Evasions

De Man

and 

Avoiding Responsibility

Paul de Man

The late Paul de Man was one of the most influential Postmodernists.1 Paul de Man was born in and lived his early life in Belgium after World War II he moved to the USA where he taught at Yale University. Paul de Man's writing were rather turgid and difficult but beneath the verbiage we sometimes find stuff that is unintentionally revealing, such has this passage:

Yet without this moment, never allowed to exist as such, no such thing as a text is conceivable. We know this to be the case from empirical experience as well: it is always possible to face up to any experience (to excuse any guilt), because the experience always exists simultaneously as fictional discourse and as empirical event and it is never possible to decide which one of the two possibilities is the right one. The indecision makes it possible to excuse the bleakest of crimes because, as a fiction, it escapes from the constraints of guilt and innocence. On the other hand, it makes it equally possible to accuse fiction-making which, in Holderlin's words, is "the most innocent of all activities," of being the most cruel. The knowledge of radical innocence also performs the harshest mutilations. Excuses not only accuse but they carry out the verdict implicit in their accusation.2

Atlas Bored

to Tears

Book Cover

In My last post I made fun of a character in Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Surely one of the worst written novels ever excreted by an author. Here I will just make a few points about the philosophical centre of the novel. John Galt’s truly horribly written speech.1

Lady Heather's Complaint

Lady Heather

(Melinda Clarke)

Lady Heather  was a character in the long running show CSI. She started out has a Dominatrix running a (legal) brothel in Nevada and ended up becoming a therapist. In the show she had various run ins with the regulars especially  head honcho Grissom.

John Galt is a character, Messiah, in that door stop of a novel Atlas Shrugged, written by Ayn Rand. The character is one of the ultimate Mary Sue creations aside from being one dimensional.

I thought it might be fun to have the two characters meet.1

A Note on Nietzsche
and Protestant Christianity



Friedrich Nietzsche

 

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche has had over the years a up and down reputation. That his philosophy contains many dangerous and questionable elements is obvious.1 However a couple of things are usually forgotten or not noticed in his writings. I will deal with here an aspect of Nietzsche's philosophy.

The “Dog-Marriage”

Crates and Hipparchia

In a previous posting I talked about the Greek thinker Diogenes, the founder of Cynicism.1 Here I will discuss an altogether different person or should I say persons. Has mentioned in the previous posting Diogenes was a dour, sullen, misanthropic unpleasant individual, and on top of that he practiced a very difficult, severe and hard way of life. This would of course make it rather difficult to attract followers, but Diogenes did indeed attract followers. This included the remarkable Crates and his wife Hipparchia.

Kissing Cousins

Kanzi, his Language Board and Susan

One of the most interesting relationships that humans have with the world they live in is the one we have with our nearest biological kin. In this case our Chimpanzee and Bonobo relatives. What is particularly interesting is the human desire to deny, downplay and frankly ignore the relationship. It appears that Bonobos and Chimpanzees are the embarrassing cousins that we don’t want to be reminded exist.

History Making

History’s (Non) Meaning

The Origins of Historicism

A Note

The Juggernaut

One of the most pernicious of Man’s near infinite catalogue of delusions is the pernicious notion that “History” has a meaning. That this idea is nonsense that should be allowed to float away on its own vacuous emptiness is rather obvious but the notion has had and will continue to have a truly pernicious effect on human beings, given its effects on how human’s behave.

That Sinking Feeling

Atlantis Part I

Plato’s Purpose

Destruction of Atlantis

One of the most popular of myths has been Plato’s tale of Atlantis found in two of his dialogues. The dialogues are the Timaeus and the Critias. Both dialogues were written late in Plato’s career as a philosopher and writer. They represent a late development in Plato’s ideas.

Are They Here Yet!

Are They Here Yet?

An "Alien"

One of the most common modern mysteries mulled over is “Are we alone?” Well the bottom line is we do not know and it is possible we will never know the answer to that.1

The Death of Socrates

A Note

The Death of Socrates by David

One of the great tropes of the Western Tradition is the Death of Socrates. Mountains of philosophical literature have been written about and it can be argued that Plato’s entire philosophical system was based on it. In the end it boils down to a jury being convinced that the charges were true and convicting him.

Kuhn’s

Flawed Idea

Prof. Thomas Kuhn

One of the most influential books ever written about science is Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.1 This book launched the modern version of the Philosophy of Science and frankly a lot of the Post-Modernist views of Science.

Dog in a Barrel

Diogenes the Bum

Diogenes in his Barrel
With Dogs

Most people if they have heard about Diogenes at all will have heard the story of him lighting a lamp in the day and looking for a good man by its light.

Kant’s

Cant

Crossed Fingers

A few Years ago I responded to individual in a forum who accepted a great deal of what Kant said about lying.1 The result was a stew of nonsense. When someone brought up the hiding the Jews in the basement / attic situation the person hemmed and hawed outrageously. The following is the main tenor of a discussion I had with the individual over lying. I have chosen to exclude a tangential discussion where the person engaged in an ad hominem attack on me and my family. The individual in question made a totally un-evidenced comment about lying always ending badly and responded with a personal attack when I pointed out the comment was absurd.

Hedonism

And

Melancholy

Omar Khayyam relaxing

In the mid nineteenth century the Englishman Edward Fitzgerald published a translation of selected poems or ruba’i’of the mathematician / poet Omar Khayyam. Subsequently Fitzgerald would go on to publish 4 more editions of selected ruba’i’.1 

Plato’s “Empathy”

Bust of Plato

In Plato’s dialogues there is sometimes the fact that the context, or set up, to his dialogue’s issues tells us more about Plato’s social attitudes than the overt statements of what the dialogue is about.

Why?

Blank

There is an old joke / urban legend that circulates among students and faculty in North American Universities and it goes as follows.

Number Games



One of the most fascinating aspects of mathematics is that of unexpected results. For example there is the way things multiply with astounding speed once you start.

The Mulla



Nasrudin teaching





In the Muslim world there as been since early on movements of philosophical mysticism. Most of them are grouped under the name of Sufism, which means “woolly minded”.1 Sufism is not a religious belief system but a movement although various Muslim religious sects have arisen out of it.2

The influences on Sufism are Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and most notably Buddhism. However the influence of ancient Middle Eastern and Eastern traditions of wisdom should not be overlooked.3

One of the techniques of Sufistic contemplation is that of contemplating the “meaning” of various stories, sayings and jokes. That aside from having a surface meaning the stories etc., has layers of deeper more profound, mystical meaning.4

Thus we get to the Mulla mentioned in the title. The Mulla’s name is Nasrudin and no he is not a real person. He is a device to teach and to entertain. He is in the stories, jokes etc., the everyman, and he is commonplace, stunningly stupid and amazingly wise depending on the story. He is in other words as unreal as the Kilroy in the saying “Kilroy was here”.5

So now we get to the real point of this posting some of the stories. However before I go into the stories I must mention that some of the stories I am using come from a collection put together by Idries Shah. Idries Shah, (1924-1996) was a controversial character to put it mildly for all sorts of reasons. However in this case it is because his translations of material were often slipshod and his account of Sufism is not to be trusted. So it is with trepidation that I use Idries Shah’s collection of Nasrudin tales.6

Annoying Carelessness

Map of America On Eve of Civil War

One of the most common yet annoying habits of far too many scholars when engaged in doing a study of a particular aspect of something is to assume a cavalier attitude about the facts regarding other aspects of what they are studying as if it is of little importance.

An outstanding example of this is provided by the book Upon the Altar of the Nation,1. It is subtitled “A Moral history of the Civil War”. The Author decided to provide five maps indicating the major engagements of the years of the Civil war along with who won, who lost, indecisive battles, the total size of armies and military casualties during each year.2

Ayn Rand

Progress

and

Justifiable Atrocity



Ayn Rand

The late Ayn Rand, (1905—1982)1 said in response to this question.2

When you consider the cultural genocide of Native Americans, the enslavement of blacks, and the relocation of Japanese Americans during World War Two, how can you have such a positive view of America?

Ayn Rand replied:

I don’t care to discuss the alleged complaints American Indians have against this country.I believe, with good reason, the most unsympathetic Hollywood portrayal of Indians and what they did to the white man. They had no right to a country merely because they were born here and then acted like savages. The white man did not conquer this country. And you are a racist if you object, because it means you believe that certain men are entitled to something because of their race. You believe that if someone is born in a magnificent country and doesn’t know what to do with it, he still has a property right to it. He does not.

Since the Indians did not have the concept of property or property rights – they didn’t have a settled society, they had predominantly nomadic tribal ‘cultures’ – they didn’t have rights to the land, and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights that they had not conceived of and were not using. It’s wrong to attack a country that respects (or even tries to respect) individual rights. If you do, you’re an aggressor and are morally wrong. But if a ‘country’ does not protect rights – if a group of tribesmen are the slaves of their tribal chief – why should you respect the ‘rights’ that they don’t have or respect?

The same is true for a dictatorship. The citizens in it have individual rights, but the country has no rights and so anyone has the right to invade it, because rights are not recognized in that country; and no individual or country can have its cake and eat it too – that is, you can’t claim one should respect the ‘rights’ of Indians, when they had no concept of rights and no respect for rights.

But let’s suppose they were all beautifully innocent savages – which they certainly were not. What were they fighting for, in opposing the white man on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence; for their ‘right’ to keep a part of the earth untouched – to keep everybody out so they could live like animals or cavemen?

Any European who brought with him an element of civilization had the right to take over this continent, and it’s great that some of them did.

...

As a principle, one should respect the sanctity of a contract among individuals. But I oppose applying contract law to American Indians. When a group of people or a nation does not respect individual rights, it cannot claim any rights whatsoever. The Indians were savages, with ghastly tribal rules and rituals, including the famous “Indian Torture.” Such tribes have no rights. Anyone had the right to come here and take whatever they could, because they would be dealing with savages as Indians dealt with each other – that is, by force. We owe nothing to Indians, except the memory of monstrous evils done by them.