“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

irony

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 →

A Critique of Gerald Gaus’s Tyranny of the Ideal (Part 2 of 2)

Posted on by under MTSP Discussion: Gerald Gaus's The Tyranny of the Ideal

Continued from part 1.

Then Gaus turns to coordination problems like Stag Hunt / Assurance game (213-15), which (he should add) also involve an independent dimensions of CAPs. It consists in an interaction-situation having more than one equilibrium, at least one of which is not P-optimal, so that arriving at the (or one of the) P-optimal equilibria requires coordination. It is crucial that in many of these cases, a mere convention like stopping at red lights rather than green lights can suffice; nothing deeper need underlie it. Sometimes the natural “salience” of certain phenomena, places, or things does underlie it (red, being associated with blood, is perhaps naturally alarming / arresting). Continue reading →

A Critique of Gerald Gaus’s Tyranny of the Ideal (1 of 2)

Posted on by under MTSP Discussion: Gerald Gaus's The Tyranny of the Ideal

There are a lot of good things to say about Gerald Gaus’ book, The Tyranny of the Ideal (Princeton University Press, 2016). It is a difficult work because it operates mostly at a meta-theoretical level, focusing on properties and problems of “ideal” theories of justice in general – although there is quite a bit of commentary on Sen’s theory and Rawls’s approach in Political Liberalism and after. Still, it contains may insights on these topics, and especially epistemic difficulties in discerning what ideal justice actually requires. But I will not focus on many of the good points here, simply in the interests of space. 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.

Img 17

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.

Continue reading →

BLAMELESS WRONGDOING (A COUNTEREXAMPLE TO THE FITTING-ATTITUDES APPROACH)

Posted on by under Uncategorized

According to me: for an action to be a wronging of a person is for it to be an action worthy of victim resentment. And similarly: for an action (at least usually a wronging of a person) to be morally wrong is for it to be an action worthy of observer indignation. So I take wronging and moral wrongness to be (non-obviously) fitting-attitude-type evaluative properties, similar to events being scary, jokes being funny, people being admirable.

Here is a potential problem for this idea: excuses can render wrong actions non-blameworthy (and so, it would seem, non-indignation-worthy) without their ceasing to be wrong. Boom. So much for my pretty little idea!

Continue reading →

Defining “Wokeness”: Strike 1 for Robert George et al

Posted on by under cancel culture

See update at the end of the post, July 12. Second update, July 25.

One of the many problems with the “culture wars” in the United States is that almost all of the contested terms used in the debate have gone undefined. It’s common for people to speak loosely about “wokeness,” “cancellation,” “cancel culture,” “the Left,” and “Cultural Marxism,” as though these terms had some obvious meaning known by all. They don’t. In fact, in the absence of explicit definitions, all of these terms are mysterious to the point of meaninglessness. So despite contrary appearances, no one really knows what they mean. The absence of definitions of contentious terms tends to benefit people who don’t know what they’re talking about, but would like to conceal that fact from others. That might explain why so much talk on this subject has such a nonsensical quality about it, at once insular, enigmatic, and histrionic. Continue reading →