Paul Newman is Cool Hand Luke (1967)
Saw Cool Hand Luke (1967) last night, with Paul Newman playing the title character. As Newman said, "Give an actor a good script and he'll move the world," though in this case it wasn't just the script, it was also Newman's own (no pun intended...) tour-de-force performance that renders film a masterpiece.
In short, it was about a man who wouldn't conform. Unlike some of Newman's other characters, Lucas Jackson didn't have a moral mission or a personal dream. He just simply wouldn't lead the kind of life society expects him to. From sawing off parking meter's heads at the beginning to trying repeatedly to escape from the chain-gang at the end, the "Man" might be able to break him, but it's just ain't not possible for 'em to put the right notions in his head. Call him an anti-hero. A man with heroic qualities but who's just not finding himself a hero in his real life.
The true hero
Here's a review of "The Man who shot Liberty Valance," from the internet movie database:
"Other reviewers, aside from seeing this as the end of the classic western, saw the plot as myth granting to one man that which was rightfully another's. I disagree. I see TMWSLV as a tale of a man stepping aside for the sake of a better man and a better world, at great personal cost.
I view Tom as someone who has lived a cynical life--kill it before it kills you. With the advent of Ransom he recognizes that there is a better way, and that Ransom, by defying evil from a position of weakness, is far braver than Tom, who has merely defied evil from a position of strength. Additionally, Ransom brings about an answer to the question "must the sword rule forever?" with a resounding "no," a denial that at first seems foolish to Tom, but who then realizes that things really should be Ransom's way.
And so Tom, knowing that one of them is the better man, allows that better man to receive the fame attendant to heroism; and in fact Ransom, for daring what Tom never did dare, is the true hero of the tale. Like all honest men must, Tom steps aside for the better man, knowing what it will cost him to do what is right.
An earlier reviewer said that the depiction of the politics was a parody; in fact, the politics of the early portion of the republics was even more lively (read: pugnacious) than is depicted in the film."
It was by reviewer "evilsnack" from Idaho, and I thoroughly agree with her/his points. Yes the "slave" is the hero of history, for it is she who through her work transform the eternal mother nature and thereby catalyzing human progress. I like the parody in the earlier part of the movie too. There was this scene in which Jimmy Stewart told his student Woody Strode, who played a top-notch yet illiterate African-American gunfighter (and servant of John Wayne's character), to recite the beginning sentences of the Declaration of Independence in the literacy school Stewart had founded. It was ironic, since Strode's character was an African American living in the Postbellum West: a place which wasn't exactly the most enlightened when it came to racial relations, and where many public facilities were segregated. Nice ironic touch, as John Ford made the movie in 1962, a year before Martin Luther King Jr.'s March on Washington.
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
Great John Ford movie (1962). The greatest director, John Ford. The greatest cast a western could've ever had: James Stewart, John Wayne, Lee Marvin.
I'm very intrigued by the movie's theme. Since it was presented as a retrospective narrative by a U.S. Senator from the old West, it touched upon the, uh, evolution of the Western society. It even fits into Kojeve's narrative of the master-slave dialectic. John Wayne's character essentially stood for the old, "pagan" aristocratic ideal of the "master" who fought for pure prestige; while Jimmy Stewart's character, a tought-talking idealistic lawyer-turn-ruthless politician on the Hill, stood for the bourgeois, "Christian" slave. But of course under the Hegel/Kojeve's construction, it is the slave who moves human history. It is the bourgeois "slave" who gave the West law and order.
I love this movie.
jimmy.org
Jimmy Stewart, one of my favorite actors, has a museum dedicated to him. The url is quite memorable:)
http://www.jimmy.org
Movies
Saw a couple of movies these days, including "Room with a view" (1985), "Rope" (1948) and "Frankie and Johnny." (1991) I like sappy romance films and thrillers, and I'm absolutely a fan of Jimmy Stewart :)
E Pluribus Unum
Had a French dip sandwich at a bar outside Boston Commons two days ago. It was delicious, and I had to look up its origin:
http://members.cox.net/jjschnebel/frdipsan.html
So French dip isn't French at all. It was invented accidentally by a French-American immigrant, one M. Mathieu, who ran a deli in L.A. Isn't that just amazing? How this country has been and still is enriched by the cultures various immigrants brought with them has never failed to impress me. Without the fabrics of many, there could never have been the wholecloth of the United States of America.
New Directions
I've decided to give up reading philosophy, at least for awhile. I'll probably focus more on our class readings, as well as biographies and autobiographies, such as the autobiogrphies/memoirs of Ben Franklin and Winston Churchill; as well as Thayer's biography of Beethoven and the Book of Abigail and John Adams.
I also bought a CD of Vladimir Horowitz playing Chopin.
Nice Calvinist quotes (sarcasm intended)
These Calvinist/Presbyterian quotes are taken from the magnum opus of Robert Barclay, Quaker minister and theologian and sometime Governor of East Jersey (1682-1688), "An Apology for the True Christian Divinity" (published 1676 in Latin, translated into English in 1678.)
Enjoy.
John Calvin: "I say that it is by the ordination and will of God that Adam fell. God wanted man to fall. Man is blinded by the will and the command of God..."
Beza: "God has predestined whomever he saw fit, not only to damnation, but also to the causes of it...The decree of God cannot be excluded from the cause of man's corruption."
Zanchius: "It is certain that God is the first cause of obduration. Reprobates are held so fast under God's almighty decree, that they can do nothing but sin..."
Martyr: "God inclines and forces the wills of wicked men into great sins."
Ulrich Zwingli (here's the kicker): "God moves the robber to kill. He kills because God forces him to. But, you will say, then he is forced to sin; I permit truly that he is forced."
Piscator: "Reprobate persons are absolutely ordained to this twofold end, to undergo everlasting punishment, and necessarily to sin; and therefore to sin, that they may be justly punished."
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Robert Barclay the Quaker: "These quotations not only make God the author of sin but more unjust than the most unjust of men..."
Judge Hand :)
Loved this. I'm a big admirer of Judge Hand (though I have to say I've got a softer spot for Judge Friendly who tended to write more humerous pieces...), and I really find this funny:
http://howtolawschool.blogspot.com/2005/05/learned-hand.html
Judge Leval on Judge Posner:
http://www.nyu.edu/pubs/annualsurvey/articles/61%20N.Y.U.%20Ann.%20Surv.%20Am.%20L.%209%20(2005).pdf
Positive vs. Normative theory
There's a problem with social scientists and it's that whenever they think somethin' ought to be done, they articulate their ideas as though they are mere positive descriptions of what has been going on.
One example would be Richard Posner. In some of his late 80s opinions, like the Indiana Harbor case and a number of innkeeper negligence cases, he apparently believed that a cost-benefit efficiency analysis (and consequently application of the Hand Formula) is what he as a Judge ought to apply. But in his earlier books (Economic Analysis of Law, Economic Structure of Tort Law, etc) he described efficiency as something Judges have always been doing and that he and his coauthor William Landes weren't doing anything new (notwithstanding the fact that with the illustrious exception of Judge Hand in Carroll Towing case most courts in tort cases never mention a word about efficiency.)
A better example is Hegel. Obviously he has this idea of the Absolute Spirit realizing itself in human societies throughout the ages. But is it a positive or a normative idea? Hegel wrote that it is positive (both in his Philosophy of History and in the great Phenomenology), that men did progress through the master-slave dialectic and the negating action of the man, although I seriously suspect that he was really contructing a normative theory: that men ought to, through realizing themselves as rational beings, push the human society into more enlightened "stages. If the Hegelian tautology is understood in normative terms, then we wouldn't even need to stand it on its feet as Marx did. All Marx really had to do then, is to rip Hegel's narrow-minded Prussian construction of the "Spirit" apart (which he did); substitute it with a truly trascendental ideal; perceive the human individual as she is ("sum total of the social relations he experiences") and tell her that she ought to strive for the ideal and that only thus could she achieve freedom.
Then the whole Kant-Hegel-Marx chain of development would become complete. What we have then is:
Concept/Absolute Knowledge = Something Eternal (the Moral Law), related to Time (=human society, which is temporal and always changes through the self-perfecting activities/practice of human individuals which negate the present)
It also squares pretty well with the Bible, since the something Eternal then could be used to explain away the Divine revelations, and the Time thing and the end of history thesis would fit pretty well with the notion of the Day of the Lord, the End Times or Last Things or however one would like to phrase it.
It also solve the issue a positive theory would create: that everything that happens in history could be justified as rational since it's the Spirit who's at work... (essentially my friend John Odito's biggest worry with respect to Hegelian philosophy...)
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Just watched this weird baseball game with my friend Nels...it was between Japan and Korea, and nothing happened, I mean, nothing, at all, during the first five innings, and then suddenly Japan scored like 6 points in the 6th inning...
I wonder who the winner will be. Regardless of who they are, they'll have to face Cuba...
But then this is not uncommon in baseball. We had a good time anyways, laughing at the silly comments the "commentators" made...
"What ought I to do"?
Finished reading Hegel's intro to the philosophy of history yesterday, and skipped all the crap toward the end (mostly racist theory re human origin, etc.)
I came to realize that due to the obscure language in the "Phenomenology of the Spirit," many readers had come to regard Hegel's teleological view of history as a positive theory (of "historical inevitability"). But now that I've thought it over and over, I think he probably meant it as something normative. Or at least that's what a right-minded person should treat it as. Otherwise it becomes highly speculative, for no one could be so sure as to whether history really has beeb "progressing" all along; and a patently absurd one too, for as my friend John pointed out such a view might force us to accept all kinds of violent/absurd event as something "historically inevitable" and therefore "rational"...
The question then is not, "has the Spirit been realizing itself through past history?" but rather "how might I participate in the realization of the Spirit, through hope for the future?"
Personally I think this understanding of the Hegel's philosophy of history as a normative theory is not an unreasonable one, since Hegel essentially built his theory on the German classicals, like Kant, who first systemized what one might call the philosophy of right.
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Last night's St. Patty's day celebration had been very successful. Ben, John, Matt, Mike, Derek, Polly, Jessica, Emma, Anna, myself and a whole host of other people went out, and I did get dressed up in this lush green Austrian jacket...
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Hope. I'm still not quite sure if I get the essence of this cardinal virtue of "Hope." Can we equate it with the Hegelian notion of "desire"? Or the more general notion of self-consciousness? I'll have to work more on it...
Laboring
I'm still laboring with how to make sense of the death of Tom Fox. Tom, a Quaker, was one of the Christian Peacemakers kidnapped by an Iraqi terrorist group which calls itself the "Sword of Righteousness," or some words to that effect. These cowardly criminals murdered Tom some days ago, and it was not until yesterday that I learned of this sad news from Rich Ailes, clerk of Middletown Friends Meeting, Lima, Pennsylvania.
This is absurd. This is so absurd. These fanatics are taking lives of precisely those who advocate nonviolence. Apparently they're not only fanatical and violent. They're cowardly as hell too. These are precisely the type of reactionary criminals who belong to the dustbin of history.
I am definitely looking forward to their Day of Judgment. Not
only the Day of the Lord, mind you, but a trial before a court of law in this world, where they will receive their this-worldly reward. Justice must be done. It must be done.
Philosophy of History
I had beer with Peter, Jessica, Dan and some other contra-dance folks in Davis Square this Monday, and went to the used bookstore Lisa brought me to the other day. There I found this Dover edition of Hegel's "Philosophy of History" and decided to give it a shot.
Turned out that I think the most important part of the book is its introduction (pp. 1-100 something...) since it pretty much laid out Hegel's teleological view of history and his ontology. It wasn't really a sufficient exposition of Hegel's thoughts since his "dialectics" was barely touched on...and to be honest his ontology was barely touched upon...but that's sufficient for my purpose of reading it.
I also bought this pamphlet, Brother Lawrence's "Practice of the Presence of God." It was very interesting, since its Platonic ontology (equating Absolute Knowledge with the eternal God, which is itself outside of time) demands that we forsake discursive knowledge and engage non-logical-and-therefore-nontemporal/ANGELIC conversation with God outside of timeframe (prayer time and cooking time means the same to Brother Lawrence, and in lack of words he described such experience as the "bosom of God.") It is a form of mysticism, since it renders discourse impossible for all rational agents that are not Angelic. The positive side is, if Brother Lawrence really is able to practice the presence of God this way, then one may conclude that he plainly was an Angelic man. That to me is a pretty upbeat idea.
No Comment
Uh, here's the pictures of Zhou Enlai receiving Nixon and Chen Shui-bian attempting to shake the hand of Clinton...
http://photo.hexun.com/p/2005/0821/2947/b_8A22CB1B1FF34A65.jpg
Two conclusions I guess: first, looks matter. For politicians at least. And second, please, at least don't be so cheap...
Just to show that I'm not politically biased, here's a picture of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek (1886-1975), former President of the Republic of China (1948-1949, 1949-1975), as one of the big four (Roosevelt, Stalin, Churchill, Chiang):
http://history1900s.about.com/library/photos/blyfdr126.htm
See the difference?
Lee Kuan Yew on race and ethnicity
By today's standard Lee Kuan Yew, "Minister Mentor" (read Super Prime Minister) of Singapore is definitely
the last unabashed old-time racist politician.
Here're some pearls of his wisdom on race and ethnicity. Notice how he arranged 'races' into a nicely-structed hierarchy, with Ashkenazi Jews on top and "Malays"/"Negroes"/and all other lazy brown-skinned tropical peoples at the bottom...
http://www.sfdonline.org/Link%20Pages/Link%20Folders/Human%20Rights/barr2.html
The curious thing of course is that Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir apparently shared Lee's racist views on his own people. Apparently he even wrote a polemic in the early 70s denouncing the alleged laziness of the "average Malay."
I wonder whether Trent Lott is secrely envying Lee's position. It's unlikely that Lott's ever gonna have a chance to deliver a 4-hour speech to Congress saying, "
I understand the Englishman. He knows deep in his heart that he is superior to the Welshman and the Scotsman.... [Down] here [in Mississippi], I am a [White Man]."
Dance at Brown
Last night several friends and I went contra-dancing at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. It was so much fun! The dancing party itself was much longer than usual too, and the music the band there played was very different...I somehow missed the subtly melancholic tunes of the MIT band...
After dancing, Peter did some recording of a French-Canadian harmonica player who plays on the streets. It was pretty neat, since he's got this designed-for-ethnographer type of mini-recorder.
Morning Prayer at the Appleton Chapel
Just got back from the morning prayer service at the Memorial Church, offered every morning at 8:45. It was a quite refreshing.
I might attend a Contra-Dance festival in Providence, Rhode Island tonight with my friend Peter. I'm not sure if we're going yet, since it depends on whether he could find someone to drive us there. We'll see. I'm quite excited.
Compline at the Appleton Chapel
Just came back from the Compline (evening prayer) service at the Appleton Chapel of the Harvard Memorial Church. It was an aesthetically pleasing experience. Every month, congregants would sing evening prayers in the Chapel, holding candles in their hands.
Here's the paradox. Deep down I know I have a deep distrust of the "Establishment." You know, the Northeast "Liberal" Establishment represented by men like John Lindsay, Eliot Richardson, Kingman Brewster, George H.W. Bush and oh yes Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr...on the other hand, culturally I am somehow drawn to their practice...
In the meantime, I'm also trying to reconcile the ontology of Hegel-Marx, as interpreted through Kojeve, with that of Kant and the Christian Existentialists. Apparently according to Kojeve they are quite fundamentally different. While Kant would relate Concept (sum total of all concepts) which is eternal (a priori?) with time (Christian notion of God-incarnate in man?), Hegel (and therefore Marx) equates Concept with Time, and posits a world that is a synthesis of an eternal natural world and a temporal human world through the dialectic of the two (the human world essentially transforms the natural world.) The difference in their implications lies here: whereas for Hegel/Marx the human historic world is God, and that the end of humanity lies in the achievement of absolute knowledge at the end of history; for Kant and the Christians it is possible for an enlightened individual to have a glimpse of absolute knowledge (God, in this case) at any given instance of time.
The practical implication for the Christian could also be serious. In a sense if at any given instance of time I were able to attain absolute knowledge through communion with God, I no longer have much incentive to effect *essential* change in the natural world and move the human world from one era into another through "action" or "negation" so that I might finally attain absolute knowledge at the "end of history"...This paradox exists in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures too, for on one hand the Prophets stressed the immediacy of the Divine Communion, on the other hand they simultaneously look forward to the End of History...What is the point though? Isn't one a perfect substitute of the other?
Well, Kojeve even drew little compound circles to represent all these. I think it was a little crazy of him, but he made a valid point. It makes me rethink Fromm's notion that there is a coherent golden thread that ties Christ to Kant to Hegel to Marx to Erich Fromm...
