Maverick Philosopher

P1
P2
Therefore
C

This makes it clear that the relation between premises and conclusion lies between premises and conclusion and is not part of the premises or the conclusion. Once one grasps this simple point one sees that Harris's argument collapses: it is not the case that 'Socrates is mortal' is false, nor is 'therefore, Socrates is mortal' "implicitly false." What could that mean? Such talk rests on a confusion of truth/falsity with validity/invalidity.

Harris thinks that there must be an "essential connection," a connection at the level of meaning, between p and q if we are to be able to assert 'If p then q.' But this is just plain false.

Suppose I encounter a flat-earther who tries to convert me to his doctrine. I cut him off with 'If the earth is flat, then I'm the Pope!' There is obviously no relation of semantic entailment between the antecedent and the consequent in this example. They have 'nothing to do with each other.' But the sentence is obviously assertible -- it has a use and makes a move in a language-game -- and it has a clear sense which can be paraphrased as follows: 'It is no more the case that the earth is flat than that I am the Pope!' If the flat-earther is particularly dense, as one might expect such a lunatic (geotic?) to be, I might expand my enthymeme into an explicit argument of the form modus tollendo tollens:

If the earth is flat, then I am the Pope
I am not the Pope
Therefore
The earth is not flat.

The reasoning in this argument is perfectly clear and perfectly valid. The argument is sound in addition to being valid: its premises are true. Now no proposition can have a truth-value unless it is meaningful. It follows that the conditional is meaningful, pace Harris. I submit that this conditional is at once both a material conditional and a piece of ordinary language. Thus here we have an ordinary language example of a material conditional. So although the material conditional is a theoretical construct for logical purposes, it is exemplified in natural language.

Doctor, that is kind of you. – Nothing is harmless anymore. The small joys, the expressions of life, which seemed to be exempt from the responsibility of thought, not only have a moment of defiant silliness, of the cold-hearted turning of a blind eye, but immediately enter the service of their most extreme opposite. Even the tree which blooms, lies, the moment that one perceives its bloom without the shadow of horror; even the innocent “How beautiful” becomes an excuse for the ignominy of existence, which is otherwise, and there is no longer any beauty or any consolation, except in the gaze which goes straight to the horror, withstands it, and in the undiminished consciousness of negativity, holds fast to the possibility of that which is better. Mistrust is advisable towards everything which is unselfconscious, casual, towards everything which involves letting go, implying indulgence towards the supremacy of the existent [Existierende].

After Auschwitz, nothing that exists can be simply enjoyed with a good conscience, not even a tree in bloom. Everything lies under a shadow of horror. Adorno intends this in a quite radical sense: after Auschwitz, the very Being (Sein) of beings (des Seienden) can no longer be credited with an affirmative character as metaphysicians traditionally have done from Plato and Aristotle on: nothing any longer has "a positive meaning or purpose." (Cf. Adorno, Metaphysics: Concepts and Problems, Polity Press 2000, p. 101.) For the medievals, for example, ens, verum, bonum were convertible notions: ens et bonum convertuntur. In other words, every being qua being is good. Beings are good just insofar as they are. To exist is good. Evil is privatio boni. But after Auschwitz, Adorno opines, no one can take this seriously. Indeed, anyone who does and adheres to "old-style metaphysics" is "inhuman." "To assert that existence or being has a positive meaning constituted within itself and orientated towards the divine principle . . . would be, like all the principles of truth, beauty and goodness which philosophers have concocted, a pure mockery in face of the the victims and the infinitude of their torment." (101-102)

There is a strange historicism at work here: the very structure of being has suffered an alteration due to an historical event. How is such a thing possible? The structure of being is arguably invariant. So either it was either always the case that being had a positive meaning, despite horrendous events (which did not first surface during the 20th century) or it was always the case that being lacked a positive meaning. Adorno needs to explain how the structure of being itself can suffer historical alteration. The mere fact that people like him can no longer believe something does not make what he no longer can believe false. Shades of what I earlier satirized as the Continental Shuffle, the confusion of the epistemic/doxastic with the ontic.

But let's proceed with Adorno's text:

The malign deeper meaning of comfort, which at one time was limited to the toasts of cozy sociability, has long since spread to friendlier impulses. When in the chance conversation with a man on the train, one acquiesces, in order to avoid a quarrel, to a couple of sentences which one knows ultimately certify murder, [it] is already an act of treachery; no thought is immune against its communication, and uttering it at the wrong place and in the context of a false agreement is enough to undercut its truth. Every visit to the cinema, despite the utmost watchfulness, leaves me dumber and worse than before. Sociability itself is a participant in injustice, insofar as it pretends we can still talk with each other in a frozen world, and the flippant, chummy word contributes to the perpetuation of silence, insofar as the concessions to those being addressed debase the latter once more as speakers. The evil principle which has always lurked in affability develops, in the egalitarian Spirit [Geist], into its full bestiality. Condescension and making oneself out as no better are the same. By adapting to the weaknesses of the oppressed, one confirms in such weaknesses the prerequisite of domination, and develops in oneself the measure of barbarity, thickheadedness and capacity to inflict violence required to exercise domination. If, in the latest era, the gesture of condescension is dispensed with, and solely adaptation becomes visible, then it is precisely in such a perfect screening of power that the class-relationship, however denied, breaks through all the more irreconcilably. For intellectuals, unswerving isolation is the only form in which they can vouchsafe a measure of solidarity. All of the playing along, all of the humanity of interaction and participation is the mere mask of the tacit acceptance of inhumanity. One should be united with the suffering of human beings: the smallest step to their joys is one towards the hardening of suffering.

Note the exaggeration and the universal quantifiers: "no thought," "every visit," "always lurked," "only form," "all of the playing along," "all of the humanity," "the smallest step." This is typically Continental excess.

But more importantly, there is the stock leftist attitude that what actually exists and provably works is valueless, oppressive, rotten to the core, ignominious, treacherous, something sinister despite its deceptive appearance, false, phony, a mask of hidden interests, 'ideological,' in no sense or aspect worthy of preservation or loyalty or respect or reverence -- but exists only to be transcended, aufgehoben, smashed to pieces, 'liberated.'

But for what? For some utopian state that people like Adorno never manage to articulate. This inability to articulate is of course installed as the very essence of the emancipatory, and so a virtue is made of impotence.

I would also draw your attention to the quasi-religious totalitarian character of this sort of atttiude. Nothing can be enjoyed with a good conscience, everything is to be totally rejected, because everything is a 'moment' -- that's Hegelian jargon -- of the same rotten whole. Nothing escapes this totalitarian negative dialectic in which everything is internally related to everything else.

The first assertion is plainly, indeed breath-takingly, false. Tillich is saying that an atheist is one who is indifferent to the meaning of his existence, and that this is the only form atheism can take. This is refuted by the simple fact that there are atheists such as my old friend Quentin Smith who are centrally concerned about the meaning of their existence. An atheist is either one who denies the existence of God, or else does not affirm the existence of God. (These are different.) Either way, being an atheist is consistent with being an affirmer of existential meaning. It is just that the source of one’s meaning would have to come from some source other than one’s belief in God.

One who affirms God (in his heart and not merely verbally), will seek the meaning of his existence in his relation to God, whether by prayer, meditation, worship, attempts to discern the will of God for one, attempts to prepare for ultimate union with God, and the like. But one who denies God, or refuses to affirm God, has the option of seeking the meaning of his existence elsewhere, in helping to bring about the Revolution, or whatever it might be. A third possibility is to be both an atheist and an existential meaning-denier. A theistic existential meaning-denier is a fourth combinatorial possibility but arguably not an existential one.

Tillich’s second main assertion involves an arbitrary redefinition of ‘God’ as object of one’s ultimate concern. The assertion can be unpacked as the following argument:

1. God =df one’s ultimate concern.
2. To deny God is to deny that God is one’s ultimate concern.
3. To deny that God is one’s ultimate concern is to affirm one’s ultimate concern.
Therefore
4. To deny God is to affirm one’s ultimate concern.
Therefore
5. To deny God is to affirm God.

The problem with this argument is the initial assumption, (1). God cannot possibly be identified with whatever is one’s ultimate concern, since this is different for different people. God is not a role occupiable by different things for different people, but an individual. Once this is clearly seen, it will also be clearly seen why atheism cannot be defined as the attempt to remove any ultimate concern. Atheism is not the denial of ultimate concern but the denial that a certain being is a possible object of one’s ultimate concern. The fact that ultimate concern cannot be removed since everyone has one does nothing to show that God’s existence cannot be denied.

In brief, Tillich is confusing a role with one of its possible occupants. In linguistic terms, he is confusing a definite description, ‘the x such that x is one’s ultimate concern’ with a proper name.

Filed under: Critique of Continental Philosophy

On p. 2, we find:

[1] Genealogy means both the value of origin and the origin of values. [2] Genealogy is as opposed to absolute values as it is to relative or utilitarian ones. [3] Genealogy signifies the differential element of values from which their value itself derives. [4] Genealogy thus means origin or birth, but also difference or distance in the origin. [5] Genealogy means nobility and baseness, nobility and vulgarity, nobility and decadence in the origin. (Numbers in brackets my interpolation.)

Ad 1. Notice the superficially clever transposition, "value of origin and origin of values." That’s typically French. The attempt to achieve a clever or showy style drives the thought. The French writer aims at literary effect first, and worries whether a coherent thought has been expressed only later, if at all. (Are there exceptions to this? Of course.) It is true that Nietzschean genealogy is concerned to uncover the origin of values. But the origin of values, as Deleuze himself says on the preceding page, is in acts of evaluation which "are not values but ways of being, modes of existence, of those who judge and evaluate..." (p. 1) So the phrase "value of origin" comes close to contradicting Deleuze’s own point on the preceding page. But whether there is a contradiction or not, there is unclarity. In philosophy, however, "clarity is courtesy" as Ortega y Gasset says somewhere. And you will notice how these writers never give concrete examples or show how any of this is supposed to work in detail.

Ad 2. It is clear that genealogy is opposed to absolute values. But in his concern to be ‘radical’ and to say something ‘shocking,’ Deleuze exaggerates and says something that is incoherent, namely, that genealogy is opposed to relative values. This is false: if values derive from acts of evaluation that are modes of existence of the evaluators, and as such expressive of the nobility or baseness, health or sickness, etc., of these evaluators, then it is obvious that values are precisely relative to these evaluating beings. The equating of relative with utilitarian values is deeply obscure, probably confused, and the context doesn’t help.

Ad 3. This is not particularly clear, but one can figure out what is meant, namely, that the difference between ascending and descending life, between noble and base modes of existence, etc., determines which values are posited.

Ad 4. The way these French writers use ‘means’ and ‘signifies’ is annoying and sloppy, but one sees what Deleuze is getting at. Strictly speaking, however, there is nothing in the meaning of ‘genealogy’ to require any particular theory of genealogical derivation such as Nietzsche’s.

Ad 5. What a miserable sentence! Strictly speaking, ‘genealogy’ means no such thing. I often get the impression with French philosophers that they cannot decide whether they want to be philosophers or literary writers. Unable to commit themselves one way or the other, they evolve an unholy and sloppy blend of verbiage that teases and frustrates more than it enlightens. There are exceptions of course such as Descartes and Sartre.

If I could pull Deleuze up out of his grave by his lapels, I would say to him: Be clear! Say something definite! Give an argument with discernible premises and conclusion! Stop your silly-ass posturing and name dropping! Say something that can be evaluated as either true or false! But of course, these literary poseurs do not believe in truth. Their truth is that there is no truth . . .

Alain Badiou’s Manifesto for Philosophy (tr. N. Madarasz, SUNY Press, 1996) begins like this:

The dominant philosophical traditions of the century agree that philosophy, as a discipline, is no longer really what it used to be. It must be said that Carnap’s critique of metaphysics as nonsense is very different from Heidegger’s announcement of the supersession of metaphysics. It is also very different from the Marxist dream of a concrete realization of philosophy. Very different as well from what Freud ferrets out as illusion, indeed paranoia, from speculative systematicity. But the fact remains that German hermeneutics like Anglo-Saxon analytical philosophy, revolutionary Marxism and psychoanalytical interpretation concur to declare the ‘end’ of a millenial regime of thought. No further question of imagining a philosophia perrenis perpetuating itself. (27)

Although I have skimmed the whole of Badiou’s book, this opening paragraph really is enough to return the book to the library. Part of what he is saying is that "Anglo-Saxon analytic philosophy" has declared the end of philosophy. This is simply false. It may be true for Richard Rorty, but Rorty does not represent analytic philosophy. It is true that Rorty rejects the existence of perrenial philosophical problems, but this is not true of many or even most analytic philosophers.

When a book starts off with a grotesque falsehood, why continue reading? But if one does continue reading, one quickly finds oneself immersed in the usual Continental mishmash of persons and themes: Lacoue-Labarthe, Lyotard, Lacan, Deleuze, Gadamer, Celan, Derrida, Genet, Heidegger and the Jews and the Nazis, Kolyma and Auschwitz, Plato... And all of this on one page! (28) What’s the point of all this name dropping? Are you a literary scribbler or a philosopher? Are you at a cocktail party or in your study?

Here is what I would say to Badiou et al. Define your terms. Make an assertion and defend it. Tell us what your thesis is. Say something definite. Try to be clear. Philosophy is hard enough even when one is clear. Avoid name dropping, that mark of the pseudo-intellectual. Go easy on the rhetorical questions. If you ever find something definite to say, employ the indicative mood.

One can re-read a page of this stuff half a dozen times and still not know what is being said or where the discussion is going. And I say this as someone who has read practically all of Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Gadamer, a shit-load of Derrida (who, according to John Searle, gives bullshit a bad name) and plenty of others besides.

This Badiou book seems to have all the typical French faults: the confusion of philosophy with a kind of Begriffsdichtung (conceptual poetry) in which practically anything can be associated with anything else; the historicist confusion of a theory’s being accepted or in favor with its being true (but cf. p. 140); the excessive use of rhetorical questions.

As an example of the latter: "What in fact did Heidegger do other than presume that the ‘firm resolve’ of the German people as embodied by the Nazis was transitive to his thinking as a professor and hermeneutician?" (29) Rewrite that interrogative as a declarative and it still won’t make much sense. Declarative nonsense doesn't suddenly become sense when translated into the interrogative.

It says something that the error just mentioned was caught neither by the author, nor by the editor, nor by the referees, nor by the proofreader. It says something in particular about 'analytic' philosophers. I am sorry to report that many of them are ignoramuses (indeed, ignorabimuses) wholly innocent of foreign languages, knowledge of history (both 'real' history and the history of ideas), and of high culture generally. One name analyst implied in print that the music of John Lennon was on the level of that of Mozart. There are Ph.D.s in philosophy who have never read a Platonic dialogue, and whose dissertations are based solely on the latest ephemera in the journals. Here, as elsewhere, ignorance breeds arrogance. They think they know what they don't know. They think they know what key theses in Kant and Brentano and Meinong mean when they have never studied their texts. And, not knowing foreign languages, they cannot determine whether or not the available translations are accurate. Not knowing the sense of these theses, they read into them contemporary notions. And if you told them that this amounts to eisegesis, they wouldn't know what you are talking about.

Not all analytic philosophers are ignoramuses, of course. Hector-Neri Castaneda, for example, had a grounding in classics. When he founded Nous, a top analytic journal, he placed Nihil philosophicum a nobis alienum putamus on the masthead. It is a take-off on Terence, philosophicum replacing humanum. It is telling that the Latin motto was removed by Castaneda's successors after his untimely death. Princeton University, I understand, removed the language requirement for the Ph.D. in philosophy in 1980. An appalling development. It has been said that if you don't know a foreign language, you don't know your own.

The fact that many analytic philosophers lack historical sense, knowledge of foreign languages, and broad culture is of course no excuse to jump over to the opposite camp, that of the 'Continental' philosophers. For lack of historical sense, they substitute historicism, which is just as bad. For lack of linguistic competence, they substitute a bizarre linguisticism in which the world dissolves into a text, a text susceptible of endless interpretation and re-interpretation. For lack of broad culture, they substitute a super-sophistication that empties into a miasma of sophistry and relativism. Worse, much of Continental philosophy, especially much of what is written in French, is just plain bullshit. Indeed, to cop a line from John Searle, one he applied to Jacques Derrida, it gives bullshit a bad name. I'll get around to substantiating this charge later. It is therefore no surprise that many Continental types jump to embrace every loony idea that emanates from the Left.

You can see that I am warming to my theme. I am also brushing in very broad strokes. But details and documentation are readily supplied -- later.

What inspired this post was a query of a correspondent. He wanted to know how to render 'seize the world' into Latin. Well, we know that 'seize the day' goes into Latin as carpe diem. And we should have picked up by now that 'world' is mundus. 'Seize' takes the accusative, and since mundus is a second declension masculine noun, we get: Carpe mundum.

And another thing. I find it appalling that so many people nowadays, college 'educated' people, are completely innocent of grammatical terminology. Words like 'genitive,' 'dative,' 'ablative,' etc. elicit a blank stare. Grammar being a propaedeutic to logic, it is no wonder that there are so many illogical people adrift in the world.

End of rant.