Author Archives: Irfan Khawaja

The Lessons of 9/11: Twenty-Two Years Later

Posted on by under Memorials and Obituaries

I post this every year around 9/11 (have done so since 2014), so here it is again with some revisions. I seem to have neglected to post it last year, and have not yet had the chance to add anything specific to the Ukraine War or proxy war more generally. But some of the implications should be obvious enough.

Today is the twenty-second anniversary of 9/11. Here are a few of the lessons I’ve learned from two decades of perpetual warfare. I offer them somewhat dogmatically, as a mere laundry list (mostly) minus examples, but I have a feeling that the lessons will ring true enough for many people, and that most readers can supply appropriate examples of their own.

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“Neo-Aristotelian Ethical Naturalism: Philippa Foot and Ayn Rand”

Posted on by under General announcements

The latest issue of Reason Papers is out, vol. 43:2/Fall 2023, featuring a symposium on “Neo-Aristotelian Ethical Naturalism: Philippa Foot and Ayn Rand.” Participants include Aeon Skoble (Bridgewater State University). Douglas Rasmussen (Emeritus, St. John’s University), Douglas Den Uyl (Liberty Fund), Tristan de Liège, and Timothy Sandefur (Goldwater Institute). The issue also includes the latest installment of Gary Jason’s series on political films, discussing D.W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation.”

The symposium topic is particularly timely, given the recent publication of three books on closely related themes: Benjamin Lipscomb’s The Women Are Up to Something (discussing Foot alongside Elizabeth Anscombe, Iris Murdoch, and Mary Midgely), Claire Mac Cumhail and Rachael Wiseman’s Metaphysical Animals (discussing the same four philosophers), and Wolfram Eilenberger’s The Visionaries (discussing Rand alongside Hannah Arendt, Simone de Beauvoir, and Simone Weil). No Foot-Rand comparisons there, however. As it happens, the Foot-Rand parallel hit me during my first week of graduate school about three decades ago; I wrote my first paper in grad school on Foot and Rand on morality as a system of hypothetical imperatives. Mercifully, the paper has long since been lost. I’m glad that competent philosophers are now pursuing the topic.

Hats off to editor Shawn Klein (Arizona State) for his hard work on the issue.

“Radical Theology: An Introduction to Karl Barth”

Posted on by under General announcements

I don’t know how many fans of radical left-wing Protestant theology read this blog, but in case any do–or in case any might miraculously materialize–my friend Heather Ohaneson is teaching a course on the theology of Karl Barth for the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research starting next Monday evening, September 11th, 6:30-9:30 ET. I took Heather’s course on the Book of Job earlier this year, and found it startling, illuminating, and fun. If you can say that of Job, I figure you can say it of Barth. (Barth was, by the way, an early influence on Alasdair MacIntyre, for any MacIntyreans out there. Apparently, Big Mac gave up on Barth after reading Hans Urs von Balthasar’s criticisms of him, or so he says. How else to grasp the esoterica of that dispute but to take this course?)

Heather is a great teacher, and the material is, shall we say, interesting. If you thought you understood what Protestantism was about before engaging with Barth, you might read a page or two or twenty of his work, and start to wonder. If you didn’t think you understood what Protestantism was about before you encountered him, well, you might end up doing much the same. A win-win!

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Every Way You Look At It, We’ve Lost

Posted on by under Ukraine

Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon
Going to the candidates’ debate
Laugh about it, shout about it, when you’ve got to choose–
Every way you look at it, you lose
–Simon and Garfunkel, “Mrs Robinson“

I didn’t watch the Republican debate last night. I don’t even remember what I did instead. I read about the debate this morning. I’m glad I missed it.

On foreign policy, the Republicans are divided over Ukraine, but united in their desire for war with Mexico, China, and migrants. That’s all I need to know to dismiss them from consideration. The Democrats have the mirror image view: united on war in Ukraine, divided and equivocal on the rest. That’s all I need to know to dismiss them. Continue reading →

“Persecution and the Art of Acting”

Posted on by under Fatwas, General announcements

I have a longish essay in the Fall 2023 issue of Isonomia Quarterly, a newish online journal edited by Brandon Christenson of Notes on Liberty. The essay is called “Persecution and the Art of Acting,” a take-off on Leo Strauss’s Persecution and the Art of Writing. It’s an informal autobiographical account of my commitment to a Judeo-Islamic form of religious fictionalism.

Sample belligerent passage:

Jews, Muslims, and atheists all make claims to religious freedom, but usually make those claims under a single description–”Jew,” “Muslim,” “atheist.” As a fictionalist, I make the same claim to freedom under all three descriptions at once, reserving the right to add as many more descriptions as I wish. In short, when it comes to religious freedom, I demand the right to have things all ways at once, and demand the right to act on it without apology. Some may find that endearing. Others may find it offensive. I regard it as non-negotiable.

I guess we’ll see what happens when the first fatwas come in.

August 15: Front page treatment at Real Clear Religion. The irony. Ht: Brandon Christensen

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Fuller on Aspirations and Duties

Posted on by under MTSP Discussion: Fuller's Morality of Law

Having finished with Gerald Gaus’s The Tyranny of the Ideal, our MTSP Philosophy Discussion Group is now back to reading philosophy of law, working our way through Lon Fuller’s The Morality of Law (1964/1969). Fuller’s book is Roderick Long’s choice, part of a sequence of books on philosophy of law we’re reading at his suggestion, starting with H.L.A. Hart, passing through Fuller, eventually en route to the work of Ronald Dworkin. 

Having just read the first chapter of Fuller (and for the first time), I have to say that I find Fuller a refreshingly clear and engaging writer, much easier to read than, say, Gaus, Scanlon, or Hart. But clear as Fuller is, I don’t find his arguments in this first chapter sound. In this post, I want to offer a quick-and-dirty (but still, I think, effective) criticism of just one point he makes in the chapter, namely, his supposed distinction between “the morality of duty” and the “morality of aspiration.” Continue reading →

I Don’t Wanna Hold Your Hand

Posted on by under cancel culture, moralism, Ukraine

There’s been an outpouring of sympathy for the Ukrainian fencer Olha Kharlan for not shaking the hand of her Russian opponent, Anna Smirnova. Kharlan’s refusal was, of course, an impassioned protest against the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

The underlying assumption here is that an athlete in an international competition is in some sense a representative of her government, including its very worst policies. On this assumption, every Russian athlete is a representative of Vladimir Putin and his invasion of Ukraine. Until January 2021, I suppose, every American athlete was a representative, whether chosen or not, of Donald Trump. Every American athlete right now represents our current immigration policies, up to and including that of pushing mothers and their children into the Rio Grande in defense of America’s southern border. Every Saudi athlete represents MBS’s evisceration of Jamal Khashoggi. Every Chinese athlete represents the repression of the Uyghurs. And so on. I guess athletes from Niger are, for lack of a government, exempt. Maybe Sudanese ones, too. Continue reading →

“Living Authentically”

Posted on by under General announcements

I’d meant to post this earlier, but it’s still not too late: my friend Monica Vilhauer is running a course on “Living Authentically,” focused on the work of Simone de Beauvoir via Skye Cleary’s new book on that subject, How to Be Authentic: Simone de Beauvoir and the Quest for Fulfillment. Starts a week from tomorrow, Sunday, August 6, 10 am-12 noon, Pacific Standard Time.

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I highly recommend every part of this package: Monica, Skye, and Simone. I know one of these ladies personally, one by social osmosis, and one by reputation: I’ve done a workshop on alienation with Monica through her organization Curious Soul Philosophy (which I very much enjoyed); I feel sure that I’ve met Skye somewhere in New York-area philosophy circles, but can’t remember where; and well, Simone de Beauvoir is Simone de Beauvoir. You’re guaranteed to learn something valuable from this trio–about yourself, and about the world you inhabit. 

Alienation is a problem easier dismissed than escaped or avoided: there are more incentives for wishing it away than dealing with it. But it’s there. And if it is, it’s a question where that leaves you as far as living authentically is concerned. We each have to answer that question for ourselves–however many of us that amounts to. This workshop will help.

Neutrality Loathsome

Posted on by under cancel culture
Either be hot, or cold: God doth despise,
Abhorre, and spew out all Neutralities.
–Robert Herrick, “Neutrality Loathsome“

When I taught college-level philosophy, one of the biggest obstacles to teaching, and particularly to successful class discussion, was students’ fear of dealing with controversial issues in class. Despite the bragging that Americans like to do about “free speech,” American students were far more reluctant to speak candidly about anything (or handle constructive criticism) than the college students I briefly encountered in Pakistan or taught in Palestine. By comparison with students in these impoverished and highly repressive places, American students were discursively speaking afraid of their own shadows. They seemed to need “permission” to say anything beyond the safely anodyne and cliched.  Continue reading →

Titanic Malice

Posted on by under ethics, MTSP Discussion: George Sher's Desert

The response to the Titan submersible event has, in my view, been both remarkable and bizarre. Some people have found it an occasion for gallows humor; others have tried to suggest that the crew/passengers felt no suffering as they died. Still others tell us that we should celebrate the heroism of people who take risks to explore the unknown, and point out that civilization itself depends on its bold risk takers. I find all three of these reactions delusional, and diagnostic of the delusions of our society.

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