Philosophical notes…
On Illumination
“[Arendt’s] defense of the dignity of politics provides a critical standard for judging the situation many of us find ourselves in today, where the opportunity to participate, to act in concert and to engage in genuine debate with our peers is being diminished. We must resist the temptation to opt out of politics and to assume that nothing can be done in face of all the current ugliness, deception and corruption. Arendt’s lifelong project was to honestly confront and comprehend the darkness of our times, without losing sight of the possibility of transcendence, and illumination. It should be our project, too.”
Richard Bernstein, "The Illuminations of Hannah Arendt," The New York Times.
On Transparency
“The rise of fake news has been attributed by some to the emergence of postmodern thought. Victor Davis Hanson, a scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University wrote in 2017 that fake news can be ‘traced back to the campus,’ specifically to ‘academic postmodernism,’ which Hanson says, ‘derides facts and absolutes, and insists that there are only narratives and interpretations.’ That’s not quite right. The insistence on the primacy of narratives and interpretations does not involve a deriding of facts but an alternative story of their emergence. Postmodernism sets itself against the notion of facts just lying there discrete and independent, and waiting to be described. Instead it argues that fact is the achievement of argument and debate, not a pre-existing entity by whose measure argument can be assessed. Arguments come first; when they are successful, facts follow — at least for a while, until a new round of arguments replaces them with a new set of facts... This wholesale distrust of authoritative mechanisms leads to the bizarre conclusion that an assertion of fact is more credible if it lacks an institutional source. In this way of thinking, a piece of news originating in a blog maintained by a teenager in a basement in Idaho would be more reliable than a piece of news announced by the anchor of a major network. And, again, what has brought us to this sorry pass is not the writings of Derrida or Foucault or any postmodern guru but the twin mantras of more free speech and absolute transparency.”
Stanley Fish, "'Transparency' Is the Mother of Fake News," The Stone, NY Times. Interesting summary of technological ideology today. Fish at least makes the case that philosophical emphases upon the deliberative context of information is not tantamount to the relativistic production of "fake news." This distinction is important to keep in mind when considering the relation between facts and opinions, as did Hannah Arendt in the 1960s context of her essay "Lying in Politics." For a recent film dramatization of those events, The Post, went some way to highlighting how a free press's standards of authorship cannot be extricated from political authority tout court. In any case, these issues are particularly important for political deliberations concerning religion, where the diversity of interlocutors can be extreme. While underdeveloped at times, pragmatist approaches to that issue provide much needed support for those interested in the persistence of democracy. Jefffrey Stout's Democracy and Tradition is a key primer to that end.
On Arguments for the Existence of God
“In philosophy generally, decisive ‘knock-down’ arguments against any claim are rare. You can challenge the reasoning of an argument and say that a conclusion doesn’t follow, but the idea of definitively settling once and for all a question like whether objective morality exists seems almost unthinkable. But there seems to be a real bias against the idea that we can even discuss the possibility of God as being on the table at all.”
“Yes, there is a kind of double-standard here. It’s a double-standard that you find not only among New Atheist writers but even, unfortunately, among some academic philosophers. In virtually every other area of philosophy, even the most notoriously bizarre arguments and ideas are taken seriously, such as: How do I know that the table in front of me is real and not just a dream? True, there are almost no philosophers who would take seriously as a live option the idea that the world of our experience is a complete dream or hallucination. But, certainly, every philosopher would say that whether or not we think for a moment that the conclusion is plausible, we need to take seriously the arguments for that conclusion and examine them, see what might be wrong with them, and also consider how a radical sceptic may defend himself against our criticisms.
Philosophical ideas are generally treated as if they are always still on the table. They are always worthy of our consideration and discussion and maybe there’s some aspect or hidden wisdom behind the argument that we haven’t yet noticed.”
"The Best Books on Arguments for the Existence of God: Recommended by Edward Feser" - https://fivebooks.com/best-books/arguments-existence-god-edward-feser/
On Kant's Categorical Imperative
“Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how, in the Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) sought to define the difference between right and wrong by applying reason, looking at the intention behind actions rather than at consequences. He was inspired to find moral laws by natural philosophers such as Newton and Leibniz, who had used reason rather than emotion to analyse the world around them and had identified laws of nature. Kant argued that when someone was doing the right thing, that person was doing what was the universal law for everyone, a formulation that has been influential on moral philosophy ever since and is known as the Categorical Imperative. Arguably even more influential was one of his reformulations, echoed in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in which he asserted that humanity has a value of an entirely different kind from that placed on commodities. Kant argued that simply existing as a human being was valuable in itself, so that every human owed moral responsibilities to other humans and was owed responsibilities in turn.”
In Our Time - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0952zl3
On Truth
“From time to time, not very often, it looks as though the world has given philosophy a job to do. Now is such a moment. At last, a big abstract noun – truth – is at the heart of a cultural crisis and philosophers can be called in to sort it out... In whichever guise we encounter truth, it has the curious property of being everything and nothing to do with us. To say something is true is to say that it is the case whether I want it to be so or not. Nothing can be made true by will alone. It is an all-too common nonsense to say that something is “true for me” but might not be for anyone else. At the same time, what is important about the truth is always relative to the knower. The mathematician, the scientist, the artist, the historian and the religious believer are not always concerned with the same truths or the same aspects of truth. Truth is not relative, but we relate to it in innumerable ways.”
Julian Baggini, "Truth? It's not Just about the Facts" -https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/post-truth-philosophers/. My current work on Hannah Arendt is addressed to these difficulties concerning a plurality of people recognizing each other's interests in public. My contention is that by focusing on the conditions of recognition some progress can be made on these matters.
On Helplines
“Welcome to the Philosophy helpline. If you’re looking to write a college paper, or hope to impress your date, or see life as a featureless void empty of all hope, or our most common answer, ‘all of the above,’ you’ve come to the right place…For Descartes, please press (1,0,0). You have pressed it, therefore you will be connected to him. But who is it that is really doing the pressing? Is it possible to press the act of pressing itself? All that is certain is that you exist, that I exist, and that your call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes.”
"Thank You for Calling the Philosophy Helpline" - https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/thank-you-for-calling-the-philosophy-helpline
On the Perception of Time
“I’m particularly drawn to the work that is done in the lab on perception of time, because I think that has the ability to make rapid advances in the coming years. For example, there are famous experiments in which people apparently make free decisions at certain moments and yet it’s found that the decision was actually made a little bit earlier, but their own perception of time and their actions within time have been sort of edited after the event. When we observe the world, what we see is an apparently consistent and smooth narrative, but actually the brain is just being bombarded with sense data from different senses and puts all this together. It integrates it and then presents a consistent narrative as it were the conscious self. And so we have this impression that we’re in charge and everything is all smoothly put together. But as a matter of fact, most of this is, is a narrative that’s recreated after the event.”
"Where Did Time Come From? And Why Does It Seem to Flow?" - http://nautil.us/blog/-where-did-time-come-from-and-why-does-it-seem-to-flow. Interesting interview with a physicist on the nature of time. Of note is that his response to the question on recent advances is philosophically oriented towards the phenomenology of the perception of time. For instance, Paul Ricoeur's Time and Narrative seems particularly apropos.
On Ricouer's Influence
“Paul Ricoeur is one of those continental philosophers you have to read with a dictionary in one hand and a strong coffee in the other (‘difficult to categorise’, as one reference work gently puts it). So he’s an unlikely candidate for providing the material to halt the march of populism in Europe. Yet his most famous student Emmanuel Macron is being credited with doing just that, having secured an election victory that has calmed nerves in Brussels and Berlin after the UK’s Brexit vote. Precisely what Macron will deliver remains unclear but there’s no doubt he has been heavily influenced by Ricoeur, with whom he worked for two years before leaving academia and becoming an investment banker.”
"Paul Ricouer: The Philosopher Behind Emanuel Macron" - http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/paul-ricoeur-the-philosopher-behind-emmanuel-macron-1.3094792. Interesting reflection upon Ricoeur's Ideology and Utopia, and other various connections with Macron's thought. A few years ago I'd written on this aspect of Ricoeur's work in an essay on "Utopia and the Public Sphere."
On Tautologies
“A couple times a week, I hear someone remark ‘It is what it is,’ accompanied by a weary sigh. I always puzzle over the expression a little bit, thinking What else could it be? ‘It is what it is’ is a literal tautology, an apparently needless repetition intended to convey something more. Overused, it has become a cliché, reflecting a too-easy acceptance of bad situations... Likewise ‘If it’s late, it’s late’ can imply nonchalance (on the part of a student: If it’s late, it’s late. Who cares?) or reinforcement of the obligation (on the part of the professor:If it’s late it’s late, even by a minute). And if a deadline-enforcer says ‘If it’s late, it’s late,’ the response might be ‘But it’s not late late.’ Here repetition indicates that the canoncial meaning of late it intended.It’s not late late, it’s just a little late.”
Edwin Battistella, "How to Use Repetition," https://blog.oup.com/2017/06/repetition-linguistics/. Relevant advice apropos end of semester essay deadlines.
On Manchester
A note of solidarity with a place I once called home. This mosaic is a much beloved city icon nestled into the corner of Afflecks on Tib and Short Street.
“Many of you won’t have ever been to Manchester, but you will definitely have heard of it. It’s famous all over the world for so many wonderful things. Great football teams: Man City, Man United. It’s famous for incredible music: Oasis and Joy Division. It was the birthplace of the leader of the suffragettes. It’s the home of the inventor of the first computer. It’s a place full of comedy and curries and character.”
James Corden's Message to Manchester - https://youtu.be/I2xoCFGTi6w