American Philosophy: A Love Story by John Kaag

John Kaag's American Philosophy: A Love Story (2016) is one of those books that successfully weaves a personal narrative with deep learning. I enjoyed it very much.

The set-up is rather simple. A young philosopher with an interest in American philosophy is going through a rough time. Rather by chance, he learns for the existence of the personal library of one of the preeminent American philosophers of the first half of the 20th century, William Ernest Hocking (1973-1966). Hocking was a doctoral student at Harvard during the time of some of the towering figures in American philosophy: William James, Josiah Royce, and Georges Santayana (with Charles Sanders Pierce hovering in the wings, as it were). Hocking later joined the Harvard philosophy department and guided it into the mid-20th century. Hocking did well enough in his chosen field to be able to afford to buy a farm in New Hampshire, where he built a library for himself. And Kraag "discovers" the library with the help of a local, and he begins to explore it with the permission of the family (Hocking's three granddaughters).

The personal life of the narrator (John Kaag) isn't going well as the narrative opens. His marriage isn't working and nothing seems quite in sync. However, the discovery of the library and the treasury of books within it give him a project upon which to focus. And as befitting a philosopher, every book allows a story of its own to be told, sometimes about the contents of the book itself (Descartes, for instance), sometimes about the times and conditions under which it was written, and sometimes about figures associated with the library's builder, Hocking. And as I mentioned, we have Hockings older peers (James, Pierce, Royce), his later colleagues (Whitehead, for instance, whom Hocking enticed to Harvard), and other famous figures, contemporary and past, such as Robert Frost, Pearl Buck, Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman. Also, women in Hocking's life, such as his wife Agnes, and more public figures such as Lydia Child and Jane Addams (of Hull House fame), add a significant theme to the story (primarily the under-valuation of these women in American culture). Kraag brings each figure into the account as he finds an inscription or letter or autograph in the collection of books and papers. And as he contemplates his discoveries, he works to come to terms with his own situation. Indeed, after the break-up of his marriage, another woman enters his life he begins to share in his adventure, both professionally and on a personal level.

Kaag tells his own story with honesty and compassion, and he's an expert in American philosophy who capably relates an aspect of American life--American philosophy--that is often ignored and certainly under-appreciated today. (Has any American philosopher been a consequential figure in American culture since John Dewey? Has any American philosopher since Dewey held the prominence of William James or Ralph Waldo Emerson? I think not.)

Kaag tells the story of American philosophy in a way that prompts me to want to know it much better. I've certainly delved into William James, and some Dewey and Pierce, but with this book, I realize the Royce and Hocking hold promise as well. (Santayana was already on my radar.) For anyone interested in American philosophy and culture, this book will prove both fruitful and enjoyable. 

"The Propaganda of Irrationalism" from An Essay on Metaphysics by R.G. Collingwood: Quotes from His Argument

The beard a sign of radicalism? Just relaxed after a cruise.

I've begun reading Collingwood's An Essay on Metaphysics (1940), and I've found it quite engaging. But I've also discovered a wonderful polemic and commentary in it about politics, education, religion, and science. In other words, topics related to the main topic--metaphysics--but not required. Reading these words in the chapter entitled "The Propaganda of Irrationalism," provided a pleasant surprise. I knew that by the time he was writing this, Collingwood was on his way--if not arrived--at his position as a "fighting philosopher." He was keenly aware of the barbarism on the march in Europe. He was not prepared to stand idly by, and words--sharp words, incisive analysis--were his weapons. Please take special note of the final sentence of this extended series of quotes from the chapter. We, too, live in dark times.

Let us suppose a civilization whose most characteristic features had for many centuries been based upon the predominance, among those who shared it, of the belief that truth was the most important thing in the world, and that consequently scientific thinking, systematic, orderly thinking, theoretical and practical alike, pursued with all the energy at his command and with all the skill and care at his disposal, was the most valuable thing man could do. In such a civilization every feature would be marked with some peculiar characteristic derived from this prevailing habit of mind and not to be expected in a civilization differently based. 

To take a few examples. . . . . 

Politics would be predominantly the attempt to build up a common life by the methods of reason (free discussion, public criticism) and subject to the sanction of reason (i.e. the ultimate test being whether the common life aimed at is a reasonable one, fit for men who, no matter what differences divide them, agree to think in an orderly way). Education would be predominantly a method for inducing habits of orderly and systematic thinking. Social structure would be predominantly of such a kind as to place in the most honourable and commanding position those who were intellectually the élite of the people, the priest-kings of the god of truth, men of science and learning on the one hand, men of affairs on the other. Economic life would come into line with the prevailing habit of mind by converting customary methods of production, distribution, transport, &c., into ‘scientific’ ones; that is, by applying the notion of orderly and systematic thinking to economic matters no less than to any others. 

. . . . 

And suppose that now within this same civilization a movement grew up hostile to these fundamental principles. I will not speak of a conspiracy to destroy civilization; not because I shrink from a notion so reminiscent of a detective novel, but because what I am thinking of is something less conscious, less deliberate, less dependent upon the sinister activities of any mere gang, than a conspiracy: something more like an epidemic disease: a kind of epidemic withering of belief in the importance of truth and in the obligation to think and act in a systematic and methodical way. Such an irrationalist epidemic infecting religion would turn it from a worship of truth to a worship of emotion and a cultivation of certain emotional states. Infecting education it would aim at inducing the young to abandon the habit of orderly thinking, or to avoid forming such a habit by offering to their imitation examples of unscientific thinking and holding up the ideals of science to contempt by precept and example. Infecting politics it would substitute for the ideal of orderly thinking in that field the ideal of tangled, immediate, emotional thinking; for the idea of a political thinker as political leader the idea of a leader focusing and personifying the mass-emotions of his community; for the ideal of intelligent agreement with a leader’s thought the idea of an emotional communion with him; and for the idea of a minority persuaded to conform the idea of unpatriotic persons (persons not sharing that communion) induced to conform by emotional means, namely by terror.  [Emphasis added.]

Comment: I think that contemporary political events provide some telling examples of what Collingwood describes in the part of the quote that I italicized. 

Next let us suppose that the tissues of the civilization invaded by this irrationalist disease are to a considerable extent resisting it. The result will be that the infection can progress only by concealing its true character behind a mask of conformity to the spirit of the civilization it is attacking. The success of the attack will be conditional on the victims’ suspicions not being aroused. Thus in educational institutions an explicit proposal to abandon the practice of orderly and systematic thinking would only bring those who made it into disrepute, and discredit them with the very persons they were trying to infect. But so long as nothing like a panic was created, liberties could be taken which would quickly have proved fatal among persons whose faith in scientific thought had not already been weakened. Let a sufficient number of men whose intellectual respectability is vouched for by their academic position pay sufficient lip-service to the ideals of scientific method, and they will be allowed to teach by example whatever kind of anti-science they like, even if this involves a hardly disguised breach with all the accepted canons of scientific method. 

. . . . 

And has there been a tendency of late years to belittle the notion of scientific thought, either by magnifying emotion at the expense of intellect, or by expounding an ideal of disorderly or unsystematic thinking, called ‘intuition’ or the like, as something preferable to the methodical or progressive (if you want to sneer, you say ‘plodding’) labour of reason? Has there been a tendency towards belittling rules, principles, policies, in the field of action, and towards developing a kind of ethical intuitionism or a kind of ethical emotionalism? 

2. Has the political tradition of our civilization been based on the idea of a political life lived according to a plan whose chief recommendation has been its claim to reasonableness? Have political leaders been chosen in the past for their supposed intelligence, far-sightedness, grasp on principles, and skill in devising means to ends that accorded with these principles? Have their followers been persons whose intellect, inferior to theirs in power, nevertheless agreed with it as one intellect does agree with another, by thinking in the same way? Have the methods by which leaders carried their points against opponents and secured their hold over their followers been the methods of reason; that is, public discussion of principies, public statement of facts, and public debate as to the relation between principles and policies, between ends and means? And has there been a tendency of late years to become impatient with the work of politically educating an entire people; to choose leaders not for their intellectual powers but for their ability to excite mass-emotions; to induce in followers not an ability to think about political problems, but certain emotions which in persons untrained to think will explode into action with no questions asked as to where such action will lead; and to suppress discussion and information in favour of what is called propaganda, that is, statements made not because they are true but because they generate these emotions or spark them into action? And have these changes gone so far that even the characteristic facial expression of a political leader has changed from the expression of a thinker (the mathematician-thinker’s face of a Napoleon, the humanist-thinker’s face of a Gladstone) to the expression of a hypnotist, with scowling forehead and glaring eye?. . . .

Collingwood, R. G.. An Essay on Metaphysics . Read Books Ltd.. Kindle Edition.

Comment: Whoever could Collingwood have been thinking of when he wrote that final part of the quote that I've italicized? Someone Italian or German (or both)? Who might we think would meet this description? Do you have to think twice about your answer (assuming you're an American)?


ADDENDUM 2019 Nov. 8

In my post on An Essay on Metaphysics, I skipped a discussion of the chapter "The Propaganda of Irrationalism," saying that I'd post something separate about it. In writing that, I'd forgotten about this post, which includes the extended quotation from that chapter set forth above. I've decided that rather than do a whole new post or add a lot of chatter on my part (since I can't challenge the lucidity and gusto of Collingwood's prose), I'll just add some further quotations to help round-out Collingwood's point. Also, of related interest, I've re-advertised an earlier set of posts (12 in all) that includes quotes and commentaries from Collingwood's essay, "Man Goes Mad" from 1936. It very much reflects and expands upon the points made in this chapter. Here's the first post in that series, and you can follow the sequence from there if you prefer. Now, for more RGC!

Now let us suppose that such a civilization had been in existence for a long time, during which the application of its fundamental principles had reached a somewhat elaborate development. Suppose, for example, that the rationalization of economic life had reached such a point that its populations could not be kept alive at all, or protected from starvation and disease, let alone kept in the degree of comfort to which they had become accustomed, except by the ceaseless exertion of innumerable scientists. And suppose that now within this same civilization a movement grew up hostile to these fundamental principles. I will not speak of a conspiracy to destroy civilization; not because I shrink from a notion so reminiscent of a detective novel, but because what I am thinking of is something less conscious, less deliberate, less dependent upon the sinister activities of any mere gang, than a conspiracy: something more like an epidemic disease: a kind of epidemic withering of belief in the importance of truth and in the obligation to think and act in a systematic and methodical way.

Collingwood, R. G.. An Essay on Metaphysics. Read Books Ltd.. Kindle Edition. 

I quite like the "epidemic" metaphor, a "plague" if you will. (Hat tip to Camus.) 

An "it could happen here" turn of argument: 

The reader is lastly to suppose, if he will, that the situation I have described is the one in which, together with the rest of the world, he now stands. I do not wish him necessarily to confine this to a matter of mere supposition; I will confess that to myself it is more than a supposition, it is a fact, and I think the reader might be well advised to consider it in the same way. If he wishes to do something on his own account towards considering whether it is a fact or not, he should ask himself the following questions among others.

Id. 

Civilizations sometimes perish because they are forcibly broken up by the armed attack of enemies without or revolutionaries within; but never from this cause alone. Such attacks never succeed unless the thing that is attacked is weakened by doubt as to whether the end which it sets before itself, the form of life which it tries to realize, is worth achieving. On the other hand, this doubt is quite capable of destroying a civilization without any help whatever. If the people who share a civilization are no longer on the whole convinced that the form of life which it tries to realize is worth realizing, nothing can save it. If European civilization is a civilization based on the belief that truth is the most precious thing in the world and that pursuing it is the whole duty of man, an irrationalist epidemic if it ran through Europe unchecked would in a relatively short time destroy everything that goes by the name of European civilization.

Id. 

Science is a plant of slow growth. It will not grow (and for a plant the end of growth is the end of life) except where the scientist as the priest of truth is not only supported but revered as a priest-king by a people that shares his faith. When scientists are no longer kings, there will be (to adapt a famous saying of Plato’s) no end to the evils undergone by the society that has dethroned them until it perishes physically for sheer lack of sustenance.

Id. 

Prefatory note: This entire section of the book sets forth Collingwood's detailed criticism of psychology to the extend that he perceives it as getting out of its lane. As this quote indicates, Collingwood isn't damning the whole enterprise in toto; only to the extent it intends to establish the standards for judging "thought," about which Collingwood has some very firm, closely argued opinions. This quote ends the chapter. 

I do not wish any reader of these pages to form an impression, or even a suspicion, that I value these achievements at a low rate. The study by psychologists of sensation and emotion, whether in the laboratory or in the consulting-room or in what other conditions soever they think it capable of being pursued, is a most important kind of research and a thing which every friend of science will encourage by every means at his command.

My suspicions are not about this; they are about the status of psychology as the pseudo-science of thought which claims to usurp the field of logic and ethics in all their various branches, including political science, aesthetics, economics, and whatever other criteriological sciences there may be, and finally of metaphysics. In these fields I find it to be a fact that psychological inquiries have proved absolutely incapable of adding anything to our knowledge. I find it to be a fact that they are conducted in open defiance of the recognized canons of scientific procedure. I find it to be a fact that their devotees and advocates are not abashed by all this. They regard the calling of attention to it as a symptom of an obsolete mentality and a thing to be treated with obloquy and contempt, not as a criticism which they must meet by reforming their work or else by abandoning it. I do not think it possible to suppress, or conscientious to conceal, a suspicion that the true explanation of these facts may be that psychology in its capacity as the pseudo-science of thought, teaching by precept that what is called thought is only feeling, and by example that what is called science is nothing more, is no mere addition to the long list of pseudo-sciences; it is an attempt to discredit the very idea of science. It is the propaganda of irrationalism.

Id. 

An Essay on Philosophical Method by R. G. Collingwood

Kindle edition

Usually after finishing a book, or at least one that I’ve found compelling (and assuming I’m not overpowered by busyness or laziness), I write a review of the book. But in this case, I’m not going to. Not because Collingwood’s An Essay on Philosophical Method (1933) isn’t compelling; it most certainly is compelling. Rather, I don’t believe I’m up to the task. I often read books far above my paygrade (it’s not that hard for an author to reach that level), but I can usually convince myself that I have something worthwhile to add to the conversation started by the book. But EPM is a philosophy book of a high-order, and the insights that I received from it came by way of lightning flashes rather than guideposts from which I could readily recreate my path through Collingwood’s arguments. I’m not a philosopher, and I had only one course from the philosophy department as an undergraduate and that was a course entitled “Philosophy of History.” It was in that course that I would have been first introduced to Collingwood, and I ignored him. Then, after about 40 years, via the serendipity of an Oxford University Press bookstore near our apartment in Jaipur (India), I came across an inexpensive and tantalizing copy of Collingwood’s most famous book, The Idea of History. Thus, most of my encounter with philosophy (and Collingwood) has come through either the lens of history or politics and law. When it comes to logic, ontology and metaphysics, morality and ethics, and epistemology, I’m a rank amateur. None the less, I sometimes get a great deal of pleasure from jumping into the deep end of the pool, even as I tend to flail around and eventually sink.

For those who may want a review, there are plenty to be found (including a couple on Goodreads). This edition that I read includes an exchange of correspondence between Collingwood and his eventual successor as Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at Oxford, Gilbert Ryle. Gilbert wrote a critical review of EPM in the journal Mind, and Collingwood replied via letter. Reading this exchange between these two reminded me that I’m no philosopher, at least not at that level. (“Cracker-barrel” probably best denotes my rank.) But I did get something out of the exchange: Collingwood gave at least as good as he got in this duel of logic and metaphysics with Ryle. Collingwood is the supposed “idealist” (a designation made by Ryle that Collingwood roundly rejects) and Ryle the “analytic” philosopher, but Collingwood suffers no disadvantage that I could discern in his mastery of logic and analysis. And while I’m not in qualified to score the rounds on logic and analysis, I can say that the exchange reinforces my appreciation of Collingwood as a superb English prose stylist. And, to add spice to his prose, he can prove quite cheeky. Perhaps this is what so riled Ryle.

In fact, the one part of EPM that I believe myself most competent to comprehend and appreciate was the final section, entitled “Philosophy as a Branch of Literature.” In this section, as the title suggests. Collingwood, for all the logic and analysis of the earlier part of the book, makes a compelling case for philosophy as a branch of literature. Please grant me leave to quote at length from Collingwood to allow him to make his point and to help me prove mine about Collingwood as a stylist:

The [philosophical] matter does not exist as a naked but fully formed thought in our minds before we fit it with a garment of words. It is only in some dark and half-conscious way that we know our thoughts before we come to express them. Yet in that obscure fashion they are already within us; and, rising into full consciousness as we find the words to utter them, it is they that determine the words, not vice versa.. . . . 

Prose and poetry are philosophically distinct species of a genus; consequently they overlap. Literary excellence, which is the means to an end in prose and the sole end or essence of poetry, is the same thing in both cases.. . . . 

[M]any of the greatest philosophers, especially those who by common consent sent have written well in addition to thinking well, have used nothing that can be called a technical vocabulary. Berkeley has none; Plato none, if consistency of usage is a test; Descartes none, except when he uses a technical term to point a reference to the thoughts of others; and where a great philosopher like Kant seems to revel in them, it is by no means agreed that his thought gains proportionately in precision and intelligibility, or that the stylist in him is equal to the philosopher.. . . . 

It has sometimes been maintained that all language consists of sounds taken at pleasure to serve as marks for certain thoughts or things: which would amount to saying that it consists of technical terms. But since a technical term implies a definition, it is impossible that all words should be technical terms, for if they were we could never understand their definitions. The business of language is to express or explain; if language cannot explain itself, nothing else can explain it; and a technical term, in so far as it calls for explanation, is to that extent not language but something else which resembles language in being significant, but differs from it in not being expressive or self-explanatory.. . . . 

The duty of the philosopher as a writer is therefore fore to avoid the technical vocabulary proper to science, and to choose his words according to the rules of literature. His terminology must have that expressiveness, that flexibility, that dependence upon context, which are the hall-marks of a literary use of words as opposed to a technical use of symbols.
A corresponding duty rests with the reader of philosophical literature, who must remember that he is reading a language and not a symbolism.. . . . 

Common to all these literary forms is the notion of philosophical writing as essentially a confession, a search by the mind for its own failings and an attempt to remedy them by recognizing them.. . . . 

A philosophical work, if it must be called a poem, is not a mere poem, but a poem of the intellect. What is expressed in it is not emotions, desires, feelings, as such, but those which a thinking mind experiences in its search for knowledge; and it expresses these only because the experience of them is an integral part of the search, and that search is thought itself.. . . . 

[P]hilosophy represents the point at which prose comes nearest to being poetry. Owing to the unique intimacy of the relation between the philosophical writer among prose writers and his reader, a relation which elsewhere exists only in fine art or in the wide sense of that word poetry, there is a constant tendency for philosophy as a literary genre to overlap with poetry along their common frontier.. . . . 

[T]he philosopher must go to school with the poets in order to learn the use of language, and must use it in their way: as a means of exploring one's own mind, and bringing to light what is obscure and doubtful in it. This, as the poets know, implies skill in metaphor and simile, readiness to find new meanings in old words, ability in case of need to invent new words and phrases which shall be understood as soon as they are heard, and briefly a disposition to improvise and create, to treat language as something not fixed and rigid but infinitely flexible and full of life.

. . . .  

The prose-writer's writer's art is an art that must conceal itself, and produce not a jewel that is looked at for its own beauty but a crystal in whose depths the thought can be seen without distortion or confusion; and the philosophical writer in especial follows the trade not of a jeweler but of a lens-grinder. He must never use metaphors or imagery in such a way that they attract tract to themselves the attention due to his thought; if he does that he is writing not prose, but, whether well or ill, poetry; but he must avoid this not by rejecting all use of metaphors and imagery, but by using them, poetic things themselves, in the domestication of prose: using them just so far as to reveal thought, and no farther.
 

R. G. Collingwood. An Essay on Philosophical Method. Kindle Edition.

Please excuse my extended quotation of Collingwood above, but I hope it demonstrates the quality of his prose and that he practices what he preaches. In fact, as I’ve strung together these quotes, I’ve reached the self-realization that my complaint at the beginning of the review--or rather, appreciation--that Collingwood’s work here was too far out of my league to review is a poor excuse for what is, in fact, some laziness on my part. I could follow much of what Collingwood argued and having done so, I know that if I want to—if I put in a modicum of further effort—I can go deeper with him. (I will, however, note that he does tend to drop Latin phrases in his text and to include quotes in the original ancient Greek, French, and German, which can be annoying to someone as pedestrian in languages as I am.)

I was first drawn to Collingwood for his work about history and how we should understand it and pursue it. While doing this, I discovered that he was also a political thinker for dark times (and so I believe connected in spirit with Hannah Arendt, among others), and then discovered that he has compelling ideas about art, feelings and emotions, morality, and consciousness. So, I will continue my journey, and I look forward to returning to EPM.

Persuasion as Magic: Reflections via Lachman, Collingwood & DJT

Gary Lachman

Last night I had the pleasure of hearing Gary Lachman speak about his work, Dark Star Rising: Magick & Power in the Age of Trump (2018). His presentation, along with the Q&A afterword  and the post-presentation conversations that followed have prompted some thoughts on my part that I’ll describe here with the understanding that they’re initial conjectures and notes that demand further elaboration and refinement.

Broadly speaking, Lachman’s book is about the rise of Donald Trump and the—shall we say—unusual forces that may have—or claim to have—aided in his rise. Lachman is a student of the consciousness, culture, and the Western esoteric tradition. In an attempt to sum up his project (an intention rife with the potential for misuse or misunderstanding or just plain error), I’d say that he’s interested in the way that world works as a result of the mind (and minds) or Mind or God or Spirit or Consciousness—that is, some form of consciousness, from the quotidian mind (the thoughts of an individual) to the “metaphysical” mind or a Mind or Consciousness that surrounds we humans and from which we draw our thoughts. The “esoteric” part of this project references the fact that in pre-modern times esoteric knowledge was limited to elites (initiates) because this knowledge in some measure deviated from the dominant religious and other belief systems of society and that, therefore, risked the well-being if not survival of adherents to these unorthodox beliefs. In modernity, this knowledge has become in some measure hidden or shunted aside because it is “un-“ or “pre-“scientific according to the dominant world-view.

In his book and talk, Lachman considers whether American New Thought via Norman Vincent Peale (“The Power of Positive Thinking”) may have influenced Trump from a young age. He examines the development of “chaos magic” as a trope adopted by some alt-right adherents to explain Trump’s surprising ascent to power. (They claim to have “willed” it.) And Lachman looks at the Russian side of things, with Russian politics, culture, and technological manipulations serving as a testing ground and template for Russian meddling in U.S. politics that helped elect Trump. (My review of  Dark Star provides more details.)

During his talk, Lachman had recourse to drop the “H-bomb” of Trump analogies: Hitler. Lachman is very circumspect and reluctant to reference this analogy, but he was right to do so. Such an analogy can be—like so many historical analogies—overused and overvalued. Analogies only work on a gradient and are tools at arriving at understandings; they’re not definitive prototypes. For example, don’t tell me that Trump is a “fascist” (as I heard someone remark after the talk). He’s not; he has no independent, organized paramilitary to back him up as Hitler had the SA, the SS, and the Nazi Party as a whole. Republicans aren’t Nazis (at least not yet).

But what do have Trump and Hitler (and Mussolini—whom I think might prove the better Trump prototype) have in common? All of them were compelling orators for their target audiences. All of them qualify as “master persuaders” in Scott Adams’s term (which I use with some reluctance given mydeep skepticism about Adams’s “master persuader” trope viz. Trump and persuasion). Think what you may of this unholy troika, they seduced many persons into their projects. (Trump’s project has always been primarily to make money, with politics only an afterthought. Hitler and Mussolini developed political ambitions at much earlier ages.) So, do any of these three succeed by any “magic?” I’m going to say “yes.”

R.G. Collingwood (d. 1943) 

Now, here I bring in my current intellectual crush, R. G. Collingwood. Collingwood devotes an entire chapter (4) to magic in his The Principles of Art (1938). But Collingwood understands magic not as a form of entertainment (stage magic, illusionists) nor as an effort to summon spirits from the vasty deep, nor (most importantly), as bad science. Rather, Collingwood writes:

          I am suggesting that these emotional effects, partly on the performers themselves, partly on others favourably or unfavourably affected by the performance, are the only effects which magic can produce, and the only ones which, when intelligently performed, it is meant to produce. The primary function of all magical acts, I am suggesting, is to generate in the agent or agents certain emotions that are considered necessary or useful for the work of living; their secondary function is to generate in others, friends or enemies of the agent, emotions useful or detrimental to the lives of these others. (67) 

          A magical art is an art which is representative and therefore evocative of emotion, and evokes of set purpose some emotions rather than others in order to discharge them in the affairs of practical life. (69).

Published 1938

Collingwood goes on to note that contemporary propaganda (of both the Left and the Right) is an example of contemporary magic.

It seems to me, based on Collingwood’s analysis, that any form of persuasion, even classical rhetoric or Plato’s dialogues, can serve as a form of magic. This magic, by ritual performance or by image or by music and verse or political spectacle, is all around us. We’re all attempting magic in some measure or other a great deal of the time.

Collingwood doesn’t provide any discussion of ritual magic or “spooky action at a distance,” and he largely ignores the obvious “spooky action at a distance” that technology provides us. In Hitler’s time, his speeches (performances) could be broadcast by radio and heard by those not present at the same place as him. Today, we can have live visual and audio images, or we can summon the specter (for instance, Trump) by a few clicks of our smartphone wherever we are or he is. Magic indeed! Lachman alluded to this role of technology in his talk and Dark Star, but it’s a topic that bears a great deal more consideration. Modern communication technologies are a form of magic in the sense of magic as spooky action at a distance*: the specter can be summoned almost anywhere at practically any time.

Lachman observed that the magician can be seen as casting a spell on the one (often his or her own self, as in much of ritual magic); the guru as casting a spell over the few (devotees); and the demagogue as casting a spell over the many. All can be classed (at least potentially) as examples of Colin Wilson’s “right man,” someone who cannot tolerate any sense of fallibility or questioning of his [sic] project that is encased in a singularity of focus. (Sound familiar?)

Enough for now. Comments, criticism, and suggestions welcome.

* Don’t take the phrase “spooky action at a distance” as in any way pejorative. I believe that Einstein coined the term as a knock on quantum physics, but I believe that he lost that battle. And I can think of everyday occurrences that demonstrate “spooky action at a distance;” for instance, hypnosis and the placebo effect (which, although it involves a ritual act and requires the subject to participate, the result is not explained by the attributes of the inert substance provided to the subject). Suffice to say that this rabbit hole can go very deep.

The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind & the Future of Knowledge by Jeffrey J. Kripal

Look at a photo of Jeffrey Kripal, and you’ll see a pleasant, teddy-bear- looking fellow (or the winner of a Karl Rove look-alike contest). He looks pleasant and friendly, and I suspect he is both. But behind this pleasant facade and seemingly easy-going demeanor is an intellectual daredevil. Let me provide a little background of what I know about this Clark Kent of scholars. 

Kripal was raised in a small town in southeast Nebraska and raised a Catholic. As he reached his teen years, instead of pursuing a the common family pursuit of athleticism, he marked himself off by becoming very thin via religiously-motivated--or so he thought--fasting. And after graduation from high school, he went off to a monastery in Missouri. There, his fellow monks worried about his appearance (thin), and they put him in psychoanalysis with a Benedictine monk. Kripal gained a great deal from this, not the least of which was weight. What he discovered in this process was that he has issues with sexuality that he was suppressing and that he was suffering (as he describes it) from anorexia. With this life-altering and intriguing knowledge, Kripal left that seminary and went to pursue a degree in comparative religion at the University of Chicago. Apparently not one to take the easy course, he concentrated in the Hindu tradition, studying under an acclaimed expert in that tradition, Wendy Doniger. (Surely he learned some Latin and Greek during his time in the Church and in a monastery.) But like Doniger, Kripal’s writings about Hindusim--especially about the sexuality of some Hindu gods and adepts--drew the wrath of militant Hindus, and this eventually drove him from the field. (It seems that writing about the sexuality of religious figures in an established tradition can yield death threats for such perceived transgressions. The same thing happened to Doniger while we lived in India, and her book, The Hindus: An Alternative History, was supposed to be pulled from shelves in India by her publishers--although I found it in Trivandrum, I’m happy to report.)  (Most of this information comes from a Youtube interview of Kripal conducted by science journalist John Horgan, which is well worth watching to get an overview of where Kripal is coming from and what he's up to.)

Karl Rove? No? Well, different thoughts, I'm sure, the likeness notwithstanding

So Kripal took his professional life in a new and no less provocative direction by inquiring into the “paranormal”--all the weird, seemingly impossible things that people report have happened both within and outside of established religions. What’s going on with reports of telepathy, precognition, near-death experiences, levitation, UFO abductions, conversing with spirits, and so on? Needless to say, this broad topic is fraught with challenges and skeptics from both religious and secular perspectives. Nevertheless, he persists, and happily so.

Flip is Kripal’s most recent venture into this field, and I think it serves as a summary of where he’s gone and what (often tentative) conclusions he’s reached so far. (In this, I’m speculating, because I’ve read only one of his earlier works in full, The Serpent's Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion (2006), but Flip certainly seems like a weigh station on his journey). In any event, Kripal provides a useful summary of his conclusions to date and how his thinking along these lines might continue. In the book, he addresses individuals and their “flip” experiences, and ideas about how weird reality might be made more comprehensible through contemporary thinking based on quantum physics and scientifically-informed philosophy. I should note that philosophy is called on in part because it is one the humanities (as opposed to a field in the natural sciences). In short, the humanities deal with the mind or consciousness. As Kripal notes, “Consciousness is the fundamental ground of all we know, or ever will know” (46) and the humanities involve “the study of consciousness coded in culture” (45). Later in the book Kripal reminds us again of the importance of the mind (consciousness) to scientific as endeavors as well as those of the  humanities: 

Mind or consciousness is the locus of all scientific practice and knowledge; that science, at the end of the day, is a function of human subjectivity and consciousness and not, as often assumed, a simple photographic record of the world of things and objects "out there." (15).

Kripal buttresses his arguments via quantum theory, drawing upon, for instance, international relations theorist-turned-quantum social science proponent, Alexander Wendt, along with others. He also draws upon contemporary philosophers such as Philip Goff and Bernardo Kastrup. But the most compelling aspect of the book isn’t the theory (interesting as it is), but in his choice of witnesses to the paranormal. For his testimonials, he draws upon scientists, physicians, a philosopher, and a rationalist--not a “religious” figure among them. A couple of his exemplars I found especially surprising: A.J. Ayer, the famed logical positivist philosopher and Barbara Ehrenreich, a cell biologist and journalist concerned about women’s issues and poverty. But she’s also the author of Living With a Wild God: An Unbeliever’s Search for the Truth about Everything (2014) that details a “flip” experience of her own that occurred in her youth. Another witness (as it were) is Eben Alexander III, a physician who suffered a near-death experience and an extended coma that flipped his perspective on "reality." I trust you get Kripal’s point: this isn’t the group of loonies that you might expect. (For a parody of those whom many would associate with paranormal events, see the SNL skits with Kate McKinnon as the renegade UFO subject whose reports aren’t sweetness and light but instead hilarious sexual shenanigans.) 

This book and Kripal’s project as a whole to inspect what’s under the hood of the paranormal or “super natural” is a careful and thoughtful--and needed--investigation into these undeniable phenomena. He’s fun to read and can hold the reader's attention much as we’d be held in thrall by a . . . well, a ghost story. 

George Conway: DJT as a Mental Health Issue

Impeachment Installment #5: This article by lawyer George T. III provides an excellent brief arguing the premise that DJT has shown himself unfit for office because of his mental condition. Of course, Speaker Pelosi and Chairman Schiff may cringe when reading this, not because they disagree with the premises or conclusions offered in the article, but because it doesn't fit with the pointed effort to pursue impeachment based on the abuse of power displayed in the effort to bribe Ukraine and to cajole other nations into helping DJT's re-election campaign. But DJT's extreme aberrant behavior isn't something that we can continue to sweep under the rug. He's not the daft, cranky old uncle you have to invite over for Thanksgiving dinner and whose behavior you have to tolerate for a few hours. This is the President of the United States of America, whose decisions are often those of life and death. And, IMHO, DJT is utterly unredeemable. In my experience as an attorney who represented clients charged with crimes, neglect or abuse of children, and involuntarily confined for mental health treatment, so cases can be truly intractable. This 73-year old man of dubious physical health and with such longstanding and patent mental health issues (not to mention lack of basic moral conduct) isn't going to change. We need to face the truth of what we have on our hands.

THEATLANTIC.COM

Unfit for Office

Donald Trump’s narcissism makes it impossible for him to carry out the duties of the presidency in the way the Constitution requires.

Maureen Dowd Goes Noir: Trump's Washington as Chinatown (with a Touch of Evil)

I'm going to get around another impeachment installment, but this is related and it uses a favorite flick to make its point. The article is by Maureen Dowd, whose jaundiced eye has seen just about everything that Washington D.C. and politicians have to offer. She's usually not at a loss for words of her own or in need of such an extended analogy, but this essay is pretty spot on. Plus, this is a classic film (especially the screenplay by Robert Townsend). A good excuse to see the film again and consider the "Chinatown" we're in today. BTW, the title of the piece, "Touch of Evil" is also the title of a film by Orson Welles that starred Welles, Charlton Heston, and Janet Leigh from 1958 and that is considered one of the last--and best--of the golden age of film noir. Dowd knows her flicks!

NYTIMES.COM

Opinion | Touch of Evil

Donald Trump drags us down to Chinatown.

Gun Island: A Novel by Amitav Ghosh

Amitav Ghosh’s most recent novel  Gun Island: A Novel, was a joy to read. 

One may quibble, I suppose, whether this book is best described as a novel or as a fable, but under either rubric, it tells a story that takes the reader on a fascinating adventure and that provides a much-appreciated perspective on our world.

The story revolves around a middle-aged Indian-American rare books dealer--Deen--who, during an annual trip to Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), becomes involved in a mystery. Or is it a revelation? Into Deen’s quotidian life in Kolkata come two women; one, a new acquaintance, Piya, is also an Indian emigre to America, and she’s a marine biologist. She’s a skeptical scientist committed to her research into dolphins in the vicinity of the Sundarban islands in the Bay of Bengal, near Kolkata. The other woman, Cinta, is a long-time acquaintance from Venice, a historian, who has experienced what we might call the “paranormal’ or the“super natural” in her long life. Finally, two young men, Rafi and Tipu, are introduced into the plot, and things begin to move--across continents. 

The confluence of the five main characters begins a chain of events that takes Deen to the Sundarban islands, back to his home in Brooklyn, to Los Angeles, to Venice, and onto a ship in the Mediterranean, all to solve a mystery. Or to pursue a vision.  The mystery arises from the legend of the “the gun merchant” (or ‘Bonduki Sadagar’ in Bangla) and “Manasa Devi,” the goddess of snakes and other poisonous creatures. Deen is prodded into exploring this legend in part because of his work as a young doctoral student who wrote his dissertation about a Bengali legend. Although quite reluctant, Deen is compelled by personal connections (realized and hoped for), and he agrees to investigate the claim that there is a shrine in a swampy Sundarban island dedicated to the goddess. The shrine, he hopes, will also provide a memorial of the struggle between the gun merchant and the goddess. Almost against his will, Deen is drawn further and further into discovering and reconstructing the tale of the gun merchant. 

But as Deen attempts to construct an account of the gun merchant, the natural world, the world of snakes and dolphins, for instance, keeps intruding in new and puzzling ways.  To the rational mind, what the characters are experiencing is a sea-change (in part quite literal) in the environment that forces creatures to migrate or die. The natural world and the super natural world keep manifesting in new and unexpected ways. “Super natural”? In a bit of coincidence (or synchronicity), at the same time that I read The Gun Merchant,  I read Jefferey Kripal’s The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind & the Future of Knowledge (2019). In his work, Kripal, a scholar of comparative religion, addresses what is often referred to as the “paranormal,” or as he suggests, the “super natural.” (My review in the works.) Of course, we’re dealing here with a work of fiction, but Ghose doesn’t open or close the door of explanation about what’s going on here;  instead, he leaves the door ajar for us to ponder what lies on the other side. In any event, the confluence of events, by coincidence or synchronicity, natural or “super natural,” comes to a climax on the Mediterranean as a group of illegal immigrants seek to improve their lot in life by coming to Europe. 

Through the course of the novel, we learn about the experience of immigrants, legal and illegal, human and animal. Some are impelled to move in the hope of a better life, others compelled to migrate just to survive in a rapidly deteriorating environment. While providing this account of our rapidly changing world--and the rapidly changing world of the gun merchant in the late 1600s--Ghose doesn’t preach. His story illustrates his points. The connection between the human world and the natural world (to the extent that they could ever be thought truly distinct) is displayed with such story-telling dexterity that Ghose needn’t exposit his themes or provide lengthy accounts from history. We watch the changing tides of history as we learn the story of the gun merchant and the adventures of Deen and his compatriots involved in bringing this quest to a conclusion. For me, it provided a compelling reading experience.