{"id":14301,"date":"2026-07-27T10:50:19","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T17:50:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/?p=14301"},"modified":"2026-07-29T03:29:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T10:29:08","slug":"the-dutch-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2026\/07\/27\/the-dutch-act\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Dutch Act’"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just now came across this phrase for the first time on p. 442\u00a0 of Blake Bailey’s biography of Richard Yates, A Tragic Honesty<\/em>.\u00a0 \u00a0If literary biography\/pathography is your thing, Bailey’s the man.\u00a0 The context is a discussion of suicide, which is the act the phrase names.\u00a0 I recommend this\u00a0 erudite disquisition<\/a> on the term and its variants.<\/p>\n

As for Yates’s attitude to suicide, it seems he held that one was a wimp to off oneself, but also a wimp to give up the hard drinking and heavy smoking — piecemeal suicide one might call it —\u00a0 which put paid to his life at the relatively young age of 66.<\/p>\n

What surprises me is the cocksurety of Yates and others who believe that we are mere material systems, and thus that we are easily disposed of. I am not saying we are not merely material systems.\u00a0 I am not a dogmatic affirmer of this view. Maybe we are. But to be cocksure of such a thing in the face of counter-evidence is surprising and suggests an unseriousness of attitude bordering on insanity.\u00a0 The sane look before they leap in matters large and small. Beware the leap of despair. Such a leap is a ‘leap of faith’ in one’s ultimate nonentity.<\/p>\n

I have often wondered to what extent one’s cock or the female counterpart thereof influences the over-confident conviction of the mortalist.\u00a0 Is it your cock,\u00a0 the dowsing rod of your concupiscence, that makes you so sure?\u00a0 Our concupiscence contributes mightily to the sense most people have that the sense world exhausts reality.\u00a0 There may or may not be eternal life, but\u00a0 it is clear that the long dong of concupiscence will not lead one to the waters of eternal life.<\/p>\n

As for the word ‘cocksurety,’ I thought I had coined it.\u00a0 I was wrong<\/a>. We are not only concupiscent but vain as well, and much else besides. And so the the Calvinists speak of total depravity — which brings us back around to the Dutch.<\/p>\n

Finally, is it slanderous to speak of Dutch valor in the case of the pot-valiant<\/a>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just now came across this phrase for the first time on p. 442\u00a0 of Blake Bailey’s biography of Richard Yates, A Tragic Honesty.\u00a0 \u00a0If literary biography\/pathography is your thing, Bailey’s the man.\u00a0 The context is a discussion of suicide, which is the act the phrase names.\u00a0 I recommend this\u00a0 erudite disquisition on the term … Continue reading “‘The Dutch Act’”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,6,40,296,280],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-concupiscence","category-language-matters","category-literary-matters","category-literary-pathography","category-vocabulary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14301"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14310,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14301\/revisions\/14310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}