Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

  • Is Political Catholicism the Only Genuinely Political American Intellectual Movement?

    In Liberalism's Good and Faithful Servants, Adrian Vermeule spends eight long paragraphs out of ten explaining why "What passes for the American intellectual right is a sorry thing." He's a clever writer and his catalog of the varieties of epicene political quietism is of some interest. Only in the last two paragraphs, however, does he get to the point and tell us what he is for. Would that he had announced that at the outset, to save our time and patience. The heart of the article is in the ninth paragraph:

    The only intellectual movement on the American scene that is genuinely political is so-called integralism or, as I think a more accurate term, political Catholicism. This political Catholicism is frequently accused by critics of a will to power (or, more pompously, a libido dominandi). In a certain sense, the accusation is true. Indeed, it is far more true than the critics, whose horizons are truncated by the basic compromise with liberalism, can begin to understand. The political Catholic looks at the series of false alternatives offered by the localists, the free-marketers, the cheerleaders of martyrdom—national or local action? state or market? Rome or the catacombs? —and says, “Yes, both/and; I will take them all.” The political Catholic wants to order the nation and its state to the natural and divine law, the tranquility of order, precisely because doing so is the best way to protect and shelter the localities in which genuinely human community, imbued with grace, can flourish. Conversely, those localities are to be protected as the best way to generate well-formed persons, who can rightly order the nation and the world towards truth, beauty, and goodness, rooted in the divine. Not everyone must engage in politics in the everyday sense, but some should make a vocation of political action in the highest sense. The political Catholic thinks that not even the smallest particle of creation is off-limits to grace, which can perfect and elevate any part of nature, even the state and even the market.

    Well, why not be an integralist?  My answer is over at Substack. 

    Related: Does Classical Liberalism Destroy Itself?

    Bill Vallicella

  • ‘Equity’ Can Get You Killed

    Here

    Bill Vallicella

  • A ‘Progressive’ Paradox

    Leader of the Stack.

    Leftists like to call themselves 'progressives.'  We can't or rather ought not begrudge them their self-appellation any more than we can begrudge the Randians their calling themselves 'objectivists.'  Every person and every movement has the right to portray himself or itself favorably and self-servingly.  "We are objective in our approach, unlike you mystics."

    But if you are progressive, why are you stuck in the past when it comes to race?  Progress has been made in this area; why then do you deny the progress that has been made?  Why do you hanker after the old days? Why, Mr. President, do you go on about lynching?

    Read it all. Pithy, on target, true.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Hey Jackass!

    Statistics on crime in Sweet Home Chicago.  "Illustrating Chicago values." By cops, for cops.  Fascinating analyses of shot placement, etc. Where do Chicagoans get shot? How many in the face? How many in the head but not in the face? How many in the chest, the buttocks? Useful information if you plan to sally out onto the mean streets of "that toddlin' town." It turns out that it  is statistically  better to wear a helmet than to cover your ass. Delightful details on how leftist lunacy can destroy a once-great city.

    If you love crime. be sure to vote Democrat!  I can't wait to hear whether Lori Lightfoot survives politically. The lovely Lightfoot ordered the cops in Chi-town to refrain from foot pursuit of criminals. But of course! We can't have that. It would be racist!

    Further indicators of civilizational collapse aided and abetted by Dementocratic wokery:

    1) Ukraine refugee fails to find safe haven in San Francisco middle school.

    2) The DFL’s Blackout Bill, requiring that all electricity be produced by wind and solar energy by 2040, has now been signed into law by Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. Commentary here.

    3) Black thug in St. Louis calmly shoots homeless man through the head. The DA, Kim Gardner, is Soros-funded.

    UPDATE (3/1). Lori Lightfoot got the boot. So not all news is bad. And this despite her 'wokifications,' being black, female, and openly gay.  Dov Fischer:

    So Lori Lightfoot counterintuitively has been kicked out with a heavy boot, and we soon blessedly will have heard and seen the last of that apparition unless she appears in a future police bulletin as a crime victim during a Saturday night gang spree in Chicago. She now is the first elected Chicago mayor in 40 years to lose a reelection bid. Still, it seems that 17 percent of the voters in Tuesday night’s Chicago mayoral primary were idiots enough to vote for her reelection. Presumably, the other 83 percent of the Democrat primary voters were racists and misogynists and homophobes, voting against a Black lesbian woman (the “Democrat Trifecta” or the “Progressive Hat Trick,” your pick).

    [. . .]

    Or consider how Mayor Lightfoot campaigned: “I’m a Black woman and, let’s not forget, some folks frankly don’t support us in leadership roles.”

    Yeah. Also some people frankly don’t support morons who lead a once-great city into the dungheap of murderous crime. In 2021, under Lightfoot’s enlightened footwork, the city suffered the most murders it had recorded in a quarter-century. Plus 3,651 shootings — comprising 1,415 more than had occurred only two years earlier. Chicago had more homicides that year under Lightfoot than any other city in America.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Saturday NIght at the Oldies: Ordinals and Cardinals > 10

    I did zero to ten a few years back.  What songs can you think of that feature ordinals or cardinals greater than tenth or ten? Well, racking wracking my brains there's

    Connie Stevens, Sixteen Reasons.  With footage from David Lynch, "Mulholland Drive."

    Simon and Garfunkel, 59th Street Bridge Song. What a great song!  Slow down you hyperkinetic hustlers, you're moving too fast!

    Cannibal and  the Head Hunters, Land of 1000 Dances.  This one goes out to Tom Coleman who probably danced to this at the El Monte Legion Stadium circa '65.  "Be there or be square!"

    Question Mark and the Mysterians, 96 Tears.  Is that a Farfisa organ making that cheesy sound?  This one goes out to Colin McGinn.

    Bobby Darin, 18 Yellow Roses

    Cannonball Adderley, 74 Miles Away

    Chicago, 25 or 6 to 4

    Frank Zappa, Twenty Small Cigars

    Tom Waits, Ol '55

    Dr. Feelgood, Route 66.  Energetic and attitudinal.

    Paul Simon, 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover

    Paul Simon, English major, was a wee bit pretentious in some of his '60s songwriting. Case in point: Dangling Conversation. But I like it; if I didn't I wouldn't link to it.

    And we spoke of things that matter
    With words that must be said
    Can analysis be worthwhile?
    Is the theater really dead?

    Billy Ward and the Dominoes, Sixty Minute Man.  Explicitly sexual. I don't need to explain to my sophisticated readers what 'rock and roll' means.  Some say this was the first R & R record. Others cites the following number. I myself take no position on this weighty question. 

    Ike Turner, Rocket 88 The video features footage and 'legage' of 1950's sex kitten Bettie Page.

    Beatles, When I'm 64

    Dave Allen, Highway 61 Revisited. Ever hear this version? No you haven't, which is why you need Uncle Bill's Saturday Night at the Oldies.

    Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited

    And no doubt more . . . 

    Bill Vallicella

  • Ingredients of Happiness

    Top o' the Stack.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Of DEI and the Devil

    The genitive of deus. Advocates of D.E.I. being slanderers, they are properly labeled diabolou (διαβόλου, genitive of διάβολος), "of the devil." (Anthony G. Flood)

    I am as little an etymologist as I am an entomologist, but to extend Tony's riff, I have often suspected an etymological connection between the German Zweifel (doubt) and the German Teufel (devil) via the zwei (two) in the first word. The Father of Lies is duplicitous. Latin duplex, duplicis means twofold, double, divided.  Latin duplicitas, duplicitatis can mean doubleness, duplicity, deceit, ambiguity.

    You have heard me say that doubt is the engine of inquiry. Admittedly, though, doubt is two-faced in that it can, driving inquiry, lead to truth, but also degenerate into denial of truth. Leftists, being duplicitous, regularly conflate doubt and denial as when they tar the right-thinking with 'climate denial' when we merely question their hysterical claims about the imminence of "boiling oceans" (Al Gore at Davos, Switzerland recently) and such other nonsense as they spew.

    Hypocrisy is a from of duplicity, and who more hypocritical than the climate summit attendees who travelled by private half-filled jets to Davos when, if they themselves believed their climate claims, could have much more easily and 'environmentally' convened via Zoom. And note where they convened: in a country that, unlike the USA under the 'leadership' of the brazen liars Biden, Harris, Mayorkas, et al. actually controls its borders.  

    And you still vote Democrat?

    The hard Left, which now controls the Democrat Party, is evil at its core. I don't say that every  leftist, 'progressive,' and wokester is evil. Most of these folks are useful idiots. A large subset of them are superannuated, low-information, life-long Democrats who are pissing away their 'golden years' in empty socializing, hitting white balls into holes, and other forms of Pascalian divertissement.

    I am talking about the drivers of this demonic, duplicitous assault on civilization. Prime example here in the 'City of Angels.'

    Bill Vallicella

  • The Age of Feeling and Proto-Wokery

    Over the last few years I have spoken often of the Age of Feeling in which we now live, here for example. The feeling fetish is downstream from the feminization that has been in flow for quite some time.  These are ingredients of the proto-wokery now 'flowering' into full-on wokery.  An excerpt from an article in First Things you should read:

    The emphasis on “feelings” is rooted in a deeper ideology of Safetyism. Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff, in their 2018 book The Coddling of the American Mind, define Safetyism as “a culture or belief system in which safety has become a sacred value, which means that people are unwilling to make trade-offs demanded by other practical and moral concerns.”

    While Haidt and Lukianoff focus their analysis on proto-woke novelties like “trigger warnings” and “micro-aggressions,” the cult of Safetyism is best exemplified in our response to the pandemic. Think of the litany of violations of our basic rights to personal freedom and choice over the last two years that were justified on the basis of harm reduction. The economy, our dying loved ones, our faith practices, our children's education, all of it served up on the altar of Safetyism. Think of the Covid Karen: Triple-masked. Quad-boosted. Self-confined for months on end. Hyperventilating in panic as she ventures to the grocery store for the first time in a year. Then scolding the rest of us for wanting to send our kids back to school, and demanding instead that we all abide by her hypochondria, on pain of punishment by the bureaucratic state. This person—who is as often male as female—is the avatar of the Longhouse.

    Look out for Longhouse Karen who will report you to the WokeState apparatchiki.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Perception: An Inconsistent Triad

    London Ed writes,

    I am making great progress on the perception book. I have borrowed your idea of an aporia, which I use to illustrate the central problem of perception:

    (1) Transparency: This is the surface of my desk.

    (2) Continuity: When I shut my eyes, the surface of my desk does not cease to exist

    (3) Discontinuity: When I shut my eyes, this ceases to exist

    Here is how I 'see' it.  The problem concerns the nature and status of the referent of the demonstrative pronoun 'this' when uttered by a person as he looks at a physical object such as a desk and says, 'This is the surface of my desk.'  To what, exactly, does 'this' refer? There are two main possibilities.  Roughly, either 'this' refers to something physical that exists in itself or it refers to something non-physical or mental that does not exist in itself.

    P1. The referent of the pronoun is a proper physical  part of a physical thing that exists whether or not any person is looking at it. (Note that if the thing exists whether or not perceived, then so do its parts.)

    P2. The referent of the pronoun is not a physical part of the desk but an item that exists only as a correlate of the act of visual awareness of the person who is looking at the desk at a given time.  This correlate is an epistemic intermediary that has (or encodes) all and only the properties of the desk the person has before his mind at the time of his perceiving.  

    On (P1), the solution to the aporetic triad  is by rejecting (3) while accepting (1) and (2). On (P2), the solution is by rejecting (2) while accepting (1) and (3)

    I assume that Ed will plump for (P1).  That makes Ed a kind of direct realist. The other type of view can be developed in a realist way as a type of indirect realism or in an idealist way. But no more about that for now.

    Well, why not be a direct realist?  Are there any considerations that speak against it?

    Bill Vallicella

    6 responses to “Perception: An Inconsistent Triad”

  • Depredatory Wokery: Resist and Refuse

    The good Baron over at Gates of Vienna has some worthwhile suggestions. (HT: Bill Keezer)

    My main suggestion is that you vote with your wallet. For example, if your alma mater requests money, tell them, politely but firmly, no dice as long as they support DIE. 

    ('Die' is the singular of 'dice.' Surely DIE is more fitting an acronym that DEI, which, technically speaking, is not an acronym at all, but a mere abbreviation.)

    In other news: no self-defense allowed in Canada.  

    Bill Vallicella

  • Ash Wednesday

    Vanitas2"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?

     

    The 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.

    More here.

    Christopher Hitchens has been dead for over eleven years now.  In Platonic-Augustinian-Christian perspective, what no longer exists never truly existed.  So here we have a man who never truly existed but who denied the existence of the Source of his own ephemeral quasi-existence. Curious.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Bullshitting and Lying

    Top o' the Stack.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Is Sin a Fact?

    Substack latest. A passage from G. K. Chesteron examined.

    Bill Vallicella

  • How to Leave a Call Back Number on the Eve of WWIII

    Don't make me re-play the message a dozen times. Pronounce the string slowly, clearly, and distinctly, numeral by numeral. You are not in a competition to see how fast you can spout it. And then repeat the string.  Don't say 'o' if you mean 'zero' (0). 'o' is a letter, '0' is a numeral. Confusing the two is a mark of a linguistically slovenly 'liberal.' 

    And now you see the fix the Democrats have landed us in, on this, the Eve of Destruction.  (The accompanying video is the best I have seen attached to this song.) Joey B in his infinite incompetence, mendacity, and stupidity-cum-dementia has brought people together alright, but the wrong people, the Chi-Coms and the Russkis.  Way to go, Joe.  And all you useful idiots who voted for him, what were you thinking? You weren't, you were emoting, like good 'liberals.'  And now:

    Russian leader Vladimir Putin announced in a nearly two-hour speech on Tuesday the unilateral suspension of the longstanding New START agreement that limits American and Russian nuclear development, describing Western support for Ukraine amid an ongoing Russian invasion as an existential threat to Russia.

    An exciting, and possibly an exiting development.

    Elsewhere in his remarks, Putin bemoaned the “spiritual catastrophe” of the West.

    “They distort historical facts and constantly attack our culture, the Russian Orthodox Church, and other traditional religions of our country,” Putin claimed. “Look at what they do with their own peoples: the destruction of the family, cultural and national identity, perversion, and the abuse of children are declared the norm. And priests are forced to bless same-sex marriages.”

    This is how Putin sees us, and with some justice. We are in grave danger. We would not be had Trump been re-elected. 

    Tulsi Gabbard talks sense on this issue.

    UPDATE (2/23):  Russia deploys nuclear-armed ships for first-time in 30 years.  Let's go Brandon!

    UPDATE (2/23): A U-2 eye's view of the ChiCom spy balloon's massive payload. Let's go Brandon!

    Bill Vallicella

  • The Toxic Racialist Obsessions of Joe Biden

    Victor Davis Hanson makes many fine points, but fails to lay bare the root of Biden's racist flip-flopping, namely that the man is an utter phony and fraud who is rooted in no principle except that of self-promotion at all costs. 

    Bill Vallicella

Latest Comments

  1. https://www.thefp.com/p/charles-fain-lehman-dont-tolerate-disorder-charlie-kirk-iryna-zarutska?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

  3. Hey Bill, Got it now, thanks for clarifying. I hope you have a nice Sunday. May God bless you!

  4. Vini, Good comments. Your command of the English language is impressive. In my penultimate paragraph I wrote, “Hence their hatred…

  5. Just a little correction, since I wrote somewhat hastily. I meant to say enemies of the truth (not from the…

  6. You touched on very, very important points, Bill. First, I agree that people nowadays simply want to believe whatever the…

  8. https://barsoom.substack.com/p/peace-has-been-murdered-and-dialogue?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=841240&post_id=173321322&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1dw7zg&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

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