Category: Western Civilization

The Problem OF Philosophy

Obligations are currently limiting my free writing time to the books I’m working on; lately, and unfortunately, that has meant republishing older posts. Today’s falls into that category. At the end of it, I’ve appended a list of links to posts germane to the problem OF philosophy. I hope to generate fresher material soon.—Anthony Flood

Aristotle’s School

There are problems of philosophy, which philosophers have perennially asked and attempted to answer.  What really exists? What can (and do) I know?  What is the nature of the good, the true, and the beautiful?

But there’s also the problem of philosophy, one that philosophy raises implicitly but cannot answer directly. That’s the problem of worldview. Do my answers to those philosophical questions comport or clash with one another? How much about the world must I “take for granted” when I ask my first question? Can I query those takings?

When one is adverting to the problem of “background” worldview one is not trying to solve problems that arise on its terms. And one’s worldview must be able to acknowledge worldview-diversity. But where is one standing when one entertains that problem?

As my interest in the worldview problem has increased, that in philosophical problems has decreased.  That’s because philosophical problems now seem to me a function of one’s basic, non-negotiable stance toward the world. When philosophers pay attention to it, they’re not “doing” philosophy.  When they don’t, their philosophical work is exposed to worldview-level criticism.

It’s not that philosophical questions are unimportant. The almost fifty years I spent studying them were not wasted time. Philosophical questions are endlessly interesting culturally and historically. But worldview questions have supplanted philosophical ones in my mind, perhaps because my worldview is of paramount importance to me and, going forward, I wish to advert to it explicitly. Worldviews assign various values to cultural and historical importance and hence to philosophy.

Philosophers who profess the same worldview can agree or disagree fruitfully about, for example, the veridicality of sense perception. Those who do not profess the same worldview, but are not conscious of that disparity, may misunderstand both their agreements and disagreements, even if when they use the same natural language correctly.  If they are conscious of that disparity, then it is not clear what their apparent agreements or disagreements could mean. “God exists,” affirms the Christian, who thinks the idea of God important. “Yes, God exists!,” answers the Buddhist, who deems it a distraction from the main issue of living.

If philosophical problems are embedded in a worldview, then worldview conflict-adjudication is not a philosophical problem. The attempt to resolve the conflict also operates at the level of worldview. There is no worldview-neutral stance from which to make that attempt.

That one’s philosophical system is one’s final court of appeal for all questions was my assumption. Glancing at my life’s clock and calendar, however, I no longer care to do that. I’ve achieved enough clarity about my position to give myself permission not to.

The implications of the Christian worldview, the one that permeates the pages of the Bible, exhausts my philosophical interests. I’ve come to the conclusion that it is the only worldview that makes possible what philosophers do. (Indeed, what we all do at the inception of our every predication, even our silent ones.)

I further claim (as an implication of my worldview) that everyone, even those who claim to be anti-Christian, operate implicitly in terms of the Christian worldview.  It’s the birthright of all those created in the image of God.

I prefer exploring the Christian worldview, as Biblical exegesis reveals it, to burrowing down the tunnel of worldview-justification. For life is short, and justification tends to be a long-winded if not also interminable affair. Still, as my position is in need of clarification, I will try to clarify it in future posts.

Postscript, July 21, 2020: Here are those “future” posts, i.e., subsequent to November 26, 2018, when the essay above was first published:

The Apostle Paul preaching to the philosophers. Acts 17:16-34

The spiritual preconditions of rational debate: Eric Voegelin’s diagnosis revisited

The “national conversation” Leftists urge us to have about social order is about as genuine as  Mao Zedong’s Hundred Flowers Campaign and, for patriots tempted to participate, about as safe. Debate has spiritual conditions, and the Left-dominated academedia complex guarantees that they’re rarely, if ever, met (except perhaps among family, friends, and trusted associates, at least for now).

No one made that point with greater profundity and learning than Eric Voegelin. On November 2, 2018 I posted a vignette of my interaction with the great philosopher of consciousness, enriched by extensive quotes from his classic essay, “On Debate and Existence.” Our perilous times call for reposting it. Those who vaguely remember it should take another look; it’ll be new for those who don’t.—Anthony Flood

Eric Voegelin: no debate without accord on existential order

(First published November 2, 2018)

“What ‘banged’?”

That was the derisive reaction of Eric Voegelin (1901-1985) to someone’s mentioning the prevailing cosmology, the Big Bang theory (not to be confused with the television comedy whose theme song’s lyrics encapsulate the disordered cosmology Voegelin analyzed*).

He asked that rhetorical question on March 26, 1983 in Newton, Massachusetts during a Friday night-Saturday afternoon conference arranged by organizers of the annual Lonergan Workshops. (During that year’s meeting in June I’d meet Bernard J. F. Lonergan, SJ, whose mind I revered as much as Voegelin’s.)voegelin

Being a Rothbardian libertarian, I could hardly resist asking Voegelin about the seminars that Ludwig von Mises led in Vienna in the twenties. Smiling, Voegelin said he appreciated learning from Mises that inflation is not an increase in prices but rather the central bank’s increase in the money supply not commensurate with an increase in production of commodities. (A government may politically “freeze” prices, but then the economic effect of the inflation, that is, of the physical increase, is a shortage of the goods whose prices were frozen.)

At the cocktail hour I asked Voegelin (I paraphrase from memory) how he could communicate with scholars whose grasp of the historical material was far below his (among whom he did not number Father Lonergan, but I certainly include myself). “With a kind of controlled irony,” he deadpanned.

Continue reading “The spiritual preconditions of rational debate: Eric Voegelin’s diagnosis revisited”

Brand Blanshard on wisdom

Brand Blanshard. Photo by Richard P. Lewis, published in “Man of Reason: In Memoriam Brand Blanshard.” “A memorial service in honor of Brand Blanshard was held December 16, 1987, in Dwight Memorial Chapel of Yale University. The memories and appreciations spoken that day and some from letters are printed in this booklet,” which Roberta Yerkes Blanshard, his widow, mailed me on May 5, 1992.—Anthony Flood

The wisdom that American philosopher Brand Blanshard (August 27, 1892-November 18, 1987) sought was not intelligible in terms of his rationalism and determinism. (Of course, wisdom is no more intelligible in terms of the empiricism and indeterminism Blanshard opposed.) In the perennial pendulum swing between the static block universe of Parmenides and the endless flux of Heraclitus, Blanshard unambiguously favored the Eleatic thinker over the Ephesian. As Van Til memorably put it, however, one chooses between these anti-theistic options as one chooses hats.[1]

His doctrines could not help him account for the epistemological (or metaphysical or ethical) “hat” he chose. He gave reasons for his choosing, but the deterministic worldview to which he was committed could not ground an account for reason-giving itself.

Nevertheless, it is ironic, pleasantly so, to note that Blanshard articulated precisely and elegantly almost everything one might want to say about wisdom. Today I want you to know, in his own words, what I think he got right.

In my opinion, what he got wrong (and in this he was not alone) was his presupposing, as all non-Christians do, that pursuing wisdom occurs in an impersonal context (rather than in a divinely personal creation). For Blanshard (again, not just for him) wisdom is a possible achievement of the human being. The human being, in turn, is regarded as the ultimate point of reference (or background or “atmosphere”) of that pursuit (or, indeed, of any predication whatsoever). This presupposition of autonomy leads only to one or another species of foolishness.[2]

As followers of this blog know, my work-in-progress is entitled “Philosophy after Christ”—after not only in the sense of temporally subsequent to Christ’s earthly ministry, but also in the sense of “according to” the Wisdom and Truth that Christ is. This post may be taken as another occasional progress report. Continue reading “Brand Blanshard on wisdom”

“By any means necessary” revisited

That linguistic barbarism continues to spoil America’s discursive landscape. Once a mere hint of violence sporting the thinnest veneer of plausible deniability, it has evolved into a preferential option for “direct action” exercised by wide swaths of the populace, with its predictable vandalism, firebombing, assault on person and property, and usurpation of legitimate authority.

Below is this blog’s first post, dated October 3, 2018. Reference to the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh dates it only slightly (in my opinion; you may disagree). The logic of the deranged behavior that was on display two autumns ago is now being played out to its dystopian conclusion. I continue to hope that a majority of Americans will pull the country back from the brink this coming November 3rd—indeed, that they will be permitted to pull it back—but events have not allayed my fear that “we are probably living through the run-up to a civil war.”—Anthony Flood

“By any means necessary”: pragmatism on stilts

First published October 3, 2018

Malcolm X’s contribution to the erosion of American political rhetorical standards lives on, most recently in President Trump’s speech at a rally in Tennessee. But at least he was characterizing the expediency of his enemies.

In 1963 Communist-sympathizer Jean-Paul Sartre penned the words that in English become “by any means necessary.”

Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre, Ernesto Che Guevara, 1960, Cuba

 

 

Their African-American popularizer employed it to everlasting effect the following year. (He was assassinated the next.)

Conflating the necessary with the sufficient, it’s literally nonsense. “Any” doesn’t go with “necessary.”

There is, for example, more than one way to get to Times Square from Grand Central. One can walk a few blocks; or hop on the westbound M42 bus; or take the subway, either the shuttle (one stop) or the No. 7 (two). Each of them will do, but none is necessary.

The seductive power of the phrase overrides logic. “By the one means necessary” or “by any means sufficient” lacks punch. What the hackneyed phrase’s users mean is: “What I want is imperative, and whatever achieves it is permissible.” “Whatever it takes,” or “The end justifies the means,” which evacuates “justifies” of meaning.

Continue reading ““By any means necessary” revisited”

Kaepernick’s Cachet

Colin Kaepernick’s back in the news (assuming he ever left). Known more for his anti-police protests than gridiron prowess, he’s aligned himself with history’s worst police states (and never notices the irony). On October 11, 2018, he was the recipient of the W. E. B. Du Bois Medal, about which I blogged at the time. (I’ve appended the post below.) Once in power, the type of political creature he admires would demand absolute submission to their agenda on pain of incarceration or execution. Until then, they’ll find him useful. (I’m charitably assuming, until there’s contrary evidence, that he’d be a victim rather than victimizer.) Given the totalitarian urge inspiring so much political activism today, I thought my old post worth dusting off. For a study of a major instance of communist hypocrisy on race, see my Herbert Aptheker: Studies in Willful Blindness. —Anthony Flood

Kaepernick’s Du Bois Medal: How Fitting

(First published October 11, 2018)

I don’t know whether any recipients of this year’s W. E. B. Du Bois Medal, to be awarded tonight at Harvard’s Sanders Theater, care to qualify their admiration of the medal’s namesake. Probably not. And that’s understandable, given his many notable accomplishments over the course of 95 years.

The least likely to demur, I’ll bet, is “athlete and activist” Colin Kaepernick. A man who has a tee shirt adorned with photos of Fidel Castro chatting with Malcolm (“By any means necessary”) X probably has no reservations about getting a Du Bois Medal, certainly not any more than that “Un-American” scholar and civil rights activist had about his 1959 International Lenin Prize.

The Castro regime may have been responsible for murdering anywhere from 35,000 to 141,000 souls (with a median of 73,000), but the enormity of Joseph Stalin’s reign exceeded Fidel’s by orders of magnitude: its unit of measure is “tens of millions.”

The breadth of Stalin’s mass murder, rivaled in the last century only by Hitler’s and Mao’s, could have been ascertained in 1953 by any competent researcher like Du Bois. Yet that was the year Du Bois penned a defense of Stalinism in the form of a eulogy upon the passing of Koba the Dread.

“Joseph Stalin,” Du Bois wrote, “was a great man; few other men of the 20th century approach his stature.”

Continue reading “Kaepernick’s Cachet”

In defense of Lord Acton

On the occasion of the birthday of the great liberal Catholic historian John Dalberg-Acton (1834-1902), I’m publishing not only links to earlier posts about him, but also a 2006 essay. The latter replies to an attack on Acton, one I’d call ignorant if its author weren’t a learned Catholic historian. Like my Christ, Capital & Liberty, whose chapters began as blog posts critical of another traditionalist Catholic, the arguments and evidence marshaled in my essay deserve more exposure than my old site can give them.

The links:

John C. Rao, Ph. D. [Oxon.], Associate Professor of History, Saint John’s University, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
“In Defense of Lord Acton” was written in January 2006 in response to “A Message from Bethlehem: Lord Acton Tends to Corrupt,” a smear of Acton as a “Gnostic” by Professor John C. Rao of St. John’s University. The Remnant, a traditionalist Catholic periodical, published Rao’s defamation of Acton on the last day of 2005. Its original title of my response was, “Do Illiberals Tend to Smear? Or Is It Just Professor Rao When It Comes to Lord Acton?” The editor not only didn’t publish it, but even after more than one query, wouldn’t even acknowledge receiving it.

In Defense of Lord Acton

The significance of the Incarnation of the Prince of Peace for society is always a timely topic, and never a more welcome one than at Christmastime. It is the motif of Professor John C. Rao’s vast historical studies, and I expected his recent column in The Remnant1 to add one more variation on that theme. He more than disappointed any such expectation by taking the occasion of the season to impute heresy-mongering, if not heresy itself, to Lord Acton, a man who regarded communion with the Church as dearer than life itself. That is, Professor Rao maligned a fellow member of his own profession, a towering figure in European historiography who participated in the unearthing of many official archives. And he did it not by examining any of Acton’s own words, but rather by repeatedly asserting what he “really” meant. Feeling glum2 cannot excuse such a lapse from the standards of controversy. Continue reading “In defense of Lord Acton”

Guest Blogger: Hugh Murray on Herbert Aptheker

Hugh Murray

As I noted in Herbert Aptheker: Studies in Willful Blindness (and elsewhere on this blog), I can trace my friendship with historian Hugh Murray to the early ‘70s, when we were Aptheker’s research assistants. His review appeared on Amazon last week, a first for the book. Below is the expanded version he posted on his own blog.

Henry Steele Commager, 1902-1998

I’ve appreciated his criticisms enough to share them with you. I especially want to know what you think of Hugh’s defense of Herbert Aptheker as an historian, an evaluation I questioned in the book. Henry Steele Commager, Hugh’s counterexample, ignored African American intellectuals in his monumental 1950 The American Mind: An Interpretation of American Thought and Character since the 1880s. Consequently, there’s no mention therein of Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois, Richard Wright or any of the creators of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.

Does this neglect disqualify Commager as an historian? Can Commager’s works be trusted despite that neglect? The doctoral advisor to Aptheker’s biographer told him to find another topic, for Aptheker’s works could not be trusted; the judge in David Irving’s libel trial adjudged that Irving’s could not. Since we cannot reasonably make knowing everything the precondition of knowing anything, Hugh argues, we have to live with the fact of bias. How much bias, however, and what kind crosses the line?

Anthony Flood

Herbert Aptheker’s Blindness as Historian—and Blindness Spreads

Hugh Murray

In his short book Mr. Flood has written an essential work for anyone interested in the many volumes of history written by Dr. Herbert Aptheker. The questions Flood raises, however, are not limited to Aptheker, but concern all historians and indeed all intellectuals who were members of the Communist Party USA (CP), and other Communist parties worldwide. The question simply put, “Can they be trusted?” Continue reading “Guest Blogger: Hugh Murray on Herbert Aptheker”

Book Launch: “Herbert Aptheker: Studies in Willful Blindness”

My first book went live on Amazon today. Its introduction and first chapter were originally blog posts, but the rest the book consists of essays published over the past five years. If you can help spread the word, please do. I’ll prepare a paperback version. I now append the book description.—Anthony Flood

Herbert Aptheker (1915-2003), a pioneering researcher in African-American slave revolts, was also an American Communist theoretician. Anthony Flood, who attended Aptheker’s lectures a half-century ago, became his research assistant, friend and comrade. Decades after Flood repudiated the comradeship, it dawned on him that Aptheker’s politics had blocked his research in his area of specialization: he failed to recognize The Black Jacobins, the work of C. L. R. James (1901-1989) that chronicled the only successful slave revolt in modern times. The failure was ideological.

In the course of investigating this silence, Flood discovered scholars who admired both writers, but never at the same time. Doing so would have forced them to address the uncomfortable truth that one of their heroes ignored the other. That is, the white radical scholar ignored the black radical scholar who was 14 years his senior. The only explanation, Flood contends, is that Aptheker, the Stalinist, could not bring himself to acknowledge the work of James, the Trotskyist.

There are other problems with Aptheker’s legacy, of course, such as his uncovering the truth about slavery in the Americas while covering it up in the Soviet Union and its satellites. The “dissing” of James, however, undermines his “anti-racism” reputation as well as his argument that “partisanship with the oppressed” makes objectivity in history writing possible. He was a partisan of too many oppressors. He eventually admitted his own “willful blindness” (his words), yet that didn’t stop him from defending, as late as 2000, The Truth about Hungary, his book-length apologia for the Soviet Union’s crushing of the 1956 Hungarian revolution.

Herbert Aptheker: Studies in Willful Blindness includes not only Flood’s essay on Aptheker and James, but also vignettes of his coming into Aptheker’s life as a high school student and that of Sidney Hook (Aptheker’s nemesis and Flood’s philosophy professor). Also included are a review of the first biography of Aptheker and an inquiry into Aptheker’s status as an historian. Appendices include Aptheker’s first essay (in The American Hebrew) and Flood’s first letter on Aptheker (in The Journal of American History).

Herbert Aptheker expressed the ethos of the American Communist Party in its heyday, an atmosphere that pervades “progressive” American politics today. If you want to look at his role in that “progression,” this monograph is a good place to start.

Once more on Romans 13: James Redford’s “Jesus Is an Anarchist”

As I have an interest in dislodging the sediment of encrusted theological opinion, today I post an excerpt from James Redford’s 2001 essay “Jesus Is an Anarchist,” the text of which is here: anti-state.com and revised and expanded in 2011. It complements Otis Q. Sellers’s situating of Romans 13:1-7 in the Acts dispensation, posted recently.—Anthony Flood

It is often claimed that Christians are required to submit to government, as this is supposedly what Paul commanded that we are supposed to do in Romans 13. Thus:

Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. For he is God’s minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil. Therefore you must be subject, not only because of wrath but also for conscience’ sake. For because of this you also pay taxes, for they are God’s ministers attending continually to this very thing. Render therefore to all their due: taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor. Romans 13:1-7

But in actual fact Paul never does tell us in above excerpt from Romans 13 to submit to government!—at least certainly not as they have existed on Earth and are operated by men.

In fact, Paul would be an outright, boldfaced hypocrite were he to command anyone to do such a thing: for Paul himself did not submit to government, and if he had then he would not even have been alive to be able to write Romans 13.

Continue reading “Once more on Romans 13: James Redford’s “Jesus Is an Anarchist””

Eric Voegelin on Romans 13

The following “Theoretical Inquiry into Romans 13” has been taken from Eric Voegelin, Hitler and the Germans, translated and edited by Detlev Clemens and Brendan Purcell, University of Missouri Press, 2003, 178-183. This is from a lecture Voegelin gave at the University of Munich in the summer of 1964. I have taken the liberty of breaking up long paragraphs. I’ll share another contrarian interpretation of Romans 13 next week.—Anthony G. Flood

Theoretical Inquiry into Romans 

Image result for Eric Voegelin, Hitler and the GermansAnd now, in concluding this investigation on the Evangelical side, a theoretical inquiry into Romans 13 for the Evangelical part, and then for the Catholic part an inquiry into the theological idea of the corpus mysticum Christi, so that the decadence I have repeatedly spoken of will come to light.

In all the documents, Evangelical and Catholic, with which those belonging to the communities were enjoined to obey Hitler, there are two texts from the Bible invoked by the clergy in order to command obedience to the authorities. Among the two, on the Catholic side, in the documents I will present to you next time, the fourth commandment is preferred. That commandment is “Honor your father and your mother.” This father and mother is now interpretatively expanded as “Honor the state, carry out its laws, obey the authorities!”

Please note that. Not a word of all that is in the fourth commandment—for the good historical reason that precisely in the covenant of Sinai, within which the Decalogue was announced, the people existed under God and not under authorities. There was no occasion for speaking about having to obey any kind of authorities at all. So it is unhistoric and anachronistic, and if such an alteration of an interpretative kind were made to a text in a secular context by a scholar, one would say: Absolutely barefaced falsification of the text!  When theologians do it, then it is the church.

Continue reading “Eric Voegelin on Romans 13”