Mattias Desmet ('The Psychology of Totalitarianism') talks to John Waters

 

Mattias Desmet has been popping up on youtube speaking about the phenomenon of mass formation or the coalescenceof a significant percentage of the population around a perceived situation  that must be dealt with even at the cost of abandoning normal ethical principles.  The covid 19 ‘emergency’ which I have been calling covidology is an example of this zombification.  A lot of people got bitten.

In his conversation with John Waters he covers much of the same ground as he did previously linking the panicked response to the emergence of totalitarianism.  He’s written a book on this ‘The Psychology of Totalitarianism’ which is to be published later this month.  The difference between the usual delineation of the mechanisms facilitating the emergence of a mob mind and this conversation with John Waters is the sympathetic vibration of their strings which brought out what Otto called the non-rational sources of knowledge and awe normally called wisdom.  Aristotle and the Thomists, that band, call it connaturality.  The not-mentioned Jacques Maritain frequently writes about it in ‘The Degrees of Knowledge’- on my book stand at the moment.

Have a look: you’re worth it.

totalitarianism

Modern Moral Philosophy by Elizabeth Anscombe

 I’ve read that this paper is important and I suppose that it is though I have noticed that judicious context elision can negate what is its main purport: to be an engine of stultification. All modern ethical theories are rendered foolish by their unwitting divorce from a philosophical psychology of the person.  The ‘is’ of their oughts is missing in action.  It is this which gives the force to the quotable:

This word ‘ought’ having become a word of mere mesmeric force, could not, in the character of having that force, be inferred from anything whatever.

Anscombe having a Catholic Christian view of morality would be committed to a virtually instinctual grasp of good and evil.  The following through of that impetus leads to a connaturality with the good in the Aristotelian/Thomistic sense of that term.  ‘What the good man deems to be good is good’ (Aristotle iirc)

From 2018:

ethics without god

describes a argumentative trajectory which culminates in a position contrary to that which he first starts out with. Is this an indication of retrocausality in action whereby a power acts from the future on a present situation? The ineluctable power of the truth that is yet to be assented to mitigates the contemporary confusion.

It begins, as American reflections often do, with a story. A student is shocked by Prof. Troy’s admission that he has no religious beliefs. This evokes his comment:

 ‘But Professor Jollimore,’ he stammered, ‘how can you not believe in God? You teach ethics for a living!’

The series of lectures in contemporary Ethics that was being taught made no mention of “the scaffolding of any faith or religious tradition”(T.Jo.) which in itself is a questionable choice. Leaving out the whole history of moralizing up to comparatively recent times is an example of bias and egregious leading. In any case the spontaneous reaction of a student is not a serious basis for a generalisation. I call that a ‘straw boy’. There’s nearly enough of them in the essay to make a full complement of mummers like the Straw Boys of Wexford that go out with the wren on St.Stephen’s Day.

His argument against divine rule is summarized:

Adding God would give us divine rewards and punishments, but that’s only to add self-interested reasons to be ethical, not genuinely moral reasons.

We’re not very far down the page when that hedging locution ‘suspect’ comes on the pitch:

 I suspect that something else is going on, and that in most cases these arguments are just rationalisations for the belief that morality depends on faith in God. The actual explanation, I believe, is something else.

This lateral thought sends him in a direction which subverts his original thesis. Religion is fixed on the personal not the theoretical. There are no impossible computations about universal felicity.

This emphasis on being attentive to concrete reality tallies with the idea that it is the emotions (compassion and sympathy in particular), rather than abstract rational principles, that are doing the motivating when it comes to ethical behaviour.

It is wisdom that enables discernment:

Wisdom, as opposed to knowledge, might seem a somewhat quaint notion in the contemporary world. (Indeed at this point even the word ‘knowledge’ sounds quaint to many people, who prefer to talk about ‘data’ or ‘information.’)

Professor Jollimore quotes that section of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics on connaturality that I have referenced a few times in posts:

‘Actions, then,’ Aristotle taught, ‘are called just and temperate when they are such as the just or the temperate man would do; but it is not the man who does these that is just and temperate, but the man who also does them as just and temperate men do them.’

It would be impertinent of me to remind the professor that for Aristotle the highest form of happiness lies in contemplation. It is divine because the divine nous is absorbed in self awareness as its highest condition. It thinks itself. (cf. Lambda 9 Metaphysics) We become aligned to the divine in following that path.

It is in the summation to his essay that the strange turn occurs:

The idea that morality stems from strong character rather than from obedience to a strict set of rules, for instance, is very much in line with the moral reorientation proposed by Christ in the New Testament, from a view centered on obedience to God’s commandments to one in which love and compassion take centre stage.

We need to:

.....teach ourselves to stop looking at morality as an abstract and isolated set of requirements and demands — an external authority that stands apart from and sets limits on human existence — and see it instead as a set of commitments, enthusiasms, and passions that are woven into the very fabric of our lives.

An exemplar that generates enthusiasm (en theos - god within) is the only force that can draw us out an in-group morality based on obligation to a universal one based on love. Such are the great saints and sages of world religions.

Hey Troy, you’re nearly there.

 

Realism in Advaita part 1

 

Advaita throws the word ‘real’ and its antonym ‘unreal’ about freely leaving the casual reader or the sitter at the feet of Swamiji, guruji, and the internet oracle, confused.  Is Advaita a type of subjective Idealism which holds that the world is a dream or ‘like’ a dream in that it is experienced and vanishes on waking, an ‘insubstantial pageant’?  Fear not, let this mini-guru with more than a hint of tin in his water pot put you right.  One thing I have though, if not enlightenment, is a fair reading in general philosophy that allows one to sift the nuances of the levels of reference.  Am I then referring to the vyavaharika/pratibhasika (absolute/relative) distinction?  Not quite.  Let me first deal with the opening question purely from an epistemological point of view.  What are we aware of when we experience something?  Is it an internal occurrence in our minds  that by some process represents the external reality or is that an overly complex way of saying that we experience an object?  Effectively, experience of the object is the immediate thing and all else is an over elaboration of the febrile mind and a derealising distraction.  There is a tiny, shy, half-truth in that.  My counter would be that Adi Shankara catered to the seeker who requires rational clarification.

The other, frequently met with, counter to this question of epistemological stance is the Orientalist - ‘really this Realism/Idealism dyad is a Western preoccupation that does not apply in Vedanta’.  Again, Shankara took it seriously though Vedanta’s answer to the aporia (puzzle) is so to speak, non-binary.   What else does non-dual mean if not that?  In any case the attempt to navigate between the Scylla and the Charybdis of Internal and External has also a long history in Western thought from, I would hold, Plato and Aristotle to Henri Bergson and the modern revival of Panpsychism.

This is a long menu and the first item must be the neglected - what is the nature of the person, the mind/body complex that is in a world of objects?  

I’ll be back.

'Wrong' sort of Realism

((I left this comment on a post in electric agora. I'm posting it here for the record.))

Mark:
I went a bit metaphysical there on you for a bit but I do think that the sceptically vulnerable physical can get confused with it.. In good light and not having ingested psychotropic substances and facing the right way I can say with assurance - ‘there is an tree in the yard’. As a brain in a vat and as a subject trapped in a computer simulation I could say the same thing with the same assurance and be wrong. What would ‘wrong’ mean in this case? Is it not parasitic on the true ‘wrong’, the one that is open to correction? All observations are subject to determined scepticism and we can only stay calm and carry on.

However metaphysical realism is different. It relies on their being an ontological substratum which unites Subject and Object. This is the approach of Platonic, Aristotelian and Vedantic philosophy. It is coherent with the project of critical realism in the physical sense. We accept the truth of our observations as a default assumption. We could be wrong though, but this ‘wrong’ is a true ‘wrong’ i.e. one connected to the metaphysical reality of the unity of the substratum.

My point is that realism which tries to establish itself solely in the domain of observation is not on the ‘wrong’ track if you will forgive a paradox.

Professor Troy Jollimore on Religion Based Morality

Troy Jollimore’s Aeon essay on ethics without god
ethics without god
describes a argumentative trajectory which culminates in a position contrary to that which he first starts out with. Is this an indication of retrocausality in action whereby a power acts from the future on a present situation? The ineluctable power of the truth that is yet to be assented to mitigates the contemporary confusion.

It begins, as American reflections often do, with a story. A student is shocked by Prof. Troy’s admission that he has no religious beliefs. This evokes his comment:

 ‘But Professor Jollimore,’ he stammered, ‘how can you not believe in God? You teach ethics for a living!’

The series of lectures in contemporary Ethics that was being taught made no mention of “the scaffolding of any faith or religious tradition”(T.Jo.) which in itself is a questionable choice. Leaving out the whole history of moralizing up to comparatively recent times is an example of bias and egregious leading. In any case the spontaneous reaction of a student is not a serious basis for a generalisation. I call that a ‘straw boy’. There’s nearly enough of them in the essay to make a full complement of mummers like the Straw Boys of Wexford that go out with the wren on St.Stephen’s Day.

His argument against divine rule is summarized:

Adding God would give us divine rewards and punishments, but that’s only to add self-interested reasons to be ethical, not genuinely moral reasons.

We’re not very far down the page when that hedging locution ‘worry’ comes on the pitch:

 I suspect that something else is going on, and that in most cases these arguments are just rationalisations for the belief that morality depends on faith in God. The actual explanation, I believe, is something else.

This lateral thought sends him in a direction which subverts his original thesis. Religion is fixed on the personal not the theoretical. There are no impossible computations about universal felicity.

This emphasis on being attentive to concrete reality tallies with the idea that it is the emotions (compassion and sympathy in particular), rather than abstract rational principles, that are doing the motivating when it comes to ethical behaviour.

It is wisdom that enables discernment:

Wisdom, as opposed to knowledge, might seem a somewhat quaint notion in the contemporary world. (Indeed at this point even the word ‘knowledge’ sounds quaint to many people, who prefer to talk about ‘data’ or ‘information.’)

Professor Jollimore quotes that section of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics on connaturality that I have referenced a few times in posts:

‘Actions, then,’ Aristotle taught, ‘are called just and temperate when they are such as the just or the temperate man would do; but it is not the man who does these that is just and temperate, but the man who also does them as just and temperate men do them.’

It would be impertinent of me to remind the professor that for Aristotle the highest form of happiness lies in contemplation. It is divine because the divine nous is absorbed in self awareness as its highest condition. It thinks itself. (cf. Lambda 9 Metaphysics) We become aligned to the divine in following that path.

It is in the summation to his essay that the strange turn occurs:

The idea that morality stems from strong character rather than from obedience to a strict set of rules, for instance, is very much in line with the moral reorientation proposed by Christ in the New Testament, from a view centered on obedience to God’s commandments to one in which love and compassion take centre stage.

We need to:

.....teach ourselves to stop looking at morality as an abstract and isolated set of requirements and demands — an external authority that stands apart from and sets limits on human existence — and see it instead as a set of commitments, enthusiasms, and passions that are woven into the very fabric of our lives.

An exemplar that generates enthusiasm (en theos - god within) is the only force that can draw us out an in-group morality based on obligation to a universal one based on love. Such are the great saints and sages of world religions.

Hey Troy, you’re nearly there.

Eudaemonism and Virtue

Neo-Stoicism as eudaemonistic is questionable certainly but ought eudaemonism be causally linked to virtue at all?

Relating eudaemonia to being a virtuous person may have arisen as the result of equivocation. It seems to be so for Aristotle where being good and doing good are linked as perhaps they should be. However he warps the connection by suggesting that the more good you can do the better person you will be. Ethics are propaduetic to Politics in his mind because in Politics the possibility to do great public good is enhanced. Doing more good means that you are more virtuous. The good life i.e. being successful is an indication that you are virtuous. Rhetorically it is because your Ethos is ample that you are trusted in the Polis. In Athens the concept of being a private citizen was tangential to your role as member of the polis with recurring public duties. In our time the family is the basic unit of society and we can regard the person who is of no public importance as having the same value ethically speaking as the politician. The struggling, debt ridden individual may be a good father or mother or friend and so forth.

For me there’s a whiff of success gospel about eudaemonism that repels.

Nichomachean Ethics

Simple and naive questions about the Nichomachean Ethics: dare to be stupid o.k. Who was Ari, who did he lecture to and what were, in the immortal terms of the teacher’s lesson plan, his Aims & Objectives?

A: He was well connected, lectured to the elite well connected and prepared them to connect to the well connected. His virtues had a strong instrumental cast to them, essentially those that were likely to win friends and influence people. My instinctive reaction to the N.E. is distaste and repulsion. I realize that I am irrational in this but there it is.

The Happy Medium

What the good person takes to be good is good according to Aristotle. What the good person does often happens to coincide with a mean, the aurea mediocritas, but not always. A good person may take extreme positions on slavery, on abortion, on rack renting, on social protection etc. The happy medium might be ‘these things will always be with us, we cannot eliminate them so let us try to regulate them in a humane a way as possible’. Correction by History or fatuous meliorism won’t suffice. The good person is, in that over used metaphor, an icon. An icon’s mysterious powers are attained by the artists work on himself via ‘prayer and fasting’. Being perfect from the Latin ‘perfectus’, finished, is not a state that the good person has attained, his work on himself is continuous, never ending.

To focus on actions as the absolute base of our moral assessment of a person is wrong when we don’t know what is in their heart. A tree growing in the shade of another one grows crooked trying to maximise
access to light.

Half right and wholly wrong the Utilitarian is open to evil remedies because results are what count.

Aristotle, Holmes, The Buddha, and Bergson on Memory

One might ask how it is possible that though the affection (the presentation) alone is present, and the (related) fact absent, the latter-that which is not present-is remembered. (The question arises), because it is clear that we must conceive that which is generated through sense-perception in the sentient soul, and in the part of the body which is its seat-viz. that affection the state whereof we call memory-to be some such thing as a picture. The process of movement (sensory stimulation) involved the act of perception stamps in, as it were, a sort of impression of the percept, just as persons do who make an impression with a seal. This explains why, in those who are strongly moved owing to passion, or time of life, no mnemonic impression is formed; just as no impression would be formed if the movement of the seal were to impinge on running water; while there are others in whom, owing to the receiving surface being frayed, as happens to (the stucco on) old (chamber) walls, or owing to the hardness of the receiving surface, the requisite impression is not implanted at all. Hence both very young and very old persons are defective in memory; they are in a state of flux, the former because of their growth, the latter, owing to their decay. In like manner, also, both those who are too quick and those who are too slow have bad memories. The former are too soft, the latter too hard (in the texture of their receiving organs), so that in the case of the former the presented image (though imprinted) does not remain in the soul, while on the latter it is not imprinted at all.

(from On Memory and Reminiscence by Aristotle - memory)

This is the storage theory also espoused by Sherlock Holmes:



“I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”

(from A Study in Scarlet)


The alaya vijnana of the Buddhists (storehouse consciousness) is sometimes understood as a ‘personal’ unconscious but that does not agree with the Buddha’s statements about his previous lives.

With his mind thus concentrated, purified, and bright, unblemished, free from defects, pliant, malleable, steady, and attained to imperturbability, he directs and inclines it to knowledge of the recollection of past lives (lit: previous homes). He recollects his manifold past lives, i.e., one birth, two births, three births, four, five, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, one hundred, one thousand, one hundred thousand, many aeons of cosmic contraction, many aeons of cosmic expansion, many aeons of cosmic contraction and expansion, [recollecting], 'There I had such a name, belonged to such a clan, had such an appearance. Such was my food, such my experience of pleasure and pain, such the end of my life. Passing away from that state, I re-arose there. There too I had such a name, belonged to such a clan, had such an appearance. Such was my food, such my experience of pleasure and pain, such the end of my life. Passing away from that state, I re-arose here.' Thus he recollects his manifold past lives in their modes and details. Just as if a man were to go from his home village to another village, and then from that village to yet another village, and then from that village back to his home village. The thought would occur to him, 'I went from my home village to that village over there. There I stood in such a way, sat in such a way, talked in such a way, and remained silent in such a way. From that village I went to that village over there, and there I stood in such a way, sat in such a way, talked in such a way, and remained silent in such a way. From that village I came back home.' In the same way — with his mind thus concentrated, purified, and bright, unblemished, free from defects, pliant, malleable, steady, and attained to imperturbability — the monk directs and inclines it to knowledge of the recollection of past lives. He recollects his manifold past lives... in their modes and details.

(From Kevatta Sutta)

Here we have moved away from the storage concept of memory, the standard model of neuro-science, to the transpersonal. This is the photo that is already taken (Bergson) and that exists ‘out there’ in the noos-sphere.

The whole difficulty of the problem that occupies us comes from the fact that we imagine perception to be a kind of photographic limited by view of things, taken from a fixed point indeterminate by that special apparatus which is called an organ of perception—a photograph which would then be developed in the brain-matter by some unknown chemical and psychical process of elaboration. But is it not obvious that the photograph, if photograph there be, is already taken, already developed in the very heart of things and at all the points of space ? No metaphysics, no physics even, can escape this conclusion. Build up the universe with atoms: each of them is subject to the action, variable in quantity and quality according to the distance, exerted on it by all material atoms. Bring in Faraday's centres of force : the lines of force emitted in every direction from every centre bring to bear upon each the influences of the whole material world. Call up the Leibnizian monads: each is the mirror of the universe. All philosophers, then, agree on this point.

(from Matter and Memory)

From a certain point of view memory as storage is like internal phrenology.

Interdining in America

Daniel Kaufman writes:

Yet this is precisely what the hardest moral dilemmas involve: not figuring out which action will serve a lone already-established value, but which value, among many, should be served.  Is utility most important in this situation?  Respect?  Gratitude?  And it is for this reason that those who are in the grip of a moral theory behave so poorly on so many occasions.  The Utilitarian vegan, who upon finding himself at an ordinary dinner party refuses to eat the food, acts wrongly not just because he fails to recognize any value other than utility, but because that failure cripples his capacity to engage in sound practical reasoning and to decide among competing values: he is unable to properly navigate the moral demands of his situation, for he can’t see that the effects of his actions on the general welfare, under these circumstances, are negligible, the insult to his host and the disregard for his efforts are substantial, and the overall affect that characterizes his behavior is boorish and uncouth and is in fact made worse, not better, by his philosophic rationalizations.

(from ;
ten
Going by Aristotle’s dictum that :

these things are both valuable and pleasant which are such to the good man; and to each man the activity in accordance with his own state is most desirable, and therefore to the good man that which is in accordance with virtue.

Putting the good man in the capacity of host it is apposite to consider whether offering a vegan food which he does not wish to eat is the mark of a good host. Is it not the business of a good host to find out the food preferences of his guests. That is hardly onerous and merely good manners. You do not offer the imam pork chops or a Hindu beef curry. The vegan might also inform the host that they are such - by the way I’m a vegan/vegetarian; Is that a problem?

The other odd food story Kaufman offers is:

Yes, sometimes the right thing to do *is* to suffer something disgusting, out of respect and caring for one’s host. A friend of mine was teaching English in a rural village in China, and he was invited to the home of one of the students for dinner. He was served a plate of Cicadas, of which the hosts were exceedingly proud — and which, apparently, cost a great deal, relative to their income. He said it was absolutely revolting and yet he ate it anyway, precisely because of the circumstances he was in and the people who were hosting him.

Are there any Chinese who don’t know that Westerners don’t eat insects? (and cats and dogs)) I suspect mischief. Was he being a good host in not making inquiries as to what Westerners like?

Miss Austin (Austen) and Aristotle

Miss Austin (the form of Jane’s name that Dr. Whately uses) pays attention and can conjure a world out of fragments:

Harriet, tempted by every thing and swayed by half a word, was always very long at a purchase; and while she was still hanging over muslins and changing her mind, Emma went to the door for amusement.—Much could not be hoped from the traffic of even the busiest part of Highbury;—Mr. Perry walking hastily by, Mr. William Cox letting himself in at the office-door, Mr. Cole's carriage-horses returning from exercise, or a stray letter-boy on an obstinate mule, were the liveliest objects she could presume to expect; and when her eyes fell only on the butcher with his tray, a tidy old woman travelling homewards from shop with her full basket, two curs quarrelling over a dirty bone, and a string of dawdling children round the baker's little bow-window eyeing the gingerbread, she knew she had no reason to complain, and was amused enough; quite enough still to stand at the door. A mind lively and at ease, can do with seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer.

That episode of Harriet shopping and going back to the Bates house with Frank Churchill and his step mother Mrs. Weston and then Mr. Knightley passing by on his horse on an errand and the meandering conversation, the teasing of Miss Fairfax, the fixing of a rivet on a pair of spectacles; one thing after another in a flow so natural that we hardly notice the art. Whately praises her in his review for her achievement of Aristotelian perfection.

It is a remark of the great father of criticism, that Poetry (i.e. narrative, and dramatic poetry) is of a more philosophical character than History; inasmuch as the latter details what has actually happened, of which many parts may chance to be exceptions to the general rules of probability, and consequently illustrate no general principles; whereas the former shows us what must naturally, or would probably, happen under given circumstances; and thus displays to us a comprehensive view of human nature, and furnishes general rules of practical wisdom. It is evident, that this will apply only to such fictions as are quite perfect in respect of the probability of their story; and that he, therefore, who resorts to the fabulist rather than the historian, for instruction in human character and conduct, must throw himself entirely on the judgment and skill of his teacher, and give him credit for talents much more rare than the accuracy and veracity which are the chief requisites in history. We fear, therefore, that the exultation which we can conceive some of our gentle readers to feel, at having Aristotle's warrant for (what probably they had never dreamed of) the philosophical character of their studies, must, in practice, be somewhat qualified, by those sundry little violations of probability which are to be met with in most novels; and which so far lower their value, as models of real life, that a person who had no other preparation for the world than is afforded by them, would form, probably, a less accurate idea of things as they are, than he would of a lion from studying merely the representations on China teapots.

(from Miscellaneous Lectures and Reviews by Richard Whately)

And Mr Knightley, that paragon, is he a little whim of improbability on the part of Miss Austin, a mocking perhaps of the beau ideal of ladies fiction, a snapping of the knight’s garter as it were. What evidence have I for this mischief? Alas none.

Adhyasa/Superimposition as the key to Advaitic Critical Realism

“But availability for empirical experience depends on superimposition” (pg.419 numbered section 142: The Method of Vedanta by Sri S.S.S.)

Even though the Swami is talking about mutual superimposition of the Self and the non-self I think that a tangential truth is expressed about what Vedanta Paribhasa calls perceptuality. In other words, superimposition is the fact whereby the stone out there as an object comes in some sense to be in me, the subject.

Why do we not take the experience in here as a bounded subjective domain in the manner of Idealists (both subjective and objective) and Representationalists/Scientific Realists? Because for Vedantins the Vedas have an intrinsic ‘aboutness’. The language that they are expressed in is eternal, capturing, for all time, and in every eon, universals (vedic words). The action of the enjoined sacrifices is real and effective.

Starting from that foundation a metaphysics is promulgated which can sustain the non-numerical identity of object and mental modification (vritti). In his own way Aristotle squared that circle also.

What about illusion? Does that not break the upadhi link? It was a witty metaphysics that used as a founding analogy the fact of error. It is still the case though that our default assumption is of perception as veridical. Further experience may prove us wrong and we can accept this. We may even test our experience in an experimental fashion: Come let me clutch thee/I have thee not and yet I see thee still. Our realism is critical (krites/judge).

Anscombe on Aristotle/Vritti & Upadhi

I mentioned in my previous post Snakes and Ladders that Advaita has found that narrow land between Realism and Idealism by using the concept of the vritti or mental modification which is identical to the object in a non-numerical way. That needs to be teazed out further but I offer this extended quote from Anscombe which indicates a ‘family resemblance’ between the theory of Aristotle on passive and active intellect and the Advaitins ‘vritti’ and ‘upadhi’/limiting adjunct.

Now the existence of the things is precisely the actualisation of this possibility: thus we find Aristotle constantly distinguishing between existence on the one hand and on the other (a) actuality (b) whatever is actualised by that actuality. In comparison with the latter, existence seems to relate to form; the existence of the matter that composes Socrates is substantial existence as a human being; but in comparison with ‘actuality’ or the formal cause, existence is is particular and material. The contrast between actuality and existence is drawn especially in his theory of knowledge, according to which if, say, a sighted animal receives a sense impression of red, the ‘actuality’ or ‘form’ signified by the word ‘red’ is one and the same in the seen object and the sensation, but the ‘existence’ of the red thing and the sensation of red is different. Either existence however, is the actualisation - and hence the actuality, and one and the same actuality - of what was before a mere potentiality. Similarly the intellect is actualised by the forms, which also actualise matter; again, the ‘actuality’ will be the same but the ‘existence’ different.

The theory has the attraction of seeming to preserve that internal relation which must be shown to hold between what we may quite generally call ‘cognitions’ and their objects, without falling into idealism. The forms which the intellect in understanding are without matter, and are made to be so by the intellect, which thus divides into a ‘passive’ intellect actualised by these forms, and a ‘productive’ intellect that makes the forms-without-matter: Aristotle compares this to light making colours actual. Thus it appears that the objects of understanding are only potential in material things, although, as they exist in material things, they are the actualisation of the matter of those things. It is ground for intense regret that Aristotle never expounded his ideas for the general public, shewing those unversed in these difficult conceptions how they might attain to them. For so far as his ideas are sound, they must be capable of a clearer exposition than he has given them.

(From Three Philosophers by G.E.M. Anscombe and P. Geach // citation: Anscombe on Aristotle)
Note: Italics in quote mine.

Shaftesbury on the Good

He is reckoned to be a fine writer says Thomas Gray of Shaftesbury. To me that suggests a demurral and reading in his 'Characteristics' does not incline me to a contrary opinion. Moreover he does not gain a place in the authoritative collection of English Prose selected by William Peacock for the O.U.P. English Prose. Neither is he in the Everyman Anthology edited by S.L. Edwards. Fame has a momentum like a top or a celt that before it dies takes a contrary wobble. That may yet happen. I personally find a slackness in his style, a certain diffuseness which flattens his conclusions.

'Tis not the same with Goodness as with other Qualitys, which we may understand very well, and yet not possess. We may have an excellent ear in Musick, without being able to perform in any kind. We may judg well of Poetry, without being Poets, or possessing the least of a Poetick Vein: But we can have no tolerable Notion of Goodness, without being tolerably good.

(from Section V. Bk.1)

There is a languid understating quality about that 'tolerable' which erodes his intent which I take to be the Aristotelian maxim that the good man is the best judge of what the good is. An example of what Gray referred to as 'seeming always to mean more than he said' perhaps.

Plato is a Smart Man.....

But he doesn’t know what Love is. This is the essence of Gregory Vlastos’s paper Plato: The Individual as an Object of Love(1973). With 101 footnotes and an appendix distinguishing Platonic Love as vulgarly understood from Plato’s febrile sublimations, this is the scholarship of shock and awe. Plato’s view of the person is instrumental, your value is located in your usefulness to others or to the state. This is in contrast to Aristotelian ‘philein’:

Let philein be defined, writes Aristotle in the Rhetoric, as wishing for someone what you believe to be good things - wishing this not for your own sake but for his - and acting so far as you can to bring this about.

Vlastos has the rare combination of precision and lucidity that makes reading a joy. After a night of insomnia spent reading it I toddled off to bed at 6A.M. quite rested. I found this paper in Philosophy Through Its Past (ed.Ted Honderich) a Pelican/Penguin from 1984.

As a theory of the love of persons, this is its crux: What we are to love in persons is the ‘image’ of the Idea in them. We are to love the person so far, and only in so far, as they are good and beautiful. Now since all too few human beings are masterworks of excellence, and not even the best of those we have the chance to love are wholly free of streaks of the ugly, the mean, the commonplace, the ridiculous, if our love for them is to be be only for their virtue and beauty, the individual, in the uniqueness and integrity of his or her individuality, will never be the object of our love. This seems to me to be the cardinal flaw in Plato’s theory.

Analogies from Nowhere

Opponent: The comparison with the reflection of the sun in water cannot be reasonably upheld her (in the case of the Self), since nothing like that is perceived (here). A material thing, such as water, is seen to be clearly separate from and remotely placed from the sun etc. which are themselves material entities (with forms). There it is proper that an image of the sun should be formed. But the Self is not such a material entity (having form); and since It is all-pervasive and non-different from all, It can have no limiting adjuncts either separate or remote from It. Hence this illustration is inapt.

The opponent has a point, analogies on the same plane can be fruitful but the analogue from nowhere, the no place beyond physics, what are you standing under when you stand under that? Your analogy is a rumour from a resounding void but it is a void that inspires poetry when it is listened to . The vedic sages called it sruti, what is heard. Such analogies from nowhere are a Prolegomena to an Archetectonic of Pure Silence and Philosophy is what you pass through on your way there. A partial defence of metaphysical illustrations is that they are a reflection of a reality and enough to allow a useful transcendental postulate to strike (plant cutting metaphor). “As above so below” (Hermetic maxim)

"What is here is there, what is not here is not anywhere" (Tantric saying)

Note that the Magician of the Waite tarot combines in himself what the two philosophers of the School of Athens indicate.

Life in the Fast Lane by Garry Pettitt

De gustibus non est disputandum. If you prefer Lovecraft to Joyce we may simply agree to differ and if I never again discuss literature with you that is no more than snobbery. We do not wrangle over this because taste is the bedrock of fixed predilection yet we find our tastes changing; the enthusiasms of our youth are replaced as we grow older and the raucous passion of rock and roll finds a greater emotional range in opera.

What makes a good novel good has as its shadow the badness of the bad novel. We teach ourselves the distinction by an empirical acquaintance with fiction that remains shuffling in the halls of the banal. How often too the most gifted in experience will be unable to make very much of it. In a mysterious way they seem to be unable to tell a story. Compton Mackenzie is to me that sort of writer whose narrative capacity on a linear level is fine, there are even flourishes of good writing but what Aristotle called amplitude is lacking. They lack that beginning, middle and end which he says is what a whole consists of and who am I to contradict Magister Ari. Sometimes his utterances have the wisdom of simplicity like the coach’s dictum on the virtue of possession. ‘If we have the ball they can’t score with it’. Be that as it may, Mackenzie seems to be all middle and it’s all middle because it’s all linear. There’s no depth just progression. Modernist fiction brought in the idea of stream of consciousness which shows the simultaneous aspects of the totality of any state of mind. Natural storytellers do that effortlessly.

I’m looking at a little book, Life’s too Short(£1.99), edited by Val McDermid (Wire in the Blood) being true stories of life at work produced by people who left school without being able to read. This collection would be part of a literacy programme. One of the stories is written by a Garry Pettitt called Life in the Fast Lane. Garry who was a truck driver now retired aged 70 is remembering an incident in which his vehicle jack-knifed on an icy stretch of road. He was 33 at the time. Even though tragedy in our modern sense was averted ,tragedy, in the Aristotelian sense of a literary form is achieved.

In tragedy it is action that is imitated, and this action is brought about by agents who necessarily display certain distinctive qualities of character and of thought, according to which we also define the nature of the actions. Thought and character, are, then, the two natural causes of action, and it is on them that all men depend for success or failure. The representation of the action is the plot of the tragedy; for the ordered arrangement of the incidents is what I mean by plot. Character, on the other hand, is that which enables us to define the nature of the participants, and thought comes out in what they say when they are proving a point or expressing an opinion.

(Aristotle: On the Art of Poetry Chap.6)

Garry Pettitt hurtling towards a built up roundabout looking at the side of his trailer tells us:

Suddenly I was a very frightened young man. I realised that I was rapidly heading downhill towards a roundabout that I couldn’t possibly avoid. Hitting it at speed would very likely overturn the vehicle, crush my cab and kill me. I didn’t want to die. I was only thirty-three, with a gorgeous wife and a lovely little boy at home, and it was nearly Christmas. I wanted very much to see them again. I had yet to put up the tree and decorations for my precious little family, and I still had their presents to buy!

It’s a perfect story hardly more than 1,000 words long. Ari would like it.

Wisdom

Is there such a thing as wisdom. Could someone be so connatural with wisdom that everything they do and say has that virtue.

"But in all such matters that which appears to the good man is thought to be really so." (i.e. that which appears good to him) Aristotle,'Nichomachean Ethics' Bk.10.chap.V.

Wisdom and Truth can often be connatural with persons who know nothing of abstruse philosophy and ethical theory. The only explanation is that they are it. A Nisargadatta or a Ramakrishna is more impressive than a hyper educated Brahmin but of course 'it' can land anywhere.

From War and Peace:
"Oh, well, of course, folks are different. One man lives for his own wants and nothing else, like Mituh, he only thinks of filling his belly, but Fokanitch, is a righteous man. He lives for his soul. He does not forget God."
"How thinks of God? How does he live for his soul?" Levin almost shouted.
"Why, to be sure, in truth, in God's way. Folks are different. Take you now, you wouldn't wrong a man ......"
"Yes, yes, good-bye!" said Levin, breathless with excitement, and turning round he took his stick and walked quickly away towards home. At the peasant's words that Fokanitch lived for his soul, in truth, in God's way, undefined but significant ideas seemed to burst out as though they had been locked up, and all striving towards one goal, they thronged whirling through his head, blinding him with their light.