Another Useful Idiot Crosses My Path

I'm the chess guy hereabouts. A year and a half ago I got a call from an 86-year-old retired chemist with an interest in the game. A meeting was arranged, a game was played, and then the talk turned to politics. The old man told us that he had voted for Biden out of revulsion at Trump. He said he had been a Republican all his life but lately became a Democrat. Brian and I were gentle with him, drawing him out to see how deep he'd dig his hole. It was deep enough for us to write him off as an utterly clueless old man living in the past.

Part of the problem with such people is that they live by a code of civility that will get you killed in the present-day political world should you dare to enter it.  They don't understand that the Left is at war with us, and leftists no longer hide the fact. Their stealth ideologues of, say, 10-15 years ago are now out in the open and brazen in their plans and proclamations. Leftists see politics as  war, and if we don't, we lose.  Clueless oldsters such as the retired chemist are also, most of them, unaware that the Democrat Party is now a hard-Left, successor-commie, outfit that is trying to achieve under the sign of the Jackass what the CPUSA failed to achieve under the hammer and sickle.

Brian and I are a couple of patzers which is not to say that we won't clean your clock at the local coffee house. We are 'B' players (1600-1800) in the USCF hierarchy. The game with the old man turned into a training session. He acquitted himself so poorly that we never heard from him again despite our welcoming manner. 

That is another fault of old men. Their outsized egos make them impermeable to instruction. They cannot stand to lose. But life is hierarchical and you will lose again and again and again. Wokesters with their promotion of 'equity' (equality of outcome) and their assault on merit rail against life's natural hierarchy, but to no ultimate avail. In the end, reality wins.

With apologies to Ron DeSantis, reality is where 'woke' goes to die.

A ‘Feuerbachian’ Objection to Descartes’ First Meditation III God Argument

Descartes gives three arguments for the existence of God  in his Meditations on First Philosophy.  This entry discusses the first argument and commenter Elliot's objection to it. We can call it the argument from the representational content of the God-idea.  In a subsequent entry I hope to set forth the argument in full dress and point out its weaknesses. For now I offer a quick sketch of it as I interpret it. After the sketch, Elliot's objection, and finally Descartes' anticipation of the objection.  It will lead us into some deep waters. So put on your thinking caps and diving gear.

Sketch

The argument attempts to move from the idea of God, an idea that we find in ourselves, to God as the only possible cause of the idea. It is not the mere occurrence of the idea in us, the mere fact of our having it, that is the starting point of the argument, but what I will call the representational content of this idea. Ideas are representations. They occur in consciousness as representings, acts of representation, but they purport to refer beyond themselves to realities external to consciousness.  Which ones? The ones indicated by their representational contents. A three-fold distinction is on the table: mental act, representational content  of  the act, extramental thing presented to consciousness under the aspect of the content.  Cogitatio, cogitatum qua cogitatum, res extramentem. (An anticipation of Husserl's noesis-noema schema?)

In the jargon that Descartes borrows from the scholastics, the representational content of an idea is its realitas objectiva. By 'objective reality,' Descartes does not mean something mind-independent; he means the representational content of the act of representing which, while distinguishable from the act, is inseparable from it.  Every act has its content, and every content is the content of an act. By 'formal reality,' he means items that exist in themselves and thus independently of us and our representations. The direction of the first argument is thus from the realitas objectiva of the idea of God to the realitas formalis of God.

Descartes takes it for granted that there are degrees of reality, and therefore degrees of objective reality. Thus an idea that represents a substance has a higher degree of objective reality than one that represents an accident. The idea of God, Descartes writes, "certainly contains in itself more objective reality than do those by which finite substances are represented." (Adam-Tannery Latin ed., p. 32) 

Now according to Descartes, the lumen naturale (natural light) teaches that "there must be at least as much reality in the total efficient cause as in its effect, for whence can the effect derive its reality if not from the cause?" (Ibid.) The more perfect cannot be caused by or be dependent upon the less perfect. The more perfect is that which contains more objective reality. This holds not only for external things existing in formal reality, but also for  ideas when one considers only their objective reality. And so the realitas objectiva of the God-idea can only have God himself as its cause. Ergo, God exists!

I will note en passant, and with a tip of the hat to Etienne Gilson, just how medieval this reasoning by the father of modern philosophy is! It is very similar to the reasoning found in the Fourth Way of Aquinas. Descartes takes on board the degrees-of-reality notion as well as the idea of efficient causality together with the related notion that the efficient cause must be at least as real as its effect. These are stumbling blocks for post-Cartesian thinkers, a fit topic for  subsequent posts. 

Elliot's Objection

I hold Descartes in high regard, but I have doubts about the claim that no human is sufficient to cause the idea ‘God.’ Suppose a human who is (a) aware of himself as a person, and thus has the idea ‘person,’ (b) aware of axiological relations such as ‘greater than,’ and (c) understands the concepts of infinity and supremeness. Why couldn’t such a human come up with the idea ‘God’ by reflecting on ‘human person,’ ‘greater than,’ 'supremeness,' and ‘infinity’? Why can't an Anselm come up with the idea of the greatest conceivable being? Why can't a Plato come up with the idea of a perfect being (Republic, Book II)?

Elliot's objection has a 'Feuerbachian' flavor. Ludwig Feuerbach held that God is an anthropomorphic projection.  What he meant was that there is no God in reality, there is only the idea of God in our minds, and that this idea is one we arrive at by considering ourselves and our attributes.  We take our attributes and 'max them out.' We are powerful, knowing, good, and present, but limitedly, not maximally. Although we are not  all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good or omnipresent, we can form these maximal predicates and imagine them true of one and the same being, which we then project into external reality. By this unconscious mechanism we fabricate the idea of God. But since the mechanism of fabrication is unconscious or perhaps subconscious we fool ourselves into thinking that there really is such a being as we imagine. The God idea, then, turns out on my reading of the Feuerbachian analysis to be factitious in  Descartes' tripartition. (He distinguishes between innate, acquired, and factitious (made up, from the L. facere, to make)  ideas. As examples of the last-mentioned, Descartes cites sirens and hippogriffs.)  In sum, the presence in us of the God-idea is adequately explained by our own  unconscious or subconscious doing. No God need apply.

Descartes' Anticipation of the Objection

Descartes seems to have anticipated the objection. He writes:

But possibly I am something more than I suppose myself to be. Perhaps all the perfections which I attribute to the nature of a God are somehow potentially in me, although they [(are not yet actualized and)] do not yet appear (47) and make themselves known by their actions. Experience shows, in fact, that my knowledge increases and improves little by little, and I see nothing to prevent its increasing thus, more and more, to infinity; nor (even) why, my knowledge having thus been augmented and perfected, I could not thereby acquire all the other perfections of divinity; nor finally, why my potentiality of acquiring these perfections, if it is true that I possess it, should not be sufficient to produce the ideas of them [and introduce them into my mind].

Nevertheless, [considering the matter more closely, I see that] this could not be the case. For, first, even if it were true that my knowledge was always achieving new degrees of perfection and that there were in my nature many potentialities which had not yet been actualized, nevertheless none of these qualities belong to or approach [in any way] my idea of divinity, in which nothing is merely potential [and everything is actual and real]. Is it not even a most certain [and infallible] proof of the imperfection of my knowledge that it can [grow little by little and] increase by degrees? Furthermore, even if my knowledge increased more and more, I am still unable to conceive how it could ever become actually infinite, since it would never arrive at such a high point of perfection that it would no longer be capable of acquiring some still greater increase. But I conceive God to be actually infinite in such a high degree that nothing could be added to the [supreme] perfection that he already possesses. And finally, I understand [very well] that the objective existence of an idea can never be produced by a being which [38] is merely potential and which, properly speaking, is nothing, but only by a formal or actual being.

And certainly there is nothing in all that I have just said which is not easily known by the light of nature to all those who will consider it carefully. But when I relax my attention some¬ what, my mind is obscured, as though blinded by the images of sensible objects, and does not easily recall the reason why my idea of a being more perfect than my own must necessarily have been imparted to me by a being which is actually more perfect.

Evaluation

I am actually powerful, but not actually all-powerful. And  likewise for the other attributes which, when 'maxed-out,' become divine attributes. Am I potentially all-powerful? No. Descartes is right about this. But if I am not potentially all-powerful, all-knowing, etc., then my fabricated ideas of omnipotence and omniscience, etc. lack the objective reality they would have to have to count as ideas of actual divine attributes.  That seems to be what Descartes is saying.  He seems to be assuming that the objective reality or representational content of an idea must derive from an actual source external to the idea. That source cannot be a human being since since no such being is potentially omnipotent, omniscient, etc. and so could not ever be actually omnipotent, omniscient, etc.

But none of this is very clear because the underlying notions are obscure: those of causation, degrees of reality, and realitas objectiva.

 

Love and Death

A curious conjunction this February 14th: St. Valentine's Day and Ash Wednesday coincide datewise.  The folly of romantic love calendrically chastened by memento mori:

"Remember, man, thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return." Memento, homo, quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris. This warning, from the Catholic liturgy for Ash Wednesday, is based on Genesis 3, 19: In sudore vultus tui vesceris pane, donec revertaris in terram de qua sumptus es: quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris.

How real can we and this world be if in a little while we all will be nothing but dust and ashes?

Vanitas 2The typical secularist is a reality denier who hides from the unalterable facts of death and impermanence.  This is shown by his self-deceptive behavior: he lives as if he will live forever and as if his projects are ultimately meaningful even though he knows that he won't and that they aren't.  If he were to face reality he would have to be a nihilist.  That he isn't shows that he is fooling himself.

Wherein resides the folly of the romantic fool? In the conceit that a finite good, woman or man, can finally satisfy the heart's desire. The idolatrous love of creatures is love of God shunted onto creatures.

 

Social Distance and Good Relations

Social distance aids in the preservation of good relations with people. Familiarity breeds, if not contempt, disrespect. In the famiglia, especially. Conventional usages, phony and formulaic as they often are, have their uses. They allow for civil interaction while preserving distance. "Good morning." "After you, sir." We all want respect even while aware of how little we deserve it and how insincere are those who show it.

A figure from Schopenhauer comes to mind. We are like porcupines on a cold night. They come together to stay warm but then prick one another and move apart. Trial and error leads to the optimal spatial adjustment.

The art of life, with its trials and errors, is learned by living, and learned best by living long. 

He Who Hesitates is Lost

Sometimes, however, it is better to look before you leap. 

Note this curious philo-lang point: 'he' above, though grammatically classifiable as a pronoun, does not function logically as a pronoun: it has no antecedent. It functions as a sex-neutral universal quantifier, or rather, it functions as an individual variable bound by a universal quantifier.  Thus the maxim translates as 'For any x, if x hesitates, then x is lost.'

‘Racism’: Supply and Demand. ‘Cultural Appropriation’

Because the demand exceeds the supply, new variants of 'racism' have to be invented by leftist race-hustlers. One of the latest is digital blackface.  (I wrote this in March of last year.) What might that be?  Here:

Digital blackface is a practice where White people co-opt online expressions of Black imagery, slang, catchphrases or culture to convey comic relief or express emotions.

[. . .]

Digital blackface involves white people play-acting at being black . . . 

The complaint seems to be that whitey engages in 'cultural appropriation.' If that were a legitimate complaint, then so would the retort: but then so does blacky.  Black folk regularly play-act at being white when they  practice self-restraint, show respect for legitimate authority, are punctual, work hard, defer gratification, speak correct English, are self-reliant, reasonable and objective, study mathematics and science, save and invest, plan for the future, act responsibly towards themselves and others, listen to and play classical music, enjoy the fruits of high culture, and so on.

So one might ask, rhetorically, "By what right do blacks appropriate OUR culture? OUR white values and virtues?"

But I don't ask that question. 

What I have insisted on, again and again in these pages, is that whites do not own the above values and virtues. They are universal and available to all.  It is just that whites are better at isolating, describing, and implementing the values that belong to all of us.  

Blacks will always be on the bottom as long as they think that they are 'acting white' when they practice self-restraint, show respect for legitimate authority, are punctual, work hard, defer gratification, speak correct English, are self-reliant, reasonable and objective, study mathematics and science, save and invest, plan for the future, and so on, as per the above litany.  You are not 'acting white' if you live in accordance with the above values and virtues; you are acting humanly and optimally, and in a manner that will lead you to success and happiness.

Whitey wants you black folks to be happy! Do you know why? Two reasons, the first self-interested: happy people don't cause trouble, and we don't want trouble in the form of criminal behavior directed against us.  That happy people don't cause trouble is a generic statement. I explain what a generic statement is here: but you will need an attention span, above-average intelligence and a modicum of philosophical savvy to follow it.  That happy people do not cause trouble is a Dennis Prager riff. I borrow it; I endorse it. (Always give credit where credit is due. It's the decent thing to do. Plagiarism is to be condemned, whether done by the president of the USA or the president of Harvard.)

The second reason is that most of us genuinely want you to do well for yourselves.

Cultural appropriation? What could possibly be wrong with that? Appropriate, i. e., make your own, whatever is good from any culture. Take it on board. Develop it. Profit from it, intellectually, spiritually, and morally. 

Legutko on Entertainment

Legutko tends to exaggerate, as witness the final sentence in the following quotation, but the point he is making is true and important.

In today’s world entertainment is not just a pastime or a style, but a substance that permeates everything: schools and universities, upbringing of children, intellectual life, art, morality, and religion. It has become dear to the hearts of students, professors, entrepreneurs, journalists, engineers, scientists, writers, even priests. Entertainment imposes itself psychologically, intellectually, socially, and also, strange as it might sound, spiritually. A failure to provide human endeavors—even the most noble ones—with an entertaining wrapping is today unthinkable and borders on sin.

― Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies

Yes, even priests. The Catholic priest who during a supposed 'sermon' goes on about the Stupor Bowl. And then there is Bergoglio the Clown:

Buffoon Pope 1

Read all about it.

Seven Causes of Civilizational Decline and Fall

A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within. The essential causes of Rome's decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars.

Caesar and Christ, epilogue

As it went with Rome, it may well go with us. I would have no trouble giving current examples of each of Durant's seven causes. 

Perhaps an eighth should be added: the regime's provision of panem et circenses, pornography, and legalized drugs to keep the populace distracted, docile, dumbed-down, and doped-up.

I watched a few minutes of the Grammys the other night and a few minutes of the Stupor Bowl and its half-time show. It occurred to me that we have an advantage not enjoyed by Augustine: we can watch the decline and fall of a great republic on television. 

But it ain't over 'til it's over. So we fight on in the gloaming, ready for a long twilight struggle.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Varia

A mixed bag for your enjoyment, but mainly mine.  I post what I like and I like what I post. And I post what I've posted before. Links go bad, and even when they don't I never get tired of the old tunes I like. It's Saturday night, friends, pour yourself a stiff one and relax a little the bonds that tether us to the straight and narrow.  I am drinking the fermented juice of the agave cactus mixed with a little orange juice and ginger ale. What's your libation?

Forget for a time the swine who have taken over our great country, and enjoy the moment.

Thelonious Monk, I'm Getting Sentimental Over You

Wes Montgomery, 'Round Midnight

Cannonball Adderley, 74 Miles Away. In 7/4 time.

Ry Cooder, I Think It's Going to to Work Out Fine

Jeff Beck, Sleepwalk. The old Santo and Johnny instrumental from 1959. Remember this one, Catacomb Joe?

Danny Gatton, master of the Telecaster. Phenomenally good, practically unknown.

Bob Dylan, Cold Irons Bound. When your name is 'Bob Dylan' you have your pick of sidemen. A great band. "The walls of pride, they're high and they're wide. You can't see over, to the other side."

Joe Brown, Sea of  Heartbreak.  Nothing touches Don Gibson's original effort, but Brown's is a very satisfying version.

Elvis Presley, Little Sister 

Carole King, You've Got a Friend

Buddy Guy, et al., Sweet Home Chicago. Sanctuary cities are not so sweet these days, are they? Looks like everyone is playing a Strat except for Johnny Winter.

Ry Cooder, He'll Have to Go.  A fine, if quirky, cover of the old George Reeves hit from 1959. 

Marty Robbins, El Paso. Great guitar work.

A Quasi-Kierkegaardian Poke at Paglia, Catholic Pagan

This Stack leader has her stuck at the aesthetic stage.

I'm on a Kierkegaard jag again. I've been reading him all my philosophical life ever since my undergraduate teacher, Ronda Chervin, introduced him to me.  

For an easy introduction to the Danish Socrates, I recommend Clare Carlisle, Philosopher of the Heart: The Restless Life of Søren Kierkegaard (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2019). Well done and heart-felt as only the female heart can feel.

Wikipedia:

Søren (Danish: [ˈsœːɐ̯n̩], Norwegian: [ˈsøːəɳ]) or Sören (Swedish: [ˈsœ̌ːrɛn], German: [ˈzøːʁən]) is a Scandinavian given name that is sometimes Anglicized as Soren. The name is derived from that of the 4th-century Christian saint Severin of Cologne,[1] ultimately derived from the Latinseverus ("severe, strict, serious"). Its feminine form is Sørine, though its use is uncommon. The patronymic surname Sørensen is derived from Søren.

Nomen est omen?

I am also on a Hannah Arendt kick. I've got four of her books in my library. Her The Human Condition has been languishing on my shelves since aught-six, with only a few pages showing marks of attention, but now I am diving deep into its labyrinthine riches. An astonishing product of wide-ranging erudition, it is packed with insights and intriguing suggestions.

It's long on Teutonic Tiefsinn and somewhat short on Anglo-Angularity, if you catch my drift, but I've done my time on both sides of the Continental Divide and frequently wander back and forth as is the wont of a maverick. The maverick schtick is supposed to convey that philosophical bipolarity, or, to try a different metaphor, my philosophical amphibiousness: I am at home on the dry and dusty desert  ground of nuts-and-bolts analysis, but also, though in lesser measure in my later phase, in the muddy waters and murky fluidity of Continental currents, not to mention the oft-neglected backwaters of Scholasticism. 

The Human Condition show unmistakable signs of Heidegger's influence, but the man is not mentioned even once, for reasons I suspect but will keep to myself for the time being. And while classifiable as a work in political philosophy, in THC there is no mention of, nor Auseindandersetzungen with, either Leo Strauss or Carl Schmitt, again for reasons I suspect but will keep under my hat.

A 5 February 2024 memo to self reads:

Compare Arendt to Schmitt on the nature of the political. Arendt: action (praxis) constitutes the political realm. Action (vita activa) is acting together, the sharing of words and deeds, and thus co-operation (HC 198). For Schmitt, by contrast, the Freund-Feind opposition defines the political. 

More grist for the mill.  

Two-Tiered System of Justice?

I know what conservatives such as Sean Hannity mean when they employ the above expression, but the expression is inept. There cannot be two tiers of justice, one for the rulers and the other for the ruled, or one for Democrats and the other for Republicans,  for the simple reason that justice in Anglo-American law is equal justice, one justice for all.  A guiding principle of our  republic, as the Pledge of Allegiance attests, is "liberty and justice for all." We are all (to be considered to be) equal before the law. Whether you are Joe Biden or Joe Blow, you are subject to the same laws. And the same goes for Joe Biden and Donald Trump.  It is a guiding ideal essential to our system of government. That it is being egregiously violated in the case of Trump does not make it any less of an ideal. 

Joe Sixpack will say, "This is all just semantics." That is the sort of response one expects from a barfly at Joe's Bar and Grill.  Someone who says that has not grasped the truth I have been hammering on for the last twenty years: Language Matters!

Julian Epstein, Democrat, on Crooked Joe. (HT: Tony Flood) There is hope for some Dems.