Items Posted by Jim Kalb
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Oct 23 08:51:27 EDT 1996
Article: 8315 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: "Quirky Little Newsletter" to join Militia of Montana
Date: 22 Oct 1996 16:43:32 -0400
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The current issue of _First Things_, the neocon neopapalist mag run by
Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, is a special issue on the courts and whether
they and their sympathizers are ruining everything. The participants
can't stay away from the issue whether in the not-distant future
serious Christians and Jews will have to start regarding the United
States as an illegitimate polity.
A particular pressure point is gay rights -- they are worried for
example by the sequence => => . They're also alarmed and
disgusted by partial-birth abortion, think euthenasia is likely to be a
growth area, and see no real prospects for reform.
So maybe it's really true or will be true shortly that everyone to the
right of Bob Dole is an extreme right wing threat to the established
order.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Yo Bob, mug a gumbo boy!
From jk Thu Oct 24 08:05:57 1996
Subject: Re: masters cont.
To: leo-strauss@freelance.com
Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1996 08:05:57 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <35c.2275.124@freelance.com> from "Charles Butterworth" at Oct 23, 96 10:55:37 pm
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> Can you make a serious link "between polygamy and political
> despotism?" What is the "available evidence to support such a modest
> view?"
Is a suggestion that societies that accept polygamy are less likely to
have free institutions than societies that reject it so outrageously
ignorant that anyone who makes it thereby demonstrates that he has no
right to open his mouth on the subject?
If that or something like it is the case, I am curious to know why it
is the case. It's not sufficient to point out that some monogamous
societies have had despotic governments since the suggestion is not
that polygamy is the sole and sufficient cause of despotism. Nor is it
sufficient to point out that it is more common for a regime or moral
system to tolerate than promote polygamy, since the suggestion relates
to a distinction between societies in which it is tolerated and
societies in which it is not.
I would have thought, based on not much more than my sense of what the
world is like, that family forms correspond to something fundamental in
a society's understanding of human relations, and that monogamy
corresponds more to notions of partnership and polygamy to notions of
command and obedience. I may well be completely wrong -- hence my
requests for illumination.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Yo Bob, mug a gumbo boy!
From jk Thu Oct 24 17:20:14 1996
Subject: Re: masters cont.
To: leo-strauss@freelance.com
Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1996 17:20:14 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <35c.2281.124@freelance.com> from "div093@abdn.ac.uk" at Oct 24, 96 04:45:04 pm
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Francesca writes:
> > monogamy corresponds more to notions of partnership and polygamy to
> > notions of command and obedience.
> What is your evidence that, in pre-democratic times, Christian
> marriage, for example, was understood primarily as a partnership?
Do I need evidence of that for what I said? "More" does not imply
"primary."
It seems to me that any relationship intended to be durable and to deal
with an open-ended series of important issues will mix partnership and
command. My suggestion was only that, other things being equal, when
marriage is conceived as essentially monogamous the mixture is likely
to have a larger element of partnership than if polygamous unions are
also thought to exemplify what marriage is.
> I would have imagined that, for example, the Pauline comments about
> husbands and wives led to a somewhat hierarchical, not to say,
> command-structured understanding of marriage.
Paul's view of marriage had several elements, though. One was that
when a man leaves his mother and father to be joined to his wife he
becomes one flesh with her, and therefore should love his wife as he
loves his own body. It seems to me that view of things emphasizes the
importance of the woman's well-being as one of the goals of the
marriage. It also seems to me that it is difficult for such a view of
things to have much force when a man has several wives, so to insist on
monogamy as part of the essence of marriage is to increase the
importance of that element and therefore the relevance of the woman's
views and interests.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Yo Bob, mug a gumbo boy!
From jk Thu Oct 24 17:53:31 1996
Subject: Re: masters cont.
To: leo-strauss@freelance.com
Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1996 17:53:31 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <35c.2279.124@freelance.com> from "Charles Butterworth" at Oct 24, 96 11:32:30 am
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Professor Butterworth writes:
> Please explain more the following observation:
> "I would have thought, based on not much more than my sense of
> what the world is like, that family forms correspond to something
> fundamental in a society's understanding of human relations, and that
> monogamy corresponds more to notions of partnership and polygamy to
> notions of command and obedience."
>
> To defend that position, you will need to do at least two things:
> one, provide a solid account of relationships within polygamy
My profession of ignorance was not feigned -- I really did want to know
why you think the claim of a relationship between polygamy and
despotism is outrageously ignorant, if that is indeed your view. The
"I would have thought" was intended to show why the claim doesn't seem
obviously false to me rather than to prove its truth.
So to continue with what I would have thought, I would have thought
that other things being equal a pair dealing with common problems would
tend more toward partnership than a trio of whom two are in competition
with each other for the favor of the third. My impression that
polygamous households tend to involve competition among the wives comes
(apart from my feeling for what people are like) from literary sources,
for example the Biblical accounts of the patriarchs.
> two, show that polygamy, even within societies where it is permitted,
> is so wide-spread as to influence the way those societies understand
> human relations.
The thought was that polygamy reflects the society's understanding of
human relations rather than affects it, or better that forbidding
polygamy institutionalizes an understanding of what the most
fundamental social relation (that between a man and a woman for the
creation of a household) should be and thus both expresses and affects
the way people and the society tend to understand human relations in
general.
Again, all these thoughts might be wrong. I would be interested,
though, in knowing why you think them so clearly wrong, if that is your
view.
I notice that in another message you gave me some references, for which
I thank you.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Yo Bob, mug a gumbo boy!
From jk Thu Oct 24 20:06:30 1996
Subject: Re: Geach, etc.
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1996 20:06:30 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Oct 24, 96 05:32:44 pm
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> Here he argues that 'God' is a definition, not a name, so that if we
> define God differently, we worship a different God.
This seems very surprising. I would have thought that a definition is
of a concept, a name of a person, so on his view we seem to end up
worshipping the former. Or maybe God's special in this regard. Does
he ever talk about the ontological argument?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Yo Bob, mug a gumbo boy!
From soc.religion.christian Sat Oct 26 04:38:08 1996
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~From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
~Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
~Subject: Re: !! Political Responisibilty !!
~Date: 25 Oct 1996 00:12:58 -0400
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"H. Kaltinger" writes:
>- How can our nation best respond to the haunting needs of vulnerable
>children in a society where 1.5 million unborn children die each year
>through legalized abortion, in a nation where more than 1/4 of our
>preschoolers grow up poor, and in a society where almost 35,000
>children die every day from hunger and malnutrition?
(There's something wrong with your final statistic. 35,000 a day is
almost 13 million a year.)
The wording of the questions troubles me somewhat. I don't see why
visualizing "our nation" or "society" as a single moral actor
responsible for social and moral evils is likely to bring about a better
world.
Child poverty is mainly a result of illegitimacy and marital
instability, and the moral sentiment in favor of abortion is the
sentiment that forced continuation of pregnancy is discriminatory and
oppressive. Social justice as a fundamental moral principle contributes
to both, and the language suggests considerable sympathy for it.
Social justice tends to view "society" as the primary moral actor, and
therefore to locate evil in unequal social structures rather than the
choices and failures of particular persons. An unequal structure is any
structure that imposes burdens on one that are not equally imposed on
all. Taken seriously, such a morality destroys the ordinary obligations
of family life because they have to do with particular relations to
particular people under particular conditions, and therefore can't
possibly be made remotely equal for everyone.
>growing hostilities towards immigrants and refugees?
What's included in the growing hostility -- the view that we should have
less immigration than we do now? The view that we shouldn't have more?
Opposition to open borders?
>How can our society better support families in their irreplaceable
>moral and social roles, offering real choices and help in finding and
>affodring decent education, housing, and health care? How can we help
>parents raise their children with sound moral values, a sense of hope,
>and an ethic of responsibility for themselves and others?
Sounds like a question that tends toward contradiction. The
irreplaceable role of the family is to be the primary locus of moral
life. That won't happen unless the family has serious responsibility
for the physical and moral well-being of its members. If that's so,
though, "support" and "help" for the functions of the family from
outside institutions can easily undercut the family's role by reducing
its responsibility, especially if the support and help take the form of
direct responsibility for the well-being of family members.
>How can our society best combat continuing prejudice and
>discrimination, overcome the divisions among our people, provide full
>opportunity for all people, and heal the open wounds of racism and
>sexism?
What counts as bad prejudice and discrimination? The view that men and
women properly play different roles in the family? A preference for
living and working with people with whom one shares common background,
cultural heritage, and so on? And why should Christians want a
government to overcome all divisions among the people it rules? That
could only be done by remaking the people, their values and way of
life, along lines chosen by the government for its own purposes. Don't
Christians have their own beliefs, values, way of life and so on that
they consider important? Why should they want their rulers to
assimilate them to something else?
>Does the candidates policy protect the life and dignity of the human
>person as well as human rights and responsibilities and the dignity of
>work and the rights of worker. Does it include an option for the poor
>and call to family and community to help?
Some people think that many of these wonderful things aren't achieved
through direct state administration but grow up if at all as part of
the overall life of the society, and that the appropriate role of
government in social life is neither overall direction nor direct
responsibility for the well-being and relations of individuals. Such
people would be quite likely to vote *against* someone whose policy
included all those things.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Yo Bob, mug a gumbo boy!
From news.panix.com!panix!feed1.news.erols.com!insync!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!uunet!in3.uu.net!dziuxsolim.rutgers.edu!igor.rutgers.edu!christian Mon Oct 28 14:18:49 EST 1996
Article: 86507 of soc.religion.christian
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Vote Christian
Date: 28 Oct 1996 00:54:35 -0500
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In <54penl$pe7@heidelberg.rutgers.edu> dwelch@badlands.NoDak.edu (Dwight R. Welch) writes:
>Actually the Bible is concerned about
>-social justice for the poor (600 Bible verses relate to oppression of
>the poor and our responsibility of the poor and government's
>responsibilty to the poor Ezekiel 16:49)
Ezekiel 16:49 has to do with government's responsibility to the poor
only if saying a society does not strengthen the hand of the poor and
needy is the same as saying the government of the society does not do
so. But isn't the very point at issue the appropriate role of the
state and its relation to our moral life?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Yo Bob, mug a gumbo boy!
From jk Fri Oct 25 07:45:24 1996
Subject: Re: masters cont.
To: leo-strauss@freelance.com
Date: Fri, 25 Oct 1996 07:45:24 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <35c.2289.124@freelance.com> from "Charles Butterworth" at Oct 24, 96 08:15:41 pm
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> If you are speculating about things that could favor or foster
> despotism (which is what, by the way, and different in what way
> from tyranny?), surely other factors need to be considered.
Absolutely. I think, by the way, that it might focus the inquiry more
to ask what things favor or foster free institutions.
As to "despotism" and "tyranny," I didn't mean anything very precise by
using one word rather than the other. I suppose among arbitrary and
unlimited governments one could draw a distinction between those guided
primarily by the pleasure and advantage of the ruler and those guided
significantly by something else.
> If your evidence comes from the Bible, do you consider these
> partriarchs to be despots?
It seems to me the issues would be different when there is no organized
government beyond the household, as with the patriarchs and Israel
during the time of the judges. Michael Kochin also mentions the
Mormons. An interesting example, for which I thank him.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Yo Bob, mug a gumbo boy!
From jk Sat Oct 26 03:15:11 1996
Subject: Re: paul on woman;s silence
To: leo-strauss@freelance.com
Date: Sat, 26 Oct 1996 03:15:11 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <35c.2298.124@freelance.com> from "ao066@osfn.rhilinet.gov" at Oct 26, 96 01:07:16 am
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> Most of the time it is brought up merely as a strawman argument,
> masking a universal rejection of monagamy simply.
I must say I am puzzled by suggestions that Paul's views on men's
headship within the family and women's silence in church are a specific
consequence of Christian advocacy of monogamy. If Paul had thought
polygamy was OK would he have said the opposite on those points? Isn't
it clear that polygamy enhances patriarchy?
Also, it's interesting that people whose views otherwise differ a great
deal seem to agree there is some connection between monogamy and public
participation in politics.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Yo Bob, mug a gumbo boy!
From jk Sat Oct 26 09:32:26 1996
Subject: Re: divorce and serial polygamy
To: leo-strauss@freelance.com
Date: Sat, 26 Oct 1996 09:32:26 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <35c.2300.124@freelance.com> from "James R. Harrigan" at Oct 26, 96 02:57:53 am
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> to attach our current practice of marriage to an understanding of
> polygamy is senseless, especially when the issue was brought up in
> the first place to explore the notion of political choice, or the
> lack thereof, vis a vis tyranny.
Isn't it relevant though? A tyranny is unconstitutional government, in
which power is not distributed and limited by fundamental laws, and
monogamy has to do with presumptively permanent marriage between one
man and one woman as a social institution that is so fundamental that
other sorts of union are not recognized as legitimate. The issue is
whether there is a connection between monogamy and constitutional
government in which power is fairly widely distributed. That issue is
relevant to our own society, in which both constitutional government
and monogamy are I think seriously in question.
The examples that have come up so far seem consistent with such a
connection: societies which are polygamous but not tyrannical because
there is no organized government beyond the household (Jacob, Israel
under the judges), societies which are polygamous and tyrannical
(medieval Islamic dynastic states??), successor societies in which
elites that disfavor polygamy attempt to promote constitutional
government (certain modern Muslim states??), societies that are
monogamous and constitutional, with fairly widespread political
participation (classic Greek and Roman society and modern European
society during their most characteristic periods), and
post-constitutional societies that are also post-monogamous at least to
the extent of accepting serial monogamy (the Roman republic at its
close, and at least incipiently our own society?) Polygamous Mormon
society may be an exception to the foregoing, although the
circumstances were quite unusual. Comments? Criticisms?
Counterexamples? (The more extreme the better, of course -- best of
all would be a highly civilized polygamous society with a long history
of constitutional government with extensive participation. A
particular monogamous society that was tyrannical wouldn't be that
helpful.)
On a different matter, or at least a different post, I don't think I
was disagreeing with Mr. Bates on Paul, monogamy and patriarchy.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Yo Bob, mug a gumbo boy!
From jk Sat Oct 26 11:51:15 1996
Subject: Re: Nobel Prize
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Sat, 26 Oct 1996 11:51:15 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <199610261450.KAA22597@graf.cc.emory.edu> from "Martha Bishop" at Oct 26, 96 10:50:29 am
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> I didn't realize he had become syndicated--for me, he just dropped
> out of view, marginalized.
He's both syndicated *and* marginalized. He says that most papers
won't take his column because when one does it gets lots and lots of
letters protesting that he's a hate-filled bigot and why don't they
print a responsible conservative like George Will instead. He has his
own newletter, _Sobran's_, and also does a column for a right-wing
Catholic weekly newspaper (_Wanderer_?).
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Yo Bob, mug a gumbo boy!
From jk Sun Oct 27 13:09:55 1996
Subject: Re: Scottish diet
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Sun, 27 Oct 1996 13:09:55 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19961027112750.006b299c@swva.net> from "Seth Williamson" at Oct 27, 96 11:30:16 am
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> I have to confess that the thought of a fried candy bar makes me feel
> a little green.
When I first read this I thought the greenness had to do with envy. I
don't see the problem -- aren't grease, chocolate and sugar the three
basic food groups?
The real issue, I think, is sticky toffee pudding. I first ran into it
in Cullen (Banffshire) and now understand that it's become a big thing
is Australia. No dinner party is complete without it ...
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Was raw tap ale not a reviver at one lap at Warsaw?
From jk Sun Oct 27 13:14:16 1996
Subject: Re: Prix Nobel
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Sun, 27 Oct 1996 13:14:16 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19961027112348.006b299c@swva.net> from "Seth Williamson" at Oct 27, 96 11:30:09 am
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> Ezra Pound or somebody said that great poets require great audiences,
I seem to recall that he predicted somewhere that literature would come
to an end in the 1990s because no one would bother to do more than
half-read anything -- does that ring any bells or am I just becoming
even more of a crank than he was?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Was raw tap ale not a reviver at one lap at Warsaw?
From jk Mon Oct 28 20:00:24 1996
Subject: Re: Scottish diet -Reply
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 20:00:24 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Mark Cameron" at Oct 28, 96 12:00:07 pm
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> >While a student in France years ago, I came into a practice of
> >breaking pieces of chocolate and cheese into a baguette and munching
> >on the combination as a snack while touring.
There was a fun movie about 15 years ago called "Bread and Chocolate",
about an Italian guest worker in Switzerland who was fond of eating
just that. It was intended to symbolize his endearing human weaknesses
in contrast to the efficient and unemotional Swiss.
> Poutine (soggy French Fries, cheese curds, and gravy)
The best! There are poutine stands all over Quebec.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Was raw tap ale not a reviver at one lap at Warsaw?
From jk Mon Oct 28 20:06:02 1996
Subject: Re: matriarchy and matrilinial
To: leo-strauss@freelance.com
Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 20:06:02 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <35c.2328.124@freelance.com> from "div093@abdn.ac.uk" at Oct 28, 96 10:35:38 pm
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> Can you know that a pre-literate society of, say, five thousand years
> ago was matriarchal?
If matriarchy is one of the possible social forms it's not clear why it
would be necessary to go 5000 years back to find examples. Why not New
Guinea, or tribal India, or Australian aborigines, or whatever? In
historical times lots of societies with a huge variety of institutions
occupying all sorts of niches have existed and been observed and
described.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Was raw tap ale not a reviver at one lap at Warsaw?
From jk Mon Oct 28 20:08:26 1996
Subject: Re: divorce and serial polygamy
To: leo-strauss@freelance.com
Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 20:08:26 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <35c.2329.124@freelance.com> from "Leslie Goldstein" at Oct 28, 96 05:31:38 pm
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> The verse is read by almost all commentators as limiting marriage to
> one woman on the grounds that no one can be fair to more than one.
Has that been the general interpretation, at least among the most
authoritative scholars, throughout the history of Islam?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Was raw tap ale not a reviver at one lap at Warsaw?
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Oct 30 01:38:25 EST 1996
Article: 13931 of soc.history.medieval
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: soc.history.medieval
Subject: Re: Scythes
Date: 29 Oct 1996 06:36:13 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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billb@mousa.demon.co.uk (Bill Bedford) wrote:
>The difference is that a sickle is a one handed tool that enables, for
>instance, the cutting of corn ears from standing straw, while a scythe
>has a long handle and is thus able to cut close to the ground, and is
>used for cutting grain with with the straw attatched and hay.
What about squatters? In countries in which people habitually squat
they don't find it uncomfortable to use a sickle to cut close to the
ground.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Was raw tap ale not a reviver at one lap at Warsaw?
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Article: 86600 of soc.religion.christian
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: is PREMARITAL SEX wrong?
Date: 29 Oct 1996 23:39:29 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <553r4m$2el@heidelberg.rutgers.edu> jeubank@mail1.sas.upenn.edu (Judith Eubank) writes:
>>Sex results in spiritual and emotional bonding of the deepest kind
>>[and people get hurt]
>This can be true, of course. Often, demonstrably, it isn't. To
>generalize like this is to appear naive about sex and the workings of
>human psychology generally.
I don't see why statements like the one on top must be interpreted as
categorical factual statements.
The point as I understand it is that sex characteristically results in
bonding and to the extent attitudes and practices ignore or slight that
feature of sex then there's something wrong with those attitudes and
practices, because they make sex and therefore human life (since
sexuality is a fundamental component of human life) less and worse than
they should be. The obvious wrong is that someone gets hurt. Your
point seems to be that sometimes there's no significant bonding and
therefore no hurt. The obvious response to that is that such a
situation is even worse, just as being unable to sympathize with others
is worse than the pain that sometimes results from sympathy.
Why not understand the language first quoted to mean "Sex results in
spiritual and emotional bonding of the deepest kind, and when it
doesn't there's something wrong that shouldn't be indulged or
cooperated with"?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Was raw tap ale not a reviver at one lap at Warsaw?
From jk Wed Oct 30 01:47:06 1996
Subject: Re: Scottish diet
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 01:47:06 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Gradle" at Oct 29, 96 11:25:35 pm
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> >real obesity - revoltingly fat people - is more obvious on the
> >streets of New York and Dallas than on those of Aberdeen.
> >
> I am curious as to why this is so. The baby boomers of Dallas seem
> obsessed with beauty and health.
One goes with the other, doesn't it? If some part of life is in good
order, so that what comes naturally to people makes sense, it's not
going to what they obsess about.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Was raw tap ale not a reviver at one lap at Warsaw?
From jk Thu Oct 31 08:15:40 1996
Subject: Re: Gnosticism
To: VOEGLN-L@its1.ocs.lsu.edu
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 08:15:40 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <32786424.AFD@premier.net> from "Neal Fuller" at Oct 31, 96 02:32:36 am
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>Voegelin's use of the concept is not meant to be the creation of a
>Voegelinian language; rather it is meant to embody the state of science
>up to the time he wrote it. One should not accept Voegelin's work as an
>authoritative text. The reality is out there to be seen. Voegelin has
>shown us what to look for. I see it. Many others see it.
What other writers also see it but use language quite different from
Voegelin's to discuss it?
"Science" sounds like it ought to be an ordered body of knowledge and
appurtenances (methods of investigation, etc.) that on the whole is
accepted as appropriately ordered knowledge by serious investigators of
the subject matter. Is that the kind of science Voegelin's language and
concepts embody? If so, why do those who use the language and concepts
get blank stares from their colleagues?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Was raw tap ale not a reviver at one lap at Warsaw?
From news.panix.com!panix!newsfeed.internetmci.com!hunter.premier.net!hammer.uoregon.edu!csulb.edu!news.sgi.com!rutgers!igor.rutgers.edu!christian Fri Nov 1 07:52:09 EST 1996
Article: 86727 of soc.religion.christian
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: On Bishop Spong
Date: 31 Oct 1996 21:41:33 -0500
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lehnertr@IMAP2.ASU.EDU writes:
>Spong basicaly states that all the miraculous stories of the Nt, and
>probably of the OT as well, are human literary expositions of the
>mundane happenings, the deeper spiritual truths.
So far as I can tell, what Spong most truly believes is not that Jesus
is the Way, the Truth and the Light, but that the Jesus stories (like
the Buddha stories, the Krishna stories, the Confucius stories, etc.)
are a way used by particular people to symbolize and articulate deeper
truths to which however the stories bear no privileged relationship.
It seems to me he is Christian in the same sense he is Episcopalian --
it's not that Christian stories, doctrines etc. or the special features
of ECUSA are his ultimate concern, but each is what he's used to and the
concrete socially established form in which he works toward whatever his
concern really is. Each for him makes sense only as part of something
larger, and the special features of each for him are in the end all
dispensible.
On that understanding, is it misleading to say Spong is a Christian? It
seems that a man's religion is what he believes most fundamentally and
unconditionally to be true, so if he is a Christian he is one whose
religion is not Christianity but something else. It would be an odd way
of speaking to say someone's religion is Episcopalianism, and similarly
(I think) to say Spong's religion is Christianity.
(If I've misrepresented Spong, do tell me. I'm no Spong scholar. He's
said a lot of different things, and seems to mean what he says in a
variety of senses. Not long ago I read a speech of his to his diocesan
convention from which it appeared that his real religion is historical
materialism. Who knows?)
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Was raw tap ale not a reviver at one lap at Warsaw?
From news.panix.com!panix!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.sgi.com!rutgers!igor.rutgers.edu!christian Fri Nov 1 07:52:10 EST 1996
Article: 86735 of soc.religion.christian
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: The New World Order
Date: 31 Oct 1996 21:41:42 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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"Stephen A. Fuqua" writes:
>There is a simple question I have for you all: what is that (many)
>Christians find so reprehensible about the idea of a "New World Order?"
>What exactly is this "new world order?"
As I understand it, it ties into a grand understanding of the direction
the world is going. The notion is that the tendency today is toward a
universal rational ordering of society for goals like political
stability, economic growth and satisfaction of individual preferences
whatever they happen to be. The expression "New World Order" sums up
that tendency. The NWO is understood to be a necessary and logical
extension of centralizing and antitraditional tendencies in our
national life. (I speak as an American, but believe our country is not
unique.) Concrete manifestations include various international economic
and quasi-governmental groupings on the one hand and things like the
treaties on sex discrimination and the rights of the child on the
other.
Although the goals of the NWO may sound OK as far as they go, if taken
as ultimate guiding principles they cause problems. For example,
promoting satisfaction of individual preferences can mean that moral
standards that teach that some ways of life are better than others, or
that there's an objective moral order binding on us all, have to be
destroyed. Economic growth as an ultimate goal means that money and
economic efficiency become standards to which all else is sacrificed.
Universal rational order means rule by a vanishingly small and
increasingly distant elite of experts. Political stability means
manipulative control by that elite. What the NWO presents is a world
intensely hostile to Christian life as traditionally conceived that no
one can do anything about because the centers of power are so very
distant from ordinary people.
Of course, I can only present my own understanding of the situation and
concerns -- others may differ.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Was raw tap ale not a reviver at one lap at Warsaw?
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sat Nov 2 04:01:28 EST 1996
Article: 8365 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: things fall apart?
Date: 1 Nov 1996 14:42:58 -0500
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For a while it's been my hobbyhorse that the world of the future is
going to be a radically incoherent society of the sort that has existed
in the Middle East, in which a single territory is occupied by a
congeries of ethno-religious groups each living unto itself and dealing
with the others only in the bazaar (that is, through abstract market
institutions that don't touch what people feel to be their real life
with others). Think of a world of gated communities, one occupied by
Southern Baptists, another by traditionalist Chinese, another by Reform
Jews, etc., all trading with each other but with few economic
enterprises extending across community boundaries. (I'm assuming a
grand future for downsizing, outsourcing, and so on)
Such a situation could exist only if communications networks were
substantially fragmented so that each group had a separate network, with
some overall network dealing with market quotations and other such
bloodless topics. Conversely, it seems that if communications networks
were so fragmented it would promote a development of the sort I
envision.
Is it probable that there will be such a fragmentation of networks
within a decade or two? As things are, it seems that in a few years
every living room will be only a few clicks of a button away from oceans
of stuff ranging from _McGuffy's Reader_ to virtual reality renditions
of _120 Days of Sodom_ and everything in between. Will people be
comfortable with that? If not, it seems most likely that they will
subscribe to services that only make available a selection of what's out
there -- it's hard to think of another means of point-of-delivery
censorship that would work without lots and lots of consumer effort.
That would constitute fragmentation of the communications network. The
fragmentation could become quite radical. It seems likely that people
would look for the service that's tailored exactly to them and their
friends. Tastes differ a great deal, and what some like others don't
want in their house. Also, the whole point of the exercise will be
picking what you want in and shutting other stuff out, and once you get
used to that you're likely to develop ideas about just how it should be
done. A service that appealed to even a very small market share could
work financially, since the cost of delivery would be low and the
absolute number of subscribers could still be large. So it seems the
tendency would be toward differentiation.
Comments? Objections? Alternate theories?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Was raw tap ale not a reviver at one lap at Warsaw?
From jk Thu Oct 31 19:25:00 1996
Subject: Re: Gnosticism
To: leo-strauss@freelance.com
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 19:25:00 +1900 (EST)
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Neal Fuller writes:
> You seem to suggest that I mean it is easy to determine what the
> "state of science" is at any given time.
I suppose the thought was that if it's hard to determine the basic
principles of something as understood at a particular time then it's
not a science. "Science" as opposed to "theory" or "teaching" seems to
mean that there are a great many principles and results generally
accepted by practitioners, and inconsistent theories or teachings are
viewed by outsiders as well as insiders as bearing a high burden of
proof, with the community of practitioners as the judges. If that
isn't the case then outsiders can't distinguish science from
non-science, and scientists become a sort of invisible church, an odd
situation.
(It's good to hear from you again as well, by the way.)
Professor Sills writes:
>His thesis, after all, argues that gnostic attitudes are pervasive and
>poorly-understood. Compare the strategy of Alasdair MacIntyre in the
>first chapter of After Virtue, where he points out that the initial
>implausibility of his proposal is in fact predicted by his proposal,
>and therefore should not be taken as decisive against it.
A formally similar strategy is followed by Marxists and Freudians.
They say their views constitute science and those who reject them,
often with hostility, do so not on rational grounds but because they
are as their science explains in the grip of false consciousness or
whatever. Outraged rejection therefore confirms the validity of the
"science".
I don't mean to suggest anything against Voegelin's views in the
foregoing, by the way. I'm just trying to provoke comment on what the
relation is between his understanding of things and something that can
be called "science" since that term came up. The question seems to me
to touch on some interesting issues although I'm not sure whether it
matters to anyone else.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Was raw tap ale not a reviver at one lap at Warsaw?
From jk Sat Nov 2 04:26:11 1996
Subject: Re: Bad news, good news
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Sat, 2 Nov 1996 04:26:11 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19961101193148.006bc7f4@swva.net> from "Seth Williamson" at Nov 1, 96 07:31:59 pm
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Seth writes:
> This same prediction was made two or three years ago by the culture
> wars professor at U.Va., James Davison Hunter.
Didn't Brent Bozell's _Triumph_ start this off at the beginning of the
'70s?
It's interesting that the "down with the American regime" line of
thought should now be picked up by a neocon mag of all things. You're
either on the bus or off the bus, and it seems that once you get off
the liberal bus you very quickly become an extremist from the viewpoint
of the established order.
Somehow I connect this with the enlistment of _Commentary_ and _The New
Criterion_ in the neo-creationist movement.
> Whether it's a big enough minority to trigger a party realignment, I
> don't know. But I think the possibility is there.
The Buchanan campaign shows how difficult it is to do a party
realignment when all respectable opinion and all mainstream channels of
political information and discussion are so utterly against it. It's
going against gravity. The immediate prospect is for greater
insistence on public conformity (because the alternative is what is
understood as an abyss of extremism), greater alienation, and more
gated communities.
> What worries me is the increasingly likely possibility that we, in
> the West, have already irrevocably chosen death.
If we have done so in our public life then our public life will die.
It's too bad -- public life has been our long suit in the West and if
it goes then a valuable and irreplaceable part of us dies. Still, life
goes on even if we have to carry it on in separate enclaves speaking
our separate private languages.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Was raw tap ale not a reviver at one lap at Warsaw?
From jk Sat Nov 2 13:54:12 1996
Subject: Re: Bad news, good news
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Sat, 2 Nov 1996 13:54:12 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Nov 2, 96 03:04:03 pm
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Francesca writes:
> My own view is that there can be a Christian politics when there
> is a broadly Christian consensus about religion and about morals.
> When there is not, the notion of Christian political action
> becomes a dangerous fantasy. I think we are clearly in this
> state now.
I'm not sure what you mean by "a Christian politics." I suppose that
under any circumstances one could attempt in political matters to act
as well as possible by Christian standards. Part of that would no
doubt be to promote things that Christians view as good and inhibit
things Christians view as bad. To the extent the consensus is against
you and you can't find common ground or bring people around to form a
new consensus you're going to lose of course. Also, attempts to
promote or inhibit anything by law can work out badly so you have to be
smart when you choose your concrete goals. But what's the specific
problem that you see?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Was raw tap ale not a reviver at one lap at Warsaw?
From jk Sat Nov 2 16:33:46 1996
Subject: Re: Bad news, good news
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Sat, 2 Nov 1996 16:33:46 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Nov 2, 96 07:36:58 pm
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Thus Francesca:
> In the first 300 years, Christians lived in the Roman empire. The
> only political action which they took was precisely the theological
> action of refusing to burn that pinch of incense.
They didn't have the vote, though. If Christians had been appointed to
positions in which they were responsible for ultimate review of what
the government did and participated in the choice of government
officials, what would they have done? As it happens, everyone on this
list holds such a position. Also, suppose the Roman government had not
only collected taxes, built public works and enforced order but also
had responsibilities that are necessarily entwined with day-to-day
moral life like education of the young and care for the aged and those
who for whatever reason are short of money?
> Politicians can only act on such widespread intuitions. This is what
> I mean when I say that politics is based in consensus - I mean
> widespread gut-feelings, for example, about morality.
What politicians do has to be consistent with such intuitions. At any
time some things are realistic and some are not. The intuitions are
not simply given though but develop through public discussion, which
often gets its focus through campaigns for concrete ends. They are
also full of tensions and ambiguities, and so develop through how they
are given a practical form that resolves the tensions and ambiguities
one way or another and establishes the resolution as normative social
reality.
> The problem I see is that the moral consensus is lacking for a
> genuine Christian political action.
It always has been. Political action must always draw most of its
support from motives and aspirations that are not specifically
Christian. Finding common ground is a necessary part of politics.
> Yes, there is in America a Conservative Coalition - I think, as
> advanced by Buchanan, they got a tiny portion of the Republican
> votes.
The effect of an out-of-mainstream political movement can't be judged
by how many votes they get. Their importance is more their effect on
the range of political possibilities. Such effects may not seem
pragmatically important for a long time but in the end they tell.
> It is my contention that, where there is not a sufficient 'gut'
> consensus for it, Christian morality is not a political possibility.
If Christian morality is true morality then political and social
reality can only approximate it more or less crudely. A society wholly
opposed to it however could not exist. So why not view it as something
to build toward in all states of the world?
> It is better, for example, as Hauerwas & Willemon say, to run
> 'save-a-baby' homes than politically to combat abortion.
The laws relating to abortion could be anywhere from what they are in
China to what John Lofton would approve. What's wrong with keeping the
nature of those laws alive as a political issue? People are ambivalent
on the issue so there ought to be room for common ground short of our
current regime in the United States. Would it be unwise for example to
try to make partial-birth abortions illegal or to propose waiting
periods or parental notification in the case of a pregnant minor?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Was raw tap ale not a reviver at one lap at Warsaw?
From jk Sat Nov 2 22:39:17 1996
Subject: Re: Bad news, good news
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Sat, 2 Nov 1996 22:39:17 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Nov 2, 96 11:23:49 pm
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Also sprach Francesca:
> If the Roman Empire had been democratic, would any elected officials
> have been Christians?
Maybe none would have. Christians would nonetheless have been
obligated to exercise their political power in accordance with their
understanding of what is good.
> this would be far less important, and less effective, in the long run
> than the task of creating Christianitas (Christian folk).
I agree. Before you reform others you reform yourself. You can get
that from Confucius, you don't even have to go to Christianity. All
I've argued for is the reality of our obligations with respect to
society in general, not their primacy.
> I think that is true, but do you think the pro-life campaign has done
> anything to affect the consensus about morals in this past twenty-five
> years?
I do think it's had an effect. After all, what we're comparing with is
a situation in which nobody at all is objecting to free abortion. If
you don't win today keeping the issue alive wherever its relevant,
including in politics, is still a worthwhile achievement.
> in the States, it is vociferous, loud, noisy, sometimes very angry
> sounding, and - just as ineffective as the movement here.
Its pragmatic effectiveness is of course limited by the power and
dominant ideology of the courts here.
> is there any longer any common ground?
There is always common ground. It's true that the common ground may be
sufficient only for a very loose political connection, which is what I
think we're heading for.
> It seems to me that what you call an out-of-mainstream political
> movement and what I call an a-political movement may come down to the
> same thing! :)
It's possible.
> An example of community as opposed to a State action: I'm talking
> about one school principle getting his students to read the Classic
> texts. As distinguished from State law trying to impose the Classic
> texts.
Suppose the State prescribes the curriculum and it doesn't include
Classic texts. To permit the principal to do what you suggest would
require political action.
The modern state by nature is opposed to community. It wants to
prescribe itself what the social ordering principles are to be in
accordance with its own goals and rationality. That is for example the
significance of "social justice."
> But, suppose you have just ten dollars to give to charity. Is it
> more likely to do good in a post-abortion counselling centre, for
> women who have breakdowns after abortion, or in the political
> pro-life movement?
I agree that it is more important to build up a way of life among
people already inclined toward it than to induce others to live that
way.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Was raw tap ale not a reviver at one lap at Warsaw?
From jk Sun Nov 3 18:23:43 1996
Subject: Re: Bad news, good news
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Sun, 3 Nov 1996 18:23:43 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Nov 3, 96 03:59:22 pm
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Francesca Murphy writes:
>> Suppose the State prescribes the curriculum and it doesn't include
>> Classic texts. To permit the principal to do what you suggest would
>> require political action.
>Do the States (individually or generally) actually prohibit the use of
>certain texts?
As its form suggests, the example was hypothetical. The tendency in
public education in the United States is toward centralization and
uniformity on lines favored by education professionals. Their
allegiance is to a society organized on rational/bureaucratic rather
than traditional/community lines and their understanding of the good is
hedonistic and utilitarian. That tendency affects the ability of local
schools to define their own goals.
The more general point is that Christians and others are likely to find
it necessary to engage in politics defensively, to prevent them and
their children from being assimilated to something they detest, at
least until we have something far closer to a libertarian state -- for
example until the state gets out of the business of raising children
through public schooling etc.
>In one sense, one hears that government keeps growing. But, on the
>other hand, very few people seem any longer to believe in Statist
>solutions with respect, for example, to Welfare. Thus, Clinton
>signing the bill which effectively ends the New Deal and, in England,
>the Labour party remaking themselves as a Tory Mark II party, appear
>to be signs that most people realize that Welfarism, which is at least
>one form of Statism, doesn't work. Economic statism is on the way out;
>so some people try social statism, with laws to regulate the family
>etc. Is it too optimistic to expect that this is one last throw from
>people who just are addicted to running people's lives and must have
>some sort of 'ideal' by which to live, and that it will be far more
>short-lived than its economic predecessor?
People don't like any particular welfare system, but it seems to me
that the fundamental principle that the state is responsible for the
welfare of each individual remains unchanged and is not going to change
soon or easily. People can't get by without believing in providence of
some sort, and as you would no doubt point out our public life is
unlikely in the forseeable future to be based on belief in divine
providence. That means that to the extent we have a morally coherent
public life it's going to involve the protection and support of an
earthly providence. While that principle remains welfare reform will
always turn out in the end to be rhetoric and symbolism.
Also, there are multiple ways in which the modern state makes community
unlikely. The principle of state responsibility for the welfare of
each individual is one. Another very important one is the principle of
antidiscrimination, that it is a basic function of the state to prevent
ethnicity, sex and sex roles, religious allegiances etc., from
affecting social position, opportunities, or material well-being. That
principle is more strongly held now than ever -- for respectable
opinion it's absolutely fundamental to morality. It is hard for me
though to imagine actual communities coexisting to any great extent
with that principle and with the administrative requirements and
machinery needed to vindicate it.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Was raw tap ale not a reviver at one lap at Warsaw?
From jk Sun Nov 3 18:42:12 1996
Subject: Re: Why Clinton will be re-elected (was Bad news, good news)
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Sun, 3 Nov 1996 18:42:12 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Nov 3, 96 09:59:19 pm
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> I wonder if this is partly due to conservativism rebounding on itself
> Conservatives have been encouraging people to ask this pragmatic
> question for years. Then, they work themselves up into a frenzy
> about Clinton's immorality and expect people to vote against him on
> account of it.
It's a problem. The victory of liberalism has meant that the moral
coherence of our public life relies on the ideal of social justice --
state promotion of equal treatment, meaning at least antidiscrimination
and guarantees against material deprivation. There's too little in our
common life to which conservatives can appeal in response other than
pure individual self-interest. So when social justice doesn't work,
and the successful appeal to pure self-interest is made, public life
with moral standards, common purpose, etc. disappears. (Anyway, that
in substance has been the theory I've been presenting.)
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Was raw tap ale not a reviver at one lap at Warsaw?
From jk Sun Nov 3 18:52:24 1996
Subject: Re: natural right and history -- preface
To: leo-strauss@freelance.com
Date: Sun, 3 Nov 1996 18:52:24 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <35c.2383.124@freelance.com> from "Cameron Wybrow" at Nov 3, 96 03:30:29 am
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> In particular, I would like to pose an exegetical question for any
> and all takers.
> "To avoid a common misunderstanding, I should add the remark that the
> appeal to a higher law, if that law is understood in terms of "our"
> tradition as distinguished from "nature," is historicist in
> character, if not in intention."
> I am particularly interested in the phrases "common misunderstanding"
> and "'our' tradition".
What's the obscurity? People are always talking about the Western or
Judeo-Christian traditions as support for some principle or other
(human dignity, democracy, freedom and equality, whatever), often with
the implication that the principle is good or even universally binding
but without a clear basis for moving from the statement about a
particular tradition to a judgment of goodness or universality.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Was raw tap ale not a reviver at one lap at Warsaw?
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Mon Nov 4 17:30:12 EST 1996
Article: 8376 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: things fall apart?
Date: 4 Nov 1996 15:43:52 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 49
Message-ID: <55lki8$p18@panix.com>
References: <55djs2$mf5@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
"James C. Langcuster" writes:
>In the meantime, what event or series of events do you perceive leading
>up to this breakdown into separate ethno-relgious enclaves? Economic
>upheavel, internecine warfare -- or both, perhaps?
Something less dramatic, I think. People will just arrange their lives
so more and more they deal with people they feel they can understand
and trust and avoid people they don't. In much of the United States
most new housing is already taking the form of common-interest housing
developments, with loads of covenants determining what people can and
can't do and a board of directors representing property owners taking
the place of local government in many respects. That will continue,
and Kiryas Joel has shown us some uses to which such things can be put.
In small business you deal with people you feel comfortable with, and
small business is doing well. Homeschooling and various school choice
plans will continue to make headway. As I suggested in my previous
post the mass media will be absorbed by a super internet and then in
effect be partitioned so that they will diversify rather than unify.
The process is being driven less by anything mechanical like
communications technology than by the disappearance of a common public
life with common assumptions as to what things are good and right.
That's what contemporary liberalism and libertarianism are all about,
and that's what multiculturalism, postmodernism, and the political
success of a pathologically fragmented person like Bill Clinton is all
about. But without common standards and goods only cooperation at
extreme arms' length is possible, and people can't live like that.
>What's so fascinating about this thesis is that is seems improbable in
>one context but downright prophetic in another.
If you say "the world is going to change radically" you've taken leave
of common sense, so it's not clear if you're a crank or a prophet.
>What he finds most astonishing is the number of blacks of in the South
>who yearn for the days when they were in control of their own social
>institutions -- schools first and foremost.
The post-60s regime has been catastrophic for most blacks. Their
overall economic progress had previously been quite rapid, but after
the early '70s it stopped altogether. And apart from money, it says
something about their lives that rates of incarceration, illegitimacy,
murder etc. post-60s went through the roof. People who don't have many
resources are injured most of all by the disappearance of community,
and the welfare/civil rights state makes community impossible.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Was raw tap ale not a reviver at one lap at Warsaw?
From jk Wed Nov 6 07:57:47 1996
Subject: Re: Carrying on in Politcal Theory
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon)
Date: Wed, 6 Nov 1996 07:57:47 -0500 (EST)
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Ed Kent writes:
> Rather property consists of rights and duties, powers and liabilities
> -- legal relations. A property system is best compared to a game
> with rules that determine what plays players can o cannot make.
> These rules sometimes relate to things, but for the most part actions
> permitted or not-permitted are what is central to the property game.
>
> Can I go the the hospital and get treated? Can I go to the store and
> buy some food? Can I ride on the highway? Can I go to a movie?
> Whatever. All these and many others constitute my 'property'.
That isn't the whole story. In the U.S. federal constitution where it
says that a deprivation of property requires due process of law and a
taking of property requires just compensation the word "property" I
think mostly means "thing ". Apart from that understanding I don't see
how the provisions can be given coherent sense.
"Property system" might be defined to include any system of rules like
the ones you mention. But a system of private property that mostly
runs itself without constant administration, ad hoc rulemaking and
adjudication by the government, like the common-law system without
which those constitutional provisions make no sense, requires rules
that permit people to think of their property as fundamentally the
collection of things that they own. So the conception of property as
things remains an important one to those who are skeptical of state
administration of economic and social life.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Was raw tap ale not a reviver at one lap at Warsaw?
From jk Wed Nov 6 12:25:20 1996
Subject: Re: Carrying on in Political Theory
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon)
Date: Wed, 6 Nov 1996 12:25:20 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <199611061511.PAA12327@abdn.ac.uk> from "GC-Etchison, Michael" at Nov 6, 96 08:56:00 am
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> Is a contract property? American common law seems to think it
> is.
At common law, property rights were treated as "choses in action" and
thus assimilated to "things."
"Chose" is of course the French word for "thing." A "chose in action"
is defined variously as "personal property rights which may not be
claimed by taking physical possession but only enforced or claimed by
action," "an incorporeal right to something not in one's possession, a
right to sue," or "a right to receive or recover a debt, demand, or
damages on a cause of action ex contractu or for a tort or omission of
a duty." To my mind the definitions suggest an inclination to treat
immateriality and absence of physical possession as qualities that have
to be explained away when classifying something as property.
Beyond language, the tendency at common law was to construe contracts
literally in accordance with their terms, rather than in accordance
with the decisionmaker's view of policy, equity or whatever, and to
treat contractual rights as freely transferable, thus making
contractual rights as objective, impersonal and thinglike as possible.
Some contractual rights (those embodied in negotiable instruments) were
even more thinglike because they were identified with ownership of a
piece of paper enbodying them. I take it though that the question
relates to situations in which the "thing" classification seems as
little appropriate as possible.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Was raw tap ale not a reviver at one lap at Warsaw?
From jk Thu Nov 7 05:36:11 1996
Subject: Re: does strauss make an unequivocal distinction between nature and custom
To: leo-strauss@freelance.com
Date: Thu, 7 Nov 1996 05:36:11 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <35c.2406.124@freelance.com> from "Lawrence Casse" at Nov 7, 96 00:24:32 am
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> What is puzzling is the pious respect accorded the opinions and
> practices of the orthodox by some participants on this list who
> clearly do not share the belief in the divine origin of these
> commandments.
>
> But perhaps it is not so puzzling after all - if we believe with
> Pascal that nature is inacessable, then custom or tradition rules.
Because it settles the issue and lets life go forward.
Is there more to it than that, though? Although undesigned and
unrationalized, systems of tradition and custom such as language and
accepted morality reflect the experience of a great many people over
long periods of time. The result is implicit knowledge of nature.
Philosophy can add to that knowledge but can't dispense with it.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Was raw tap ale not a reviver at one lap at Warsaw?
From jk Thu Nov 7 07:36:13 1996
Subject: Re: Carrying on in Politcal Theory
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neocon)
Date: Thu, 7 Nov 1996 07:36:13 -0500 (EST)
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Ekent@brooklyn.cuny.edu (Edward Kent) writes:
>You are quite correct that the US Constitution's reference to property
>undoubtedly reflects the Lockean notion of property primarily as things
>-- land, money conceived as something indestructable, etc.
That notion isn't just an historical oddity, though. It serves a
function: for small government to work, property must in general be
easily recognizable and transferable in daily life by ordinary people so
that government doesn't have to administer everything. That will be
possible if the system of property rules facilitates thinking of
property as "things."
>But the fact of the matter as any one trained in law now knows is that
>the 'things' are the least of one's problems.
It's not a "fact of the matter" issue.
Practicing lawyers do tend to analyze property into its parts, just as
doctors tend to look for particular malfunctions rather than thinking of
the body as a whole. That's the way technicians handle specific
problems they deal with.
The question is not the best technical way to handle problems, though,
but whether the "thing" conception coordinates legal rules usefully, and
if so to what end. Legal theoreticians these days tend to deconstruct
property into a loose collection of duties and rights for a variety of
reasons. Some of those reasons are political.
>And then there are all the extras that people don't recognize as their
>property. Here in NYC we have a host of free or virtually free
>institutions that we can 'use'. The Metropolitan Museum costs a penny
>still. Central Park has a host of free entertainments if one knows
>one's way around.
The issue is whether all benefits and burdens made available or
protected by society are to be put in the same category, or whether some
of them are to be treated as "private property" that can not rightfully
be dealt with as part of the _res publica_. Dissolving property into
loosely connected rights and obligations makes it hard to do the latter.
My rights with respect to my car become an issue of the same kind as
what I have to pay to get into the Metropolitan Museum.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Anuta Catuna (winner, 1996 NYC women's marathon)
From jk Sun Nov 10 17:42:29 1996
Subject: Re: Colson on Emotivism
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Sun, 10 Nov 1996 17:42:29 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <199611102054.PAA20161@gabriel.cc.emory.edu> from "Martha Bishop" at Nov 10, 96 03:54:00 pm
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> The Court recently ruled that when believers help pass laws that
> express disapproval of certain behaviors, that in itself constitutes
> hating the sinner.
> In the words of Gov. Roy Romer, what Coloradans wanted was "no
> discrimination based on sexual orientation, but no special privileges
> either."
Since Proposition 2 mentioned sexual orientation rather than conduct
it's open to apologists for the Court to claim that it had to do with
attributes of persons rather than conduct. It's not a good argument,
but lawyers make specious arguments to avoid issues and get rid of
problems. For example, one Court of Appeals has asserted, in
connection with the gays-in-the-military issue, that sexual orientation
provides "no reasonable basis" for conclusions as to the likelihood of
sexual conduct. So hey, presto, no problem. Ibsen's _Enemy of the
People_ isn't about lawyers, but it should have been.
The reason "orientation not conduct" is a bad argument, by the way, is
that any clear distinction between orientation and conduct would almost
always be unworkable. The only way to permit people to act based on
their moral judgement of conduct is to permit them to take evident
orientation into account. The Court doesn't want them to do the
latter; therefore, as Chuck Colson says, it has forbidden them to do
the former.
> In effect, Romer_ declared that moral principles are nothing but
> _hostile feelings--that traditional morality is nothing but a mask
> for emotional neurosis.
>
> There's a reason for this dramatic shift in legal philosophy: the
> justices have swallowed an emotivist theory of morality.
I'm not sure this is quite so. The justices don't think traditional
morality is garbage because they think all morality is garbage. They
are often highly moralistic, as Kennedy is in this very case. Rather,
their theory of value and view of the proper organization of social
life is different from that upon which traditional morality is based.
They think of the Good as aggregate individual material satisfactions,
and proper social organization as a rational technocratic setup that to
a degree combines maximization of those satisfactions with their equal
distribution. Traditional morals have different presuppositions and
goals, so the Justices reject them and in fact can't even understand
what they are about. Hence the Kennedy opinion.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Anuta Catuna (winner, 1996 NYC women's marathon)
From jk Tue Nov 12 07:31:07 1996
Subject: Re: Colson on Emotivism
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 07:31:07 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19961111182715.006c9e00@swva.net> from "Seth Williamson" at Nov 11, 96 06:49:44 pm
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> But the whole thing is beside the point anyway, isn't it? Suppose we
> discover there is a heritable component to pedophilia? Does this
> suddenly make it OK? I know you are less than impressed with this
> line of thinking, but I think I would give it even less weight than
> you.
The significance of the concept of sexual orientation is certainly
exaggerated. People think that to say someone is homosexually oriented
is to say that engaging in homosexual acts is necessary to his essence,
so a claim that homosexual acts are wrong is a fundamental attack on
the person himself. That's nonsense.
The concept does make some sense though and it doesn't depend on
innateness. Even if there were no hereditary component homosexual
orientation could still be experienced by homosexuals as given prior to
any choices they make. (Most of us experience nationality that way.)
As to its significance, it's the sort of distinction lawyers find
important. As an example, people aren't convicted and punished for
being thieves but for particular acts of theft. If the state wants to
prove a particular act of theft it can't introduce the fact that the
guy's been habitually stealing things for years into evidence. If he
looks, talks and acts like a crook in the courtroom the prosecution
will be pleased but that's not the sort of thing that gets treated as
evidence sufficient to uphold a verdict.
Private discrimination isn't the same as criminal punishment of course.
The distinction between general orientation and specific conduct *is*
the sort of issue lawyers tend to discuss, though, and it seemed worth
sorting through since Colson brushed over it in discussion something
some lawyers had done.
> But isn't Colson simply saying that the emotivist theory has
> it that all moral judgements come down to whims or moods? It would
> seem that you can be self-righteous and censorious while asserting
> this. In fact, one of my colleagues is quite explicit about it.
That's what the emotivist theory is, but I don't think you have to
understand the Court as buying into it. The dominant theory on the
Court seems to be that persons and their choices have objective value
but what is chosen has merely subjective value. Each person posits his
own values. The values so posited are valid only for that person and
only while he continues to posit them, but as long as he posits them
their validity for that person is objective moral fact. Objective
morality then becomes the science of coordinating the private
evaluative worlds to minimize practical clashes. The Court sees itself
as the supreme authoritative interpreter of that objective morality.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Anuta Catuna (winner, 1996 NYC women's marathon)
From jk Tue Nov 12 16:29:17 1996
Subject: Re: Colson on Emotivism
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 16:29:17 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <20253304@prancer.Dartmouth.EDU> from "Gregory D. Wadlinger" at Nov 12, 96 08:30:39 am
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> Yes, it's inconsistent. But it seems to me that it's
> impossible to be a liberal in the late 20th century +without+ being
> inconsistent. It's a job requirement, so to speak.
> --- end of quoted material ---
> ...sort of like saying, "STAMP OUT INTOLERANCE!"
Positive tolerance -- it's sort of an analog of "positive freedom." If
people have the right to an environment free of bigotry then the
employer, government or whatever has the obligation to control how
people feel about each other.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Anuta Catuna (winner, 1996 NYC women's marathon)
From jk Tue Nov 12 16:43:39 1996
Subject: Re: Colson on Emotivism
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 16:43:39 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <199611121728.MAA27711@graf.cc.emory.edu> from "Martha Bishop" at Nov 12, 96 12:28:31 pm
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> I think the pragmatic (if that's the right word) approach of the
> present majority of justices seems to be bringing them inevitably
> into an open clash with transcendent morality as espoused by
> traditional religion, thereby increasing the risk of "practical
> clashes". There doesn't seem to be any way to bridge this gap in the
> concept of morality--which is what the symposium in _First Things_ is
> all about. Or is there? Colson recommended that transcendentalists
> make a lot of fuss to alert the practical-minded Court as to what
> it's getting into.
The Court's tendency has been to hold that it is unconstitutional to
give legal effect or advantage to any morality (other than their own)
that purports to bind anyone other than the person holding it. People
made a fuss about abortion and the Court's response was "Well, maybe we
would have reconsidered our holding in _Roe v. Wade_ at some point, but
you people made a fuss so just to teach you a lesson we won't."
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Anuta Catuna (winner, 1996 NYC women's marathon)
From jk Tue Nov 12 21:51:09 1996
Subject: Re: Colson on Emotivism
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 21:51:10 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19961112185852.006b3a4c@swva.net> from "Seth Williamson" at Nov 12, 96 07:01:41 pm
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> You would agree, though, that this is more or less what the
> activist courts are saying? That being homosexual is analogous or
> exactly the same as being a persecuted minority like blacks before
> civil rights?
Sure.
> But wouldn't you say that the condition of being homosexual
> means that you have to feel sexual desire for somebody of the same
> sex? I can believe that this might be the case for some, perhaps
> many, homosexuals. But it would seems that the etiology of the
> condition, whatever it may be, says nothing about its moral status.
> This is what bothers people about activist court decisions--they are
> telling us we have no right to make moral judgements about actions,
> whether free will is implicated in those actions or not.
The idea seems to be that being homosexual is an involuntary part of
personal identity, and that it's of overriding morally importance for
the world to be equally suitable for everybody. The former is implicit
in the presently accepted notion of "sexual orientation" and the latter
is the principle behind multiculturalism, the Americans with
Disabilities Act, and to a large extent the abortion decisions (if
women can't get abortions they'll find it harder to pursue some
activities, so the world won't be equal for them).
> I'm still not clear on how you can make a convincing--hell,
> even a half-convincing case--that orientation must be taken into
> account when it comes to the legal or moral status of homosexual
> behavior.
Suppose you have an extra apartment in your house and you decide not to
rent it to a homosexual couple because they are homosexual. Since you
(presumably) have no way of knowing anything about their sexual conduct
apart from the fact that they look, act and talk like homosexuals you
are discriminating based on their apparent orientation. Therefore, the
argument goes, any state constitutional provision (like Proposition 2)
that protects your right to do so will be a provision protecting
discrimination based on apparent orientation rather than on conduct.
> >The dominant theory on the Court seems to be that persons and their
> >choices have objective value but what is chosen has merely
> >subjective value.
>
> I guess I don't see the distinction you're making between the
> choice somebody makes and "what is chosen."
Sorry for the obscurity. If I like strawberry milkshakes, pornographic
movies or the _via mystica_ the objective value the Court recognizes is
my choice rather than the thing chosen considered apart from my choice.
> Sounds like you're saying they believe that one's right to choose is
> inviolate--but that it makes no difference whatever gets chosen.
That's about it. Think Mario Cuomo -- he says his personal views on
abortion are irrelevant to where he comes out on "the choice issue."
> Ordinary people--I think even the ones that Allen Bloom found to be
> thoroughgoing relativists--always regard some things as are always
> and everywhere wrong. What gets chosen is of more import than the
> right to make the choice.
Is that still true?
> Over and over again they have made moral, not legal, arguments--and
> pretty shoddy ones at that--and tried to pass them off as legal
> decisions.
The technique has been to break new ground in an opinion written by the
most shameless justice -- at first Douglas, because he was so arrogant,
then Blackmun and now Kennedy, who are too stupid to feel shame. Once
that's done the ones with more legal self-respect can claim to be bound
by _stare decisis_.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Anuta Catuna (winner, 1996 NYC women's marathon)
From jk Tue Nov 12 22:20:24 1996
Subject: Re: Colson on Emotivism
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU (Newman discussion list)
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 22:20:24 -0500 (EST)
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I just thought I would post some exerpts from the majority opinion in
_Planned Parenthood v. Casey_ (1992) that seemed relevant to the
discussion.
Men and women of good conscience can disagree, and we suppose some
always shall disagree, about the profound moral and spiritual
implications of terminating a pregnancy, even in its earliest stage.
Some of us [i.e., the justices voting with the majority] as
individuals find abortion offensive to our most basic principles of
morality, but that cannot control our decision. Our obligation is to
define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code.
At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of
existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human
life.
... for two decades of economic and social developments, people have
organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their
views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the
availability of abortion in the event that contraception should
fail. The ability of women to participate equally in the economic
and social life of the Nation has been facilitated by their ability
to control their reproductive lives ... The Constitution serves
human values, and while the effect of reliance on Roe cannot be
exactly measured, neither can the certain cost of overruling Roe for
people who have ordered their thinking and living around that case
be dismissed.
Where, in the performance of its judicial duties, the Court decides
a case in such a way as to resolve the sort of intensely divisive
controversy reflected in Roe and those rare, comparable cases, its
decision has a dimension that the resolution of the normal case does
not carry. It is the dimension present whenever the Court's
interpretation of the Constitution calls the contending sides of a
national controversy to end their national division by accepting a
common mandate rooted in the Constitution.
Like the character of an individual, the legitimacy of the Court
must be earned over time. So, indeed, must be the character of a
Nation of people who aspire to live according to the rule of law.
Their belief in themselves as such a people is not readily separable
from their understanding of the Court invested with the authority to
decide their constitutional cases and speak before all others for
their constitutional ideals. If the Court's legitimacy should be
undermined, then, so would the country be in its very ability to see
itself through its constitutional ideals. The Court's concern with
legitimacy is not for the sake of the Court but for the sake of the
Nation to which it is responsible.
The Court's duty in the present case is clear. In 1973, it
confronted the already-divisive issue of governmental power to limit
personal choice to undergo abortion, for which it provided a new
resolution based on the due process guaranteed by the Fourteenth
Amendment. Whether or not a new social consensus is developing on
that issue, its divisiveness is no less today than in 1973, and
pressure to overrule the decision, like pressure to retain it, has
grown only more intense. A decision to overrule Roe's essential
holding under the existing circumstances would address error, if
error there was, at the cost of both profound and unnecessary damage
to the Court's legitimacy, and to the Nation's commitment to the
rule of law. It is therefore imperative to adhere to the essence of
Roe's original decision, and we do so today.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Anuta Catuna (winner, 1996 NYC women's marathon)
From jk Wed Nov 13 18:09:12 1996
Subject: Re: emotional reactions
To: tampsa@vt.edu
Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 18:09:12 -0500 (EST)
Cc: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU (Newman discussion list)
In-Reply-To: <328A611C.3A38@vt.edu> from "Morton Nadler" at Nov 13, 96 04:00:28 pm
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> The world's religions have very different views of homosexuality.
Which ones treat it favorably? Islam views it as a sin, although it's
a common enough vice in many Muslim countries. The culture is against
it in India and China. I don't know whether religious considerations
are important there.
> In any case it is not moral "relativism" to say that it is nobody's
> business to impose ones own morality on others. Those who consider
> homosexuality a sin and an "abomination before god" are entitled to
> this consideration; but why do they try to impose this on others, who
> may not subscribe to this view.
One way to look at the issue is to ask whether public standards of
sexual conduct serve a function and if so what that function is and
what public standards best serve it. For a discussion see
http://www.panix.com/~jk/sex.html.
> Now, that attempt to impose that view leads to the vilest kinds of
> discrimination--nay, persecution, going as far as murder--against those
> who don't subscribe.
In living memory the view that it's OK to have a government has led to
stupefying evils. Most of us continue to hold that view because we
believe that there are necessary social functions that in general are
served far better if there is a government than if there is not.
Similarly for public standards of sexual conduct that go beyond
forbidding coercion.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Anuta Catuna (winner, 1996 NYC women's marathon)
From news.panix.com!panix!feed1.news.erols.com!howland.erols.net!newspump.sol.net!iag.net!rutgers!igor.rutgers.edu!christian Fri Nov 15 10:53:13 EST 1996
Article: 87386 of soc.religion.christian
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: On Bishop Spong
Date: 14 Nov 1996 23:22:13 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <56e9gm$7hn@geneva.rutgers.edu> vngiles@sirius.com (Vera Giles) writes:
>According to what I am saying above, something certainly did happen --
>Jesus' followers received the Holy Spirit and their eyes were opened to
>the true meaning of the crucifixion. That is what they were prepared to
>die for. The stone tomb is a symbol whose power is limited by taking it
>literally.
What do you mean by "the receipt of the Holy Spirit?" It sounds like
some sort of communication from God. Was it a psychological process
that can be accounted for purely as such, or was it something that was
inexplicable apart from God's intervention?
If the former it seems it wasn't really a communication from God any
more than the outcome of any other psychological process is a
communication from God; if I think I received a communication from you
and then realize you had nothing special to do with it and it was all
in my mind I stop looking on it as a communication from you. If on the
other hand God intervened, it was a miracle and I don't see the
advantage from the standpoint of rationality, modern believability or
whatever in saying "the physical resurrection didn't happen but some
other miracle did."
Also, why is the power of the resurrection limited by taking it
literally? If a man kisses his wife it doesn't limit the power of the
symbol if he literally kisses his wife rather than referring to some
other aspect of their life together as a figurative kiss. The whole
idea of incarnation, I thought, is that the Word becomes flesh -- that
what literally happens has meaning. What's wrong with that?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Anuta Catuna (winner, 1996 NYC women's marathon)
From news.panix.com!panix!feed1.news.erols.com!howland.erols.net!newspump.sol.net!iag.net!rutgers!igor.rutgers.edu!christian Fri Nov 15 10:53:16 EST 1996
Article: 87398 of soc.religion.christian
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: The death of Christain Social Justice
Date: 14 Nov 1996 23:24:17 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <56e9el$7g3@geneva.rutgers.edu> duncan.vinson@sewanee.edu (Duncan Vinson) writes:
> When Joseph was in Egypt, the pharoah had a dream which Joseph
>interpreted to mean that there will be seven more years of plenty, and
>then seven years of famine. Therefore, he ordered all to give the
>government one-fifth of their crops to store for the famine. When famine
>came, these crops were not all distributed to those who contributed them,
>but rather to those who needed them. (Gen 41.)
The crops weren't distributed but sold, so that by the end of the
famine Pharoah owned everything in Egypt and the Egyptians (except for
the priests) had been reduced to slavery. Gen. 47:13ff.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Anuta Catuna (winner, 1996 NYC women's marathon)
From bit.listserv.christia Sun Nov 17 06:12:51 1996
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From: Jim Kalb
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Subject: Re: Left, Right, and a Better World
"Zachary T. Frey" writes:
>>if government tries to remake society, especially in accordance with
>>principles that are novel or have never been applied in nearly so
>>comprehensive a way, it's very unlikely to work and very likely to do a
>>lot of damage.
>
>When you look at history, constitutionally limited, representative
>government is a pretty novel principle which we Americans have applied
>in a pretty comprehensive way.
Not so novel. Representative institutions and the principle that the
king rules subject to the law were quite old in Europe. It was royal
absolutism and (in England) parliamentary absolutism that were modern
novelties. The notion that government can do things like do away with
poverty and eliminate the importance of sex roles and ethnic loyalties
is of course more recent yet.
>I don't think "novelty" should be such a problem. A foolish
>application of your principle just ends up reinforcing the worldly
>status quo. And as Christians, we ought to undertand that much of the
>status quo will be wicked and opposed to God, and *ought* to be
>challenged.
How much caution novelty requires depends on circumstances. If you're
using forceful means to intervene comprehensively in an extremely
complex system I think lots of caution is called for.
"Big government" means that the preferred mode of challenging the
status quo consists in supporting the issuance by people who know
little and care less about Christianity of complex systems of commands
backed by fines, prison sentences and men with guns. "Social policy"
requires belief in experts who understand how society works well enough
and are clever enough at controlling what people do that if you give
them enough administrative authority over the rest of us it will make
life better for all. I think we ought to be dubious of such things.
>government is not some alien institution, it is *us*. And why should we
>be frightened of ourselves? If we have _not_ attained that state, then
>that is the problem that needs to be fixed first.
Government is certainly not "us", least of all for Christians. That's
not a flaw, it's a necessary state of affairs. You might as well say
that GM is "us" because lots of people work there, its stock is widely
held and publicly traded, and they sell their products to the mass
market and respond to consumer preferences.
>It seems to me that the conservative approach is still an attempt to
>use "social technology" to effect desired changes in society. It's just
>that the preferred tecnology is limits on government and a l'aissez-
>faire economics, rather than a broader goverment and a more
>interventionist economics.
"Leave it alone" is an odd sort of technology.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Anuta Catuna (winner, 1996 NYC women's marathon)
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Date: Thu, 14 Nov 1996 11:56:10 -0500
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From: Jim Kalb
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Subject: Re: Pope and evolution
Tim Ikeda writes:
>This is the difficulty of introducing or developing a religious-based
>explanation of the world. As Daniel Dennett described, it's like
>playing tennis without a net.
Life is difficult. Anyone who tried to treat the whole of life as if it
were like the game of tennis would be mentally ill. The activity of
defining the rules of tennis and assessing the place of the game in
human life, for example, is carried on without anything like a net.
We try to understand the world as best we can, leaving nothing out.
Some parts of our knowledge can be formalized to a greater or lesser
degree. Others can not. That can not be an objection to the parts that
are less formalized since the more formal depends on the less formal.
>> Why are "special intervention" and "divine" in quotation marks?
>
>The ultimate sources of such interactions might be difficult to
>ascribe to God specifically.
The quotation marks seem to suggest that such an ascription would be
arbitrary to the point of losing meaning. Was that the intended point?
>Methodological naturalism is just a method or "program" of inquiry.
>It's not perfect, although it's one of the few methods that seems to
>work reasonably well.
What do you mean by "science" -- our knowledge of the world considered
as an ordered system, together with related standards and practices?
If not, it would be of interest to hear your definition. If so, then
there are certainly parts of science that methodological naturalism
can't account for. For example, our knowledge that others have
subjective experience that is in general like our own can't be
accounted for by m.n. because subjective experience itself can not be
accounted for that way. Ditto for our knowledge that concretizing
one's superiority to others through a campaign of murder and torture is
not the highest good of which man is capable. Ditto for our knowledge
of what will happen physically attributable to our knowledge of
intentions, for example my knowledge that the next character to appear
on my computer screen will be an #.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Anuta Catuna (winner, 1996 NYC women's marathon)
From bit.listserv.christia Thu Nov 21 06:41:37 1996
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~From: Jim Kalb
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
~Subject: Re: Pope and evolution
Tim Ikeda writes:
>But if an area can't be formalized, then one shouldn't try to analyze
>it using standard methods for formal processes.
Don't quite understand. What is fully formalized is mathematics. Other
fields of inquiry can be formalized to some extent. It it were wholly
impossible to formalize something -- to place it in systematic order --
it's hard to see how we could even talk about it.
The degree to which a field can be formalized productively can be itself
a matter for investigation and experiment. People argue for example
about the role of formal reasoning in ethics, the use of mathematics in
the social sciences, the value of systematic as opposed to aphoristic or
what-have-you philosophy or theology, etc. It's also true that a
particular formalization could be inappropriate.
>Yes, experience is subjective. But descriptions of experiences can be
>compared. That suggests that it's not too much of a stretch to
>conclude that others experience things similarly to ourselves. To be
>sure, it's axiomatic but it's going to be axiomatic in practically
>every system of knowledge.
"Naturalism" as people use it seems to consist in considering the world
as a system of publicly observable and measurable phenomena related by
laws of either invariable sequence or statistical correlation. So far
as I can tell, what we mean by subjective experience has no place in
such a system.
>But I do not agree with the notion which began this discussion, that
>methodological naturalism is contradictory to Christian beliefs. I
>think the two can be accomodated. Have we reached some consensus on
>this basic point yet?
I thought I clarified my view on the issue immediately when questioned
(in my reply in this thread to "Dr. Nancy's Sweetie"). My objection is
to considering methodological naturalism the criterion for well-founded
statements about the world, at least the observable world.
For example, is "life exists because God designed the world to be
hospitable to life and then intervened to bring life out of non-life" a
candidate for inclusion in the body of knowledge, observations,
theories, beliefs, variant speculations, practices, standards of
criticism etc. that constitutes our science of living things? It seems
to me that if it asserts anything rational at all it asserts it about
living things and so must be considered a theory to be considered as
part of our overall inquiry regarding living things. I have trouble
distinguishing a claim that it can't legitimately be considered as part
of biological inquiry from a claim that it could not possibly be a
rational statement about the world. The latter claim, though, seems to
me contradictory to Christian beliefs, which relate to a God who has
done particular things like creating the world and becoming incarnate
and which have characteristically held that God is to at least some
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Eva can ignite virtuosos out riveting in a cave.
From jk Sun Nov 17 19:59:54 1996
Subject: Re: Bork on Islands of Sanity
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Sun, 17 Nov 1996 19:59:54 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19961117171439.006b668c@swva.net> from "Seth Williamson" at Nov 17, 96 05:15:51 pm
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Seth:
>After reading Robert Bork's "Slouching Towards Gomorrah," let me report
>that he and Jim Kalb have been thinking along the same lines.
Good to be on the same side as my old teacher, although he's not the one
who taught me the full horrors of contemporary liberalism. Bruce
Ackerman, Owen Fiss, and other colleagues of his with whom I gather he
is not now on speaking terms did that.
>...Nor is the prospect of sheltered enclaves entirely consoling.
I don't like it at all. It's a denial of the public life that has been
a distinctive superiority of the West. But nostalgia gets us nowhere,
and I think s.a.'s are going to be the best that's available.
>Jim Kalb's response, as I understand it, is that the consequences of
>modern liberalism will prove so disastrous to the very notion of order
>that centralized authority will inevitably collapse, making outright
>dictatorship impossible. I'm not so sure that technology might prove
>him wrong.
The issue is whether liberals will maintain the energy and purity of
their bigotry. It seems unlikely. Why should they be purer than the
communists? Do the Clinton people seem particularly disciplined and
self-sacrificing?
Corrupt and inefficient tyranny will be possible and likely. Corrupt
and inefficient tyrants have many virtues, though. They have no
interest in reforming people, especially people who don't cause them
practical difficulties, who reduce the number of things they (as the
government) have to do, and whose way of life aims at goods other than
political dominion.
Technology is a collection of tools, and everything depends on who is
wielding them. A bunch of bureaucrats, each of whom is in it purely for
himself, isn't going to be able to use them as well as people whose way
of life is at stake. Remember what the actual effect of technology on
communism was. Orwell thought it would make it unbeatable, because the
TV would watch *you*, but it didn't work out that way.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Eva can ignite virtuosos out riveting in a cave.
From jk Wed Nov 20 08:40:34 1996
Subject: Re: Bork on Islands of Sanity
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Wed, 20 Nov 1996 08:40:34 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19961119201954.00701600@swva.net> from "Seth Williamson" at Nov 19, 96 08:20:10 pm
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> >Bruce Ackerman, Owen Fiss, and other colleagues of his with whom I
> >gather he is not now on speaking terms did that.
>
> Just curious...who are they and why aren't they speaking any more?
Notable liberal law professors. Bork's no longer a fellow member of
anything they view as respectable. Also, I understand that there are
hard feelings from the time of the confirmation hearings.
Fiss is a sort of Robespierre type, a moral fanatic. I'm told he
described the Bork hearings as a great exercise in democracy. I took a
seminar from Ackerman on his (then uncompleted) book _Social Justice in
the Liberal State_ that he won lots of awards for. I wouldn't have
been allowed to vote in his liberal state because I could not have
affirmed that the vision of the good of each of my fellow citizens was
as good as my own.
> What classes did you take from Bork?
Just antitrust. He started his professional life as an antitrust
lawyer. It wasn't that hard a course as he taught it. You'd go
through a case and he'd say "this is stupid" and tell you why he
thought it was stupid, intellectually corrupt, whatever.
> But the disease that is modern liberalism should not, strictly
> speaking, be compared to something as (relatively) coherent as
> Marxism. That, at least, was a world view or philosophy or address
> to existence. Liberalism is, by contrast, a mood. It is a revolt
> against what is normal and normative and healthy.
I think that Marxism contains a lot of mood -- that's why Marxist ideas
catch on so easily under some circumstances -- and that liberalism is
quite coherent in many respects. If it weren't coherent how could
political correctness even be possible? How would so many people who
after all aren't literally conspiring with each other know without much
thought what the right answer is on so many questions?
> Who was it that noted that, after the collapse of communism, American
> liberalism morphed into what he called "left eclecticism"? Feminism,
> eco-utopianism, homosexual activism, whatever. What they have in
> common is that they are a revolt against reality.
All consistent. The individual posits values, which are valuable only
because and to the extent the individual posits them. Therefore all
social arrangements and conceptions of nature that favor some people's
preferences over others are oppressive and must be done away with.
Therefore feminism and homosexual activism. Further, a new conception
of nature must be adopted that sees it as favoring the liberal moral
outlook. Hence eco-utopianism.
It's true that in the long run liberalism is not self-consistent, and
that the triumph of liberalism in the cultural revolution of the 60s
and then the fall of communism means that the long run is now. For
example, multiculturalism is self-contradictory, inconsistent with
liberal individualism, and a necessity for contemporary liberalism.
The basic problem is that liberalism now has no competitors, so it must
run the show on its own resources, and it can't do it.
> For as long as a society is in a state of collapse, I don't know that
> this mood requires anything special to sustain it, since it is that
> very mood or attitude that is causing the collapse.
> I just don't see people like Carville or Stephanopoulos being
> motivated by anything as "pure" as Marxism. It is nothing more than
> libido dominandi combined with a revolt against the normal.
But I thought the issue at this stage of the discussion is not whether
the social order at large has big problems but whether it will be
possible for little social orders founded on sounder principles to
survive. My suggestion is only that incoherent revolt and individual
libido dominandi (and habendi as well -- the Clinton people have shown
us the importance of financial corruption in late liberalism) will not
be up to the task of social cleansing, so non-liberal social order will
be able to survive locally.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Eva can ignite virtuosos out riveting in a cave.
From jk Wed Nov 20 21:30:32 1996
Subject: Re: Bork on Islands of Sanity
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Wed, 20 Nov 1996 21:30:32 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19961120173854.006e0c2c@swva.net> from "Seth Williamson" at Nov 20, 96 05:40:07 pm
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> >You'd go through a case and he'd say "this is stupid" and tell you
> >why he thought it was stupid, intellectually corrupt, whatever.
>
> Is that a typical method in law school? General discussion, that is?
> I am totally innocent of the pedagogy in the law schools.
It's a mixture. The most common method is socratic/case study, in
which the teacher asks a student questions about an assigned case
intended to bring out issues, underlying themes, ambiguities,
inconsistencies, whatever. That method is mixed with some element of
professorial lecturing.
> liberals profess to be disinterested champions of ordinary people,
> when in fact everything they've done for 30 years has tended to
> short-circuit democracy and remove the decision of important
> questions from the hands of the people.
That's an easy one.
They intend to champion ordinary people individually rather than
collectively. In order to do so they liberate ordinary people from the
parochial tyranny of other ordinary people. Therefore, ordinary people
are deprived of political power, which is necessarily rule by the more
dominant over the less dominant among them, and ruled instead by a
disinterested liberal elite who establish an order in which the vision
of the good held by each of those ruled receives equal respect. That
way lies liberation. Or such is the theory. The theory might be wrong
but it's not *immediately* senseless in the way conservatives often
believe.
> Irrational anger is not "coherent," but it is immensely destructive.
> I just hope they can be counted upon to transmogrify into
> run-of-the-mill tyrants.
It takes discipline -- enduring coherence -- to bring about any great
thing, so great achievements rarely go to completion and even more
rarely last. Anger is always at the heart of fanaticism and its purity
soon dies. Nature reasserts herself, both in the form of human
weakness and in the form of human recognition of the good. (If you
want, I can supply many more such sayings ... )
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Eva can ignite virtuosos out riveting in a cave.
From bit.listserv.christia Thu Nov 21 12:58:51 1996
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~Date: Thu, 21 Nov 1996 08:40:27 -0500
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~Subject: Re: Pope and evolution
In Tim Ikeda
writes:
>> "Naturalism" as people use it seems to consist in considering the world
>> as a system of publicly observable and measurable phenomena related by
>> laws of either invariable sequence or statistical correlation. So far
>> as I can tell, what we mean by subjective experience has no place in
>> such a system.
>By "subjective" I didn't think you were restricting it to mean,
>"unreportable experience."
I wasn't, I was using it to refer to aspects of our experience that are
not publicly observable. My sensation of pain is not publicly
observable but I can report it.
>> My objection is to considering methodological naturalism the
>> criterion for well-founded statements about the world, at least the
>> observable world.
>> For example ... "life exists because God designed the world to be
>> hospitable to life and then intervened to bring life out of non-life"
>But the question is whether one should reasonably include it as a
>useful description of the world.
Why not? Our actions make sense by reference to their setting, so our
understanding of the origin and nature of the world in which we act has
an effect on how it is reasonable for us to act.
>For example, how would one establish the causal connection between God
>and the condition of the world.
You seem to be asking the question "why believe in a creator God?" One
sort of answer is the one Behe suggests, that there are aspects of the
world that look designed, and no other remotely plausible explanation
presents itself, so you go to the best explanation. Another is the
kind of anwer Aquinas gave, for example that rational explanations are
necessarily of finite length, so if the world is rationally explicable
at all it must be by reference to a self-caused cause, a very special
sort of thing that on further reflection can be seen to have the
properties we attribute to God. Another is revelation -- someone
accepts the Christian revelation because it uniquely illuminates the
world as he experiences it, and part of that revelation is that God
made the world and called it good.
>In terms of observable physical phenomena, how does adding "God did
>it" enhance the explanation?
In terms of physical phenomena observable by me, how does rejection of
present-tense first-person-singular solipsism enhance the explanation?
The answer in both cases is that putting the system of observations
linked by mathematical descriptions of relations among them in a larger
system of entities (physical things and processes as they exist without
reference to being observed, past times now lost to observation, future
times not yet observable, minds other than my own, God) makes the
system more comprehensible and, as it seems to me, truer.
By the way, here it looks very much as if you were making
methodological naturalism a necessary criterion for truth or at least
for rationally accepting something as true. Do I misunderstand?
>Divine interaction _can_ be a rational statement about the world, but
>to date, nobody has really good idea about how it might apply to
>biology.
Why couldn't "God made the first life by direct interaction rather than
by relying on uniform natural law" be a statement in biology?
>Again, does the hypothesis of divine interaction make any positive
>statements about the world and are they distinguishable from
>naturalistic explanations?
It appears that you are making methodological naturalism your criterion
for the positive content and the distinguishability of statements.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Eva can ignite virtuosos out riveting in a cave.
From alt.revolution.counter Sat Nov 23 06:29:23 1996
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
~From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
~Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
~Subject: Re: On the vanity of argument
~Date: 22 Nov 1996 20:28:45 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
~Lines: 41
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~References: <19961122065819553774@deepblue0.salamander.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In <19961122065819553774@deepblue0.salamander.com> wmcclain@salamander.com (Bill McClain) writes:
>After a time, it seems pointless. People's opinions are rarely altered
>by argument.
One problem with usenet is that the connection between the participants
is so slight that it's very easy to shrug things off. The plague of
crossposting makes things worse. You can usually find better
discussions on listservs, where the participants constitute a more
stable and better defined group.
What's annoying is that people so rarely seem interested in joining
issue. They want to yell their slogans and pretend opposing arguments
don't exist. I take it for granted someone's opinion isn't likely to
be altered right now by an argument, but it would be nice if there were
at least cooperation in finding out what the points at issue really
are.
>Lastly, there is a way in which dispute is not pointless, but provides
>a means of social control, a segregation of the opinionated into
>groups. I often see this from young people at school. They wander away
>from their fellows and repeat the group wisdom to a different
>audience: "X is an idiot, only Y believe in evil Z..."
Still, this sort of thing isn't altogether useless intellectually.
Even if you are only willing to discuss things with people who agree
with you on almost everything almost any contact with another mind
should help you put your thoughts in better order and suggest things
you overlooked.
>In the public square, winning "arguments" means driving adversaries
>off the field. Some use reason, others abuse.
It seems to me that even though conservatives are said to be more
successful now in American public discussion than in the recent past
the liberals still mostly have the ability to define who is in the
mainstream and who is an extremist. As things stand that ability is
more important than anything else.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Eva can ignite virtuosos out riveting in a cave.
From alt.revolution.counter Sat Nov 23 06:29:23 1996
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
~From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
~Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
~Subject: Must-read books
~Date: 22 Nov 1996 20:50:13 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
~Lines: 32
Message-ID: <575l8l$q5r@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Someone recently asked me for a list of must-read writers on politics.
Here's a revised version of what I sent him -- I'd be interested in
seeing other people's.
Confucius' _Analects_. Also look at the alternatives, the Legalists,
Mohists and Taoists. The Middle Way turns out to be a sort of
conservatism.
Plato's _Republic_. Among other things, a good analysis of political
evolution and the weaknesses of different regimes including democracy.
Aristotle's _Politics_. A good summary.
Tacitus. Political life in a postconstitutional cosmopolitan empire.
Ibn Khaldun. Political life in a radically incoherent multicultural
posthistorical world.
Hobbes, Locke and Rawls. You can't understand politics today unless
you understand liberalism.
Rousseau and Marx. You also have to understand the political fantasies
of the modern world.
Burke's _Reflections_.
On a much different level, for specific aspects of our current regime
I'd suggest Richard Epstein's _Forbidden Grounds_ on the civil rights
laws and Maggie Gallagher's _The Abolition of Marriage_ on sex.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Eva can ignite virtuosos out riveting in a cave.
From jk Fri Nov 22 20:08:27 1996
Subject: Re: the liberal writes again
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 1996 20:08:27 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Nov 22, 96 04:12:49 pm
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> Common sense intuition should carry the day, not a priori certainty.
> That would lead to less 'unfairness' than denying everyone in Britain
> the right to own a gun.
Just an aside -- the *strong* tendency in the law, at least in the
United States, is toward equality, formalism and a demand for
explicitly defensible grounds for every decision. A universal ban
satisfies those requirements, whereas giving the cops the power to deny
someone the right to own a gun because they don't like the way he looks
does not.
> 1) it is unarguably true that a nutter with a gun, as opposed to a
> hammer, a knife, a bottle, can kill a lot of people all at once.
Tim McVeigh demonstrated that you can do a lot with heating oil and
ammonium nitrate fertilizer. Oddly enough, people thought that the
demonstration of what you can do without guns supported the need for
gun control.
> Once we get down to 'proving the need to own a gun', it becomes
> impossible to demonstrate. The onus of proof is now on the side of
> the gun-owners, and they have had a difficult time making their case.
For a study showing that laws permitting the concealed carrying of
firearms reduce crime and save lives, see:
http://www-law.lib.uchicago.edu/faculty/lott/guns.html
So it follows that people who oppose concealed carry like robbery, rape
and murder.
> 3) Conservatives, as opposed to libertarian theorists, tend to say,
> with the conservative's conservative, Enoch Powell, that government
> should work, not on any blueprint about the way society should be,
> but on the underlying feeling of the country as a whole. I think
> that, at this moment, the underlying feeling is for a ban.
"Underlying feeling" can't be something of the moment, it has to be
much more stable than that. For all I know though the anti-gun feeling
in Britain may be extremely stable and the Dunblane massacre is simply
the occasion for it to act.
A more basic problem is that going with "underlying feeling" is fine
when the government is regularly in the hands of conservatives who
always go with underlying feelings. If it's not, but rather in the
hands of people with an anticonservative agenda, then underlying
feeling can be used opportunistically to advance that agenda (for
example, centralizing more and more power and decisionmaking in an
anticonservative central bureaucracy). Under such circumstances
opposing the agenda might be the conservative thing to do even if in
the particular case it cuts against underlying feelings.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Eva can ignite virtuosos out riveting in a cave.
From jk Sat Nov 23 11:40:23 1996
Subject: Re: Bork on Islands of Sanity
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Sat, 23 Nov 1996 11:40:23 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19961123080026.006d2b40@swva.net> from "Seth Williamson" at Nov 23, 96 08:01:44 am
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Seth says:
>In neither do we see the liberation of individuals from the tyranny of
>collective notions of value, the "parochial notions of other people,"
>which I assume is what you're driving at. People who want to use their
>school tax money to escape from the government schools and educate
>their children as they see fit are not trying to "impose" anything on
>the children of others. They simply want to escape liberal tyranny
>themselves
Liberalism is skeptical of the authority of parents over children. It
approves of the liberation of children from their parents' parochial
notions of value and views it as part of the liberation of ordinary
people from petty social tyranny. The public schools are run in
accordance with liberal standards as determined by experts. They teach
equality and the equal validity of the values posited by each
individual. Parents most commonly want "school choice" (for
themselves, not for their children) because they deny the equal
validity of personal values and want to determine what their children's
values will be. From the liberal standpoint, that is oppression. Or
they may want school choice because they want to send their children to
a selective school (that is, one that excludes some children) or to a
school that spends more than the public schools do. Both constitute
attempts to give their children an advantage over other children and
therefore are also oppressive from the liberal standpoint.
>It's about the same with gun control. I'm not sure that I've ever met
>a liberal who really, honestly believes that he or anybody else is in
>danger when gun ownership is made easier for law-abiding citizens.
>Instead, I think they harbor a dread that ordinary people might use
>their guns to protect themselves against the depredations of the
>liberal ruling class.
So they don't like guns because guns distribute power more widely and
end up making it more difficult for liberal elites to run things. If
that's right then people who think that liberal elites free ordinary
people from the petty local tyrannies that necessarily result from
widely-distributed power will also think that gun control is liberating.
>It's just that I see liberalism as essentially a mood of hatred and
>revolt against what is normal and healthy, not a tightly reasoned
>theory of human nature or government. Most of the theory came along
>after the mood exercised its appeal on large numbers of intellectuals,
>who felt the need for some intellectual superstructure.
The rational and the non-rational go hand-in-hand in an understanding of
the world. For my own part I'm impressed by the extent to which
liberalism can be put into a logical system in which later forms evolve
out of earlier forms as new distinctions are made, principles are
generalized, etc. I suppose that's the "ideas have consequences" theory
of history. It may be as you suggest that mood is more fundamental than
thought. However that may be, I think it's important to be able to
understand liberalism as liberals understand it intellectually.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Eva can ignite virtuosos out riveting in a cave.
From jk Sat Nov 23 11:52:10 1996
Subject: Re: the liberal writes again
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Sat, 23 Nov 1996 11:52:10 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Nov 23, 96 03:13:20 pm
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> When you say that the law prefers formal grounds to the police
> denying someone the right to own a gun because of they way he looks,
> it makes me think of the kind of police attitudes caricatured in Easy
> Rider. In the case of Hamilton, there were dozens of parental and
> other complaints to the police about him over many years. It ought
> to have been Scottish common sense to deny him a gun licence.
That may be so. Common sense depends on social cohesion, though, and
when the law grows suspicious in principle of the bases of social
cohesion it will begin calling common sense "popular perceptions of
deviance," "deeply rooted social stereotypes" or whatever and refuse to
give local officials discretion to act on it in deciding how to treat
individuals. Quite likely if Easy Rider had been about people who sat
still instead of riding around on motorcycles the movie would have
shown the police as having dozens of complaints from the other rednecks
to use to justify whatever they did.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Eva can ignite virtuosos out riveting in a cave.
From jk Sat Nov 23 22:09:47 1996
Subject: Re: the liberal writes again
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Sat, 23 Nov 1996 22:09:47 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Nov 23, 96 05:39:55 pm
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Also sprach Francesca:
> Common sense does not depend on social cohesion!
An interesting issue. I suppose what I had in mind is that "common
sense" is a feeling for what things are like and what behavior is
appropriate that people have in common. That *does* seem to depend on
social cohesion. If you had the preconceptions and reactions of an
average member of the Labour Party, and I had the p. and r. of a
run-of-the mill Assyrian nobleman, and you appointed me police chief
and told me "just use your common sense," you'd probably find my
performance somewhat troubling.
I also had in mind that "common sense" suggests a certain coherence of
conduct with an understanding of the world that has proven to work over
time. It seems to me that kind of coherence and understanding has a
necessary social aspect.
> Only a small minority, perhaps the 'liberal elite' whom you and Seth
> have been discussing, really believe that common sense is just social
> steriotyping - or use nouns as verbs in that way!
It seems to me that the view that "follow your common sense" means
"follow social stereotypes" is an influential one in American law as it
now exists. Remember that the legal system is highly centralized and
extremely hierarchical, so views held by small elites are important.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Eva can ignite virtuosos out riveting in a cave.
From jk Sun Nov 24 15:53:43 1996
Subject: Re: the liberal writes again
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Sun, 24 Nov 1996 15:53:43 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Nov 24, 96 02:00:28 pm
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Francesca writes:
>> I suppose what I had in mind is that "common sense" is a feeling for
>> what things are like and what behavior is appropriate that people
>> have in common. That *does* seem to depend on social cohesion.
>
>What things are like - tick
>
>what behaviour is appropriate - tick
>
>that people have in common - why?
"Common sense" is by definition something people have in common, at
least normatively. It depends on common membership in a specific
society to the extent it differs by time and place for historical or
other reasons. For example, I have been advised authoritively that the
common-sense view of gun control is not the same in England and the
United States.
>I tend to imagine that an Assyrian taxi-driver and a Georgia taxi-
>driver have a fairly wide range of shared instincts.
No doubt that's so. The Babylonian proverbs I've read still ring true.
There would be important differences, though. Common sense adjusts to
things other than itself, like religious doctrines, fundamental social
and moral commitments, etc. and it's colored by them. Also, many of us
think common sense sometimes isn't enough -- we insist on points of
honor, articles of faith, justice that must be done though the sky
fall, whatever. Is that simply an error of fanaticism, or does common
sense need to be anchored in things that are not common sense? If the
latter, it seems that people's common sense will differ in accordance
with differing points of anchorage.
>Burke had a wonderful phrase for the notion that one set of morals
>applied to the British and another to the Indians - which,
>unfortunately, I forget - you will get it in the next post, no doubt!
>From his armchair in Westminster, you may say, Burke was claiming that
>family, community and local culture in India produce a set of common-
>sense ideas which LOOK different from 18th century British ones, but
>have an underlying analogy, if not identity.
"Don't give us India" was what Dr. Johnson said to Boswell in a
discussion about polygamy and the like. I think the point was that
people in London didn't understood much about what goes on in India, so
they'd form better judgements paying attention to things closer to home.
Something of the spirit of Hume on miracles, I think.
Hume himself dealt with the issue in the _Dialogue_ appended to his
_Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals_. Ancient Greek and modern
French morality could be made to look very different, but he thought
similar perceptions and concerns were at work in both. His theory broke
down when it came to Diogenes and Pascal, though, so he classified them
as bizarros who don't count. Is that your view as well?
>Apart from a very few academics, and even then, usually in general and
>not in relation to particular cases, one seldom meets anyone who
>concurs with the current trend in legal judgements, such as the near
>automatic favouring of the woman in claims of sexual abuse or
>harassment. And yet the trend seems unstoppable.
In the absence of common sense everything must be made explicit, which
in the end leads to immobility or insanity and in the meantime gives an
unbeatable advantage to certain tendencies of argument, for example to a
perpetually more radical egalitarianism, that almost no-one really
believes.
The issue I am raising is why readiness to rely on common sense in our
public life has diminished. My suggestion is that common sense varies
in accordance with its points of anchorage -- for example, whether
there are only values posited by particular individuals or there are
objective goods, perhaps created by God and implicit in nature, for
example in the form and function of the human body. In the former case
it may seem commonsensical to show schoolchildren how to use condoms,
in the latter case maybe not. The "culture war" means there are too
few common points of anchorage, and therefore no common sense for
American public life as a whole.
>yet, if very many people still judge by steriotypes, there is a common-
>sense which underlies and overrides the overt attitudes of the culture.
It's a puzzling situation, because it's also commonsensical in America
in 1996 that the habit of judging by stereotypes is bad and should be
countered by civil rights laws and so on. If you say "the civil rights
laws are bad and should be repealed" you've said something
incomprehensible. Part of the force of the feeling that civil rights
laws are necessary depends on the recognition that stereotypical
thinking is ineradicably part of common sense.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Eva can ignite virtuosos out riveting in a cave.
From jk Mon Nov 25 08:23:21 1996
Subject: Re: Bork on Islands of Sanity
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Mon, 25 Nov 1996 08:23:21 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19961124185006.006d641c@swva.net> from "Seth Williamson" at Nov 24, 96 07:02:30 pm
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Seth writes:
> But it's not without meaning that liberals are mostly afraid to come
> right out and say that they believe kids should be liberated from the
> tyranny of their parents' choices.
It's the logic of the position, and liberal theoreticians and education
experts are very much aware of the matter. More commonsensical
liberals only have to deal with specific issues as they come up, for
example whether parents should be notified before a minor child has an
abortion, and it's always possible to claim special circumstances, so
the radicalism of their general commitments remains camouflaged even
from themselves.
I think it was R.W. Emerson who said that every reform hides some far
more terrible reform. The basic problem is that liberalism has no way
to deal with parental authority because it can't recognize common goods
-- goods are individually posited. Therefore in the end parental
authority has to go. That's a fundamental problem with liberalism --
it can't deal with reproduction, at least unless some perfected
cybertechnology can substitute for human caretakers.
> Some do, as did an earlier incarnation of Hillary Clinton.
I found the discussion of Ms. Rodham's writings interesting. One side
said "this is unbelievably radical" and the other said "this is the
scholarly mainstream." Both were right. The writings themselves are a
mindlessly literal application of the principles accepted in Ms.
Rodham's environment.
> Of course, when they send their own offspring to Sidwell Friends,
> they are quite knowingly looking to give their own kids an advantage
> over others, which is another inconsistency.
An inconsistency in liberals more than liberalism, I think. Maybe they
could claim that Sidwell Friends is a laboratory of tomorrow, and all
schools will grow more like it as liberal rule perfects itself. In the
meantime the school promotes the coming age even as it necessarily
reflects the contradictions of the present one. Or something like
that.
> But I think it's important to acknowledge two things. One,
> it has suffered from fairly serious theoretical inconsistencies from
> the very beginning--the liberals' patron saint John Stuart Mill
> directly contradicted himself on a number of important points, as
> Gertrude Himmelfarb is only the latest to point out.
I agree it has very important fundamental problems that mean that it
can exist only in opposition and destroys itself when it triumphs.
That's what we're seeing now. Until that happens though the problems
can be thought of as unresolved issues to be worked out as time goes on
and no worse than the problems that can be found in any political
outlook.
I haven't read Himmelfarb on Mill, but agree that _On Liberty_ for
example is a very odd book.
> Solzhenitsyn said it is a rebellion against God that is at the heart
> of modern Western liberalism, which is to say the same thing.
I don't think I've said anything different. To say that I am the
source of my own values and have no goods beyond that is I think
rebellion against God. I suppose one could say (and people have said)
that God made each of us the sovereign source of his own values and the
only rebellion against God is acceptance of values from a source
outside our own wills, but that seems unconvincing.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Eva can ignite virtuosos out riveting in a cave.
From jk Tue Nov 26 07:26:47 1996
Subject: Re: the liberal writes again
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Tue, 26 Nov 1996 07:26:47 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Nov 26, 96 11:58:10 am
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Thus Francesca:
> My philosophy teacher, Barry Smith, taught us to use the phrase
> 'borderline cases' for those instances which do not conform to
> Husserlian essence analysis!
If essence analysis of ethics excludes Diogenes and Pascal, who are
borderline cases, what do we do with them? Treat them like anomalous
data points in the natural sciences and ignore them?
> Miracles are irrational!
Common sense is a guide to conduct. Miracles are also a guide to
conduct. I attempted to show how the two could be part of some overall
plan of conduct. That required me to deny the universality of common
sense and treat it to some degree as an outgrowth of things that go
beyond it.
You seem to differ, and to hold that (1) universal common sense is a
trustworthy guide to conduct wherever it applies, which is in such a
broad range of situations that an Assyrian nobleman's common sense
would suffice for police work in England, (2) u.c.s. denies miracles,
and (3) miracles happen and at least in some cases (e.g., the
Incarnation and Resurrection) should be accepted and relied on to the
extent that they transform our lives.
Where have I gone astray in understanding you?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Eva can ignite virtuosos out riveting in a cave.
From jk Tue Nov 26 07:30:39 1996
Subject: Emerson
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU (Newman discussion list)
Date: Tue, 26 Nov 1996 07:30:39 -0500 (EST)
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I dug up the quote from Emerson I mentioned to Seth yesterday. Since I
like it, and it seems relevant to current discussions of liberalism and
of the domain of common sense, I'll pass it on:
Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances.
I don't know where he said it, but Auden and Kronenberger quote it in
their selection of aphorisms.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Eva can ignite virtuosos out riveting in a cave.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Nov 26 08:03:54 EST 1996
Article: 8471 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Crime and Correction
Date: 26 Nov 1996 07:53:12 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <32979CB9.79AA@tao.sosc.osshe.edu> "Sylvia T. Paldhan" writes:
>This is how to stop crime; by stopping the dysfunction which leads to
>the cracking of the mind and the breaking of the heart or the dulling
>of the mind and the blanking of the heart which lead to crime.
No doubt crime is a dysfunction, but does it really result from
feelings of personal worthlessness and the like? I was under the
impression that many criminals think very highly of themselves.
There has been an enormous and apparently unprecedented rise in crime
throughout the Western world since the mid-50s. How do you fit that
into your scheme?
>Short of that, there remains hope and potential. The human soul, so
>long as it is alive and capable of hope and affection, can heal
>itself, given the means and the faith to do so.
No doubt, but is there any reason to think that is likely to happen in
most cases? You seem to believe that man always seeks the good, so
failure to attain it must result from ignorance or lack of means, both
of which can easily be dissipated. What experience leads you to
believe that is so?
>I would have guarded-perimeter farms, totally self-sufficient, with
>housing, schools for the interested, counseling for those who seek it,
>and such manufacture and technology as may be appropriate. I would
>have dormitories and married housing, and only segregate by sex those
>who have been guilty of rape (and both male and female can be) or
>viciousness (ditto). I would assist the convicts to assume their own
>governance and allow them the opportunity to develop the perspectives
>and skills in community living which they have lacked. I would see to
>it that they had a viable skill to make a living upon release. I
>would have sentences limited to a maximum of seven years
Has anything approaching this ever suceeded? Self-government is
difficult enough even when people aren't hard-core criminals. For my
own part, I would hate to live under the rule of crooks even if I were
a crook myself.
>Retribution is not only unworthy but ineffective.
What's unworthy about the principle that the evil a man does should
come home to him?
>Rehabilitation has never been honestly tried, other than
>here-and-there, now-andagain; most of the time, it was a mere name on
>the surface, and the same old game underneath.
If those who claim to want to rehabilitate have all been frauds in the
past, why should we expect better of you?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Eva can ignite virtuosos out riveting in a cave.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Nov 28 08:44:33 EST 1996
Article: 8473 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Crime and Correction
Date: 26 Nov 1996 13:09:04 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In Matthew L Weber writes:
>> There has been an enormous and apparently unprecedented rise in crime
>> throughout the Western world since the mid-50s. How do you fit that
>> into your scheme?
>This is interesting. Is there a study where this information can be
>found?
I can't cite you to a single study. Some statistics and references I
have handy:
Crime rates increased 6 to 7-fold in most Western European countries
between 1955 and 1990. Heidenson and Farrell, eds., _Crime in Europe_
(Routledge, 1991); Himmelfarb, "A De-moralized Society", _The Public
Interest_, Fall 1994, p. 57. The Gertrude Himmelfarb article I think
has been incorporated into a book with a similar title. It includes
historical crime statistics that make it clear how out of the ordinary
the current situation is.
In the U.S., the number of violent crimes per 100,000 persons grew from
117 in 1957 to 160 in 1960 to 198 in 1965 to 361 in 1970, while the
index of property crime grew from 719 to 967 to 1317 to 2386. The
increase in criminality has been particularly large among young people:
in 1960, 527,000 out of 3,679,000 persons arrested were under 18; in
1965, 1,074,000 out of 5,031,000; in 1970, 1,661,000 out of 6,570,000.
_Statistical Abstract of the United States_ and _Historical Statistics
of the United States_.
>> What's unworthy about the principle that the evil a man does should
>> come home to him?
>It's not unworthy--it's just meaningless. Take for example the guy
>who killed Polly Klaas--killing him isn't going to bring the girl
>back, and I seriously doubt whether it's going to make Marc Klaas feel
>that much better. If we kill this man, it's only justifiable in terms
>of protecting society. The idea that somehow his death will "make up"
>for Polly's murder is ludicrous.
You assert that the notion of retributive justice -- that when a man
acts to bring about some evil he should get for himself the evil he has
chosen simply because that is just (that is, it makes his action part
of a system that respects him as an agent and gives effect to the
nature of his actions) -- is meaningless. Your view seems to be that
the only rational purposes of action are to increase pleasure and
reduce pain. In particular, if it increases pleasure and reduces pain
("protects society") to shut people up in cages or kill them you're
happy to do so. It's interesting that you should hold such views, but
I have no idea why anyone should consider them correct.
Which would seem better and more rational to you, a world in which
injuring another always resulted in an injury of the same kind to
oneself or a world in which the consequences to the agent of injuring
another varied all over the lot?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Eva can ignite virtuosos out riveting in a cave.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Nov 28 08:44:34 EST 1996
Article: 8481 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Crime and Correction
Date: 26 Nov 1996 21:53:16 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In Matthew L Weber writes:
>Retributive justice imposes a standard of behavior and a notion of
>justice that can only be explained in terms of metaphysics.
Why more so than any other standard of behavior except maybe "I do what
I do"? Even that seems commited to personal identity, which is a
metaphysical concept. Maybe if you just did stuff and grunted whenever
anyone asked you about it you'd avoid metaphysics. Or maybe if you
said "like, shit happens" whenever someone asked you about something
you had been involved in you'd avoid metaphysics.
>I don't happen to think that supernatural powers (which may or may not
>exist) are a good foundation for state action. Locking up or killing
>a murderer to keep non-criminals from being murdered seems more
>justifiable than punishing him because it's Thor's Will (e.g.).
How about locking up or killing people for some other beneficial
purpose? It seems you'd need a weird metaphysical reason not to do it
if you thought it would work.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Eva can ignite virtuosos out riveting in a cave.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Nov 28 08:44:35 EST 1996
Article: 8482 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Crime and Correction
Date: 26 Nov 1996 21:56:59 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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References: <32979CB9.79AA@tao.sosc.osshe.edu> <57ep7o$i88@panix.com> <57fbo0$14e@panix.com> <1996112616103386627@deepblue11.salamander.com>
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In Matthew L Weber writes:
>for me the primary concern is the safety of human beings. I suppose I
>am making a metaphysical assumption that pleasure is preferable to
>pain...
"Safety" can't be defined except by reference to a theory of the good
for man. Also, you seem to be assuming not only that pleasure is
preferable to pain but also that pleasure and pain are the only
rational grounds for choice. Why is that supposed to be so obvious and
non-metaphysical?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Eva can ignite virtuosos out riveting in a cave.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Nov 28 08:44:36 EST 1996
Article: 8495 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Crime and Correction
Date: 28 Nov 1996 08:05:38 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 21
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References: <32979CB9.79AA@tao.sosc.osshe.edu> <57ep7o$i88@panix.com> <57fbo0$14e@panix.com> <329BBFD4.6510@gte.net>
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In <329BBFD4.6510@gte.net> "T.O. Minnix" writes:
>Jim, you seem to imply that a world where the consequences of harming
>another 'vary all over the lot' is bizarre - but isn't that exactly the
>kind of world in which we do live? If I take someone else's life on a
>city street when that person has not provoked me in any way, that is
>called murder, but if I take his life on a battlefield during wartime I
>am considered to be simply fighting for my country. It seems to me that
>in any kind of realistic society, the consequences for killing someone
>must depend on the circumstances under which such an act occurred.
The thought was that we'd approve more of a world in which the
consequences corresponded to the moral nature of the action, so that
people who chose good got good and people who chose evil got evil, and
were similar where the morality of the actions was similar. Therefore
(the thought goes) it is rational to try to make our own world more
like such a world, for example by establishing a system of retributive
justice.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Eva can ignite virtuosos out riveting in a cave.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Nov 28 08:44:36 EST 1996
Article: 8496 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: On the vanity of argument
Date: 28 Nov 1996 08:12:18 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <199611261347401087974@deepblue11.salamander.com> wmcclain@salamander.com (Bill McClain) writes:
>I have also found that when people do want to pursue an issue seriously,
>diagreement is not over reasoning, but about premises. One then backs up
>and tries to justify the premises, which, rather than leading to an
>infinite regress, soon founders on metaphysical definitions that are
>very difficult to deal with.
Still, sorting out the premises can be useful. To pick an example --
I've never discussed or thought much about retributive justice, and the
present discussion in this newsgroup is quite useful in helping me
understand what arguments might be made for it, what it is that I find
objectionable about views that reject it, the relation between ways of
thought that accept it and ways that don't, and so on.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Eva can ignite virtuosos out riveting in a cave.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Nov 28 08:44:39 EST 1996
Article: 8497 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Must-read books
Date: 28 Nov 1996 08:36:07 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <57huol$mjc@gerry.cc.keele.ac.uk> cla04@cc.keele.ac.uk (Andy Fear) writes:
>I'm intrigued by 'post constitutional' the Romans never had a
>constitution in the sense that this is understood in the US. Tacitus
>certainly implies that the problem with the principate is that the
>power of an emperor is not well defined, but then that had been the
>problem with the Republic too in many ways.
By "constitution" I meant a distribution of political power that limits
and defines what the various actors can do, and leads them to comply
with law and to cooperate with each other at least to some degree in
accordance with a common conception of the public good. None can
govern by himself. The gross disorder of the republican constitution
as I understand it was what led to the principate.
>Cosmopolitan again has changed meaning i think. The elite of the Roman
>Empire had a pretty common set of values, though that wasn't at all
>true of the lower orders of course. maybe the 18th century is a
>parallel there.
Common values shared by an elite of diverse origins scattered over
three continents ruling over a motley populace don't function the same
way as common values where the connections are more concrete. For one
thing, it makes trust and loyalty in life-and-death matters far less
likely and so leads to
>abuse of power, futile strategies of opposition, and cowardice in the
>face of that abuse
In _History as a System_ Ortega y Gasset comments on the consequences
of the spread of the Latin language and uniform "Roman" values:
As early as the time of the Antonines there had become apparent a
strange phenomenon that has been less stressed and analyzed than
it should: men had become stupid.
He further speaks of
This form of life that spread throughout the Empire, both
homogenous and stupid
It seems to me "cosmopolitan" is usable to describe such a situation,
in which a man's city is the whole world since the same form of life is
found everywhere.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Eva can ignite virtuosos out riveting in a cave.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Nov 28 08:44:39 EST 1996
Article: 8498 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: REVIEW: _Past Master_, by R.A. Lafferty
Date: 28 Nov 1996 08:42:31 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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References: <1996112714280234021@deepblue18.salamander.com>
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In <1996112714280234021@deepblue18.salamander.com> wmcclain@salamander.com (Bill McClain) writes:
>Thomas Molnar writes
> It is just possible--hence our "age of anxiety"--that this
> civilization closes the door on anything beyond itself and
> proclaims its functional self-sufficiency. _That_ would be the
> true Dark Age.
The issue is whether a social technology is possible. I think not, and
so expect the effort to act as if one existed to lead to bloody chaos
and then eventual rebirth as unsocialized newer generations prove their
incapacity to carry on the functions required for the survival of the
technostate. The question of the possibility of artificial
intelligence is no doubt a closely related one.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Eva can ignite virtuosos out riveting in a cave.
From jk Tue Nov 26 21:37:23 1996
Subject: Re: Emerson
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU (Newman discussion list)
Date: Tue, 26 Nov 1996 21:37:23 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <329BB0DA.30EC@vt.edu> from "Morton Nadler" at Nov 26, 96 07:09:14 pm
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Morton Nadler writes:
> Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private
> opinion again, it will solve the problem of the age.
He also said that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little
minds.
> I don't believe the authenticity of the quotation
As stated, I don't know which of his works it is taken from. I got it
from _The Viking Book of Aphorisms_, edited by W.H. Auden and Louis
Kronenberger (Viking, 1962), p. 311. Auden and Kronenberger were
reputable (to put it mildly) men of letters, and Viking is a reputable
publisher, so I doubt that it was fabricated.
> Your "liberals" sound to me like the Elders of Zion!
Read the liberal theorists, John Rawls and so on. If you have a more
specific criticism of anything anyone has said it would of course be
helpful if you stated it.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Eva can ignite virtuosos out riveting in a cave.
From jk Tue Nov 26 21:40:18 1996
Subject: Re: Evolution
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Tue, 26 Nov 1996 21:40:18 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Nov 26, 96 06:28:38 pm
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Francesca writes:
> I am preparing a full counter-attack on universal common sense.
Looking forward to your comments.
> If I invent an ironic joke about what a contemporary theologian could
> say about God's impassibility, the filioque, etc., I find Moltmann
> has got there first, and no joke intended.
I suppose it would be too boring to dredge up that Cicero quotation
about foolish propositions and philosophers.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Eva can ignite virtuosos out riveting in a cave.
From jk Wed Nov 27 07:10:07 1996
Subject: Re: Emerson
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1996 07:10:07 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Nov 27, 96 11:38:05 am
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> I came to the conclusion that there is a vast difference between
> entertaining an idea and believing in it. There may be an irrational
> or just 'affective' leap which has to be made between even
> entertaining the idea as true and really holding the idea as a
> conviction.
This is an interesting point. Somehow there's a problem in the
connection between thought or language and the world. The issue pops
up all over -- it's connected to the fact/value distinction, to
relativism, to denial of a Creator, to the linguistic crisis in ancient
China, to lots of other things. Newman's _Grammar of Assent_ is worth
reading in this connection.
Since my last Emerson quote was such a hit, I should give another:
It takes a great deal of elevation of thought to produce a very
little elevation of life.
Auden and Kronenberger, p. 327.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Eva can ignite virtuosos out riveting in a cave.
From jk Thu Nov 28 10:32:43 1996
Subject: Re: Emerson
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Thu, 28 Nov 1996 10:32:43 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Nov 27, 96 01:00:45 pm
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Francesca asks:
> What was this linguistic crisis?
During the Warring States period the various political, social and
philosophical problems seems somehow to have unsettled the relation of
language to the world. There were sophists, with their theory that "a
white horse is not a horse." There was Chuangtse:
For speech is not mere blowing of breath. It is intended to say
something, only what it is intended to say cannot yet be
determined. Is there speech indeed, or is there not? Can we, or
can we not, distinguish it from the chirping of young birds?
There was the Confucianist claim, put into the mouth of the Master in
bk. xiii, ch. 3 of the _Analects_, that the first step in establishing
good government would be the rectification of names, and related claims
by the Legalists.
Unfortunately, the only cite I can give you just now to discussion of
the matter is a reference in Waley's introduction to his translation of
the _Analects_ to the "language crisis" with a footnote referring
further to p. 59 of his book _The Way and its Power_.
More later on other things (my whole family's visiting us for
Thanksgiving).
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Eva can ignite virtuosos out riveting in a cave.
From jk Fri Nov 29 07:50:37 1996
Subject: Re: Emerson
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU (Newman discussion list)
Date: Fri, 29 Nov 1996 07:50:37 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <329C8F8A.3748@vt.edu> from "Morton Nadler" at Nov 27, 96 11:01:16 am
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Morton Nadler writes:
> Certainly NOT conspire to overthrow the constitution, as Seth and
> others have more than once more than hinted.
I don't recall suggestions of conspiracy or of intention to overthrow
the constitution. My own concern is that in the long run liberalism is
inconsistent with constitutional government (government in which powers
are limited, defined and fairly broadly distributed by law). The
reason is that it defines its goals in an overly categorical way and
makes them peremptory demands of morality, and it has faith in the
possiblities of conscious rational reorganization of society for given
ends. That approach lends itself to rule by a small elite of those who
are experts on (1) the demands of liberal morality and (2) the methods
of realizing it socially.
> The essence of my brand of liberalism is compassion.
The theory I presented is that the essence of liberalism is giving
everyone (to the extent possible) whatever he happens to want through a
rational overall system. Yours seems to be that its essence is to keep
everyone from undergoing whatever it is he doesn't want. The views
aren't identical, but they are similar enough to make me feel I'm not
hopelessly off the track.
> Seth and others like him. I deeply resent the way he writes about his
> "abstract, hypothetical universal [liberal] personality, not any
> particular flesh and blood [liberal] person.
Why? There are academic liberal theorists who identify themselves as
liberals and make their beliefs into an elaborate and abstract system
that they identify with liberalism. Do you think that work has value,
or do you resent those people as well?
It seems to me that part of understanding the social world is
understanding the general tendencies of thought, feeling and belief
active in it. "Liberalism" seems to be a general tendency that's well
enough defined and influential enough to be worthy of discussion. So
why not talk about it? You do that yourself -- you define it
abstractly as compassion, and contrast it to other general movements
like "conservatism" and "Christians." Why can't other people do the
same? Does the fact they think there are major problems with
liberalism mean they should keep quiet?
> Plato, the arch conservative, would have banned Homer.
It seems odd to call Plato in the _Republic_ a conservative. He wasn't
liberal, but a man who wants to construct a wholly new society based
solely on philosophy is not a conservative.
[Back to my guests!]
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Eva can ignite virtuosos out riveting in a cave.
From jk Fri Nov 29 13:47:21 1996
Subject: Re: Emerson`
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Fri, 29 Nov 1996 13:47:21 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <199611291742.MAA23777@gabriel.cc.emory.edu> from "Martha Bishop" at Nov 29, 96 12:42:19 pm
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> I like a church; I like a cowl;
> I love a prophet of the soul; [not a very good rhyme, RW!]
> And on my heart monastic aisles
Was there something about the Concord transcendentalists and
near-rhyme? Emily Dickenson uses it a lot too.
In the particular case cowl/soul/aisles seems to me to work better than
it would if "soul" were pronounced to rhyme with "cowl". Is it the
increasing closeness of the vowel?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Eva can ignite virtuosos out riveting in a cave.
From jk Fri Nov 29 18:18:44 1996
Subject: Re: the liberal writes again
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Fri, 29 Nov 1996 18:18:44 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Nov 27, 96 10:49:06 pm
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Thus Francesca:
> Unless one can write off such cases, one is going to abandon a
> universally binding morality if one learns that the Egyptians
> accepted incest and the Greeks were no homophobes!
Diogenes and Pascal seem to me though to have a moral dignity and
weight that can't be shrugged off or rated as inferior to an ethics
that squares altogether with common sense. One problem I have with
common sense as a sufficient basis for ethics is that it seems that it
does not take the transcendent seriously and therefore is inadequate to
human life.
You of course give "intuition of the universal" as your second type of
common sense. That seems to me to use "common sense" in an unusual
way. One usually thinks of it as something we possess more completely
and fully than we possess transcendent universals. It's not something
we see through a glass, darkly.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Eva can ignite virtuosos out riveting in a cave.
From jk Fri Nov 29 18:22:30 1996
Subject: Re: Evolution
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Fri, 29 Nov 1996 18:22:30 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Nov 27, 96 10:52:59 pm
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Francesca writes:
> > I suppose it would be too boring to dredge up that Cicero quotation
> > about foolish propositions and philosophers.
>
> I don't know that one so fire away.
There is nothing so ridiculous but some philosopher has said it.
_De Divinatione_ II, 119.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Eva can ignite virtuosos out riveting in a cave.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sat Nov 30 15:18:19 EST 1996
Article: 8507 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Must-read books
Date: 30 Nov 1996 14:45:51 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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References: <575l8l$q5r@panix.com> <57huol$mjc@gerry.cc.keele.ac.uk> <57k4g7$de7@panix.com> <445382470wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk>
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In <445382470wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> raf379@bloxwich.demon.co.uk (rafael cardenas) writes:
>Ortegay y Gasset's idea that the form of life was _stupid_ is
>interesting. Perhaps more appropriate for modern cosmopolitan
>Coca-Cola culture than the Roman, though.
The homogenous cosmopolitanism of the Romans was no doubt but a type
and forerunner of what we have today. That seems to have been Ortega's
view; his concern is with modern times, and he refers to Mill and
Humboldt and their concern over their disappearance of a "variety of
situations" in Europe.
As to antiquity, he says:
The Stoic Posidonius, Cicero's teacher, is supposed with some
reason to have been the last of the ancients capable of facing
facts with an open and active mind, willing to submit them to
investigation. After him heads fell into disuse, and except among
the Alexandrians they did nothing but repeat stereotype.
He also complains about the crudeness of late classical Latin.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Eva can ignite virtuosos out riveting in a cave.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sat Nov 30 15:18:20 EST 1996
Article: 8508 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: REVIEW: _Past Master_, by R.A. Lafferty
Date: 30 Nov 1996 15:06:17 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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References: <1996112714280234021@deepblue18.salamander.com> <57k4s7$dv6@panix.com> <19961130080244139201@deepblue0.salamander.com>
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In <19961130080244139201@deepblue0.salamander.com> wmcclain@salamander.com (Bill McClain) writes:
>> The issue is whether a social technology is possible.
>I don't follow you here. Why would a social technology be required for
>what Molnar describes? Couldn't people, passively through despair or
>actively through some sort of aggressive materialism, abandon all
>sense of the transcendent and simply continue as such indefinitely?
Molnar had written:
It is just possible--hence our "age of anxiety"--that this
civilization closes the door on anything beyond itself and
proclaims its functional self-sufficiency.
"Functional self-sufficiency" would I think be for our civilization a
comprehensive social technology. We define what we want and make
arrangements for getting it. If we can't do that then we will despair
of aggressive materialism, but despair never lasts forever and we will
go on to something else -- presumably, a sense of something that
transcends our purposes and capabilities upon which we are dependent
and somehow can and should rely.
>I recently picked up John Searle's _The Rediscovery of the Mind_ and
>will try to do a review. It was one of the few contemporary books I
>could find that doubts whether mind can be represented as a computer
>program.
Another of course is Penrose's _The Emperor's New Mind_. A good
feature of Penrose's book is that he goes into mathematical arguments
(e.g., regarding the difficulties of viewing thought as an algorithm)
in enough detail so the reader can feel he understands what's going on.
>How, then, does the subjective arise from objective processes? That
>would be a very curious algorithm.
>My friends roll their eyes and act as if I'm talking voodoo when I try
>this. I may be wrong, but I can't even get them to consider the
>argument.
I'm with you on this one. It's as if someone said that the planets and
their motions arise from the ink and paper Newton used to state his
theories. What do your friends say about Searle's Chinese room
argument?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Eva can ignite virtuosos out riveting in a cave.
From jk Fri Nov 29 22:20:46 1996
Subject: More Emerson
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU (Newman discussion list)
Date: Fri, 29 Nov 1996 22:20:46 -0500 (EST)
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Here's another Emerson quote (from his journal, August 22, 1841) that
seems relevant to some of the discussions:
I remember, when a child, in the pew on Sundays amusing myself
with saying over common words as 'black,' 'white,' 'board,' etc.,
twenty or thirty times, until the word lost all meaning and
fixedness, and I began to doubt which was the right name for the
thing, when I saw that neither had any natural relation, but all
were arbitrary. It was a child's first lesson in Idealism.
And another from March 1946:
I like man, but not men.
And yet another, from April 1847:
We live in Lilliput. The Americans are free-willers, fussy,
self-asserting, buzzing all round creation. But the Asiatics
believe it is writ on the iron leaf, and will not turn on their
heel to save them from famine, plague, or sword. That is great,
gives a great air to the people.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Eva can ignite virtuosos out riveting in a cave.
From jk Sat Nov 30 12:58:43 1996
Subject: Re: Who paid for the Cathedrals?
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Sat, 30 Nov 1996 12:58:43 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Nov 30, 96 04:45:19 pm
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> I have read that such monuments as Sens and Saint Denis were paid for
> by the middle class merchants of the towns concerned.
> A second thing which I have read is that the Church borrowed a lot of
> money to build these Cathedrals? From whom? Not from other
> Christians, since money lending was forbidden, but from Jews.
All irrelevant to exploitation theory. Society is understood as a
comprehensive machine that determines all results. Aggregate
production of society as a whole was 100, 10 went for cathedrals, 0
went for day-care centers for peasant children, therefore the
cathedrals were at the expense of publicly-funded rural day care
because the social choice to spend the money on the former rather than
the latter could have gone the other way. The fact that the flow of
funds was first to the overcompensated bourgeoisie and only then to the
cathedrals, or first from the Jews, then from debt service payments to
the Jews, then from use of tithes to make those payments, makes no
difference to the overall accounting. Nor does it matter that the
dominant ideology of "private property" or whatever made the use of the
money accord with "property rights".
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Eva can ignite virtuosos out riveting in a cave.
From jk Sat Nov 30 15:16:51 1996
Subject: Re: What about the constitution of the USSR?
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Sat, 30 Nov 1996 15:16:51 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19961130145211.006cae48@swva.net> from "Seth Williamson" at Nov 30, 96 02:52:21 pm
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For a discussion of current attitudes toward the fallen Communist
tyrannies, see "A Dearth of Feeling" by Anne Applebaum in the October
1996 _The New Criterion_.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Eva can ignite virtuosos out riveting in a cave.
From bit.listserv.christia Sun Dec 1 06:57:29 1996
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From: Jim Kalb
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Subject: Re: Pope and evolution
Tim Ikeda writes:
>> Our actions make sense by reference to their setting, so our
>> understanding of the origin and nature of the world in which we act
>> has an effect on how it is reasonable for us to act.
>
>A moral argument for special creation of species? If God acted
>indirectly via natural mechanisms, should we act differently? How
>things are does not imply how things should be.
An argument that it has moral implications to understand the world as an
expression of purpose rather than of pure mechanism. One could claim
the two understandings are consistent, but that seems to run against
Occam's razor -- if mechanism accounts for everything, why import
purpose? To say that God reveals himself, as Christianity does, I think
is to say he makes himself an indispensible assumption for understanding
our experience of this world.
Why do you assert that how things are does not imply how things should
be as if were an obvious and unquestionable principle? If the world is
understood as created then how things are will in general be thought
connected with how things should be. After all, God made them as they
are for a purpose. More specifically, the Incarnation seems a denial of
the fact/value distinction.
>With respect to physical observations or future research directions in
>science, does the "God did it" explanation add anything?
If it doesn't, so what? Our proper concern, I think, is with whether it
is true rather with whether it advances a particular project of ours for
arriving at truth. I expect it would have implications, though, since
elimination of an assumption affects the plausibility of research
directions and "mechanism explains all" is an assumption.
>>>For example, how would one establish the causal connection between
>>>God and the condition of the world.
>>
>> You seem to be asking the question "why believe in a creator God?"
>
>No. That has never been my question.
"God created the world" seems to imply "there is a causal connection
between God and the condition of the world," so if the former were
established the latter would be so as well.
>However, your examples do not help to distinguish between a God that
>created species specially and separately or one that used natural
>means.
It is true that knowing God created the world and that the world
reflects his purposes including special purposes gives no _a priori_ way
to determine which things have happened in accordance with general
natural principles and which have not. So what? Very little knowledge
follows directly from grand arguments about the nature of things.
Further investigation would be needed to see for example whether a
mechanistic account of the origin of life and species is sensible. So
far as I can tell, investigations to date don't give very solid support
to such an account.
>With respect to biology, does the possibility of evolution make "the
>whole system" more or less comprehensible?
Depends on what "evolution" means. If it means descent with
modifications it does I think make the system more comprehensible. If
it means the appearance and development of life solely by reason of
random variation and natural selection it makes things more puzzling.
>I don't think attributing things to God _really_ makes the system more
>comprehensible even though one may feel more comfortable about it. But
>note, this is not an argument against God's intervention.
It appears though to be a universal argument against believing in God's
intervention since we adopt all our beliefs to make the system of our
experience more comprehensible.
>To me that step of attribution simply kicks the problem up a level (or
>sweeps the problems under the rug -- depending on which metaphor you
>like).
It appears that for you an explanation of an event that is not the
description of a mechanism is not an explanation.
>My criteria are rationality (or coherence with my experiences of the
>world), consistency and the ability to model previously unknown
>relationships/connections as simply as can be reasonably done.
>
>Could you present alternate criteria for positive content and
>distinguishability?
I would add ability to account for all major components of our
experience, including for example subjective consciousness and valid
evaluative experience.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Eva can ignite virtuosos out riveting in a cave.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Mon Dec 2 08:44:03 EST 1996
Article: 8522 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Must-read books
Date: 2 Dec 1996 08:40:41 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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References: <575l8l$q5r@panix.com> <57huol$mjc@gerry.cc.keele.ac.uk> <57k4g7$de7@panix.com> <445382470wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <57q2tf$9p2@panix.com> <57u7fl$i6o@gerry.cc.keele.ac.uk>
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In <57u7fl$i6o@gerry.cc.keele.ac.uk> cla04@cc.keele.ac.uk (Andy Fear) writes:
>I wonder what OyG meant by the crudeness of Late Latin and where he placed
>late.
He speaks of the masses and frightful homogeneity of the Lower Empire,
says increasing stupidity had become apparent as early as the time of
the Antonines, and that the process had begun earlier yet. He thinks
the situation in the Lower Empire didn't appear suddenly out of nowhere
or from some particular and contingent cause. I suppose one could
understand Tacitus as an observer of political aspects of the process
that led to it.
As to the language, Ortega is speaking of vulgar Latin:
We know little of this vulgar Latin and our idea of it comes
largely from reconstruction, but we know enough, and more than
enough, to be appalled by [its simple grammar and homogeneity].
>it remains a simple fact that in the plastic arts the Empire out did
>anything that had come before it.
You mean in Rome and the West?
>Having said that I think it remains the case that out of the ancient
>historians Tacitus has the most to teach us about our form of life
>today where again our rulers are hardly despotic in a crude sense but
>nontheless their power is poorly defined and often in its important
>acts secretive.
In both cases I think that a reason for the poor definition and secrecy
is that power has no acceptable theory of itself. Therefore the gap
between the ostensible constitution and reality becomes too wide to
bridge even with legal fictions and the notion of government in
accordance with accepted legal norms -- constitutional government --
has no applicability.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: If I had a hi-fi.
Do let me know if you have comments of any kind.
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