calami

An exchange

2007-12-14T00:28:00.000-08:00

The returning reader has probably had more than his fill of old Arthur, but I haven't. One of the essays in the Parerga and Paralipomena is a dialogue on religion between a Demopheles and a Philalethes. Any atheist will surely appreciate the opening exchange in the dialogue, even if he has no use for Schopenhauer:

“Demopheles: Between ourselves, my dear friend, I don’t much like the way you have of displaying your talent for philosophy by making sarcastic remarks about religion or even openly ridiculing it. Every man’s faith is sacred to him, therefore it ought to be sacred to you too.

Philalethes: Nego consequentiam! I can’t see why, because other people are simple-minded, I should respect a pack of lies. What I respect is truth, therefore I can’t respect what opposes truth. Just as the jurists motto is: fiat justitia et pereat mundus, so my motto is: vigeat veritas et pereat mundus.”

Hoffman on Heidegger

2007-12-12T18:39:00.000-08:00

In “Death, time, history: Division II of Being and Time”, Piotr Hoffman’s contribution to the second edition of the Cambrdige Companion to Heidegger, one runs across this rather interesting opening passage:

“Modern philosophy turns away from things in the world and zeroes in on the human self that grasps them in thought and transforms them in action. The self becomes the repository of both their truth and their ultimate purposes. By the same token, the human self is given the status of the self-grounding ground of reality. In this new and exalted status the self ceases to be viewed as part and parcel of some independent order of things. Beginning with Descartes’s cogito, the self withdraws from the world and falls back on its own experiences and thoughts. The subjectivity of the self supplies both the point of departure and the validating ground for various philosophical attempts at a reconstruction of our knowledge of the world.”

Broadly speaking, I agree with the characterization, although it strikes me that it is not so much the human self that is regarded as the self-grounding ground of reality but rather, at least in some circles, subjectivity itself. Anyway I certainly dislike this whole general trend and it is precisely Heidegger’s attempt to break the subject/object distinction and escape the subjectivist drift of most modern philosophy that renders him interesting and useful. I should quickly add, lest I get accused of being a Heideggerian, that I do not buy into Heidegger’s system as developed in Being and Time or in his later works. Nevertheless, Heidegger is useful because in several areas it seems to me that he was on to something, even if he got the details and the specifics wrong. Fit into a different context, some of his ideas and questions and problematics could prove to be very useful. As for Hoffman, well, I don’t much like the rest of his article, largely because he tries to reclaim Heidegger as the heir of the subjectivist tradition in philosophy. Nevertheless that opening passage in an interesting way of putting things.

Geekdom

2007-12-12T00:34:00.000-08:00

Do I lose like a million coolness points for reading this and immediately thinking of V'Ger?

"V...G...E...R...V'Ger"
::wiping away space grime::
"V...O...Y...A...G...E...R...Voyager!"

Tensions

2007-12-12T00:06:00.000-08:00

There is something to be said for the idea that democracy, and indeed that liberal institutions, bring about, by their internal logic, their own downfall. More exactly, that they bring into being precisely what their theoreticians hope to avoid. The Marxists and critical theorists have made a tremendous muck out of this idea though, and it is very necessary to ignore them, or at least to rescue the kernel of truth buried in their sententious twaddle. Anyway Schopenhauer says something interesting in this regard in the Parerga and Paralipomena:

“Freedom of the press is to the machinery of the state what the safety-valve is to the steam engine: every discontent is by means of it immediately relieved in words—indeed, unless this discontent is very considerable, it exhausts itself in this way. If, however, it is very considerable, it is as well to know of it in time, so as to redress it.—One the other hand, however, freedom of the press must be regarded as a permit to sell poison: poison of the mind and poison of the heart. For what cannot be put into the heads of the ignorant and credulous masses?—especially if you hold before them the prospect of gain and advantages. And of what misdeeds is man not capable once something has been put into his head? I very much fear, therefore, that the dangers of press freedom outweigh its usefulness…”

It is really a terrible bind in which he who despairs of democracy and liberal institutions finds himself. What on earth is one supposed to do instead, when everything else seems, if not worse, then at least as bad? For he who doubts that freedom of the press is a problem, I submit one fertile source of empirical data which fail to refute such worries: Americans.

Hobbesian misanthropy

2007-12-11T19:50:00.000-08:00

“It may seem strange to some man that has not well weighed these things that nature should…dissociate and render men apt to invade and destroy one another; and he may therefore, not trusting to this inference made from the passions, desire perhaps to have the same confirmed by experience. Let him therefore consider with himself—when taking a journey he arms himself and seeks to go well accompanied, when going to sleep he locks his doors, when even in his house he locks his chests, and this when he knows there be laws and public officers, armed, to revenge all injuries shall be done him—what opinion he has of his fellow subjects when he rides armed, of his fellow citizens when he locks hid doors, and of his children and servants when he locks his chests. Does he not there as much accuse mankind by his actions as I do by my words?” (Leviathan Part I, Chapter XIII)

Some flaws in Hobbes’s derivation of his conception of the state of nature aside, and overlooking obvious problems with his preferred solution, I really rather admire this passage. I always have.

Brief comment on Plato's Timaeus

2007-12-11T04:38:00.000-08:00

For contrast with the pro-Plato post before this one, I might briefly identify, while I am thinking of Timaeus, what seems to me its most fundamental error. It occurs long before any of the peculiar elements of that problematic dialogue. To wit, the fundamental error lies in the idea from which its cosmology derives: that the universe is fundamentally beautiful, ordered, good, and that it is arranged so as to produce a bounty of good things and good effects. One may perceive in this, I suppose, the alleged optimism of Hellenic civilization at its height, even though Timaeus was composed after the date at which that would usually be fixed. One might see in it a very Christian sentiment—I am not so sure, however, that Christianity originally has anything to do with such a rosy view of things. Regardless, this guiding idea of the dialogue strikes me as absurd. If ever experience refuted anything, surely it refutes this. Moreover, when considered more deeply, it becomes clear that this optimism not only is false but perhaps must be false. Unsurprisingly, I quote Schopenhauer:

“In general, however, two things cry out against any such view of the world as the successful work of an infinitely wise, infinitely good and at the same time infinitely powerful being: the misery of which it is full and the obvious imperfection of its most highly developed phenomenon, man, who is indeed a grotesque caricature. This is a dissonance which cannot be resolved.” (Parerga and Paralipomena II)

I think the passage may be appreciated even if we remember that, in all likelihood, the Timaeus’ talk of an anthropomorphic creator entity (the Demiurge) is not to be taken literally.

Popperian polemics

2007-12-11T03:45:00.000-08:00

They are fun, and often, although by no means always, they are accurate. Suiting my mood for the evening, I offer the following passages. They tidily express my opinion of Aristotle:

“...Aristotle, in spite of his stupendous learning and astonishing scope, was not a man of striking originality of thought. What he added to the Platonic store of ideas was, in the main, systematization and a burning interest in empirical and especially in biological problems. To be sure, he is the inventor of logic, and for this and his other achievements, he amply deserves what he himself claimed...our warm thanks, and our pardon for his shortcomings. Yet for readers and admirers of Plato these shortcomings are formidable.” (The Open Society and Its Enemies II, 1)

Popper goes on to say this of Aristotle's writings on the next page:

“Instead of Plato's flashes of penetrating insight, we find dry systematization and the love, shared by so many mediocre writers of later times, for settling any question whatever by issuing a 'sound and balanced judgment' that does justice to everybody; which means, at times, by elaborately and solemnly missing the point. This exasperating tendency...is one of the sources of his so often forced and even fatuous criticism of Plato.”

It is worth noting, as Popper later did, that it was his irreverent attitude toward Aristotle which caused the most problems getting The Open Society into print, and not his attack on Plato. Speaking of that, Popper seems to have had a schizoid attitude toward Plato. He is named as one of the enemies of the “open society” in Volume I of that great but also problematic work, and yet Popper clearly thought highly of Plato.

Anyway, I agree with the sentiments quoted above. Aristotle gets overly lauded. To be sure, his logical works, and perhaps his metaphysical works, deserve great praise. However, Aristotle’s numerous faults and errors tend to get ignored or explained away. The arguably negative effect that centuries of Aristotelian influence had on the progress of science and human knowledge more generally, is too often politely overlooked. On the other hand, in some circles, Plato is condemned with a degree of bile and vitriol that can only be described as pathological. Only Kant and Hegel seem to be the targets of equally histrionic fits of rage (e.g., Popper devotes many pages to a ludicrous anti-Hegel tantrum in the very volume quoted here). Plato is condemned for his political philosophy, although when Aristotle in large measure goes along with those elements that offend modern liberal sensibilities, this is often ignored. Some shrilly denounce Plato as the founder-in-spirit of Christianity, which accusation, aside from being baseless, betrays selective historical memory. It was to Aristotle and not Plato that Aquinas primarily turned, and it is the works of Aquinas that constitute the bedrock of the Catholic faith. Their influence over all subsequent Christian thinking should hardly need to be pointed out. Less intelligently still, I cannot list the number of times I have heard it said that Platonism is “obviously” wrong because it contradicts “common sense.” Of course, Platonism is not the only philosophical movement singled out by this most idiotic of “refutations.” Can one imagine where science would today be if the ridiculous notion of “common sense” were utilized there as it is in philosophy? We’d be obliged to substitute the Physics for the Principia, to say nothing of what we would have to do with the works of Einstein. I do not have the courage to speculate on what biology would currently look like.

In which I am paralyzed by laughter

2007-12-09T04:14:00.000-08:00

These are both from here, where the originals, and things equally hilarious (if you are as big a geek as I am), may be found:

A passage from Daybreak (and one other)

2007-12-08T23:32:00.000-08:00

Yes—sometimes I do quote Nietzsche, and with approval. One need not be a Nietzschean to appreciate a good point or a euphonious passage of his. In connection with my post the other day, the polemic on Greek and Christian thought, I thought the following passage from Daybreak was rather fitting:

“Christianity has done its utmost to close the circle and declared even doubt to be a sin. One is supposed to be cast into belief without reason, by a miracle, and from then on to swim in it as in the brightest and least ambiguous of elements: even a glance towards land, even the thought that one perhaps exists for something else as well as swimming…is sin! And notice that all this means that the foundation of belief and all reflection on its origin is likewise excluded as sinful. What is wanted are blindness and intoxication and an eternal song over the waves in which reason has drowned!”

Elsewhere, I think it is in Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche calls Christianity the protracted suicide of reason, or something of the sort. That is very much what it is (as are all religions, of course). It is precisely this fundamental commitment of Christianity to the destruction of reason that makes figures like Aquinas, in a sense, all the more contemptible. Here I let Russell speak for me, through a passage from The History of Western Philosophy:

“There is little of the true philosophic spirit in Aquinas. He does not, like the Platonic Socrates, set out to follow wherever the argument may lead. He is not engaged in an inquiry, the result of which it is impossible to know in advance. Before he begins to philosophize, he already knows the truth; it is declared in the Catholic faith. If he can find apparently rational arguments for some parts of the faith, so much the better; if he cannot, he need only fall back on revelation. The finding of arguments for a conclusion given in advance is not philosophy, but special pleading.”

Kierkegaard, unpleasant as he may be, at least had the integrity to admit that Christianity was an offense to reason.

Scary thoughts

2007-12-08T19:24:00.000-08:00

I was lately, as I often do, contemplating what the world might be like free of the Abrahamic religions, and of course I was most focused on Christianity, but then a most terrifying thought occurred to me. What if what replaced them was even worse. What if what replaced them was Scientology. Instead of the tribunal of Christ we might one day have the tribunal of Cruise. That's just fucking terrifying to say nothing of wholly depressing. I’m going to have nightmares now.