Fundamentalists have more fun...

"This Schlagwort [viz., 'fundamentalism'], once descriptive of a naive Biblical literalism, has become the favored device and the current glib-speak for exiling from the realm of civilized discourse those Christians, Catholic and Protestant, who prefer the magisterial authority of their traditions to the clerical and academic consensus that would subordinate the Gospel to the higher truth of modernity. ... [For example,] Martin Marty argues [ca. 1987] that insofar as persons of religious conviction do not sell out to an amalgamated 'pluralistic' public religiosity, the end they have in view can only be a theocratic intolerance....  

"The fundamentalist label is now used in quasi-Catholic circles to include whatever theological position refuses to drift before the winds of change emanating from the editorial offices of such journals of conventional opinion as Commonweal, America and the U.S. Catholic Conference 'news service,' the weekly Origins...."

-- Fr. Donald J. Keefe, S.J., Covenantal Theology: The Eucharistic Order of History, rev. ed., with an Appendix (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, [1991] 1996), p. 66. 

A return to orders...

Of late, I am rereading formative books I read long ago, or finally chipping away at that endless list of "books I've been meaning to read for a while now,"[1] and I'm currently enjoying Vinoth Ramachandra's staggeringly good, yet seemingly underrated, Gods That Fail: Modern Idolatry & Christian Mission (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996). The book was life-changing for me, not only because it cemented my conception of Christianity as a global missionary religion (particularly by opening my eyes to Christianity in Southeast Asia, which was a factor in my decision to live and serve in Taiwan for what ended up being nine years, and where I met my wife!), but also because it introduced me to the work of Fr. Stanley Jaki, which was a crucial factor in my conversion to Catholicism. 

Ramachandra's second book, Faiths in Conflict? Christian Integrity in a Multicultural World (IVP, 1999), was just as enriching, though mainly by deepening my understanding of and appreciation for Southeast Asia. I have not had a chance to read his most recent book, Subverting Global Myths: Theology and the Public Issues Shaping Our World (London: SPCK, 2008), but I intend to do so once I finish rereading the first two books. 


As an author, Ramachandra is as challenging as he is edifying because of the intellectual balancing act he performs, and which he makes the reader perform with him. On the one hand, he gleefully and deftly skewers anti-European, anti-Christian propaganda that portrays Christianity as a means of oppression by the West, or that non-Christian cultures were and are better off before and without Christian influence. On the other hand, he is anything but a stooge for Western neo-liberal progressivism, and denounces globalist malfeasance just as deftly. He casually uses buzzwords that reflexively give American conservatives, like myself, the jitters, but does so amidst a larger argumentation that ultimately undermines the ideology behind those buzzwords, and behind much of what passes for American conservatism these days, in order to hobble them in subjection to the demands of the Gospel.  

The following passages, beginning on page 116 of Gods That Fail, arrested me not only because it nicely captures Ramachandra's ability to hobble non-Christian idols on both sides of the aisle, as it were, but also because it ties in well with discussions I've had over the past couple years about "Making America Great Again" versus "Making Americans Godly Again."

Let us join Ramachandra on the tightrope: 

Development is one of those words which, far from being innocuous, has served to reinforce the hold of modern idols over vast populations in the Third World (or, the South, to use a geographically appropriate term). It has become a source of propaganda for a particular way of life. In other words, it is an ideology. ... From 'westernization' to 'modernization' to 'development': images that turned the West, whether in its capitalist or socialist expressions, into the definer of the 'good life' for men and women across the globe.  

Not surprisingly, 'development' became a neo-colonial [gasp! a librul buzzword!] project through which an aggressive, expanding Corporation Culture sought to establish a bridgehead among political and commercial elites of the Third World. The attraction of 'development' is that it has brought substantial improvements [gasp! a neo-conservative talking point!] in health care, education and general well-being to scores of people inmany [sic] countries. But it has , more often than not, given legitimacy to the acquisition and control of other people's resources, inevitably increasing poverty and distress under the guise of eliminating them. 

"It never ceases to amaze me," continues Ramachandra on page 117,

how many Christians, in the North and the South, continue to refer to the former as the 'developed' and the latter as the 'developing' world. ... All our normative images and yardsticks of 'devcelopment' are ideologically 'loaded'. Who dictates that mushrooming TV ariels and skyscrapers are signs of 'development'? Who, apart from the automobile industry and the advertising agencies, seriously believes that a country with six-lane highways and multi-story car-parks is more 'developed' than one whose chief mode of transport is railways? Does the fact that there are more telephone lines in Manhatten [sic], New York than in the whole of sub-saharan Africa, mean that human communication is more developed in the former than in the latter?

Keep in mind that I read these words shortly before I (grudgingly) bought my first cellphone, and Ramachandra wrote them years before the explosion of social media that now dominate our lives. And yet, his critique is just as salient, if not more so, for predating our "new and improved" means of "keeping in touch." But Ramachandra's bipartisan critique is not over yet. 

The commonest measure of 'development' (on the basis of which entire societies are classified hierarchically) is the Gross National Product per capita. That improving levels of income are an important aspect of human well-being..., I do not deny. But GNP per capita tells us nothing about the distribution of income in a given society. It is a well-observed fact that, even as the GDP per capita increases by leaps and bounds, the purchasing power of whole segments of the population may decline and levels of of absolute poverty in the country actually increase. As we saw in Chapter 2, no Christian assessment of human well-being can ignore the issue of distributive justice, the access of the poor to the wealth that is generated. [p. 118]

Ramachandra is referring to arguments he mounted beginning on page 44. "The privileged, who may also happen to be 'religious," notes Ramachandra, 

often feel that their social and economic privileges are somehow a solemn, basic, God-given right. In many legal systems down to the present day, the sanctity of private property has been upheld ... with greater religious indignation than the sanctity of human life. As the economist John Kenneth Gilbraith comments, tongue-in-cheek, 'The sensitivity of the poor to injustice is a trivial thing compared with that of the rich'.[2] But, someone may object, what about the apostle Paul's injunction to Christians to be content with their material state (1 Tim 6:6ff)? 

Firstly, answers Ramachandra, "Paul is not addressing those whom modern economists would describe as the 'absolute poor': namely those people ... whose basic needs of nutrition, clothing, health care and housing have not yet been met." On the contrary:

He assumes (in v.8) that these primary human requirements have been satisfied.... Where these needs have not been satisfied, it is usually because of a failure to share material resources, which in turn is a result of the arrogance of the rich and their refusal to fulfil their obligations to the poor (see v.17,18). Secondly, Paul's warnings are not directed at the legitimate aspirations on the part of the poor to be freed from exploitation and material want. Rather they are directed at human greed, the 'love of money' (v.10), the spirit of acquisitiveness which is rampant among 'the rich in this present world' and which leads to idolatry and a false sense of security (v.17; cf Col. 3:5). ... [In a word,] Paul's warnings are based on the assumption that a world of gross material inequality is a world that is dominated by false gods, by empty sources of security (v. 7,17). 

Ramachandra continues by reminding us that "the great thinkers and preachers of the Christian church have affirmed the economic rights of the poor" (p. 45). "Not only did they remind the relatively well-to-do of their charitable duty to the poor," argues Ramachandra, "but they also insisted on the right of access on the part of the poor to adequate means of sustenance." As St. Ambrose teaches, "Not from your own do you bestow upon the poor man, but you make return from what is his."[3] Even more boldly, notes Ramachandra, did St. John Chrysostom preach: 

That is also theft, not to share one's possessions. ... [T]he rich man is a kind of steward of the money which is owed for distribution to the poor. ... So if he spends more on himself than his needs require, he will pay the harshest penalty hereafter. ... [N]ot to share our own wealth with the poor is theft from the poor and deprivation of their means of life.[4] 

Presumably heading off a "conservative" objection to his "liberal" arguments, Ramachandra notes that the suggestion "that the concept of rights is a product of the humanism of the Enlightenment, is historically misleading."

Although the word 'rights' may not have appeared with much frequency in the great patristic and medieval church leaders, the thought that the poor in society have legitimate claims on the rich..., and that to withold what was in one's power to grant in situations of material deprivation was to do moral injury to the poor, permeates their writings. [As such, it] is morally permissible for an extremely impoverished person to take what he or she needs for sustenance from a person who has plenty.

More concretely, Ramachandra explains, "If I have food in my house which you need for your survival, but which is not indispensable for mine, then it rightfully belongs to you." As a result, "If I offered it to you, it would not be an act of charity on my part as much as granting you your rights under God." Ramachandra then invokes the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas in Summa Theologica: 

In cases of need all things are common property, so that there would seem to be no sin in taking another's property, for need has made it common.... Hence whatever certain people have in superabundance is due by natural law, to the purpose of succoring the poor.[5]

An obvious retort -- and certainly my own reflex -- is to say that, in our modern world, and in our daily lives, it is so rare to encounter so radical a case of need that theft against us would be mere justice. However, the retort seems to prove too much, since, if there are no realistic conditions under which we could see ourselves being obliged to follow the injunctions levied above, then we are effectively removing the moral burdens of the traditional teaching about distributive justice. In other words, if we no longer have to worry about the demands of distributive justice "in our day," then it follows that distributive justice is not a universally (i.e., transhistorically and transculturally) binding moral principle. As such, it was never, in principle, a binding principle, and therefore we are refuting the teaching of Sts. Paul, Ambrose, John Chrystostom, Thomas, et al. Rather than parrying the implications of the Christian teaching about distributive justice with sophistical qualifications, it behooves us to discover fresh applications of the Christian teaching, beginning in our own lives and communities.

Meanwhile, how did such materialistic sophistry come to hold sway in the modern Western Christian mind? Part of the problem, according to Ramachandra, is that "the market mechanism for allocating resources was raised to a semi-divine status by Adam Smith's (1723-1790) occult notion of an 'invisible hand' steering human self-interest to socially beneficent ends" (p. 110). In Smith's defense, argues Ramachandra, "Smith has been associated, rather unfairly, with the nineteenth-century [and Social-Darwinian] advocates of laissez-faire capitalism and their counterparts in the post-Thatcher-Reagan era in the West." Smith's main concern, contends Ramachandra

was to defend free trade against mercantilist arguments that a strong government was needed to protect the interests of producers. Many of the mercantilist writers were themselves merchants who saw their own interests as best served by a nation-state which used economic policy as a means of reinforcing its own power. Smith rejected any action by government which discriminated against some citizens by supporting the interests of others.

Modern defenders of laissez-faire capitalism shore up their ideology in Smith's name by leaving his position at that, but thereby do him a great injustice. For, as Ramachandra clarifies, "while [Smith] opposed any government intervention in the operation of markets, he was aware of the responsibility of government to protect human welfare." It is often overlooked that Adam Smith was a professor of moral philosophy, and only accidentally an economic philosopher. Indeed, his 1759 book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, not only predated his famous The Wealth of Nations by seventeen years, but also classified "Economics" as a subset of, or at least a shorthand name for, "Familial Rights." 

As such, his economic theories were intended to be read in the context of his larger moral philosophy. It is in that context, Ramachandra notes, that Smith 

defined three duties of government, the latter two proving a source of embarrassment to advocates of 'minimalist' government who look to Smith for support: namely, the 'duty of protecting, as far as possible, every member of society from the injustice or oppression of every other member of it', and 'the duty of of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions which can never be for the interest of any individual or small number of individuals...'[6] 

"Smith," Ramachandra concludes on page 111, "may be the patron saint of capitalism and neo-classical economics, but like all such saints his texts are used selectively by his devotees"—just ask Sts. Paul, Ambrose, John Chrysostom, Thomas Aquinas, et al. 

With the larger moral context of Smith's economic theories in mind, and the larger demands of Christianity in the socioeconomic sphere fresh in our hearts, let us return to Ramachandra's previously cited critique of 'development' (p. 118). Not only, recall, does a higher GNP per capita not necessarily result in equal development for all, but "a nation's GNP only indicates the volume of circulation of goods and services in the economy [i.e., among families]." Beyond that, however, the GNP per capita "tells us nothing about the quality of those goods and services: are they beneficial or harmful, do they enrich or damage life, do they meet the actual needs of the community?" In other words, to recall an earlier dichotomy," is a robust economy "Making America Great Again" at the expense of "Making Americans Godly Again"? If so, how we can harmonize the two aims? 

Until we achieve such a reconciliation, Ramachandra notes laconically that it "is perfectly possible to have a society with a high GNP per capita, thriving solely on the manufacture and export of armaments, heroin, tobacco and pornography." (Some might call this a libertarian utopia, but I digress.) The question Ramachandra imposes upon us is, "Would such a [commercially successful] society be regarded as 'developed'?" Under the reigning neo-liberal ideology, it would, contends Ramachandra.

In any case, I trust that the foregoing suffices to demonstrate why Ramachandra is an author well worth exploring.

NOTES:

[1] Hence, "a return to orders" I placed long ago.

[2] The Age of Uncertainty (London: BBC, 1972), p. 22.

[3] Quoted in C. Avila, Ownership: Early Christian Teaching (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1983), p. 50.

[4] On Wealth and Poverty, tr. Catherine Roth (New York: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1984), pp. 49-55.

[5] Pt II-II, Q66, Art 7, tr. by Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benzinger Bros., 1948).

[6] An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), ed. Edwin Cannan (1904) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), Vol. 2, pp. 208-209.

Rolling in his grave...

"In his forceful attempts to impart, protect, elucidate, and formulate a vitalized Christianity though his many soul-oriented writings, Augustine was seeking to prevent Christianity from mutating into a semblance of religion that 'held onto the form of the faith but denied its true power. [II Timothy 3:5]' Always one who favored the 'life and light of the mind'..., he feared that Christianity might one day be transformed into a mindless, purely symbolic and simple religion that would be content with engaging in childlike otherworldly reflections and fantasies."

Masquerading as an angel of a light show...

"He feared that the faith would become a spirituality of the moods, not of the mind and heart; unexercised, it would degenerate into a belief system that reflected a soft, relaxed confidence in Christ.... In his great concern, he may have foreseen a day when congregations would gather to worship not with the mind strengthened and sustained by the heart, but by the heart alone...."

(link)

"People could easily be swayed and swept away by the heavenly beauty of the temporal light falling through stained glass windows, or, like Odysseus with the Sirens, become captivated by soothing melodies rising from a choir."

Clowns of a feather...

-- S. T. Georgiu, The Last Transfiguration: The Quest for Spiritual Illumination in the Life and Times of Saint Augustine (Grand Rapids, MI: Phanes Press, 1994), p. 82

Microcogditations from the front…

This humidity must be part of my penance the priest slipped in when I wasn't listening. Despite everything, Marcus Aurelius never had to deal with this weather!
#TropicalKickToTheHead #Stoicism

•

""Both [Paganism & Stoicism] were consistent, philosophical, and exalted... [but] the first leads logically to murder and the second to suicide. ... It is only the Mystic, the man who accepts the contradictions [of life], who can laugh and walk easily through the world." - GKC

•

Passing an ad for plastic surgery, asked wife if she wants that. Bugged eyes: "No. I'm beautiful."
#MyWifeRocks

•

The nail in the coffin for FTL Neutrinos: LINK.

•

I stand sideways in conversations so people realize I want to go, but doing so only seems to drag it out.
#YouDoItToYourself #Fail

•

I'm leery of writing his O'ness' name in conjunction with the HHS struggle, since doing so not only misses the point (i.e. it's bigger than him, if not bigger than his ego), but also risks making opposition to HHS qua "O____care" a political campaign, at which point religious opponents of HHS have overstepped the very bounds they're trying to protect.

•

@eckharttolle "Real love doesn't make you suffer. How could it?" By making you sacrifice, how about? Saying "I love you" even when you don't 'feel' it is just what validates your love: the difference between loving and being "in love".
#SacredHeart #Crucifixion

•

George Clooney arrested in Washington, D.C. "for protesting Sudan’s attacks on its Nuba people."
"How many more bodies until the Nuba mountains become the next Darfur?"

•

My friend wanted to let me be happy in my "new baby" bubble, filter bad news, but I kneel to a crucified peasant everyday: my bubble is… congenitally open.
#SacredHeart #Crucifixion

•

The duality of human fecundity (maker/medium, male/female, thought/act) finds unity in the absolute simplicity of God as all-wise Creator. Mary's virgin motherhood is but a portrait of the deeper mystery of God's virgin fatherhood. God as Spirit thus transcends and grounds sex. Atheism is ontological solipsism.
#AnalogiaEntis

•

It must never be forgotten that economy originally meant family budget.
#Distributism

•

Scientismatics want a final theory, a theory which would in principle be universally valid, and thus physically deductive, yet they reject religion i.a. because theistic claims are "not in principle" falsifiable. Huh?
#scientism #CultofGnu

Books I've read in the last six months or so…

As you may know, I keep a running tab on my "mental diet" (books and movies), but decided to share my latest explorations. Has anyone here read any of these books and have any opinions to offer?

If you visit my log, you'll notice I'm still (still!) reading a few other books, which means I've been reading about two books a week lately, so, roughly (in theory), I read 300 books last year. Here's to another 300 this year! The interesting thing is, that's more than twice as much as I used to read in high school and college per annum. If only I could get back to writing as much as I used to then, as well.

• Schopenhauer: A Very Short Introduction (2002) by Christopher Janaway

• An Introduction to Philosophical Logic (1982; 1st ed.) by A. C. Grayling
• Self, Logic, and Figurative Thinking (2009) by Harwood Fisher
• The Development of Logic (1962) by William Kneale & Martha Kneale

• Thomas Aquinas: Selected Writings (1998) (ed.) Ralph McInerny
• God Is a Bullet by Boston Teran
• The Blue Hour by T. Jefferson Parker
• Under the Dome by Stephen King
• Duma Key by Stephen King
• The Dead Zone by Stephen King
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
• The Terror by Dan Simmons
• The Talisman by Stephen King & Peter Straub
• Point Omega by Don DeLillo
• Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor
• The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon
• The Nature of the Mind by Peter Carruthers
• Personal Identity by Harold Noonan
• Theory and Truth by Lawrence Sklar
• Philosophical Logic by John P. Burgess
• Philosophy of Logic by W.V.O. Quine
• From a Logical Point of View by W.V.O. Quine
• Everywhere and Everywhen by Nick Huggett
• Thinking about Physics by Roger G. Newton
• Real Essentialism by David Oderberg
• Why Marx Was Right (2011) by Terry Eagleton
• Logic (1985) by Juan Jose Sanguineti
• Nominalism and Realism – Volume 1 of Universals and Scientific Realism (1980) by D. M. Armstrong
• A Theory of Universals – Volume 2 of Universals and Scientific Realism (1980) by D. M. Armstrong
• Couplehood by Paul Reiser
• What Matters? Economics for a Renewed Commonwealth by Wendell Berry
• The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism by Robert P. Murphy, Ph.D.
• Toward a Truly Free Market: A Distributist Perspective on the Role of Government, Taxes, Health Care, Deficits, and More (2010) by John M. Médaille
• Leibniz's Mill: A Challenge to Materialism (2011) by Charles Landesman
• The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism by Kevin D. Williamson
• In Defence of Global Capitalism (2001) by Johan Norberg
• The "Poisoned Spring" of Economic Libertarianism –– Menger, Mises, Hayek, Rothbard: A Critique from Catholic Social Teaching of the 'Austrian School' of Economics (2011) by Angus Sibley
• Micro (2012) by Michael Crichton w/ Richard Preston
• The Case for Working with Your Hands, Or Why Office Work Is Bad for Us and Fixing Things Feels Good (2010) by Stephen Crawford
• The Conscience of a Liberal (2009) by Paul Krugman
• Free Lunch: Easily Digestible Economics, Served on a Plate (2003) by David Smith
• The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else (2000) by Hernando de Soto
• Why Most Things Fail: Evolution, Extinction & Economics (2005) by Paul Ormerod
• What's Wrong with the World (1910) by G.K. Chesterton
• The Servile State (1912) by Hilaire Belloc
• The Sun of Justice: An Essay on the Social Teaching of the Catholic Church (1938) by Harold Robbins
• The Persistence of the Old Regime: Europe to the Great War ([1981] 2010 2^nd ed.) by Arno J. Mayer

Capitalism has no conscience besides what we put into it…

John Medaille of the Univ. of Dallas Discusses Economics. His book, “Toward a Truly Free Market” is Available at www.amazon.com.
December 20th, 2011

John Medaille of the Univ. of Dallas answered questions such as the following:
1) The economy is not doing well. What caused the problem?
2) When the gov’t needs money, why not just create it and forget selling bonds and paying interest? This way there would be no national debt.
3) How important are Christian principles to the proper functioning of a free market system?
4) Is it harmful to the economy if too much annual income goes to too few?
5) Should Soc Sec be privatized? Should we keep the minimum wage and The Federal Reserve?

A more, rather than less, radical critique…

Does Catholic Social Teaching approve of capitalism?

"If by 'capitalism' is meant an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector, then the answer is certainly in the affirmative, even though it would perhaps be more appropriate to speak of a 'business economy', 'market economy' or simply 'free economy'. But if by 'capitalism' is meant a system in which freedom in the economic sector is not circumscribed within a strong juridical framework which places it at the service of human freedom in its totality, and which sees it as a particular aspect of that freedom, the core of which is ethical and religious, then the reply is certainly negative.' …

"The theology that makes CST 'a category of its own,' makes it a more, rather than less, radical critique of Capitalism, because it subordinates economics to other, higher, dimensions of society…. [Médaille] painstakingly builds the case for introducing ethics and justice into economics and business, starting with the most basic issues. … Médaille confronts [the problem of relativism] directly, and carefully reconstructs the process of moral reasoning, taking the reader all the way from the Bible and the Greeks to the Enlightenment, and the separation of reason from faith—the source of our modern (or post-modern) predicament, where relativism rules."

-- Angelo Matera, Book Review: The Vocation of Business: Social Justice in the Marketplace by John Medaille - www.cjd.org

The necessary role of justice in political economy…

"Medaille suggests that economics—better labeled as political economy—lost its way under the influence of David Hume and Bernard de Mandeville. ... As his antidote, the author returns to the political economy of Aristotle and to the necessary place of justice in proper theory. ... Aristotle also argued that '[t]he family is the association established by nature for the supply of men’s everyday wants.' Medaille elaborates: 'It is the family, and not the individual, that is the starting point ... because only the family is [fundamentally] self-sufficient; an individual in isolation can neither reproduce nor provide for himself.' Accordingly, all economics is necessarily social, or communitarian. This return to Aristotle also points to measures of justice. ...

"The author also resurrects the key insights of early 20th Century Distributists[: namely,] 'Markets are not natural phenomenon, but are socially created'; '…exchange does not create wealth; that happens in the production process'[;] …if the worker is to reap the full value of his labor, then he must own an interest in the land he works; — “Property must be seen as an aid to productive work, and not as a substitute for it'; and —-“This accumulation of property into the hands of those who do not use it is the sole cause of the vast inequalities that bedevil civil society and economic order” [referencing here Adam Smith—one of the author’s heroes-- “Wherever there is great property there is great inequality…[and] the indigence of the many”]. In each case, Medaille provides provocative elaborations of these basic premises behind the Call for a Property State."

-- "Commentary on John Medaille’s Toward a Truly Free Market" | Front Porch Republic - www.frontporchrepublic.com

Wall of separation…

"[A]s Professor Médaille reveals, the Enlightenment’s wall of separation of the 'moral question and the economic question' compelled civilization to flirt with capitalism, socialism, Communism, Keynesianism, mercantilism, and even laissez-faire. And this last has, unfortunately, replaced the 'free' in free market with excess and fiscal libertinism.

"Absent distributive justice, we cannot speak of supply and demand. [Economics] isolated from the external truths of the higher sciences ... is insufficient and disconnected from truth. ... Indeed, this 'free' market called capitalism is a system of privatized profits and socialized losses. Deregulatory and 'free' market policies have led us to higher debt, more centralized economic power, and larger government. ...

"The author suggests certain steps are needed to achieve a free market. Corporate tax subsidies must be eradicated so that the collectivizing of production and the strong political power of corporations can be eliminated."

-- "Toward a Truly Free Market: A Review" - distributistreview.com

A warning to all you "info junkies" out there…

And to the three of you who still read my blog here.

"[According to Ellul,] modern propaganda cannot work without 'education'; he thus reverses the widespread notion that education is the best prophylactic against propaganda. On the contrary, he says, education … in the modern world … is the absolute prerequisite for propaganda. In fact, education is largely identical with what Ellul calls 'pre-propaganda'––the conditioning of minds with vast amounts of incoherent information, already dispensed for ulterior purposes and posing as 'facts'…. Ellul follows through with by designating intellectuals as virtually the most vulnerable of all to modern propaganda, for three reasons: (1) they absorb the largest amount of secondhand, unverifiable information; (2) they feel a compelling need to have an opinion on every important question of our time, and thus easily succumb to opinions offered to them by propaganda on all such indigestible pieces of information; (3) they consider themselves capable of 'judging for themselves.' They literally need propaganda."

–– Konrad Kellen, Introduction (Feb. 1965) to Propaganda by Jacques Ellul, p. vi.

Man in his entirety...

From Teacher to Farmer: Why I Went Back to the Land
Posted By Kevin Ford On November 11, 2011 8:54 AM

A little more than a year ago, I quit my job as a theology teacher at a Catholic high school to become a full-time organic farmer. I like to call myself a “Catholic farmer”, because I am striving to live out the Church’s teachings on marriage and the family, as well as Catholic social teaching, in my work and in the daily life of my family. I had been contemplating a return to the land for several years, and I finally opened myself to the grace needed to take such a leap of faith. I feel as though my story is a microcosm of the Catholic Land Movement as a whole. I doubt if any will follow exactly the same path, but hopefully some will end up on the land, working to restore Catholic culture, just as I did. After much prayer and discernment, I have narrowed my reasons for returning to the land to the following: restoring Catholic family life, bringing wholeness to our lives, regaining simplicity, and building Catholic community.

In our world today, nothing comes under attack more often than marriage and the family. In this modern assault, I felt it necessary to flee to the fields in order to provide an environment that is natural for family life, one where my children could flourish. City life with its “damnable conveniences” as Fr. McNabb, O.P., called them, is often a source of great temptation. The pagan temples and idols of today are not so clearly perceived, because they are often disguised in masks of pleasure, convenience, and materialism. To me, a return to the land marks a radical departure from the frivolity of modern city life as I seek to live a life that is meaningfully fruitful. Pope Benedict XVI has stated: “The rural family must regain its place at the heart of the social order.”(1) The rural family has traditionally been the backbone of healthy cultures. Never in history has the mass of humanity been concentrated in the cities as they are today. Pope Pius XII speaks very wisely of the benefits of rural life for families in his address to Italian farm laborers:

Your lives are rooted in the family...; consequently, they conform very closely to nature. In this fact lies your economic strength and your ability to withstand adversity in critical times ... [and] the importance of your contribution to the correct development of the private and public order of society. You are called upon for this reason to perform an indispensable function as source and defense of a stainless moral and religious life. For the land is a kind of nursery which supplies men, sound in soul and body, for all occupations, for the Church, and for the State.(2) 

... I sought a place for my family to live out its life in totality without the distractions that city life often brings..., way out in the country whose nights are lit by heavenly lights alone.

... As I taught theology to high school students, I would often find myself thinking about my own children and the difficulty I would have passing on the faith to them, simply because of how much time I must spend at school. I did not doubt the dignity of the teaching profession. However, I doubted the wisdom of our modern age that insists on men working separate from their families, and always seeking after a wage. ... I began to realize that the breakdown of the family could be traced to the implementation of the wage system. ... [T]he family didn’t start to fall apart when mothers left the home for the work place. Rather, the family’s disintegration began when fathers left the home and the land for the convenience of a city wage. 

... The etymology of the word husband was absolutely fascinating. Hus-Band literally means house-bound. When a man was married he became house bound. There in the home with his wife he would bring forth a family. There in the home he would work and provide for the family; everything was centered around the home. The home was not a place to return to after work, but rather it was the place of work, it was the center of life, and it was the stability that fostered healthy families. I realized that what I wanted was a life that was whole, one that had integrity. I wanted to live, work, and pray with my family all the time, not just in the evenings or when I was off work. I wanted to be a husband in the true sense of the word, and I wanted to be a father who was always there. Working towards a self-sufficient life on the land offers me the opportunity to truly be a father to my children. I can’t express in words how beautiful this has been.

The third reason I returned to the land was to regain simplicity. Reading Eric Brende’s book, Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology, profoundly impacted my views on modern technologically-saturated life. ... It is not that all machines are bad, but the scale to which technology has infiltrated our lives led me to take my family down a different path. Now we analyze our technology piece by piece and look carefully at its effects on family life. If it is truly more harmful to family life than helpful, then we simply don’t need it. Too often a machine has taken the place of meaningful human and family interaction. 

Dishwashers haven’t decreased the dish loads, but rather increased the sinks full of dishes and decreased important interaction between people, especially children, as they learn to work together. ... We find that with less technology, we suddenly have time for activities we previously couldn’t squeeze in. Without the time in front of the television, we find time to read together, sing and dance with the piano, or simply sit out back in the evenings and watch the chickens scratch about (chickens can be a source of great hilarity, believe it or not). This simplicity gets rid of excess distractions and leaves us with more time for one another.

The final reason I returned to the land was in hope of rebuilding Catholic rural community. ... Today Catholic communal life is gravely lacking. ... [My wife and I] sought a Catholic village. Starting something like this from scratch was simply out of the question. ... We are still seeking ways to build Catholic community wherever God leads us. It is a dream of ours that one day we will have many neighbors farming and doing their various crafts next door, but until then we will have to wait for the right door to open.

Our faith is sacramental, and therefore it is not meant to be only a spiritual reality. Catholicism with its sacraments corresponds to man in his entirety. We who are embodied souls need a faith that is both physical and spiritual. Thus we seek in some way to incarnate our Catholic life on the land and to share that life with others. ... 

Going back to the land has radically changed my life and my goals. It has transformed my way of thinking, and it daily encourages me to be a better man. By throwing myself into the hands of providence, I am forced to give my fiat or give up. ... Yet, I have never done anything so rewarding and at the same time so difficult. I hope many others will follow in my footsteps, and that one day we may have a countryside filled with Catholic smallholdings once again. Vivat Christus Rex!

Notes


(1) Message of his Holiness BENEDICT XVI to the Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) for the Celebration of World Food Day, from the Vatican, 16 October, 2006


(2) Speech delivered by His Holiness to the delegates at the Convention of the National Confederation of Farm Owner-Operators in Rome on November 15, 1946, #4.

This is where my head is...

Up with economy, down with chrematistics!

Below is the TED Talk for Open Source Ecology. Have a gander. It has me drooling.

The book that got my wheels spinning in this direction is Eric Brende's Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology. My recent posting of Matthew Crawford's essay on "the case for working with your hands" is also part of this impulse. Wendell Barry's new book What Matters? Economics for a Renewed Commonwealth is also good stuff.

My larger philosophical impulse is an increasing absorption with distributism, as my recent various quotations about economic matters should indicate. Distributism is often mocked for being impractical, but the Open Source Ecology shows how hollow that accusation is. I have been reading numerous posts at The Distributist Review and have a stack of books on economics and social equity ahead of me. I have long been skeptical of the ideology of overpopulation fear-mongering, and one aspect of the debate is hunger and economic equity. The problem with global population is not whether resources are adequate--they are!--but how the resources are distributed and tended by global peoples. It was not until recently, however, that I realized the direct link between my own standard-and-style of living and the problem of unjust economic distribution.

There is a lot of talk nowadays about redistribution, but I think that misses the point on two fronts. First, since America long ago ceased being a quasi-distributist polity, the redistribution many people want remains confined in the capitalistic strictures that distributism opposes. Second, distributism allows for economic prosperity and entrepreneurship--indeed, distributists believe a distributist economy is what grounds entrepreneurship in the first place!



Hence, distributism avoids the errors of socialism (i.e. negation of private property and absolute centralized regulation of property development) and avoids the errors of capitalism (i.e. the intrinsic centralization of capital apart from individual families' autonomy over their own property as a potentially total domain of "real value"). It is a central tenet of Catholic social teaching that the family is the nucleus of human society, and in so far as distributism puts families, as opposed to the state or consumers, first, puts me largely in the distributist camp.



In any event, perhaps being a husband and father-to-be has given me the focus and personal attachment to see how simply living and living simply are great sources of joy, and how I myself can live out our abiding Adamic call to stewardship of Creation.

Thinking about thinking about physics, part 2...

In my introductory post of this series, I noted how Roger G. Newton is what I call a "chaste realist" (C.R.) and that, as such, his instinctive realism is at odds with his crypto-Kantian idealism. As I noted in the introductory post, Newton's thinking about physics is largely deflationary, in the sense that, at the end of the day, even the strangest scientific discoveries and theories can and should be reconciled as closely as possible with common sense (i.e. realism about the world and our knowledge of it). The following are informal characterizations, but I think they will make my basic point.

A C.R. is someone that, so to speak, wants realism to be true, but who is also aware of how far from reality scientific theories can be and are. Secretly, a C.R. knows science is on the right path and that normal science tells us important, lasting things about the real, mind-independent world. A C.R. cannot bring himself to subscribe to scientism, since he admits the ontological limitations of scientific claims are tied up with their origin in human cognition. C.R.s recognize that idealization, pragmatic selectivity, aesthetic bias, and so on, effect scientific paradigms, but they insist the general thrust of scientific inquiry tracks reality better than most, if not all other, methods of reasoning. On the other hand, a C.R. rejects constructivism and most of the non-progressive, anti-realist theory of science (as espoused by Duhem, Carnap. Hempel, Quine, Kuhn, Feyerabend, Van Fraassen, Giere, et al.). Scientific standards and conceptions may be relative to human "users" of science, but that does not entail the former are relativistic and fictional. In effect, C.R.s say to the regnant anti-realist regime in the philosophy of science, "If we promise not to claim too much for science as a 'truth engine', can we be allowed to accept scientific findings as 'true enough'?"

So, I'm calling Newton a chaste realist. I'll begin by noting his realism. First of all, Newton has i) ambitious aims for scientific explanation (Se). Se must not be mere description. For instance, Newton argues, even if we discovered that physical constants changed, as Paul Dirac and others have suggested based on the expansion of the universe, "we would still have to search for an underlying time-independent law that would account for the specific way in which these constants vary with time. Physics never regards history itself as a sufficient explanation of any fundamental change" (Thinking About Physics [TP], p. 10).

Likewise, ii) Se is about more than the pragmatic success of science. "What justifies our confidence in the basis soundness of the entire [scientific] structure," Newton writes, "is its coherence, an intellectual coherence that includes consistency with all the experiences and expectations founded on it, the fulfillment of precise, far-reaching predictions implied by it, and the functioning of all the technology built on its basis" (p. 19, my italics). Newton's claim contains a number of overly realist quantificational implications, which ultimately are at odds with the chastity of his realism, about which more later.

In any case, Newton continues with a point which strikes, wittingly or unwittingly, against a main pillar of the crude scientism prevalent in much of Western society, namely, the 'argument' that "Science Works, Bitch!" As Newton says, however, "[t]o point out that science works, in the sense that we readily watch television..., is, of course, the most banal of the answers we can give to those who question the truth of science... [though] it is an important component of the coherence of physics" (p. 19). These claims indicate how, for Newton, scientific truth is not merely a matter of technical success or "better living through science," but rather derives from the ambition of making sense of the world by way of science itself. Coherence, as Newton describes it in "the broad sense above... is the basis for claiming truth as the goal of physics-- not as an attainment, but as an aim" (p. 20). Lawrence Sklar, in Theory and Truth, makes almost exactly the same claim, so I hope to discuss both authors in tandem at some point.

Lest the above seem too theoretical, I should note that "the philosophy of science" is not Newton's focus. Rather, his focus is largely on how to reconcile the oddity of quantum theory (QT) with the mainstream of historical scientific claims. For instance, he denies that QT undermines good ole fashioned Newtonian determinism in the popular "spooky" way many people think, since "[q]uantum mechanics is as deterministic as classical mechanics" and that the truly weird things about QT--namely, entanglement--"originates in the wave-particle duality" (pp. 22-23). Indeed, "while part of what is meant by entanglement would obtain for any probabilistic theory... other parts [of QT] go further and are caused by phase correlations" (p. 23). Such entanglement, free of the wave-particle duality, does not strike us as odd for wave dynamics proper, so, as I mentioned in the introductory post, it is Newton's implicit aim to demystify the weirdness of QT by situating it in the larger context of physical statistics as such. A crucial premise in Newton's deflationary QT, is that "reality at the everyday level has to be distinguished from reality at the submicroscopic level" (p. 26).

This is a striking claim, and one with profound philosophical implications. Since, as always, my time is running short before I must head to class, I will close this post without getting any deeper into Newton's own claims in TP. In the next post I will connect Newton's premise about the macro-/microscopic cleft in reality (or the MMC) with its larger philosophical implications from an Aristotelian perspective (mainly by citing Wolfgang Smith's The Quantum Enigma and David Oderberg's Real Essentialism).

Stay tuned.

Thinking about thinking about physics…

The following are some observations derived from some of my recent reading materials, mainly Roger G. Newton's Thinking about Physics (TP), as well as Nick Huggett's Everywhere and Everywhen (EE).

The first thing to note is that Huggett's and Newton's approaches to "the philosophy of physics" are very similar, while their methods of exposition are very different. Both authors show a strong bias in favor of letting "normal science" reign over philosophizing about "science per se". For both authors, physical results can be dispositive of metaphysical questions. Newton plainly states in his preface that he will stick as close to physical data and methods as possible, but does defend metaphysics as the arena for honest disputes between intelligent people about those data and methods. At the end of nearly every chapter in EE, Huggett shows how physical discoveries can shed light (even decisive light) on classic philosophical queries.

Huggett's book is much broader than Newton's, and much more accessible to "the intelligent lay reader." Indeed, three or four times while reading EE, I realized Huggett had explained matters so well that it felt like the first time I had really grasped the issue, despite countless previous exposures on my part. Newton is also a very lucid writer, but, as he points out in the first sentence, TP is addressed to "readers with a good undergraduate education in physics", so, if, like me, you lack such an education, TP will be rough sledding. One deficit of EE, is its relative (!) lack of discussion of quantum mechanics, whereas TP discusses quantum theory in great detail. A good book to read in conjunction with TP, is Wolfgang Smith's The Quantum Enigma. Another good companion book is Lawrence Sklar's Theory and Truth, not the least because both authors qua "chaste realists" evince the same weaknesses in what I would call Kantian or critical realism.

It is in this vein that we can begin to discuss what I think is a substantive philosophical disparity between EE and TP. As a professional and highly awarded physicist, Newton is much more inclined to "let the physics do the thinking," as it were. In this way, he is very much a realist about scientific truth, since he writes as if we can read reality from the very face of science. His form of realism is, however, burdened by serious complications, which I shall discuss presently. Huggett, by contrast, is a professional philosopher with training in physics, and so he is much better at situating various physical questions in their broader philosophical context. Even so, Huggett strikes me as even more of a realist than Newton, and this, precisely in inverse proportion to their respective rejection of, or kinship with, Kantian idealism. Huggett locks horns with Kant on a few occasions to refute him in EE. As far as I can tell, Newton only refers to Kant once in TP, and dismissively, but certain statements he makes show how he is unwittingly a disciple of Kant, a connection which I shall also have to discuss later.

In any case, to focus on TP, Newton writes in his preface that he wants "to demystify quantum mechanics as much as possible." This is a key admission, since TP is very much a philosophically deflationary book. Time and again in TP, to philosophers of quantum reality, and physicists who would like to imagine they are philosophers of their trade, Newton effectively say, "Simmer down." Quantum theory (QT) tends to make people say and propose wacky theories, a tendency which Newton does not entirely gainsay, nor repudiate, but one that he insists can and should be toned down with a more reasonable interpretation of basic physics. His key tactic for demystifying QT, in express disagreement with Feynman and Heisenberg, is to shift focus from the particle as the most fundamental reality to the field as being most fundamental. It is only because people instinctively treat QT as a particle-based theory that QT seems to bizarre. An extension of this tactic is to undermine the crazy-making focus on indeterminacy in (Copenhagen-interpretation) QT, and treat quantum indeterminacy as just one mode of the larger, rather pedestrian issue of probabilistic physics altogether. Hearing that QT is indeterministic, Newton basically shrugs, and points out that so is, for example, classical thermodynamics. Get over it. Simmer down.

Now I want to begin discussing what I think are crucial defects in Newton's philosophical handling of his own beloved subject. I will have to bracket a discussion of Huggett for now, not only because this post is getting largish, but also because his book requires more codgitating (and a re-reading) on my part. In fact, since I need to go to class soon, I will leave this post as an introduction to the more detailed critiques to come.

What you read is what you get…

…and other amusing anecdotes of late.

Earlier this week I was playing a grammar game in class, which involves three staircases represented on the board, which each team can ascend (to glory) or descend (to doom), and, further, which teams can push their opponents down. Three staircases is the best format, since two teams invariably gang up on the third team. Well, almost invariably. This week, I was simultaneously appalled and amused to see my seventh-grade students discovered game theory on their own! At some point, team A insisted on pushing team C up one step. I said they couldn't do that, but they were adamant. I was bemused, since vicious competition makes students focus better and try harder, but I let A bump C up. Two questions later, team C insisted on bumping team A up! Fortunately, the class was over soon, so their spirits weren't utterly sedated by their socialism. I caught one student, the original philanthropist, explaining to her teammates that she could tell team C was getting angry, so she wanted to make them feel better, not the least so that C wouldn't lash back at A. Fascinating.

This morning while driving to work, a man ahead of me was wearing a purple T-shirt with the word "STAGE" printed on the back in capital letters. The A, however, was printed without the middle horizontal bar, so all I saw was one form of the logical symbol for "empty set." That's what I get for reading oodles of philosophical logic!

On the same ride, Quine's famous phrase in "On What There Is"––namely, that modal realism "offends the aesthetic sense of us who have a taste for desert landscapes"––came to mind, as I had been reading it at breakfast, and with it came the memory of my work-study manager, Bill, from my first year at university. During a break all of us were chatting and he was asked about God. He explained that he is an atheist "for aesthetic reasons," a claim I took at the time to refer to the problem of evil, but which now seems to be of a piece with Quinean nominalism. God is the ultimate in realism, modal or otherwise, so for someone offended by modal realism, such as Quine and perhaps Bill, the reality of God may be so unseemly as to be unbelievable. Fortunately, however, the Jews found God first in the desert.

Later this morning as I got up to go to class, my plastic folder-box wouldn't close properly. I pushed the lid down again but then noticed the leg of a small cardboard rocking horse was stuck in between the edges. I have seen the rocking horse every day for weeks now, but it was only this morning that I had reason to lift it up, whereupon I noticed two foiled wings were under it. They had been removed, for originally the horse was a rocking Pegasus. This was another strange coincidence, since in the same essay, "On What There Is", Quine discusses the disputed existence of Pegasus and the property of anything like it as "pegasizing."

More about books. A couple weeks ago I left a small bag at a friend's house. There were two library books inside the bag, so when I finally got around to picking the bag up at his place earlier this week, his roommate handed me the bag and explained that he "figured the books might be overdue, so [he] returned them for [me]." I was civil about it, mainly because I was in a rush, but also because I couldn't quite believe my ears. He opened my bag, inspected its contents, removed the unfinished books, and returned them for me without any notice. I felt like I was in an episode of Seinfeld. Alas, my friend tells me the roommate's logic doesn't operate on the same plane as ours. Time to go to the library, I guess.

Nothing about books this time. Last night my wife and I were eating noodles. I think she saw I was about to eat the last clump of them off my plate, for as I lowered my head, verily, to eat the last clump of noodles, the extra clump of noodles she had on her fork craned over into my hair as she tried to lower it onto my plate. I just gaped and stared. She just bawled and patted me on the back. It was a hoot.

Punishment! It's faw de boids!

Well! To read the review is to see why Honderich wants t' do away wiv pun'shment alltogever now.

Philosopher A Kind Of Life

+ + +

Quintessential secular morality. If the world is closed, Miller is right. But Miller is just barely wrong.

Dennis Miller on Bin Laden Death on O'Reilly Show.

Integrity is not a given, but gives freedom...

"Does one's integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do? I think that it usually does, for free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply. It is a mystery and one which a novel, even a comic novel, can only be asked to deepen."

-- Flannery O'Connor, author's note to *Wise Blood* 2nd ed.

Integrity is the making-whole of many. Freedom is the "quantum collapse" of many possibilities--sheer potency--into a unified new whole. That humans are determined at every moment in their physiology and sensation is a given. That the power of free will does not derive from physiology and sensation is the thesis of libertarianism. For it is not without the integrating power of will--as an ordered appetition--that there is a human subject to be determined.

Notes…

Have been busy. Got married. Have peace. Not as much money as I'd like, but peace. Have been reading and writing more than my moribund pace of the past year or two. I've read so many books recently, in fact, that I haven't even kept proper notes of them in my reading log. Here are some I recall.

Boston Teran, God Is a Bullet
T. Jefferson Parker, The Blue Hour

Stephen King, Under the Dome

King, Duma Key

King, The Dead Zone

Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

Dan Simmons, The Terror

Stephen King & Peter Straub, The Talisman

Don DeLillo, Point Omega

Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood

I've left some out, and I'm not even going to try recalling which movies I've seen (aside from Captain America--twice, no less!). It has felt great to read such large books again, and especially with such intensity: it reminded me of my younger summers. I believe in Story. I believe in the Borgesian craft. I will be getting back into more "academic" reading, and work will be keeping me quite busy, but I still have an exciting roster of novels to read from the library.

Still hitting the weights, still hitting the books…

You can peruse my BBEDU training log for my struggles against entropy and various other tidbits in my life. I hope to get a few more chapters of SCG up tonight and more again tomorrow. Alas, though, I have not been diligent about my Latin studies. I have let to many days pass without doing exercises. There are just so many books to distract me, though! To wit, I've been reading, with pleasure, A. C. Grayling's An Introduction to Philosophical Logic (1st ed.) and began Harwood Fisher's Self, Logic, and Figurative Thinking last night as I couldn't fall asleep. I find Fisher's style distracting. He's already used an unseemly number of exclamation in just the first two or three chapters and he keeps announcing his intentions, whereas I would rather he just into the meat of his theory. I might be disappointed since it is more about the logic of social theory and cognition than about "pure" logic. Call me a logic junkie, I guess. To wit, I also began Kneale and Kneale's The Development of Logic, and can't wait to plow through it, but I will wait until other minor readings are cleared away before I set in.

One other reason I'm not on the Internet much these days…

Aristotle, Topics VIII, 14 infra:

"Do not argue with every one, nor practise upon the man in the street: for there are some people with whom any argument is bound to degenerate. For against any one who is ready to try all means in order to seem not to be beaten, it is indeed fair to try all means of bringing about one's conclusion: but it is not good form. Wherefore the best rule is, not lightly to engage with casual acquaintances, or bad argument is sure to result. For you see how in practising together people cannot refrain from contentious argument."

In a related vein, I was reading the Gorgias last night and laughed out loud. The Gorgias begins with an inquiry by Socrates into the nature of the art practiced by Gorgias, a well known and then aged rhetorician. "[N]obody asked what was the quality, but what was the nature, of the art," Socrates explains, "and … I would still beg you [Polus] briefly and clearly … to say what this art is, and what we ought to call Gorgias: Or rather, Gorgias, let me turn to you, and ask the same question what are we to call you, and what is the art which you profess?" Whereupon Gorgias replies (my emphasis):

Gor. Rhetoric, Socrates, is my art.

Soc. Then I am to call you a rhetorician?

Gor. Yes, Socrates, and a good one too, if you would call me that which, in Homeric language, "I boast myself to be."

Soc. I should wish to do so.

Gor. Then pray do.

Soc. And are we to say that you are able to make other men rhetoricians?

Gor. Yes, that is exactly what I profess to make them, not only at Athens, but in all places.

Soc. And will you continue to ask and answer questions, Gorgias, as we are at present doing and reserve for another occasion the longer mode of speech which Polus was attempting? Will you keep your promise, and answer shortly the questions which are asked of you?

Gor. Some answers, Socrates, are of necessity longer; but I will do my best to make them as short as possible; for a part of my profession is that I can be as short as any one.

Soc. That is what is wanted, Gorgias; exhibit the shorter method now, and the longer one at some other time.

Gor. Well, I will; and you will certainly say, that you never heard a man use fewer words.

Soc. Very good then; as you profess to be a rhetorician, and a maker of rhetoricians, let me ask you, with what is rhetoric concerned: I might ask with what is weaving concerned, and you would reply (would you not?), with the making of garments?

Gor. Yes.

Soc. And music is concerned with the composition of melodies?

Gor. It is.

Soc. By Hera, Gorgias, I admire the surpassing brevity of your answers.

Gor. Yes, Socrates, I do think myself good at that.

Whereupon I had a philosopher's guffaw.

I also just noticed how (in more than one way) the paragraph preceding the one I cited in Topics relates to the Gorgias. "You should display your training in inductive reasoning against a young man," Aristotle argues, "in deductive against an expert." Continuing, he says (my emphasis):

You should try, moreover, to secure from those skilled in deduction their premisses, from inductive reasoners their parallel cases; for this is the thing in which they are respectively trained. In general, too, from your exercises in argumentation you should try to carry away either a syllogism on some subject or a refutation or a proposition or an objection, or whether some one put his question properly or improperly (whether it was yourself or some one else) and the point which made it the one or the other. … For it is the skilled propounder and objector who is, speaking generally, a dialectician. To formulate a proposition is to form a number of things into one––for the conclusion to which the argument leads must be taken generally, as a single thing––whereas to formulate an objection is to make one thing into many; for the objector either distinguishes or demolishes, partly granting, partly denying the statements proposed.

We also saw how Socrates insisted on phrasing the question correctly. A friend of mine, one of my philosophical mentors in fact, once said something, in passing, during a discussion with someone on Facebook, which perfectly captured this point. "I see now that we were arguing about different questions, and, for a philosopher, arguing about the wrong question is worse than arguing for the wrong conclusion." That virtually cinched my desire to be a philosopher. It is a habit of mine, in academic and personal discussions, to disentangle what and how many issues are actually being discussed. I see that is a spiritual but also a vocational gift.

Even more tangential, though of interest to my unsleeping hordes of fans, is how much I have been enjoying Michael Sandel's "Justice" lectures, available here. Always interesting to see liberally conditioned younguns crash against their own moral intuitions and the logic of indifferentism. Worth the time to view the series.