New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science

First day of class....

At one of my favorite philosophy blogs, Philosopherscocoon (a blog devoted to early career types), there is a discussion on how to make the first day work. Why not join in there?

Here's what I do:

1. I always teach a full class.
2. I make enough copies for all students of a text related to the theme of the course (or the second session).
3. I then ask a random student to read it out aloud. Before I let him/her start reading, I always make a point to ask for the student's name, and some other identifying stuff (year, major, birth-place, and a few unrelated factoids--favorite sports-team, pizza-joint in town, etc) that may allow for some small-talk. I explain that I do so because that way I will have a better shot at remembering their names [I try to remember names no matter how large my course--I always print out enrollment-sheet with pictures]).
4. If the student has a clear reading voice, I praise it; if -- as is more likely -- the student reads too quickly or in a way that confuses the rest of us, I interrupt and explain what's going wrong. (I sometimes ask the student if s/he has idea what the text that has just been read means.)
5. I then  start probing the read text with the class -- via a Socratic method; each time I call on a student I repeat  step 3. Along the way, I let students experience how much of their readings and interpretations are really a product of their culturally laden assumptions or their relying on background knowledge or their lack of experience in probing the logical and conceptual structure of texts, etc. (I want them to experience how hard it is to read a text closely.) Ideally, students start a conversation with each other and to stop expecting 'the answers' from me, and I just keep discussion going as long as it is focused on the text.
6. This (2-5) works really well with the Introduction to Hobbes' Leviathan, Locke's Preface to the Essay, Spinoza's introduction to the TTP, Hume's Introduction to the Treatise, Nietzsche's intro to Genealogy of Morals, etc.
7. I go over the syllabus either just after break or at the end of the class.

On bloggers, and other bad people

"James tells us that an asshole is a person who allows himself to enjoy special advantage ‘systematically’ due to an 'entrenched' sense of entitlement ('entrenched' means the person will never change), and who is oblivious to complaints about his behavior because of that overwrought sense of entitlement."

-- Isaac "Marty" Morris reviewing Assholes – a Theory, by Aaron James (UC Irvine). [HT to Prophilosophy]

Brazilian music on Fridays: 'Umbabarauma'

As a recent covert to Facebook (yes, I resisted the dark forces for as long as I could), just like everybody else, one of the things I’ve been doing is checking out what my school friends back in Brazil are up to. Obviously, I’m still in touch with my close friends, but not so much with most of them, having been away for so many years. Now, as it turns out, quite a few of my school friends are involved with music in different ways – not so surprising, as I went to an ‘artsy’ school for most of my school career. So Facebook is also turning out to be a way to keep up with some of the latest news in Brazilian music (so much for rationalization...).

One of my good friends in high-school, Felipe Briso, is now a film director and video-maker, and one of the owners of video production company BigBonsai. In particular, they are the makers of a number of video clips by rising stars in Brazilian music (e.g. Marcelo Janeci). On the occasion of the 2010 World Cup in Africa, they came up with an interesting idea (sponsored by Nike): a new rendition of Jorge Ben’s classic ‘Ponta de lança africano (Umbabarauma)’, which tells the story of an African football player. (Accordingly, it comes from the 1976 album Africa Brazil.) For the new version, a stellar group of musicians/singers gathered around the master Jorge Ben, in particular the rapper Mano Brown. Mano Brown is probably the most emblematic of all Brazilian rappers, and leader of the most emblematic of all Brazilian rap bands, Racionais MC (I’m hoping to write a post on them next week, time permitting). The combo Jorge Ben-Mano Brown is (perhaps surprisingly) rather excellent, as you can see for yourself below.

Circumcision, aka male genital mutilation

Via Christian Munthe on Twitter, I came across a thought-provoking blog post by Brian D. Earp on the latest AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) report on circumcision. The post is very critical of the report's failure to outright condemn the practice of circumcision, which is what a neutral, evidence-based analysis should conclude.

I realize that circumcision is a highly sensitive topic, in particular after the recent circumcision ban in Germany. It may well be that I am not sufficiently sensitive to the relevant political and cultural implications, but I don’t quite see in which ways male genital mutilation would be so fundamentally different from the (thank God!) widely condemned practice of female genital mutilation, still common in some parts of Africa, [UPDATE] from a physiological point of view. (This is not to deny the fundamental cultural, political differences between the male and female cases.) [END UPDATE] (But there is good news: female genital mutilation seems to be decreasing significantly!)

I invite readers to comment on the Practical Ethics blog post here; it seems to be a debate worth having.

UPDATE: Here is a very informative lecture on the extensive physiological effects of male circumcision (short version, long version) -- thanks to 'Parent' below for the h/t.

FINAL UPDATE: Here is a follow-up post on the topic, where I elaborate further on the similarities between male and female cases in light of the fruitful discussion ensued from this post.

Physics and Philosophy share GRE bragging rights

Even the physicists admit it here. [HT: John Corvino on facebook]

A Celebration of the life of Ruth Barcan Marcus; September 29, 2012, at Yale.

More details here.

Weekly Philo of Economics: Adam Smith, David Hume, and the Hebrew Bible on Shepherding

Early in Genesis we encounter the story of Cain (a farmer), who kills his brother, Abel (a shepherd), because he is jealous over God's (mysterious) unwillingness to accept his sacrifice (while accepting Abel's). In his The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture (CUP, 2012), Yoram Hazony, reminds us that we are  in addition to being a farmer, Cain also founds a city; cities are viewed negatively because of their tendency toward despotic-imperialism in the Hebrew Bible. [Full disclosure Hazony and I have co-authored a piece on Hume and Newton.] In Hazony's hands the Biblical (archetype) life of a shepherd (think also of Abraham, Moses, Jacob, David) stands for an anarchic "life of dissent and initiative" (108) away from the polity. While the life of the farmer (think of Noah, Isaac, and Joseph) stands for "pious submission, obeying in gratitude the custom that has been handed down, which alone provides bread so that man may live" (108). According to Hazony, The History of Israel (basically Genesis through Kings), favors the shepherding life, but as the story unfolds comes to recognize that anarchy is not self-sustaining. Hazony reads the Hebrew Bible as a search for a politics grounded in ethics--one that makes the state "limited in its aspirations" (153-4). (Some other time I'll say more about Hazony's handling of these issues.) 

Implicit in this reconstruction of the Hebrew Bible is a kind of genealogy of civilization: first, in the Garden of Eden we are gatherers (maybe hunters, too); then, second, humanity splits in between mutually antagonistic shepherds and farmers, from which city-governments with an impulse toward territorial (and other) ambitions spring. As Hazoney notes  (308 n. 26), Jean-Jacques Rousseau certainly read the Bible this way (see his posthumous Essay on the Origins of the Languages, written about the time of the second Discourse) and sides with the anarchic impulse of the "author of Genesis."

Now consider this prominent passage from Adam Smith:

This division of labour, from which so many advantages are derived, is not originally the effect of any human wisdom, which foresees and intends that general opulence to which it gives occasion. It is the necessary, though very slow and gradual consequence of a certain propensity in human nature which has in view no such extensive utility; the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another. Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations, 1.2.1)

Reagan Youth - Jesus was a communist

Man this song rocks!

Nice video too. The beginning bit is actually ironically take from a bit of propaganda against liberation theology. But it still works.

In any case, it's one of those great one-minute songs from the highpoint of 1980's punk rock.

Lyrics:

Jesus was a communist
Jesus was a pacifist
Jesus was a communist
Jesus didn't like the rich

Jesus was a communist
Jesus was a pacifist
Jesus was a communist
Jesus saw through your head

Maybe not as good as Woody Guthrie's "Jesus Christ," but maybe that's apples and oranges, or perhaps even mustard seeds. Whose to say?

The Problem with Identity

Coming to a pause in his arguments in Appearance and Reality, Bradley wonders if the reader may question “whether anything of what is understood by a thing is left to us,” given that at this point Bradley believes that what is generally thought of as a thing has been “undermined and ruined.” In particular, Bradley argues that “for a thing to exist it must possess identity; and identity seems a possession with a character at best doubtful.” (AR, p. 72).

Identity is a problem for Bradley with important, although perhaps unsettling consequences. Moreover, the problem of identity has, as Della Rocca (himself a careful reader of Bradley) shows in a recent article (here), important implications for the 3d’ist/4d’ist debate. I would also add that this was already a problem for Hume (as I’ve discussed here and here) and it is a problem that is critical to understanding Gilles Deleuze’s project.

Judith Butler responds to hostile Jerusalem Post article on her having been awarded the Adorno Prize

The press release, dated June 8, announcing the Prize is here (in German). The hostile Jerusalem Post article, dated Aug 26, is here. Butler's reply, dated Aug 27, is here. Excerpts:

The accusations against me are that I support Hamas and Hezbollah (which is not true) that I support BDS (partially true), and that I am anti-Semitic (patently false). Perhaps I should not be as surprised as I am that those who oppose my receiving the Adorno Prize would seek recourse to such scurrilous and unfounded charges to make their point. I am a scholar who gained an introduction to philosophy through Jewish thought, and I understand myself as defending and continuing a Jewish ethical tradition that includes figures such as Martin Buber and Hannah Arendt....

I studied philosophy at Yale University and continued to consider the questions of Jewish ethics throughout my education. I remain grateful for those ethical resources, for the formation that I had, and that animates me still. It is untrue, absurd, and painful for anyone to argue that those who formulate a criticism of the State of Israel is anti-Semitic or, if Jewish, self-hating. Such charges seek to demonize the person who is articulating a critical point of view and so disqualify the viewpoint in advance. It is a silencing tactic: this person is unspeakable, and whatever they speak is to be dismissed in advance or twisted in such a way that it negates the validity of the act of speech. The charge refuses to consider the view, debate its validity, consider its forms of evidence, and derive a sound conclusion on the basis of listening to reason. The charge is not only an attack on persons who hold views that some find objectionable, but it is an attack on reasonable exchange, on the very possibility of listening and speaking in a context where one might actually consider what another has to say....

I do support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement in a very specific way. I reject some versions and accept others. For me, BDS means that I oppose investments in companies that make military equipment whose sole purpose is to demolish homes. It means as well that I do not speak at Israeli institutions unless they take a strong stand against the occupation. I do not accept any version of BDS that discriminates against individuals on the basis of their national citizenship, and I maintain strong collaborative relationships with many Israeli scholars.

Read the whole thing.

Life imitates fiction, vol 5465

I recall* a Dr Who episode in which the cost of burying one's relatives triggers a debt cycle leading to slavery. A parable of the Thatcherite takeover of the UK, it points to the Autonomia spin on the notion of "real subsumption," that is, the commodification of every social relation, even mourning. Which brings us to Monday's Baton Rouge Advocate story, "East Baton Rouge Parish Coroner's Office to charge families for cremated remains."

Families that turn over the bodies of loved ones to the East Baton Rouge Parish coroner for a pauper’s cremation will have to pay if they want the ashes returned. Coroner Dr. Beau Clark said his office will begin enforcing state laws that kick in when family members agree to a pauper’s burial, which means they sign over the rights of the body to the state because they cannot afford or refuse to pay funeral costs, Clark said....

Clark said he decided to begin enforcing the law after funeral homes approached him with a concern that people were choosing what they thought was a free cremation over paying a funeral home when families could afford funeral or cremation costs.

Three steps remain, but they won't be long in coming: 1) billing the families whether they claim the ashes or not, 2) arresting those who can't pay, and 3) placing them in Louisiana's thriving private prison industry.

* Although I remember the episode, I have not been able to identify it, so please help in comments. Cites of other fictional treatments, or real historical parallels, are welcome too.

The Living Death of Solitary Confinement

I published this article on solitary confinement in The Stone blog at the New York Times.  An earlier version of the article was rejected by the Times so, like a good recycler, I posted it here.  The two versions are completely different; the first is about slavery, racism, and the politics of social death, and the second is about the lived experience of solitary confinement as a form of living death.  One passed, the other didn't.  I would like them to be read together.

Schwitzgebel's study of CP names in top mainstream journals

Eric Schwitzgebel has a very interesting quantitative study on citations of CP figures in three top mainstream journals (Philosophical Review, Mind, and Journal of Philosophy) from 1900 to the present. Confirming the impression most people have (and that we informally surveyed here), the study shows that CP citations have declined relative to the whole as time goes on.

The trends started rapidly pulling apart in the 1950s through 1970s and have continued to slowly pull farther apart since then.

His conclusion for recent years:

In the 1990s and the portion of the 2000s that has so far been indexed in JStor, the words Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Foucault, and Derrida appeared in 45 articles total among 1209 Big Three journal articles (3.7%). Thus, the Big Three journals have included, on average, about one article per journal per year that even passingly mentions any of these five authors.

Some thoughts below the fold:

How to begin reading Deleuze

I would start with Deleuze's book, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, because it expresses Deleuze's ethos, his affirmation, his love. You should know what a philosopher loves (Plato would tell you that), and this little book is a love letter from one philosopher to another. Reading it will I hope inspire you to want to read Deleuze, to see how he lives up to "the secret link between Lucretius, Hume, Spinoza, and Nietzsche: their critique of negativity, their cultivation of joy, the hatred of interiority, the externality of forces and relations, the denunciation of power" (Negotiations, 6). 

This frugal, propertyless life, undermined by illness, this thin, frail body, this brown, oval face with its sparkling black eyes­: how does one explain the impression they give of being suffused with Life itself, of having a power identical to Life? In his whole way of living and of thinking, Spinoza projects an image of the positive, affirmative life, which stands in opposition to the sem­blances that men are content with. Not only are they content with the latter, they feel a hatred of life, they are ashamed of it; a humanity bent on self-destruction, multiplying the cults of death, bringing about the union of the tyrant and the slave, the priest, the judge, and the soldier, always busy running life into the ground, mutilating it, killing it outright or by degrees, over­laying it or suffocating it with laws, properties, duties, em­pires -- this is what Spinoza diagnoses in the world, this betrayal of the universe and of mankind. (Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, 12)

After Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, here's what I recommend you read next: 

And while we're at it: all-male colloquium schedules

Following on the Gendered Conference Campaign, some of us at Newapps have been focusing attention on all-male conference line-ups and all-male collected volumes.  It is worth noting that the same principles apply to departmental colloquium line-ups.  I recently received an announcement of a departmental series for Fall.  It was an excellent series.  It was put together by good folks who surely had no sexist intent.  (It is becoming tedious to point out over and over that ill-intent isn't the point; but given the comments we get, probably worth belaboring.)  But it had more than 10 speakers, all of them men.  

Let's all try to do better. 

Some observations provoked by the Lance Armstrong case

These won't all necessarily hang together, but I wanted to put them out there in hopes others would have other angles to add or better references.

1. Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs) in sports is only one part of the picture; PED research in the military (or better, just PE, as drugs are only one form of military PE) is probably more advanced. The reports in Jonathan Moreno's Mind Wars (2007) are probably long outdated, but it is at least a start on the outlines of the issue.

2. PED experimentation in sports and in the military (and in the arts, for that matter) are intertwined with, and often the leading edge of, commercialization of drugs for general consumption; consider the recent consumer-targeted ads for "Low T," or more generally the "anti-aging drug" business.

3. The increased number of US men who desire to "get big" received a big boost in the 1980s with the release of "hard body" movies.

A thought on removing drugs from sports

When it comes to law enforcement responses to organized crime, we hear constantly that the goal is to get the "kingpins" rather than the "little guys".  I wonder why the opposite is the approach to drug enforcement in sports?

Brazilian music on Fridays: 'Travessia'

I had more ambitious plans for BMoF this week, but as I'm hosting a summer school on formal methods in philosophy at the moment, time is a bit short. (The ambitious post will be for next week.) So I'll post a song by Milton Nascimento without further ado -- as some readers might recall, one of my favorite Brazilian singers. But not just any song by Milton: here is 'Travessia' (1967), his first big 'hit', if we can put it this way. It's just amazing how, 45 years later, it remains such a timeless, beautiful song.

goddamnit, here we go again

The fricking thing keeps pointing more and more westward, and there's a tropical depression behind it. You have to read Lovecraft to understand how much dread pictures like this inspire in those of us who've been whacked by them. They might as well all be named Cthulu.

The moral psychology of all of this is horrible too. You so desperately don't want it to hit you. As someone who went through Katrina and Gustav (which was far worse for Baton Rouge; though neither Katrina nor Gustav were nearly as bad for Baton Rouge as Katrina was for New Orleans and the southern parishes) this desperation is a million times more intense once you have children (Thomas was one year old during Gustav and got heat rash during the week of no power and closed stores and services; I ran out of blood pressure medicine). But then if it hits someplace else you are overwhelingly relieved, but this relief is parasitic on the suffering of others. I try to be a Christian, but I can't help this response. . .

Anyhow, here's one of the only three Katrina inspired works of art that doesn't irritate me, nauseate me, or cause anxiety attacks (the other two being George Rodrigue's Blue Dog Katrina prints and the remake of Bad Lieutenant in New Orleans; I also love all of Mike West's pre-Katrina punk rock bluegrass that eerily predicted it). Art does make things slightly more bearable, and sometimes even joyous in an awful world.

 

Aristotle on Art and Nature: A Footnote to Eric on Posidonius

Eric’s fascinating post quotes Posidonius:

If, then, the things achieved by nature are more excellent than those achieved by art, and if art produces nothing without making use of intelligence, nature also ought not to be considered destitute of intelligence.

What does it mean to attribute intelligence to “Nature”? Is it to posit a purposeful, instrumentally rational, and technically omni-adept Creator? Or is it merely an analogy that ultimately rests on something other than intelligence? According to Eric, Adam Smith took him the first way:

The idea of an universal mind, of a God of all, who originally formed the whole, and who governs the whole by general laws, directed to the conservation and prosperity of the whole, without regard to that of any private individual, was a notion to which they [i.e., the pusillanimously superstitious] were utterly strangers.

So for Smith, and for his hero, Posidonius, the excellence of nature points to a God who is never arbitrary or ad hoc (as the pusillanimous suppose), but always rational, always universal in her edicts.

But Eric also quotes the divine David Hume:

It was pretty late too before these [Greek natural philosophers] be thought themselves of having recourse to a mind or supreme intelligence, as the first cause of all.

I don’t know exactly who Hume had in mind, but Aristotle would be a good example of some one who asserted the analogy, but did not avail himself of a Creator (except as an ultimate cause of movement and change).

Hume, Smith, and Posidonius: true liberty, magnanimity, design arguments, and a once-famous Stoic...

But if all the parts of the universe have been so ordered that they could not have been better adapted for use, or more beautiful as regards appearance, let us see whether they are the work of chance, or whether their arrangement is one in which they could not possibly have been combined except by the guidance of consciousness and the divine providence. If, then, the things achieved by nature are more excellent than those achieved by art, and if art produces nothing without making use of intelligence, nature also ought not to be considered destitute of intelligence. If at the sight of a statue or painted picture you know that art has been employed, and from the distant view of the course of a ship feel sure that it is made to move by art and intelligence, and if you understand on looking at a horologe, whether one marked out with lines, or working by means of water, that the hours are indicated by art and not by chance, with what possible consistency can you suppose that the universe which contains these same products of art, and their constructors, and all things, is destitute of forethought and intelligence? Why, if any one were to carry into Scythia or Britain the globe which our friend Posidonius has lately constructed, each one of the revolutions of which brings about the same movement in the sun and moon and five wandering stars as is brought about each day and night in the heavens, no one in those barbarous countries would doubt that that globe was the work of intelligence.--Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods.

There are three explicit mentions of Posidonius, the great Stoic philosopher, in Cicero's dialogue, On the Nature of the Gods. (I have used a slightly dated translation.) The first one is in Cicero's own voice, when he includes Posidonius among his "teachers.' The second is the passage above, which was celebrated in  eighteenth century renditions of the design argument. Let's call it the "Posidonian argument." It shows up, for example, in Derham's very popular and influential Physico and Astro-Theology (originally 1714, I think). But it is also familiar in the seventeenth century. (See Cumberland's use of it here.) It reminds us that Paley's famous argument has a long and known pre-history. Hume alludes to a version of the argument in the Enquiry and discusses it more at length in his Dialogues (here and here) and may have even enjoyed transforming Cicero's "Britain" into a desert island. Even so, Hume's treatment does not explicitly mention Posidonius or his portable planetarium (not unlike the now famous Antikythera mechanism [this post was inspired by Jo Marchant's entertaining book about the mechanism!]) In an age in which the motions of the heavenly bodies define time, a planetarium just is a watch.

 

William Thurston dies

Here is the obituary of the great geometer/topologist.  In grad school I studied topology a bit and got to the point where I could more or less understand some of his work.  It was one of the many cases in which I was struck by the utter beauty of mathematics.  

But on occasions like this, I find I am inevitably sad in a way that goes beyond the loss of a magnificent mind.  Virtually no one in the US will have had a clue who this person was.  Does that matter?  It isn't like it is important for everyone in society to know anything about topology, certainly not enough to understand why he was a genius.  But what is important - indeed, in my view, what is essential for the continuation of civilization beyond the next 100 years - is an educated, critical, intellectually and politically engaged populous.  And if we were to take serious steps to try to bring that about, it would involve radical changes to our education system, our entertainment system, our press, our economy, etc.  And any plausible institutionalization of a serious inclination to create an educated, critical, and engaged populous, I suspect, would generate as a side effect a rock star status for someone like William Thurston.  

So when I read the New York Times - which was surely one of the few outlets to even notice - and see more prominent coverage of the fact that Prince Harry took his clothes off than I do of this loss, I take it to be a very bad sign indeed for the future of humanity.

"I'm not religious, I'm spiritual" - changes in the meaning of "spiritual" over time

An interesting article on BBC on the rising numbers of the so-called "nones" in America, people who would in the past have ticked the Christian box, when asked for religious affiliation, and who now tick "none". Most of them are not atheists, i.e., explicit and firm in their rejection of a supernatural worldview. Those numbers are rising too, from 1% to 5%. The larger part of those 40% who do not self-identify as religiously affiliated are "religious but not spiritual". Weekly church attendance in the United States went down from about 40% in 1970 to 33% in 2010. There is a clear downward trend in church membership. Mainline protestants are hit hardest, but evangelicals do not do well either. Catholics should not be complacent - their steep decline in membership is masked by the influx of Hispanics.

It is not easy to find out why this is happening. I was reminded by a lovely lecture by the gerontologist Vern Bengston at Oxford some months ago. He examined how aging correlates with religiosity. Particularly: is the fact that we see mainly older people in church a cohort effect (i.e., younger generations are less churchy) or an age effect (i.e., when one gets older one thinks "Oh, no, I'm going to die, I'll better go to church then!).

Delayed volumes

A comment in this interesting review caught my attention: "the volume stems from a conference (held in 2001)." The volume was published in 2012. I have been involved in my fair share of delayed volumes both as frustated editor, which I  have come to understand requires all the Macchiavellian arts good leadership,  and (mea culpa) as proximate cause of delay. Let's leave aside the wisdom of conference-volumes. Eleven years between conference and volume seems long-ish even in philosophy (even for what appears to be a high quality volume). By contrast, in the sciences any work older than two years is often considered dated from the perspective of the 'research-front' (about that development some other time more). Anyway, this made me wonder if there are a lot of more lengthy delayed volumes a(my own dubious record as editor is five years); do readers know of volumes that have experienced longer delays?

Signed comments only.

Ananya Vajpeyi on Gandhi

It's fun when you start a discussion which is joined by people who know more about the subject than you. This was my pleasant reward for my post on Perry Anderson's jeremiad on independent India in the London Review of Books, which drew thoughtful comments and useful correctives from Patrick O'Donnell, Rich Booher, and Randy McDonald.

Particularly interesting was a pointer to an excellent response to Anderson by Ananya Vajpeyi. I won't go into the details here, but I was struck by the following.

1. Any Indian under the age of 90—my parents' generation were still very much under the emotional grip of Gandhi and the Independence movement—has had many many conflicted and conflicting thoughts about Gandhi, Nehru, and Congress. As Vajpeyi writes: "Gandhi-bashing is a hallowed tradition in India’s intellectual left, a form of compulsory hazing without which entry to higher circles of the academy has been all but barred in recent memory." But of course Indians value being citizens (or in my case a former citizen . . . sigh!) of a free country (though everywhere we are in chains, blah blah blah). It is therefore a toxic shock when somebody like Anderson unleashes his unadulterated, undiluted venom on those who made that freedom possible. There is no undertone of affection, or even respect, in Anderson's portrait of our great men, and though his cognitive content is not new, we are as much taken aback by his scowling visage as we would be if our pet dogs suddenly attacked us. (Incidentally, Vajpeyi documents the many unacknowledged Indian sources of the Andersonian critique.)

Weekly Philo of Economics: Adam Smith (Hobbes and Hume) on Religion and Usurpation

The good temper and moderation of contending factions seems to be the most essential circumstance in the publick morals of a free people. But the factions of the Greeks were almost always violent and sanguinary; whereas, till the time of the Gracchi, no blood had ever been shed in any Roman faction, and from the time of the Gracchi the Roman republick may be considered as in reality dissolved. (Wealth of Nations, Book V)

Let's leave aside Smith's embrace of mythic history here (even if he rejects the death of Remus as even more mythic, he is familiar enough with Livy to know better). In context Smith is offering an empirical attack on a theory proposed by Montesquieu (who drew on "the very respectable authority of Plato, Aristotle, and Polybius"--some other time we need to discuss the significance of the loss of Polybius from our collective philosophical memory) that Greek musical education of the young (a kind of military-gymnastics) has no positive impact on their public morals. Here Smith leaves open which institution does produce "good temper and moderation of contending factions," or if it is a matter of chance.

Elsewhere, in a different context, he explains the  source of moderation by pointing at the experiences of eighteenth-century Pennsylvania: "This plan of ecclesiastical government, or more properly of no ecclesiastical government..has been established in Pensylvania, where, though the Quakers happen to be the most numerous the law in reality favours no one sect more than another, and it is there said to have been productive of this philosophical good temper and moderation." (Wealth of Nations, V.) That is to say, he takes the lesson of Hume's Natural History of Religion (where in the context of extensive treatment of the Romans the link between polytheism and mutual toleration is nicely established), and then uses it as a political argument against state control over religion (as favored by Hobbes, Spinoza and Hume) in favor of freedom of religion (and state neutrality among competing sects).

Perry Anderson on Indian Independence

When an Indian attacks Gandhi and Nehru, the two great architects of the Indian state, you can usually figure out why. It has something to do with her contemporary politics. When a Brit does the same, and when the attack is largely personal, it's a lot more difficult to diagnose. Perry Anderson is, according to his Wikipedia page, "often identified with the post-1956 Western Marxism of the New Left. He is Professor of History and Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles and a former editor of the New Left Review." So his motivations are presumably more theoretical. But his three part, 65000 word, reflection (if one can call it that) in the London Review of Books (Parts one, two, and three) is one of the most vicious hatchet jobs I have ever come across. It is also, taken at face value, completely gratuitous: it contains no new facts and reviews no new book. So why?

It should not come as a revelation to anybody that Gandhi had beliefs that any modern intellectual would vehemently oppose. He was a traditional and highly superstitious Hindu. Because he was naturally sympathetic to other Indians and other religious believers, he read and talked about Islam and Christianity. But his take on these faiths was anything but sophisticated, and his ideas about how to unite people of these divergent faiths was often insensitive. Moreover, Gandhi had bizarre beliefs. He believed, for example, that sex was wrong except for the express purpose of procreation; he tried to subdue his own sexual feelings, and as an old man he slept naked with his niece to prove to himself that he was, at last, chaste. Finally, his vision for the Indian state was that it would be Hindu, and organized on Hindu principles, but in a way that Muslims and Christians could embrace. Well, dear reader, you don't need me to tell you that that's a bit of a head-scratcher.

Perry Anderson makes out of this a huge take-down of the man.

Partisanship in philosophy, or the principle of charity reconsidered.

Philosophy is not, I submit, primarily a matter of private performances of profound insight. It is a public act of stringing together words and arguments. What is on the page is the philosophy, regardless of what the philosopher might have thought in his secret heart.--Schwitzgebel

I am so happy to return from my internet-free holiday to a discussion initiated by Eric Schwitzgebel about the methodology of the history of philosophy! Catarina wrote a very important response, which prompted a consessive comment by Schwitzgebel here. (I am avoiding calling him "Eric S." in order to avoid confusion.) The above quote is from Schwitzgebel's second (out of three) reasons against over-reliance on the so-called principle-of-charity. The statement expresses an important insight (too often forgotten by some contextual historians of philosophy who wish to turn the history of philosophy into a sub-discipline of the history of material culture). But it is also a manifestly parochial sentiment (which relies on a misleading opposition between page and heart). For, not-so-long-ago philosophy would also be thought to involve the integration of a life-lived-with-words-on-the-page. This is why the deaths of Socrates, Descartes, Spinoza, and (say) Hume were (in a complex sense) public spectacles and could be seen as significant to the evaluation of their philosophical doctrines (recall my post). It's not clear our present indifference to such integration is to be esteemed as progess in all ways. 

One could argue that the principle of charity is designed to protect the confident interpreter from his or her parochialism. But -- like all principles -- it is a blunt  instrument that can be wielded skillfully and unskillfully. This is why Catarina's point ("it is only equipped with in-depth knowledge of a given historical theory/author that the scholar can justifiably be uncharitable. Otherwise, it may well be that she is simply missing some crucial details in the story") matters so much. Now, as I put it in a review once "The principle of charity leads to very flattening readings of past philosophers by importing one age’s plausible prejudices into another age." In context I was being critical of the very skilled use of the principle by one of the greatest historians of philosophy, Ed Curley, who had claimed (together with Walski) ‘views that are tremendously implausible should not be attributed to great, dead philosophers without pretty strong textual evidence.’ (For references see here.) The principle of charity has at one point led Curley to read Spinoza as a mid-twentieth century logical positivist and (to comment on another outstanding historian), say, more recently Don Garrett to read Hume as a kind of Quine-ean naturalist. These readings are thrilling and inspiring, but leave out a lot, too.

A nice, Flemish habit

As regular readers of NewAPPS know, I am sloppy with language; I make an endless stream of grammatical mistakes, and permit too many typos in print. (Many more would be a permanent part of the NewAPPS record if my peers -- especially Dennis and Protevi -- wouldn't correct many of the most egregious mistakes silently on my behalf behind the scenes.) I am no better in Dutch, alas, or mathematics/logic. I have tried to convince my wife (a linguistic maven, who speaks half a dozen languages fluently, in addition to being a better surgeon, mountain-climber, and scientist than me) that I am trying to refute Wittgenstein's private language argument by constant linguistic innovation and norm violation--she's not fooled. Simply put: I am unused to linguistic compliments.

My sense of linguistic inadequacy has become worse now that I work in Flanders, where folk cherish their language (and dialects). I am in constant awe of the linguistic virtuosity and subtlety of my Flemish peers--all confirming Stevin's old opinion that Dutch is indeed the best language for philosophy. One nice way in which this (the cherishing) expresses itself is in the grateful noting when one has been exposed to a Dutch-word-new-to-the-recipient. I haven't explored the boundaries of the norm yet (is one thanked also for highly technical, esoteric words, or only for words that can, in principle, be used commonly?), but it can brighten up even the dullest faculty meeting. You should try it, too.

Favorite Closing lines in Philosophy

We are all familiar with the closing scene of Plato's Phaedo and the last sentence of Wittgenstein's Tractatus, of course. But I think this is pretty damn good, too:

Is it not odd that men should have come to this pass--that they look for hope in physics and welcome, as some do, any indication of unreason in the world? Perhaps it seems less odd when we reflect upon the history of mankind, the hopeless mess that we have made of human lives. Our greed, our stupidity and lack of imagination, our apathy, these are the factors upon which the present sorry state of the world is largely consequent. It is enough to fill us with depair. Yet, despair need not be the last word. It lies within our power, if we so desire, to make the familiar world we inhabit more worthy of habitation by beings who aspire to be rational and are capable of love. Our limitation is due not to ignorance, not to the 'blind forces of Nature', not to the astronomical insignificance of our planet, but the feebleness of our desires for good. This limitation is not to be removed by the advances of physical knowledge, nor should our hopes be placed in the researches of the physicist.--L. Susan Stebbing, Philosophy and the Physicists.

Some other time I'll blog more about Stebbing (recall my exchange with Mohan (here, here, and here); Mohan and I have done some follow-up work), but for now let me ask readers for their favorite closing lines of philosophical works.