Thoughts for the Day: Tuesday 19 January 2021

 

2020 publication

Conservatism

Edmund Fawcett

Conservatives, who began as anti-moderns, came to master modernity, for the right was in telling ways the stronger contestant. It spoke for the powers of wealth and property—first, land against industry and finance, then for all three, and soon for small property as well as large. Conservatism, in addition, would rely well into the twentieth century on the organs of state and on society’s many corps—law, religion, armed forces, universities—which tended to a stand-pat conservatism in the everyday, prepolitical sense of wanting tomorrow to be like today and not forever changing the furniture.

The Inevitability of Tragedy

Barry Gewen

Across the English Channel, George Orwell may have disliked what he saw, but he understood its power. Hitler, he said, “grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life.” The Nazis knew that “human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short-working hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty parades.”

The Life of the Mind

Hannah Arendt 

Truth is what we are compelled to admit by the nature either of our senses or of our brain. The proposition that everybody who is “was meant to be” can easily be refuted; but the certainty of the I “was meant to be” will survive refutation intact because it is inherent in every thinking reflection on the I-am.

The Best and the Brightest

David Halberstam

But the education [University of Wisconsin] further developed an already identifiable quality in him; it taught the students to think in terms of civilizations, not just in terms of governments. After all, governments come and go, but civilizations linger on. There were certain values, beliefs, qualities which would prevail, no matter what the outward form of the government. These were lessons which [John] Davies [State Department China expert caught up in McCarthyism] later applied to the contemporary world, and it would explain why his reporting was so profound; it was always touched with a sense of history. He saw something in a country and the society far deeper than the events of the moment. His reporting intuitively reflected the past as well as the present, and it marked him as no ordinary reporter or observer.

On Writing Well

William Zinsser

Sell yourself, and your subject will exert its own appeal. Believe in your own identity and your own opinions. Writing is an act of ego, and you might as well admit it. Use its energy to keep yourself going.

Thoughts for the Day: Monday 18 January 2021

 

Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954

Hannah Arendt

Fear, the inspiring principle of action in tyranny, is fundamentally connected to that anxiety which we experience in situations of complete loneliness. This anxiety reveals the other side of equality and corresponds to the joy of sharing the world with our equals.

Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954

Hannah Arendt

The chief point with respect to the “scientific attitude” seems to be that it belongs to the very essence of science, which is primarily interested in facts, that our factual information is not only limited but that the answers to the most important factual questions concerning the human condition as well as the existence of Being in general are beyond factual knowledge and experience.

Men in Dark Times

Hannah Arendt

You will recall Kant’s opinion that the touchstone for determining whether the difficulty of a philosophical essay is genuine or mere “vapors of cleverness” may be found in its susceptibility to popularization. And Jaspers, who in this respect, as indeed in every other, is the only successor Kant has ever had, has like Kant more than once left the academic sphere and its conceptual language to address the general reading public.

Collingwood's The Idea of History

Peter Johnson

Certainly, for Collingwood, human actions take place in contexts, and reference to context is often necessary to understand and get a feel for what is going on, but the relation between action and context is not like the relation between the instance and the law which governs it.

The Force of Character

James Hillman

Shame is one of the “gifts reserved for age,” according to Eliot. He goes on to describe shame as

… the rending pain of re-enactment

Of all that you have done, and been; the shame

Of motives late revealed, and the awareness

Of things ill done and done to others’ harm

Which once you took for exercise of virtue. [Eliot, Four Quartets, IV.2]

Thoughts for the Day: Sunday 17 January 2021

 

Commanding Hope

Thomas Homer-Dixon

“No passion,” said Edmund Burke, the English statesman and philosopher, “so effectually robs the mind of all its power of acting and reasoning as fear.”

Commanding Hope

Thomas Homer-Dixon

Nothing is more frightful than to see ignorance in action.---Goethe.

Apologies to the Grandchldren

William Ophuls

That people can be persuaded by factual or scientific arguments to change their minds is demonstrably false. Confirmation bias—we take in information that supports our existing beliefs and mostly ignore or reject the rest—is only one of the many tricks the human mind plays on itself. Hence we respond to new facts in less-than-rational and often sub-optimal ways.

Buddha Takes No Prisoners

(William) Patrick Ophuls

First, the essential aim of all Buddhist practice is to develop undistracted awareness—that is, to arrive at the state of pure presence that the Buddha-to-be first experienced under the rose-apple tree as a child and that later became the key to his awakening.

Collingwood's the Idea of History

Peter Johnson

Collingwood wishes us to see that history is systematic knowledge. Its purpose is not to provide emotional satisfaction, but ‘to command assent’ (PH 73).

Impeachment

Cass R. Sunstein

At the same time, bad decisions, or politically objectionable decisions, are not sufficient grounds for impeachment, even if much of the nation is up in arms. The United States, unlike some other democracies, does not allow votes of no confidence.

The Shape of Ancient Thought

Thomas McEvilley

The history of philosophy transpired in this two-limbed kind of development in both Greece and India, despite the modern idea that Greek thinkers were primarily realistic and logical, while Indian thought was supposedly limited to transcendentalist and intuitive modes. In fact, neither of these ancient cultures was as limited as that. The Greeks quite as much as the Indians had philosophical schools with mystical and transcendentalist orientations; conversely, the various trends of pluralism, naturalism, empiricism, skepticism, and protoscientific rationalism unfolded in the Indian schools as well as in the Greek.

Thoughts for the Day: Saturday 16 January 2021

 

Plato's Revenge

William Ophuls

Nothing I say here should be construed as approving a dictatorial remaking of our civilization. We do not need a Lenin or even an Ataturk. We require a new moral, legal, and political order that cannot be imposed from the top down but that must instead percolate up as the consequence of an intellectual and moral reformation.

Time of the Magicians

Wolfram Eilenberger

The scientifically enlightened modern age, with its foundational belief in the unconstrained power of natural laws, from which it imagined everything that was, is, and could be causally explained and even predicted, was based on a conceptual self-deception. It lay in an inability to distinguish between the concepts of “logical necessity” and “the necessity of natural laws.” Confronted with the same problems that preoccupied Heidegger, Cassirer, and Benjamin, Wittgenstein might be said to have been concerned more than anything with clarifying the relationship between “guilt” and “fate,” “freedom” and “necessity,” “faith” and “knowledge,” “being there” and “being like this” as the central concepts of any truly mature life.

The Life of the Mind

Hannah Arendt

Clichés, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality, that is, against the claim on our thinking attention that all events and facts make by virtue of their existence. If we were responsive to this claim all the time, we would soon be exhausted; Eichmann differed from the rest of us only in that he clearly knew of no such claim at all.

Conservatism

Edmund Fawcett

The liberal side of Burkeanism could eventually come to terms with that picture of politics as argument. To the Maistrian side, the liberal picture was wrong in whole and part. No reconciliation was possible. Maistre has appealed to the rejectionist element in conservatism and to its authoritarian fringe, as well as to cultural anti-moderns like Charles Baudelaire, Friedrich Nietzsche, and their descendants, who relished his mocking disdain.

The New Leviathan

R. G. Collingwood

The council or ‘state’ or ‘sovereign’ is a permanent society because its work is never done.

The Wedge

Scott Carney

“One characteristic that most people suffering from depression share is that they run higher temperatures than non-depressed folks. And if you treat their depression, their temperature returns to normal. Not only that, but depressed people typically don’t sweat,” he says. It’s a bombshell of a statement, because if it’s true, then Raison is essentially arguing that depression stems from bad thermoregulation as much as from any other factor. I have to admit, it’s a statement that I have some trouble accepting on face value.

Why Nations Fail

Daron Acemoglu, James Robinson

Economic institutions shape economic incentives: the incentives to become educated, to save and invest, to innovate and adopt new technologies, and so on. It is the political process that determines what economic institutions people live under, and it is the political institutions that determine how this process works.

Thoughts for the Day: Friday 15 January 2021

Dark Star Rising

Gary Lachman

Fancy, for Coleridge, takes what is already created and combines it in odd ways with other things. A unicorn and a flying pig are examples of Fancy but not, for Coleridge, Imagination, because they are only the result of an unusual combination of otherwise commonplace items. They add nothing “original” to reality, unlike, as Coleridge believed, true imagination does. In a sense, Coleridge relegates art movements such as Surrealism, which produced scores of sophisticated flying pigs and unicorns, into the category of Fancy. Others, I suspect, could find a place there too.

The Uninhabitable Earth

David Wallace-Wells

All of these scenarios, even the bleakest, presume some new political equilibrium. There is also, of course, the possibility of disequilibrium—or what you would normally call “disorder” and “conflict.” This is the analysis put forward by Harald Welzer, in Climate Wars, which predicts a “renaissance” of violent conflict in the decades to come. His evocative subtitle is What People Will Be Killed For in the 21st Century.

Already, in local spheres, political collapse is a quite common outcome of climate crisis—we just call it “civil war.” And we tend to analyze it ideologically—as we did in Darfur, in Syria, in Yemen. Those kinds of collapses are likely to remain technically “local” rather than truly “global,” though in a time of climate crisis they would have an easier time metastasizing beyond old borders than they have in the recent past. In other words, a completely Mad Max world is not around the bend, since even catastrophic climate change won’t undermine all political power—in fact, it will produce some winners, relatively speaking. Some of them with quite large armies and rapidly expanding surveillance states—China now pulls criminals out of pop concerts with facial recognition software and deploys domestic-spy drones indistinguishable from birds. This is not an aspiring empire likely to tolerate no-man’s-lands within its sphere.

Time Warrior

Steve Chandler

If you have a healthy ego—designed by you for successful interaction with society and other egos—you can use it consciously to achieve goals and keep commitments. You can also preserve your spirit and soul in the process, being in this world but not of it.

The Life of the Mind

Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy

Croesus addresses Solon not because he has seen so many lands but because he is famous for philosophizing, reflecting upon what he sees; and Solon’s answer, though based on experience, is clearly beyond experience. For the question, Who is the happiest of all?, he had substituted the question, What is happiness for mortals? And his answer to this question was a philosophoumenon, a reflection on human affairs (anthrōpeiōn pragmatōn) and on the length of human life, in which not one day is “like the other,” so that “man is wholly chance.”

On Revolution

Hannah Arendt

“Neither Rousseau nor Robespierre was capable of dreaming of a goodness beyond virtue, just as they were unable to imagine that radical evil would ‘partake nothing of the sordid or sensual’ (Melville), that there could be wickedness beyond vice.”

Thoughts for Later in the Day: Thursday 14 January 2021

 

An Essay on Philosophical Method

R. G. Collingwood, ed. by James Connelly, and Giuseppina D'Oro

Thought and action, each considered in its essence, may be as distinct as we will ; but in their existence in concrete instances they are so connected that it is possible, and more than possible, for an instance of the one to be an instance of the other also. Actual thinking is a labour to which ethical predicates may attach ; and although it is a mistake to regard thesepredicates as throwing any light on its nature as thinking-a mistake made by those who regard thought as essentially practical-they do throw light on the question under what conditions thought can exist.

Query: How do Collingwood's thoughts about thought & action compare to those of Hannah Arendt?

The Principles of History and Other Writings in Philosophy of History

R. G. Collingwood, W. H. Dray, and W. J. van der Dussen

Descartes, one of the three great masters of the Logic of Questioning (the other two being Socrates and Bacon), insisted upon this as a cardinal point in scientific method, but so far as modern works on logic are concerned, Descartes might never have lived.

Men in Dark Times

Hannah Arendt

Thus there are two things that the deductive sciences, logic and mathematics, always and necessarily overlook; first, they cannot see what makes logic or mathematics precisely what it is, that is, its logicality or mathematicality, any more than a person can see the very ground on which he is standing; and secondly they cannot observe the subject of the logical and mathematical operations. They always see only their own shadows, so to speak, but not themselves. Now it is natural that the mathematicality in mathematics, in other words “number as such,” should be the “absolute” for mathematics; and this very absolute is given to mathematics from outside, demonstrably existing outside its own system.

The Future of History

John Lukacs

If—as late as 1900—a Japanese or a Chinese wished to know precise matters about the history of his state and country in recent centuries, he had to read such narratives and accounts written by a European or American historian. But during the twentieth century historical consciousness began to spread, even though unevenly, to nations and peoples previously unaffected by it.

Kinds of Power

James Hillman

The Economy differs from other world empires, depending neither on Roman legions nor on British battleships, secret police, or stockpiles of nuclear weapons. Its power, like that of religions, has become interiorized. It rules by psychological means. The Economy determines who is included and who marginalized, distributing the rewards and punishments of wealth and poverty, advantage and disadvantage. Because this internalization of its ideas is so unquestioningly and universally accepted, it is the Economy where the contemporary unconscious resides and where psychological analysis is most needed.

Letter of Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO5) Opposing Impeachment & My Response

 Below is a letter that I received from our Congressional Representative Doug Lamborn (R-CO-5) in response to my email to him urging him to support the impeachment of President Trump. Below is his reply and my response to his reply, which I'm posting here and which I will send to his office as well. 

Dear Mr. Greenleaf,

Thank you for contacting me regarding impeachment. Their resolution has broken all precedent by bypassing Judiciary hearings and debate- instead being rushed to the full House of Representatives for a vote. In the President’s own words, he called for people to march to the Capitol building to “peacefully and patriotically” make their voices heard. This is House Democrats second impeachment of President Trump. 

The impeachment vote is a travesty. In the Democrats' hasty desire to impeach the President, they are willing to trample the Constitution and our political institutions. I condemn the actions of the individuals who stormed the Capitol. However, it is clear that President Trump did not incite this violence. He clearly called for individuals to peacefully and patriotically make their voices heard. This is yet another political ploy by House Democrats who hate the President and will do everything in their power to silence the voices of millions of Americans who voted for him. I hope we can move forward together in unity, but the Democrats’ impeachment is an obstacle to that effort. I will not vote to impeach the President. 

For more information about my efforts on behalf of Colorado, please visit my website at Lamborn.house.gov. Additionally, stay up to date by visiting my Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram pages. You can also sign up for my e-Newsletter for the latest updates. It is an honor and privilege to serve you in Congress.

Sincerely,

Doug Lamborn
Member of Congress

As I posted my email urging him to support impeachment on Facebook, I want to give Representative Lamborn a forum for his reply. And I believe it's important and useful to carefully and thoroughly review his arguments, so I have. Let's look carefully at his contentions. 

"Their resolution has broken all precedent by bypassing Judiciary hearings and debate- instead being rushed to the full House of Representatives for a vote." 

You have no antecedent for "their," but I assume you're referring to House Democrats. And you are certainly correct that this impeachment effort is "rushed." You, however, don't address here (or in any previous statements that I can find) the circumstances for this impeachment effort: the attack on Congress and the Capitol building by the mob on 6 January. You don't comment on what triggered this disgraceful attack on the institution of which you are a member, nor have you offered an account of the cause of this attack. All of the House Democrats, 10 of your Republican colleagues (including your caucus leader, Rep. Cheney (R-WY)), and most Americans believe that President Trump is responsible for the words of provocation and incitement made at the rally immediately preceding the attack and throughout the election process. Let me ask you an (admittedly far-fetched) hypothetical: If the president who made had made the same statements as did President Trump throughout this election cycle and on January 6 had been a Democrat, you would not have joined as a sponsor of the resolution of impeachment? If you answer differently than you've answered by your actions (opposing impeachment), then you're admitting that your position is motivated solely by your allegiance to Trump and his faction of the Republican Party. Of course, you realize that you'd be derelict in your duty if you didn't act to impeach the Democrat in my hypothetical.

"In the President’s own words, he called for people to march to the Capitol building to “peacefully and patriotically” make their voices heard." 

Is this all that President Trump said at the rally? Is this the whole truth? Do you consider the context of his remarks at the preceding rally in light of his numerous preceding statements and actions that lied about the integrity and legitimacy of the election? I think not. In fact, you can read a transcript of what President Trump said at the rally as reported by U.S. News & World Report. After you've read his entire harangue (is "harangue" unfairly pejorative?), please confirm that you still contend that President Trump simply "called for the people to march to the Capitol building to 'peacefully & patriotically' make their voices heard." (Warning: President Trump's remarks (?) at the rally are long-winded, rambling, and disjunct. But you really should read it in its entirety given the seriousness of the attack and the significance of impeachment.) 

"The impeachment vote is a travesty." 

As your composition teacher would have written on this paper: you've stated your conclusion; now you must support it. 

"In the Democrats' hasty desire to impeach the President, they are willing to trample the Constitution and our political institutions."

The Democrats, with the support of a few Republicans and the weight of public opinion, have acted expeditiously. In what particulars have "the Constitution and our political institutions" been "trampled?" Please be specific. Mustn't the Senate still hold a trial? Might they actually solicit evidence and call witnesses if they chose to do so? (They didn't for President Trump's first impeachment.) But the conduct of the trial remains the prerogative of the Senate under the Consitution.

And why do--why would--the Democrats and those Republicans who support impeachment want to pursue this impeachment? Trump will be gone on January 20th, so removal will become a moot issue. Why would they want to burden Congress with addressing this issue when our nation is suffering unprecedented death tolls because of our ineffectual response to the pandemic and while so many in our society are suffering severe harm to their well-being--economic and personal? It better be a darned good reason. Representative Cheney's (R-WY) statement captures as succinctly as any the justification for this impeachment: 

“The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack,” she said in a statement. “Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the president. The president could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not. There has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.” (NYT)

If, as the evidence continues to mount, we receive convincing evidence (even evidence beyond a reasonable doubt) of Trump's culpability in this attack, should such "high crimes and misdemeanors" and statutory crimes go unaddressed and unpunished?  Is this your contention? 

"I condemn the actions of the individuals who stormed the Capitol." 

Good! We agree on this point. 

"[I]t is clear that President Trump did not incite this violence. He clearly called for individuals to peacefully and patriotically make their voices heard."

If it is "clear" that "President Trump did not incite this violence," then how could all of the House Democrats and ten Republicans (plus House Minority Leader McCarthy in his statement, although not his vote), and a majority of Americans conclude that President Trump incited this riot? It certainly doesn't seem "clear" to most of the rest of us. You need to go beyond mere assertions to making cogent arguments based on factual statements. (And again, read President's full transcript of his January 6 talk at the "rally.") 

Question: Can one absolve oneself from criminal liability for inciting a crowd to transform into a rioting mob by sprinkling in a few words of peace in an otherwise belligerent harangue? Can one call a crowd to action because of a false claim of a horrible wrong (a "stolen election" and degradation of the Constitutional order) without consequence? (The Mark Antony defense: "I only came to bury Caesar, not to praise him--or to rile up the crowd against the conspirators.") Or, as the law states, should we assume that an actor intends the "natural and probable consequences of his actions" when judging his intent? (In other words, should we discourage the "play dumb" defense.) Does Trump by having uttered the words "peacefully and patriotically" in the course of his harangue provide himself with a get out of jail free card? Your implicit suggestion is that words don't matter and that words spoken by a public figure should receive absolute immunity under First Amendment free speech provisions. I don't agree with what your position suggests. I don't accept that First Amendment protections for speech are absolute and without exception (and here I agree with President Trump, although I disagree in the particulars).

"This is yet another political ploy by House Democrats who hate the President and will do everything in their power to silence the voices of millions of Americans who voted for him."

How does this "ploy" work? On what basis do you allege that the Democrats "will do everything in their power to silence the voices of millions of Americans who voted for him." Are you confused? Didn't you just vote not to certify the Electoral College vote and negate the votes of millions of Americans? (Yes, you did. On January 6, no less.)  Is the "him" you're talking about, for whom "millions of Americans voted for," not Joe Biden? Are you acquainted with the psychological concept of projection?

As to "hating" Trump, I can only speak for myself. Do I hate him? As a person, I find him pathetic, a man plagued by demons and out-of-control; a man of unconstrained appetites. For this, I pity him. But as a public figure, we must judge him and his performance. I do "hate" very much of what he's done, especially the lies and the fomenting of hatred and division and his degradation of norms of decency, civility, and the rule of law. And then there are his policies, to the extent that we can call them that, which were in large measure odious and foolish, to put it as kindly as possible. Thus, you're correct that I and most Democrats loath President Trump, and I believe that he's earned this level of disdain. We can pity him, but we can't trust him or forget his deeds. If at some point he confesses, repents, and atones for his wrongs, he can perhaps put himself straight with the Almighty and those close to him. But we the citizens of the United States can never forget his transgressions, and we should trust him with any public office ever again. 

"I hope we can move forward together in unity, but the Democrats’ impeachment is an obstacle to that effort."

Can--should--a victim of a crime--including "high crimes and misdemeanors"--simply "move forward together in unity" with the perpetrator without a judicial accounting of the wrongs committed and without some penalty imposed for those wrongs? I contend not. President Trump remains utterly unrepentant for his wrongdoing. And if there is no admission of guilt--as would be required in any criminal sentencing based on a plea agreement (when a defendant receives the benefit of a plea bargain), then there can be no receipt of a more lenient sentence. President Trump should be punished for his wrongdoing if found guilty of any "high crimes and misdemeanors" or statutory crimes after a fair trial (or trials) based on due process of law. And those who have suborned and enabled his wrongdoing should be called into account in the court of public opinion and in the election booth (unless a justified criminal case can be brought). 

I'm all in favor of "moving forward together in unity" as a nation after we have comes to grips with our national ailments. I don't believe that we can afford to sweep the events of January 6 under the rug nor can we simply ignore the complicity of the President and his supporters in this attack on our democracy. Before reconciliation must come accountability. I sincerely desire that we can bring folks together by honest and forthright dialogue. We need a government that addresses the legitimate needs and aspirations of all Americans. We need to come to grips with the realities that we face--a pandemic, economic inequities, climate change--and a host of other festering problems. So, yes, we need to get beyond this impeachment and act to take positive steps toward improving our national well-being. But until we face the wrongs, the wrongs of our nation, we won't make any real progress. 

"I will not vote to impeach the President."

And you didn't. 

Thank you for your consideration of these matters. I'm happy to carry on this dialogue so long as you desire. 

Stephen N. Greenleaf