper role of government?

This philosophical question will be neither seriously posed by the people in power, nor answered. And so it is is to be expected that we will go off the cliff. I am talking about the ultimate cliff, not the one coming in early 2013 when $500 billion in tax increases and federal spending cuts are scheduled to kick in.

So you might think that Romney's loss is of no real consequence. It just doesn't matter who presides over the collapse. But if you are headed for a cliff and certain death, would you rather be mounted on a nimble Obama jackass or a plodding Romney elephant? In the long run we're dead. But later is better than sooner. There is more time to prepare.

And there is more time for the owl of Minerva to ascend and survey the passing scene until she too must pass away.

John W. Carlson’s Words of Wisdom: A Philosophical Dictionary for the Perennial Tradition

Dear Bill (if I may),

I came across your interesting 2009 post on "The Dictionary Fallacy," and I would like to follow up.

I wonder whether you are aware of my recent work, Words of Wisdom: A Philosophical Dictionary for the Perennial Tradition (University of Notre Dame Press, 2012). Attached are the publisher's notice, plus an interview I did with the blog called "Catholic World Report." My own thinking about dictionaries — and specifically philosophical dictionaries — can be gathered from the interview, as well as from the Introduction to my volume, which can be accessed as the "Excerpt" highlighted near bottom of p. 1 of the UNDP announcement.

I would be pleased to see you mention Words of Wisdom on "Maverick Philosopher," and to learn what you think about my project.

Best wishes from a philosopher who can't seem to get himself to retire,

John W. (Jack) Carlson
Professor of Philosophy
Creighton University
Omaha, Neb. 68142

Dear Professor Carlson,

I am pleased to announce your book on my weblog which, at the moment, is experiencing traffic of over 2000 page views per day. So I should be able to snag a few readers for your work.

I read the The Catholic World Report interview and I find myself in complete agreement with much of what you say. For example, I wholly agree with the following:

CWR: Let’s begin with a Big Picture question: what is the state of philosophy today? I ask because philosophy today seems to be dismissed often by certain self-appointed critics. For example, the physicist (and atheist) Lawrence Krauss, author of A Universe from Nothing, said in an interview with The Atlantic that philosophy no longer has “content,” indeed, that“philosophy is a field that, unfortunately, reminds me of that old Woody Allen joke, ‘Those that can’t do, teach, and those that can’t teach, teach gym.’” Why this sort of antagonism toward philosophy?

Dr. Carlson:So Krauss in a single sentence denigrates both philosophy and gymnasium. May we begin by remarking that Plato—who thought highly of both—would not be impressed?

Your question, of course, is a good one. A response to it requires noting salient features of Western intellectual culture, as well as key concerns of philosophers in the recent past. Over the last century and a half, our culture has come to be dominated by the natural or empirical sciences and technological advances made possible by their means. It thus is not surprising that there has arisen in various quarters a view that can be characterized as “scientism”—i.e., one according to which all legitimate cognitive pursuits should follow the methods of the modern sciences. Now, somewhat ironically, this view is not itself a scientific one. Rather, it can be recognized as essentially philosophical; that is, it expresses a general account of the nature and limits of human knowledge. But if it indeed is philosophical, we might well ask on what basis scientism is to be recommended. Does this view adequately reflect the variety of ways in which reality can be known? To say the least, it is not obvious that the answer to this question is “Yes.”

Lawrence Krauss is one of a large number (along wth Jerry Coyne, Stephen Hawking, et al.) of preternaturally ignorant scientists whose arrogance stands in inverse relation to their ignorance of what is outside their specialties. They know nothing of philosophy and yet 'pontificate' (if I may be permitted the use of this term in the presence of a Catholic) in a manner most sophomoric. Their education has been completely lopsided: they have no appreciation of the West and its traditions and so no appreciation of how natural science arose.

I criticize Krauss's scientistic nonsense in a number of posts showing him the same sort of contempt that he displays towards his superiors. These posts can be found here. His book is so bad it takes the breath away. If you haven't read it, you should, to get a sense of the lack of humanistic culture among too many contemporary scientists.

What you say about scientism is exactly right. I have made similar points over the years, but it seems one can never get the points through the thick skulls of the science-idolaters.

I have an entire category devoted to scientism. My definition of the term is contained in What is Scientism?

So I salute you and your book, and look forward to reading it.

Yours in the love of philosophy,

Bill Vallicella

P. S. Retiring may be like marrying. Wait too long and you'll never do it.