Nice chillin' with friends
Just got back from Jonathan's place in Central Sq. It was a very nice evening, and I had dinner with Jonathan, his son Asa and Ben, a young Friend from Beacon Hill Meeting. We had very nice conversations and I had a pretty in-depth discussion with Ben about moral fanaticism. It was a very relaxing evening.
I think I might attend worship at Beacon Hill Friends Meeting this Sunday.
Vulgarization of James Chang?
The angry British gentleman came back and started blog-stalking me by posting a comment under every comment I or someone else had made in the past few days. Lol. How very amusing. He surely has much time to spare.
The really troubling part though is that I just couldn't understand his new talking-points this time at all. Weird. As someone who reads a lot, I am usually able to understand the most obscure among all statements (as anyone who's done Kant's Groundwork would be able to tell), but for some reason I just couldn't decipher his angry/nervous responses this time.
He still failed to tell me why Dawkins' arguments, however scientifically valuable they are, have no moral bearing whatsoever. That was my original point, and for whatever reason he refuses to engage in answering/rebutting it.
He then moved on claiming that I got riled up by Dawkins because of his anti-religious stances. And this is clearly a misrepresentation of my views. I got riled up not because of Dawkins' irreligiosity but because of his refusal to recognize the existence of an independent metaphysical basis for all human morality, and the bindingness of the moral law. Alas our British friend also failed to engage me on this issue.
So yeah, out of my respect for him as a human being's sake I am not going to cancel his comments. But if he keep on posting non-sequiturs I'm afraid I will have to start deleting comments. You hear me, Gert.
Tension
Regarding my last post, I think the tension really lies in potential confusion caused by the following understandings:
1) that the Divine Will is readily discernible by the human individual.
2) that the Divine Will in itself is absolutely transcendent, beyond all understanding.
The two statements seem to contradict one another, though I'm quite convinced that they don't. Now if there is *no* way whatsoever by which we may learn the Truth, then there is no moral obligation at all for us to act according to Truth. But if there is a way for the human individual to approach Truth, how do we actually know that we're not acting on our own notions? Modern Fundamentalism seem to offer a quick and dirty solution: they said we should stick to the literal words of the Bible. But this doesn't help us at all since the doctrine of sola scriptura itself is extra-biblical. Alternatively, we may characterize such thought as Bible-idolatry, the we then make the Scriptures into the cornerstone of our faith.
One practical implication of the tension is that we are constantly under an obligation to act morally. If acting morally is built in to our disposition then it is not an obligation at all, for no one would then have to force herself to act morally. It's part of her natural self. It is this compulsory yet resisted nature of the law which makes the observance and reverence of the moral law an obligation, and which set our moral life apart from our natural life.
The Absolute Transcendence of God
After some thought I realize that the one insight that I've gained, namely, that the moral law, which transcends all circumstances, is readily understandable by all rational agents, could be turned into a rather conceited notion that truth is whatever we understood to be right and that our maxims (the principles we actually act on) necessarily coextend with the moral law (the principles that we ought to act on.)
I have mentioned earlier to my friends at Penn and in NEYM in separate letters that the mere fact of the existence of transcendental moral law does not itself imply that its contents could be readily comprehended by the human mind. Kant called this the outer boundaries of human reason, and some medieval English mystics called it the "cloud of unknowing." Any attempt to figure *all* the details out necessarily involves the smuggling in of empirical notions we as fallible human beings learned from the outside world...(see Marx's Critique of Hegel's Doctrine of the State...)
To a certain degree, the Quaker idea of inward Light, which parallels the above understanding, could also lead to all kinds of notions that because truth is readily available to me, by exercising my reason or by praying or through other fantastic exercises I could gain perfect understanding of it and act on it. If we leap one step further and start acting like we do know what the entire body of moral law entails, then such behavior clearly is a spectacular non sequitur. Knowledge of the existence of truth and knowledge of truth itself are clearly two different things. Affirmation of the former does not have any implication regarding the latter whatsoever.
The strange thing though, is that despite my knowledge of such danger, I have recently been acting as though not only I know that moral knowledge is a priori, but that I actually know what is right and what is wrong *for sure*, *all the time*. This might be an inkling that I am on my way of becoming a Ranter (in fact, this might be a good definition of Ranterism, the non sequitur I just mentioned.) This is rather dreadful.
For men like Karl Barth, the aforementioned non sequitur is the beginning of the divination of human thinking. Notions, however truthful they are, becomes our false god and idol and the still small voice of the living God is blocked. Perhaps instead of Origen, I should look at Barth's Commentaries on the Epistle to the Romans instead.
Former KKK organizer was not only a cowardly murderer but also a liar
Earlier last year we reported the conviction of Ray Edgar Killen, mastermind behind the "Mississippi Burning" murders, on a count of manslaughter. Apparently after his conviction he lied to the Court regarding his physical conditions to get parole. Fortunately this had been uncovered by the Sheriff and Deputies of Neshoba County, Mississippi, and the Court acted promptly to re-incarcerate this notorious murderer, who masterminded 42 years ago the murders of 3 civil rights worker in Neshoba.
Apparently Mr. Killen is not only cowardly, hateful, bigoted and murderous. He is also a perjurer and a liar.
http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050910/NEWS010702/509100361/1002/NEWS01
End of History and Philosophy
After I'm done with Kojeve and Strauss I will probably move on to "The Cloud of Unknowing" and the works of Origen of Alexandria. Like Hegel, Marx and Kojeve, Origen had very strong views on the end of history, that there will eventually be a homogenous universal society in which the natural world is coextensive with a Divine world of rationality and autonomy. I'm not sure where I will start but since I have a lot of property law and criminal law reading to do I'll probably put my reading schedule on a halt, and wait for a while before I do any outside reading.
Speaking of property law, our professor Kenneth Mack has been great today in our first lecture. He's very Socratic, yet quite soft-spoken and somewhat reserved in his manners, which is great, since it creates a more relaxed atmosphere where students are hard-pressed to come up with rapid-fire responses that do not involve much reflection.
In the coming weeks I will also be having a number of job interviews for the summer. Hopefully they'll go well.
End of Debate
Instead of "end of history," I would like to discuss a little bit about "end of debate." I feel that in my correspondence with Naturalists of various stripes I have gradually lost sight of the possibility that these people, being rational and human, should be persuaded and not just written off. In a way, I have failed to remind myself of my Quaker roots, and speak to that of God in them. But there is one problem though. When I was in Arch Street Meeting, a Friend used to tell me how, even after being a Friend for 30-odd years, he was still convinced that there are those who had extinguished the Light of Christ within them. Now this involved the judging of someone's spiritual state, something I do not want to engage in. So I think I should just stop my discussion about Richard Dawkins and his narrow-minded doctrines right here, and refrain from any further bickering with his followers.
Sleight of hand of my opponent
The British gentleman performed a further sleight of hand in his angry diatribe against my denunciation of Richard Dawkins. He noted how I am anti-atheist.
Oh really?
Ha. In my original post I used the term "Naturalist" and "Vulgar/Mechanical Materialist" to describe Dawkins, the former being the most vulgar subset of the latter group of people. On the other hand, an atheist may or may not be a Naturalist. Clearly neither Marx, Fromm, Schaff or Leo Strauss was Naturalist in their philosophic outlook.
See these people are trying to portray whoever dare to raise a finger against Dawkins' tyranny in the academia as nutty religious fundamentalist. Alas I am not one, and I certainly anticipate to find allies amongst atheist in our battle against the Dawkinsian onslaught on human dignity.
Idle talk of a Dawkinsian
In an ill-tempered response to my last entry, a British gentleman insisted that I had badly interpreted Dawkins' Vulgar Materialism. Here's his argument:
"Dawkins does not deny the existence of an individual basis for morality. He's simply arguing that morality does not stem from nature and is therefore not foredained for humankind either by mother nature or by a mystical God."
Could we ever get a better example of logical non sequitur? He is precisely proving *my* point, that Dawkins' argument is idle talk. My response is:
"So what if fact does not beget morality? We already know that. That's precisely *my* point. Morality must derive its legitimacy from sources outside of nature. That's why beyond science we study metaphysics, ethics and religion, things whose legitimacy Dawkins sought to undermine. The simple fact that the moral law does not derive its force from nature does not mean we're thereby releaved from acting according to it. It simply means that there is so much more things beyond nature that we ought to learn. Does Dawkins agree with me on this, or does he not? I think he does not. Not long ago he was telling an interviewer how criminals should not be punished for their deeds since the propensity to commit crime is determined by the constitution of their natural body and their genes, etc."
So Dawkins is a naturalist. Period.
So what do my dear readers say? Should I respond to future Dawkinsian challenge?
On Richard Dawkins
One further thing that bemused me is why on earth would someone present a Humanism award to a fellow such as Richard Dawkins, FRS, M.A., D.Phil., D.Sc., etc, etc. There is nothing humane or humanistic at all in his doctrines. They are naturalist, which is far below mechanical or vulgar materialism. For a vulgar materialist at least admit the existence of social life apart from the natural life, Dawkins denies them altogether.
I wonder what his wife and daughter think of his views on them. To be true to himself, Dr. Dawkins must necessarily deny that his wife and daughter could have possibly been moral agents.
I also wonder what would all the victims of Dachau and Buchenwald think of his doctrines. If there is, as Kojeve pointed out and Dawkins apparently believes, "a contradiction between speaking about ethics and ought on the one hand, and about conforming to a given or innate human
nature on the other..." then clearly practices such as
massendressur (mass-training) and
volkshygiene (eugenics) becomes possible to justify, if they could in fact promote our species' "well-being," defined in a Dawkinsian way of course.
Now Dawkins would tell us that nay the fact that our morality comes from our genes does not in itself mandate certain behavior, etc. But he would then be conceding that
his theory does not have any moral bearing whatsoever. Who is he then to critique other moral philosophies basing on his factual understandings, if he does not have a moral theory of his own?
I guess the Humanists decided to give Dawkins this prize due to their disdain for anything religious. Basing on the vulgar dogma "my enemy's enemy is my friend" they gotta do something with this Professor Dawkins, FRS, M.A., D.Phil., D.Sc., etc.,etc.
Another form of sleight of hand
Another way philosophers, legal theorists, mechanical materialists (like Feuerbach), Critical Theorists (of the Herbert Marcuse stripe) and Vulgar Evolutionists (a term I reserve for individuals like Dr. Richard Dawkins, Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford) perform their sleight of hand tricks is to confuse the boundary between deontological and utilitarian ethics.
Consider the following Dawkinsian statement. "Man is a beast. Like any other beast. He is natural and there is nothing rational or spiritual about his being. Therefore he must not treat himself as anything more than a beast." Such a vulgar creed, in itself, does not have any moral implication whatsoever. Just because we are beasts does not itself provide any moral imperative for us to treat other beasts the same way we treat ourselves. It does not mandate that we afford human rights to other great apes, for instance.
Again, facts do not beget morality. So when a Dawkinsian makes such a statement, our first and proper response should be, "So what?" This should serve as an immediate repudiation to his claim since for him to rebuke us he will have to resort to Ideas of Right and Wrong, which defeat his very proposition that there is no moral life beyond our natural lives; that there is not a Kingdom of Freedom beyond our Kingdom of Nature.
The mere fact that his statement is self-contradictory on the metaphysical level itself shows that at best it is idle talk at worst it contradicts the categorical imperative of morality, much in the same way that breaking a promise does. Therefore we may further conclude that a Dawkinsian is necessarily immoral, depending on whether he takes his own proposition seriously. If he does, then we
must consider him immoral.
The Human Mind
I think I need to clarify a little bit regarding the last point I raised in the last post.
On a physical/scientific level, I do not deny the veracity of the Evolutionist's claim.
Neither do I deny that the physical body is what sustains the mind: it provides a basis for all rational and intellectual activities to be carried out. What I do detest is Dawkins' notion that for all philosophic purpose the moral is the natural and that all "moral feelings" (as though there is such a thing) are means through which the human individual attempt to preserve, adapt and procreate. This is non sequitur. That preservation and procreation is a goal of life does not mean it has to be the sole, supreme goal. Furthermore, even if it is, Dawkins had yet to prove that this is what all human individuals actually hold in their heart as the guiding principle of their lives. Conversely, even if Dawkins could prove that, he still will
have a hard time convincing me that it should be the guiding principle. Facts do not beget moral. Our zoologist friend Dr. Dawkins clearly overlooked it rather conveniently.
This is ultimately junk. Before going into the fallacious logic Dawkins' sick mind came up with, let us first look at its implications.
If the sole aim of the individual is to procreate, etc., and there is no distinction between the natural and the moral, then clearly I could make racist statements such as "Chinese people are morally superior to everyone else." Res ipsa loquitur. It's that simple. (Because Chinese are more numerous, clearly they're better at procreating, which is in itself moral since it contribute to a Dawkinian moral end--the preservation of the species.) By same token, clearly Europeans and Africans are morally inferior (or maybe physically inferior too...) Otherwise why the hell are their numbers dwindling?
Dawkins claimed that religion is the foremost evil we have to confront today. No, it's not. It's Naturalism, Biologism, Darwinism and all their progeny such as racism,
vulgar Marxism, mechanical materialism that we must confront.
The proper point of departure in our inquiry of human conditions, Xenophon, Hegel, Kojeve and Strauss
I have mentioned several days ago that I was going to write a coherent account on how I think philosophers and legal theorists should treat the human individual. I did write one out, and emailed it to Hilary Ellis, a friend from Penn and a most wonderful person, and Prof. Dennis DeTurck, my math professor during college days. I'm not sure I want to publish it on this blog at this point though. I hope I could one day write a more detailed account of it.
Aside from this, I had some very interesting conversations with Prof. DeTurck and Jeff Segurit, another friend from Penn, regarding the recent "rear window incident" at Penn. It reinforced my interest in alternative forms of dispute resolution, and my understanding that social norms, rather than law, sometimes provide better frameworks (or "shadow," to steal Prof. Bob Mnookin's phraseology) under which parties may resolve their disputes.
Right now I've just started working on Xenophon's "Hiero," or "Tyrannicus," Leo Strauss' "On Tyranny" and the debate and correspondences between Leo Strauss and Alexandre Kojeve. Despite being a quasi-Marxian, many of Kojeve's claims, such as those regarding the consummation of human history, the universality of Robespierrien-Bonapartist notions of democracy, and the possibility of one "comprehensive, coherent account" for wisdom and its condition precedent, the "end of history," all sound quite suspicious. Is this supposed to be a return to vulgar Hegelianism/Marxism and Historicism? In which the "Spirit" of history determines how each "stage" of history shall evolve into the next? In which every human event is "historically inevitable"?
On the other hand, I do share his notion on how the mutual recognition of each individual's equal freedom of opportunity and dignity should be the ultimate end of all human endeavor. I also share with him this longing for a homogenous society, in which everyone is essentially the same, in which the prophecy in Isaiah 25 could be realized. (A society comprised of the "last men"?)
(And here it goes. The term "diversity" has become some kind of mantra these days. But as long as our Idea of the "true man"/"last man"/ is truly a priori, as long as we don't (as Kojeve sneakily did) smuggle empirical notions such as Bonapartism in, homogeneity means true equality, not "hegemony." To be honest with those of you who bother to read this blog, I just don't see the beauty of diversity. Instead I celebrate the one-ness of humankind. Whether such homogeneity should, as Kojeve claimed, be achieved by a totalitarian state is another question. It seems to me that Kojeve made here the big mistake of attempting to force a social revolution through political institutions, the same mistake the Jacobins made in the French Revolution...)
Furthermore, Kojeve's notion of praxis as verification of theory is also peculiar. Just why the "recognizing by others of our theory" has become the chief end of praxis is never clear to me.
Now there is one thing which I do side with Kojeve against Strauss. Strauss maintained that it is impossible for a philosopher to be political, and that philosophers should try as hard as they could to escape from politics. Kojeve, on the other hand, argues that it is through praxis that the philosopher realizes his theory, thereby not only vindicating but also realizing his own being. I'm totally with Kojeve on this.
If Kojeve's account is suspicious, Leo Strauss gets worse. He rejected the Kojeveian worldview by arguing that it runs counter to "human nature," a nature to be sublime, good and outstanding. Strauss argued that any political theory must take "human nature" into account. One wonders what he means by "human nature." If by human nature
Strauss meant "human essence" then I bet Kojeve would agree with him on this, since the Marxian "human essence" really pertains to men's proper relationships with his fellow beings, as well as his longing for self-expression, his longing to "be." But I'm not sure what Strauss really meant. Kojeve took it that Strauss really was a God-d-mn supporter of "Biologism," of eugenics and other sh-t of that sort. I doubt that this is the case. Now if we demarcate the human individual into his rational and natural self as Kant did though, we could easily reconcile the two. What man's "spiritual nature" would naturally prompt him to act on, by virtue of his being rational, becomes an obligation on the natural man.
______________________________________________________________________________________
Back to the baseline. I've also been thinking about the moral implications of Richard Dawkins' version/brand of Darwinism. Now that's Biologism in its most naked form, and my friends do not be mistaken: Prof. Dawkins, together with Prof. Peter Singer, etc. are out there to put us human beings back in our proper moral place, alongside chimps, gorillas and other cute little creatures, and the fast and dirty way of achieving this is to argue that all our moral sentiments, etc. originate from our genes. Any individual basis for rationality is denied. Our mind is no more than our brains.
This should make all the rest of us think. What are these professors up to? Hmm..the denial even of the existence of a human society ("Kingdom of Freedom") apart from the natural world ("Kingdom of Nature/Necessity")...what does this mean? I'm sure the readers (there there's any :)) know where I'm getting at...voila! The abolition of all bases of morality independent from nature. Everything becomes justifiable, this time not as historically inevitable but as "naturally inevitable." No wonder animal rights people never pay any attention whatsoever to animal welfare. (Note the difference between animal rights and animal welfare, a distinction stressed repeatedly by both animal rights advocates and their opponents.)
Conversation
Had a great conversation with Matt Latt from my section last night at Cambridge Commons
over a beer about the Neoclassical sleight-of-hand and its arguably Hegelian roots. This is so funny because viewed in this light, Richard Posner, despite his claim to being a Pragmatist or Utilitarian, really is a quasi-Hegelian in disguise. At least with respect to some of his methodologies.
The beer I had was very strong. At least 15%, which is almost weird for a beer. It's has the word 'Sotch' in its name, so I bet they must have stored them in Scotch Whiskey
barrels or somethin'.
Tony Yuen
I'm expecting a vibrant and exciting conversation with both Tony Yuen and Huanglei Ni once I get to Philly. Both are friends who are doctoral students in economics at Penn, and hardcore Neoclassicals. Haha...this gotta be fun...chatting with people smarter than myself about the methods of modern economics since the Marginalist Revolution :)
"The Economic Man," the "Rational Actor" and Hegelian sleight of hand
Prof. Hanson mentioned more than a few times in our torts class the fallacy of what he called "Dispositionism," and its corollary in Neoclassical Economics, the notion of the rational actor. Yesterday I read an essay by Professor Lucio Colletti on Marx's "Critique of Hegel's Doctrine of the State" and the issue of such pseudo-abstraction was discussed in length. It pretty much has to do with how "(un)transcendental" Hegel (and other "Dispositionists," to steal a Hansonian term) really was vis-a-vis true transcendentalists such as the Kant, Marx, Meister Eckhart and St. Denis. There are two solution to this. We could either go all the way through transcendentalism and finally come to the outer-boundary of human reason, the "cloud of unknowing," stop there, and claim that we've found the cornerstone of all human morals (as Kant did in his "Groundwork," which really provides the ethical fiber later materialist philosophies badly need); or, we could go back and become vulgar materialists like people who constituted the New Left.
Another book that I picked up yesterday was Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.'s 'The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society.' I don't know why but suddenly I came to realize that the fallacy of both monoculturalists and multiculturalists lie precisely in their pseudo-abstractions, the former of "The American Man" or "the Free Citizen," whatever that means, and the latter of categories such as "race," "class" and "gender." They both commit the mortal error of taking "the system," not-so-abstractly-constructed-and-with-empiricist-biases-built-in, rather than the human individual, as their point of departure. In a sense, the monoculturalists are repeating the Hegelian sleight-of-hand, smuggling a posteri notions into their "transcendental" construction of the "American man" and claiming generality for the specific features/quirks a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant middle class man may have; whereas the multiculturalists, being products of a reaction against
this sleight-of-hand, are just being plain-ole' vulgar materialists.
All these sound very abstract and incomprehensible at this moment. I will try to write up a short paragraph about it the next few days, when I spend my holidays in Philly, and post it online.
Finals are over!!!
This is so gruesome. But we're done, yay!!! Exams here are legendarily long and hard, and I'm so glad that they're over. I will be visiting my old friends in Philly this Sunday and early next week. It should be a very delightful and relaxing trip. I miss my friends.
Story of forgiveness
Here's a story about a small Catholic Parish in Acoma. It's a story of forgiveness. I found it on the homepage of a Quaker Minister, Peggy Senger Parsons, Pastor at Freedom Friends Church, Salem, Oregon.
http://www.unction.org/PP-So.htm
upset
I was upset today by my alma mater UPenn's near decision to sanction a student for publishing lewd pictures online.
This is totally unacceptable, and I'm very glad that the Office of Student Conduct at Penn, which is quite well known for being jelly-spined, decided to back off and dropped all the "charges" against the student.
What happened was there was this couple having sex in front of a window in one of those highrises. A peeping tom-ish student took pictures of it and then posed them on CollegeHumor.com. The Office of Student Conduct at Penn then took action and threatened to sanction the photographer. When Dr. Alan Kors, Professor of History and champion of (dare I say it?) individual liberty (hell yeah!!!) stepped in to defend the student, and when C. Edwin Baker, Gallicchio Professor of Law and constitutional expert at Penn noted how the photographer is protected by (you betcha) the 1st Amendment, the OSC, spineless as usual, dropped the charges.
This is almost like a replay of the "water buffalo" debacle 12 years ago. And apparently Penn bureaucrats, cowardly and spineless as they are, did become a little bit smaaaahhhter. Back in the golden days of political correctness they were beholden to the PC crowds. Nowadays they have to pay a little more attention to the libertarians as well. Those unprincipled cowards...
Now the lawyer for the "victim," a young-looking fella' who just got his license to practice last year, claimed that his client ain't not gonna settle with this. He said they're gonna bring a suit. A suit at common law (boo woo...), he says, an action in tort. What tort? Somethin' edible? Intentional tort. What intentional tort? Invasion of privacy.
Ah...let me see. I don't know much about the law, but the last time I looked at the hornbooks it is said that the public nature of the disclosed facts is, surprise,
valid defense. Throw in consent and other whatnot and...there p-r-o-b-a-b-l-y i-s n-o-t a c-a-s-e.
Shall we then concern ourselves with possible court sanctions on the plaintiff and her counsel then? Oh crap...gotta start studyin' my civ pro. Rule 11 sanction, whatever...
