{"id":14301,"date":"2026-07-27T10:50:19","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T17:50:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/?p=14301"},"modified":"2026-07-27T10:57:32","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T17:57:32","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 in my long life of reading 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 those who believe that we are mere material systems easily disposed of. I am not saying we are not.\u00a0 I am not a dogmatic affirmer. 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.<\/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?<\/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, it is 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 in my long life of reading 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 … 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":3,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14304,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14301\/revisions\/14304"}],"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}]}}