November 2023 – Anthony G. Flood

What a Difference a Pogrom Makes: Thoughts on the Left’s Embrace of Barbarism

A little over a month ago, I was immersed in a project that now strikes me as an exercise in navel-gazing. It’s one I might salvage, but only if I can recast it in the shadow of the pogrom that Hamas inflicted on innocent Israelis on October 7, 2023.

The project in question, set out here, is my attempt to understand what motivated those who responded to injustice (what any ethical person would regard as injustice) in order establish justice (in matters of, say, labor conditions, race relations, war and peace, etc.), but adopted a worldview and a politics through which they either acted unjustly themselves or supported people, ideas, and movements that did.

That is, they joined a Marxist movement in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s to protest company violence against striking workers or the lynching of African Americans, but wound up supporting, and rationalizing support of, regimes whose crimes were far worse than those that first offended their moral sensibilities.

It has sadly come home to me that Alan Wald, the prolific historian of such individuals, whose writings I very much enjoy and who came out of the Trotskyist movement in the 1960s and 1970s is, from my perspective, on the wrong side of the Israel-“Palestine” conflict. The rationalization and even glorification of unspeakable terror has left its mark on every major academic institution, including UMichigan, from which Wald retired in 2014 after almost 40 years. From that stance no nuanced dissent is socially permitted. To my knowledge he has expressed none.

I will see if Wald has expressed or will express condemnation of October 7, but his biography gives me no reason to be sanguine about that possibility. I don’t think he’s ever put distance between himself and the genocidal maniacs who “martyr” themselves for “Palestine” (who would incinerate him without a second thought if it suited them). Today’s Israel-negationists, with their “Jews for Palestine” contingent (“Turkeys for Thanksgiving,” anyone?), have given today’s left their sacramental “antiwar movement,” a platform on which to socialize, propagandize, and organize. Continue reading “What a Difference a Pogrom Makes: Thoughts on the Left’s Embrace of Barbarism”

“Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?” A Systematically Misleading Expression.

This was first published in 2002 on Pathways in Philosophy (link now dead) and then on my old site probably in 2005. One “answers” the question by dissolving it.* I republish my dissolution without prejudice to the view that doing so has little (if anything) to do with philosophizing after Christ, apart from Whom it makes no sense to essay an answer to this question or any other. For those in a hurry: “something” stands in for “everything.” The answer to “Why?,” the explanans, must lie outside everything, the explanandum. But there is nothing apart from everything. The universe could be otherwise than the way it is and therefore need not be at all: one may sensibly ask why it exists one way rather than another. Pre-creation, however, God eternally is all there eternally is. Nothing answers to the question, “Why is God the way He is?” There being nothing contingent about Him, one could never sensibly ask “Why does God exist?”

The word “something” needs clarification. We ordinarily use “something” to refer to an unidentified particular in a general way (e.g., “I just heard something; what was that?”). The question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?,” however, seems to ask in a general way about the totality of things.

The grammatical form of a question can be misleading. “Why is there something rather than nothing?” is grammatically similar to “Why is there salt in the soup rather than pepper?” or “Why are there swallows in Capistrano rather than bald eagles?,” but they are logically quite different from our question. The other questions can be answered by investigating other parts of the world (culinary practice and the nature of certain birds, respectively). The explanation in each case lies outside the thing to be explained. But the question, “Why is there everything [‘something’] rather than nothing at all?,” logically does not permit any such investigation. There is nothing “outside” everything that could yield an explanation.

In The Mystery of Existence, Milton K. Munitz argues that, unlike “Why is there something rather than nothing?,” the question “Why does the observed world exist?” is well-framed, but unanswerable. (A genuine mystery, according to Munitz, is a question that can be neither dismissed nor answered.) He rejects the theistic answer, i.e., the observed world exists because God created it, but that rejection does not affect what we have said above. The mystery of existence is neutral with respect to theism. Whether or not God exists, there is nothing outside the totality of existing things (including or excluding a God) and therefore nothing that can yield an explanation for its existence. That is, whether the totality equals “just the observed world” or “God plus the observed world,” there is—there can be—nothing outside that totality which explains it. Even when, according to theism, God was all that existed, there was no explanation for that fact, for there were no other facts than his existence to which possible explanatory appeal could be made.

As Paul Edwards put it in his (also highly recommended) essay, “Why?,” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

. . . the word ‘why’ loses its meaning when it becomes logically impossible to go beyond what one is trying to explain. This is a matter on which there need not be any disagreement between atheists and theists or between rationalists and empiricists.

* Partly in response, William F. Vallicella blogged “Two Forms of the Ultimate Explanation-Seeking Why-Question”

My book problem (no, not tsundoku) and a possible solution

Over the past fifty-plus years I’ve accumulated thousands of books promiscuously. The promiscuity must end, the piles liquidated.

Not all at once: there are still projects for which having certain volumes at the ready will be convenient, but most do not qualify for that use. (Even that I’ll be able to use any of them that way is, of course, not guaranteed.) If, however, “anything should happen to me” (pardon the euphemism), these wonderful volumes of philosophy, history, theology, politics, biography and so forth, lovingly curated by a bibliophile who loves the distinctive aroma of old paperbacks, will likely wind up in the trash.

I can no longer spare the time and energy to catalog every book and list it on, say, Amazon (something I did years ago for about a thousand books). It requires the seller to “jump” upon receiving a “Sold! Ship Now!” email and schedule a trip to the post office. In short, I have no desire to set up a formal used book business. I will proceed more informally.

What I will do is append to my Portfolio a list of what I’m ready to part with. At first, and slowly, I will list only authors and titles. If an item catches a visitor’s eye, he or she can enquire via Contact Me about its physical condition and terms of sale.

No trusted third party will govern any transaction that might follow. For many of my visitors/subscribers, however, that will not be an issue. Perhaps they will be the only enquirers. Or maybe word-of-mouth will encourage a few others.

My interest is in seeing the books that I’ve enjoyed reading (and beholding) occupy someone’s else’s shelves. I have ever been only their temporary custodian. Each of them will, I hope, find another conservator.