I have been very uploading my CD library to my iTunes library. I had no idea I had so many Grateful Dead CDs. I have no "favorite" Dead song, but I think "Franklin's Tower" is one of those get down and dance, sing-along and shout songs. This performance, from 1980, captures this song better than most performances I have heard or seen.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Most Horrible Statement By An Elected Official
One would think that, even if you had a thought like this, a member of Congress would be intelligent enough to keep it to himself.
As John Hurt, playing the wandmaker Ollivander in the first Harry Potter movie, says: Apparently not.
Quite honestly, I cannot even begin to fathom such a mind.
As John Hurt, playing the wandmaker Ollivander in the first Harry Potter movie, says: Apparently not.
"It seems like humanity is very gifted at hiding from something that's obviously true. I mean in this country we had slavery for God knows how long. And now we look back on it and we say, 'Well how blind were they, what was the matter with them, you know, I can't believe, I mean four million, this is incredible,'" said Franks. "And we're right. We're right, we should look back on that with criticism. It is a crushing mark on America's soul. And yet today, half of all black children are aborted. Half of all black children are aborted. Far more black children, far more of the African-American community is being devastated by the policies of today, than were being devastated by the policies of slavery.
"And I think, what does it take to get us to wake up? Sometimes we're a little bit emphatic and sometimes we get angry and say things that we shouldn't say. And I apologize right here in front of everybody by saying things, especially if they're not true, that are intemperate. But I don't want to hide from the truth, I don't want to hide from being able to speak the truth intensely, with the hope that somehow it will resonate in the hearts of people who have the power to make a difference for the suffering of the innocent that are the victims of these bad policies."
Quite honestly, I cannot even begin to fathom such a mind.
The Third Transcendental
For what really is [Susan Sontag's] New Sensibility? Perhaps it is just an expanded sensibility, a richer and more generous definition of what “counts” as art: not a lowering of standards, but an expansion of candidates to be judged by the criteria specific to their mediums and movements. Moreover it is a willingness, or more accurately, an enthusiasm to contend with new aesthetics and new ideas.
Rachel Rosenfelt & Jennifer Bernstein, The New Inquiry
What is "beauty"? In classical (read Thomistic) metaphysics, it along with "truth" and "goodness" are known as "transcendentals", qualities that a thing possesses, inherent in and to them. Beauty is an "it", some thing to be explored.
Since Kant's critiques, however, this entire approach seems not just intellectually dubious but even kind of silly. Yet, we western folks, unable to rest easily with the reality that there are some things we can appreciate - painting and sculpture, music and architecture, photography and literature - without having to ask the question, "Why?", wrestle with the question, "What is art?"
The above epigram is from a rich essay at The New Inquiry, which mines two other, equally rich essays. The first, from Scott McLemee, is a marvelous appreciation for the work of Andy Warhol*. The second is a nearly-30 year old essay by George Scialabba on Susan Sontag. All three essays deal with the question, "What is art?" All three seem to conclude that it might, indeed, be some thing, a ding-an-sich that, like Nietzsche's disdainful definition ("I know not what"), that nevertheless defies any clear definition. Scott praises Warhol's mimesis, yet also cites without criticism a review of one of his early short films that calls Warhol out for nihilism. George praises Sontag for being provocative, for being daring, while also (it seems to me, at least) not pointing out the glaring discrepancy between his own, highly moral approach to understanding, and Sontag's insistence that aesthetics eschew a moral sensibility for something akin to ars gratia artis. The ladies at The New Inquiry suggest, in closing, that aesthetics is "wholly subjective".
While not wishing to disagree with four individuals who are not only far more intelligent, but far more articulate, than I could ever hope to be, I do want to take issue with this final notion. Indeed, I want to make the point that, if it is indeed true that our appreciation for beauty is nothing more than stapling our preferences upon the world (and here I can almost quote Feodor's comment on this post; being as I appreciate Rorty's approach to understanding the world which can be so described, a criticism based on a rejection of this way of understanding the world seems like a contradiction), then we should be clear that "criticism" as a cultural past time is moot.
Or, perhaps, we could say that both art and criticism are whatever we call art and criticism, after a lengthy, heated conversation in which participants come to some sort of conclusion as to the relative merit of applying those terms to specific forms (far more Rortyan here, I think).
An example. A recent commenter insists that Andres Soranno's provocative photograph "Piss Christ" has no artistic value. I, in turn, believe it does, albeit an adolescent one. Without desiring to denigrate this commenter, I must ask, "OK, what are your criterion for deciding what is, and what is not, art?" Is it, as you say, something you know when you encounter it? If that's the case, there must be some sort of criteria, unarticulated yet coherent enough to provide a basis for an aesthetic judgment, that you apply when you encounter something.
My point in all this is quite simple: Determining something as difficult to grasp, collectively, as beauty should be a case-study in Rortyan social conversation. We should agree that there might just be things in the world - films and books, paintings and buildings, music and photographs - to which we can apply that word and not rob it of any meaning. After at least reaching that agreement, which does not include any preconceptions about "high" versus "pop", "moral" or "immoral", "sublime" and "horrific", perhaps we can understand that criticism might just be a necessary first step in redefining, at each instance, what that word means for us as a society. In this sense, at least, we can move beyond tired and unintelligible discussions about subjective versus objective, moral and immoral, and restore to beauty something akin to its prior place as something transcendent.
*This single essay has completely changed my mind about Warhol. Thanks, Scott.
Prayers For Chile
Oh dear. While Chilean society has the infrastructure to deal with this crisis that Haiti does not, they will still be in dire need.
Plus, that's one big quake.
Plus, that's one big quake.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
An Open Invitation
I am going to attempt an experiment. I know Alan won't see the point of it; to be honest, it may not be fruitful. Yet, in an attempt at fairness (whatever that may mean), I am going to try it. I am going to post invites for some folks to address a simple question. Their answers will be allowed, without rebuttal (as far as that is possible). I want to offer a completely open forum for the airing of opinions here without getting in to any kind of argument, hurt feelings, etc.
The question is this:
Conservatives argue that Pres. Obama is a socialist. Since actual socialists have been pretty critical of his Presidency, how would you support the argument that he is, in fact, a socialist?
The question is this:
Conservatives argue that Pres. Obama is a socialist. Since actual socialists have been pretty critical of his Presidency, how would you support the argument that he is, in fact, a socialist?
He Had No Staff
Disgraced former House Speaker Newt Gingrich:
So . . .
He manages to insult thousands of hard-working public servants, including members of his former office staff.
Except, considering Gingrich's history of evasion of something resembling contact with facts, it might just be he didn't have a staff to keep him up from putting his foot in his mouth.
That would explain a lot.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said yesterday that many Capitol Hill staffers have never worked at a real job. “Of course it’s the nature of the modern Congress, which hires lots of nice young staffers who have never had a real job,” said Gingrich. He added that they “spent their entire life being arrogant to visitors from back home” and “write legislation as though they have some contact with reality.”
So . . .
He manages to insult thousands of hard-working public servants, including members of his former office staff.
Except, considering Gingrich's history of evasion of something resembling contact with facts, it might just be he didn't have a staff to keep him up from putting his foot in his mouth.
That would explain a lot.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
All That's Missing Is The Thorazine
For some reason, some folks are up in arms about the CPAC Conference.
Me, I thought it was all the result of deinstitutionalization.
Lucky there weren't too many squirrels about, because they would have feasted on the nuts.
Me, I thought it was all the result of deinstitutionalization.
Lucky there weren't too many squirrels about, because they would have feasted on the nuts.
Religious Belief
A website to which I have been recently introduced is hosting a discussion forum on conservative thought, on February 27th, in Brooklyn. They will be considering conservative thought in several social and cultural areas, including religion (dear to my own heart). One of the readings they offer is a 1982 review article by George Scialabba, considering works by Kolakowski, MacIntyre, and Rorty.
In the article, Scialabba makes the typical modernist argument, not the least of whose highlights is the repeated assertion that with the arrival of the modernist project - the Enlightenment, Romanticism, the various 20th century responses to these movements - the intellectual assent to religious propositions, and therefore religious "belief" considered as intellectual assent to a set of such propositions, is now untenable. This may or may not be the case; while the French philosophes certainly were not concerned with upholding religious belief, many of the great Enlightenment thinkers (with the possible exception of Hume) certainly included religion within their sphere of interest. Locke, Hobbes, Kant, Hegel - all wrote extensively on "religion", which for them meant Christianity. Of course, Hegel considered other religions, although he thought of Christianity as the highest form of religious belief (in this vein, the Romanticist theologian Schleiermacher did as well; while they politely detested one another, they shared this at least).
Yet, few social movements have failed to die as easily as religion should have.
My question is quite simple - if religious belief should have ended when the intellectual superstructure underlying it became untenable, why didn't it? Could it be, perhaps, that, like Christmas Day for the Who's in How the Grinch Stole Christmas, religious belief is something a little bit more than the ex post facto intellectual justifications for it?
In the article, Scialabba makes the typical modernist argument, not the least of whose highlights is the repeated assertion that with the arrival of the modernist project - the Enlightenment, Romanticism, the various 20th century responses to these movements - the intellectual assent to religious propositions, and therefore religious "belief" considered as intellectual assent to a set of such propositions, is now untenable. This may or may not be the case; while the French philosophes certainly were not concerned with upholding religious belief, many of the great Enlightenment thinkers (with the possible exception of Hume) certainly included religion within their sphere of interest. Locke, Hobbes, Kant, Hegel - all wrote extensively on "religion", which for them meant Christianity. Of course, Hegel considered other religions, although he thought of Christianity as the highest form of religious belief (in this vein, the Romanticist theologian Schleiermacher did as well; while they politely detested one another, they shared this at least).
Yet, few social movements have failed to die as easily as religion should have.
My question is quite simple - if religious belief should have ended when the intellectual superstructure underlying it became untenable, why didn't it? Could it be, perhaps, that, like Christmas Day for the Who's in How the Grinch Stole Christmas, religious belief is something a little bit more than the ex post facto intellectual justifications for it?
Monday, February 22, 2010
Experiment In Liberty
A book review in The New York Times considers Timothy Ferris' new book.
No real deep thoughts, just wondering if the caveat at the end of the review article is more a contemporary development, unrelated to the origins of both.
No real deep thoughts, just wondering if the caveat at the end of the review article is more a contemporary development, unrelated to the origins of both.
Music For Your Monday
I heard a week or two ago that an archive of Soul Train has been digitally remastered and is being released in multi-disc format. I spent many Saturday afternoons as a kid watching Don Cornelius and the Dance Line, listening to some of the best 70's soul and funk. It was one of the best musical educations I received.
First, the kings of the Philly sound (where Cornelius' show originated), the O'Jays with "Backstabbers"
Wow, I had forgotten about The S.O.S. Band! Here they are with "Take Your Time".
I love this next song. Much better than the stupid remake of it by Simply Red. This is Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes, "If You Don't Know Me By Now":
First, the kings of the Philly sound (where Cornelius' show originated), the O'Jays with "Backstabbers"
Wow, I had forgotten about The S.O.S. Band! Here they are with "Take Your Time".
I love this next song. Much better than the stupid remake of it by Simply Red. This is Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes, "If You Don't Know Me By Now":
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Blogging In A Time Without Crisis
Along with Delumeau's sprawling history of the idea of sin, I am also reading Simon Schama's equally ambitious Citizens (must be a French phase; hope it doesn't last too long). One of Schama's arguments is that the Revolution developed, in part, because of a sense of crisis over the nation's finances. Various royal ministers during the reign of Louis XVI attempted to deal with national debt without any consistency; indeed, subsequent ministerial cohorts would repudiate the policies of their predecessors. By the time the Estates-General was called, there was a sense of crisis among the people that was not necessarily shared by various crown ministers. The disjunction seemed to be that the King's ministers, regardless of policy preference, believed the red ink could be rid through various policies. The newly politicized bourgeois and their representatives in the E-G, however, did not so believe. Eventually, this divide became too great to sustain the regime as it had existed.
The unanswered question, of course, is was the national debt a crisis? It obviously became one; whether or not the flow of money from the government could be stopped through a stern application of political will cannot be answered because, quite simply, politics had ceased to function at the end of the ancien regime. No one was willing to make the crucial decisions, the unpopular decisions necessary to set the ship of state aright. Even the Revolution, as it developed, didn't deal specifically with the financial quagmire; rather, it treated it as symptomatic of institutional problems that could only be solved through the steady and progressive abolition of various older governmental forms.
The years of Republican governance were years of governance by crisis management. Every event, every public pronouncement, every piece of legislation - it all seemed to relate to some pending horrid national nightmare. Even the pre-9/11 Bush Administration treated something as relatively inconsequential as embryonic stem-cell research as something akin to a crisis. The problem, of course, is the past decade really saw few crises. The September 11th attacks, whatever else they signified, were not a crisis. An event of significant national import to be sure. Not an event necessitating a radical shift in our entire national life, however.
Part of the problem that comes with seeing events, big and small, as crises is there is no sense of perspective. Crisis management is a kind of administrative skill, really only necessary to oversee the unfolding of events with a coolness and clear-headedness that, for all their vaunted and alleged skills, the Republicans and Bush Administration officials seemed to lack. Tossing about on the winds of crisis is no way to exist, let alone govern.
The Obama Administration's outstanding virtue is its refusal to bow to pressure to view governance as crisis management. The Republican opposition, and their currently most vocal constituency, the Tea Baggers, are dedicated to crisis. Their view, not only of our current economic, social, and cultural predicament, but the Administration of Barack Obama is one of on-going crisis. The nation is in peril. Our country is facing the destruction of its most treasured values. The Constitution is in peril. Obama is a socialist bent on overturning our capitalist system. He's coming after our guns, our money, our fetuses.
Unlike the historical example of the French at the time of the Revolution, I think this gap between the perceptions of the governing class and a vocal constituency of the state is not one that could lead to trouble. For one reason, the Tea Baggers just aren't that numerous. For all the noise they make, and for all the press and Republicans dote upon them, they really have no power other than attracting attention. For another reason, while there might be good reason to see our various economic woes as a set of crises to be addressed more forcefully than the President and his advisers have up until now, the never-ending stream of crises under George W. Bush has made us a little numb to the call for solidarity in the face of impending doom. We elected Barack Obama in part, I think, precisely because he has a cool, detached demeanor. He presents himself as someone who understand that we face "problems", not "crises". Furthermore, he presents himself as someone with the competence to address these "problems" without resorting to overheated rhetoric.
While this makes for a more calm approach to federal governance, it makes blogging a little boring. In 2007, there was an abundant supply of Bush Administration folks saying and doing stuff that was just outrageous. Now, out of power, these same folks continue to say outrageous stuff, but it only seems to impact a bunch of liberal bloggers who think it actually means something. Rather than the daily outrage, we have the long slog of the health care reform debate; the impending financial reform and regulation debate; and, one hopes sometime soon, a serious discussion of cap-and-trade legislation. This is government-in-normal-time that seems so unfamiliar precisely because we have become inured to so many voices in positions of authority demanding attention to this or that national crisis.
It's kind of nice, actually.
The unanswered question, of course, is was the national debt a crisis? It obviously became one; whether or not the flow of money from the government could be stopped through a stern application of political will cannot be answered because, quite simply, politics had ceased to function at the end of the ancien regime. No one was willing to make the crucial decisions, the unpopular decisions necessary to set the ship of state aright. Even the Revolution, as it developed, didn't deal specifically with the financial quagmire; rather, it treated it as symptomatic of institutional problems that could only be solved through the steady and progressive abolition of various older governmental forms.
The years of Republican governance were years of governance by crisis management. Every event, every public pronouncement, every piece of legislation - it all seemed to relate to some pending horrid national nightmare. Even the pre-9/11 Bush Administration treated something as relatively inconsequential as embryonic stem-cell research as something akin to a crisis. The problem, of course, is the past decade really saw few crises. The September 11th attacks, whatever else they signified, were not a crisis. An event of significant national import to be sure. Not an event necessitating a radical shift in our entire national life, however.
Part of the problem that comes with seeing events, big and small, as crises is there is no sense of perspective. Crisis management is a kind of administrative skill, really only necessary to oversee the unfolding of events with a coolness and clear-headedness that, for all their vaunted and alleged skills, the Republicans and Bush Administration officials seemed to lack. Tossing about on the winds of crisis is no way to exist, let alone govern.
The Obama Administration's outstanding virtue is its refusal to bow to pressure to view governance as crisis management. The Republican opposition, and their currently most vocal constituency, the Tea Baggers, are dedicated to crisis. Their view, not only of our current economic, social, and cultural predicament, but the Administration of Barack Obama is one of on-going crisis. The nation is in peril. Our country is facing the destruction of its most treasured values. The Constitution is in peril. Obama is a socialist bent on overturning our capitalist system. He's coming after our guns, our money, our fetuses.
Unlike the historical example of the French at the time of the Revolution, I think this gap between the perceptions of the governing class and a vocal constituency of the state is not one that could lead to trouble. For one reason, the Tea Baggers just aren't that numerous. For all the noise they make, and for all the press and Republicans dote upon them, they really have no power other than attracting attention. For another reason, while there might be good reason to see our various economic woes as a set of crises to be addressed more forcefully than the President and his advisers have up until now, the never-ending stream of crises under George W. Bush has made us a little numb to the call for solidarity in the face of impending doom. We elected Barack Obama in part, I think, precisely because he has a cool, detached demeanor. He presents himself as someone who understand that we face "problems", not "crises". Furthermore, he presents himself as someone with the competence to address these "problems" without resorting to overheated rhetoric.
While this makes for a more calm approach to federal governance, it makes blogging a little boring. In 2007, there was an abundant supply of Bush Administration folks saying and doing stuff that was just outrageous. Now, out of power, these same folks continue to say outrageous stuff, but it only seems to impact a bunch of liberal bloggers who think it actually means something. Rather than the daily outrage, we have the long slog of the health care reform debate; the impending financial reform and regulation debate; and, one hopes sometime soon, a serious discussion of cap-and-trade legislation. This is government-in-normal-time that seems so unfamiliar precisely because we have become inured to so many voices in positions of authority demanding attention to this or that national crisis.
It's kind of nice, actually.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
They Hurt My Feelings
OK, not really.
As usual, my position is not offered correctly. The "facts" of the matter regarding the attempted kidnapping of some Haitian children by some Baptist "missionaries" became darker and darker; if I had to guess - which, with the few verified and verifiable facts available is all I can do - I would say that these well-meaning but misguided individuals were being used by persons with nefarious purposes. A bad plot to a bad book (soon to be a movie in a theater near you, directed by Michael Bay!), to be sure, but no less a possibility for all that.
Craig's "facts" such as they are, ignore my central contention that taking children from one country - regardless of the underlying desire of those who are doing it - is a crime. Had these people managed to fill out the paperwork, and to make arrangements with the Dominican authorities to cross the border, and made proper contacts with American consular officials in Dominica, we might never be aware that there was something less than noble occurring. I, for one, am grateful that these folks were stupid enough to think they could get away with this; I applaud the Haitian legal system for retrieving some of their own from the clutches of missionaries who believe they have the right and duty to steal people from one country and take them to another.
The whole episode stinks.
As usual, my position is not offered correctly. The "facts" of the matter regarding the attempted kidnapping of some Haitian children by some Baptist "missionaries" became darker and darker; if I had to guess - which, with the few verified and verifiable facts available is all I can do - I would say that these well-meaning but misguided individuals were being used by persons with nefarious purposes. A bad plot to a bad book (soon to be a movie in a theater near you, directed by Michael Bay!), to be sure, but no less a possibility for all that.
Craig's "facts" such as they are, ignore my central contention that taking children from one country - regardless of the underlying desire of those who are doing it - is a crime. Had these people managed to fill out the paperwork, and to make arrangements with the Dominican authorities to cross the border, and made proper contacts with American consular officials in Dominica, we might never be aware that there was something less than noble occurring. I, for one, am grateful that these folks were stupid enough to think they could get away with this; I applaud the Haitian legal system for retrieving some of their own from the clutches of missionaries who believe they have the right and duty to steal people from one country and take them to another.
The whole episode stinks.
Reading For Pleasure
I have been introduced to The New Inquiry and this post, right off the bat, manages to capture my attention.
The best literature contains multitudes. There are political dimensions, social dimensions, psychological dimensions, and, yes, narrative dimensions that exist purely for their own sake. I am not one to impugn anyone's reading habits; even the most dreadful works of writing offer to their readers something, a moment's escape, a way to investigate the lives of others. Those works, The Life of Pi, One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera, and A Suitable Boy that present whole worlds, characters that are more than mere sketches on paper, and even (as in the dense Pi) ideas and thoughts that linger long after the final paragraph is finished reward repeated visits.
The idea that there is some kind of inherent "conflict" between the "moral" and the "aesthetic" is a product, it seems to me, of a vision of art in general as existing in some pristine netherworld, divorced from life. While I have no issue with anyone who chooses to read purely for the aesthetic pleasure reading can bring, I find it a highly dubious notion that there can even be such a thing as "immoral art" (or even "moral art" for that matter). Do the stories and plays of the Marquis de Sade make up the former? In what way? Is "Billy Budd", Melville's "lost story" that many high school students read with relish, something of this sort as well?
Is "Piss Christ" immoral? What about The Last Temptation of Christ, in either book or film? I fail to see how such a verdict - it's immoral! - works in any of these cases, even the extreme one of the pornographic stories of the Marquis. Morality is the tale we tell ourselves of how wonderful our ideas are; we tend to read those stories, observe that art, and such not, that reinforce our own sense of ourselves as "moral" agents, and judge that which we do not take in as not satisfying whatever criteria we have set up to meet the standard of "morality".
So, the author of this piece eschews the moral dimension for some kind of pure aesthetics. Good for him. Sometimes, reading something for the pure joy of encountering those beautiful bits of prose or poetry for their own sake can indeed be a joy. To claim, however, that literature enjoys some kind of Platonic sphere, removed from the conditions that drove authors to create it, makes of it something artificial, even inhuman.
I immediately recognized myself in this passage, as someone who tends not to care what most people read, who thinks poorly of the common reader, and who doesn’t think literature can or should be justified morally—who prizes aesthetic over moral concerns any day of the week. The third habit is the one I struggle with especially. I tend to believe that literature exists solely for the pleasure of those who read and write it, and that claims that literature does moral good in society invariably rely on dubious logic.
--snip--
I balked and continue to balk at the implication that literature must be justified morally. Unlike Trilling, I believe that there are irreconcilable conflicts between ethics and aesthetics. What about great art that is amoral or perversely immoral? (For example, art that valorizes the anti-social impulses Freud considered in constant conflict with the positive, social ones, and which Camille Paglia explores magnificently in Sexual Personae.) Is that art (if you believe art has a significant impact upon society) a detriment to society? Should we eschew such art? Should artists ever privilege moral concerns over aesthetic ones when they create art? My answers to these questions tend to fall on the side of the aesthetic, not least because I don’t think we can determine the moral content of all impulses (sexual and violent impulses are particularly ambiguous).
The best literature contains multitudes. There are political dimensions, social dimensions, psychological dimensions, and, yes, narrative dimensions that exist purely for their own sake. I am not one to impugn anyone's reading habits; even the most dreadful works of writing offer to their readers something, a moment's escape, a way to investigate the lives of others. Those works, The Life of Pi, One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera, and A Suitable Boy that present whole worlds, characters that are more than mere sketches on paper, and even (as in the dense Pi) ideas and thoughts that linger long after the final paragraph is finished reward repeated visits.
The idea that there is some kind of inherent "conflict" between the "moral" and the "aesthetic" is a product, it seems to me, of a vision of art in general as existing in some pristine netherworld, divorced from life. While I have no issue with anyone who chooses to read purely for the aesthetic pleasure reading can bring, I find it a highly dubious notion that there can even be such a thing as "immoral art" (or even "moral art" for that matter). Do the stories and plays of the Marquis de Sade make up the former? In what way? Is "Billy Budd", Melville's "lost story" that many high school students read with relish, something of this sort as well?
Is "Piss Christ" immoral? What about The Last Temptation of Christ, in either book or film? I fail to see how such a verdict - it's immoral! - works in any of these cases, even the extreme one of the pornographic stories of the Marquis. Morality is the tale we tell ourselves of how wonderful our ideas are; we tend to read those stories, observe that art, and such not, that reinforce our own sense of ourselves as "moral" agents, and judge that which we do not take in as not satisfying whatever criteria we have set up to meet the standard of "morality".
So, the author of this piece eschews the moral dimension for some kind of pure aesthetics. Good for him. Sometimes, reading something for the pure joy of encountering those beautiful bits of prose or poetry for their own sake can indeed be a joy. To claim, however, that literature enjoys some kind of Platonic sphere, removed from the conditions that drove authors to create it, makes of it something artificial, even inhuman.
Speaking Of Competing Narratives
This post asks a good question. I wonder if our resident Haiti-expert, Craig, can tell us, exactly, who is right.
Taking Stock Of Our Heritage
Scott McLemee provided a link to this article from Inside Higher Ed. A general defense of an "intellectual history" approach to teaching Christianity in a secular institution, the article offers its best points, I think, toward the end.
The stock of ideas that make up our cultural inheritance includes a hefty amount of Christian ones. A university education that seeks to make its students not only more informed, but better critical thinkers, should definitely include these ideas. Setting them out honestly, which includes being critical of them, makes these young men and women more aware of what it means to be children of the western cultural tradition.
I would add that many survey classes in western thought could benefit from a more rounded approach. For example, teaching Descartes as the first "modern" thinker (his Meditations and Discourse on Method are usually the first texts read in a class on "modern philosophy" could benefit from making clear that such a designation is arbitrary; Descartes himself would have no idea what it would mean) includes the caveat that he saw himself as providing a better approach to talking about God and a better metaphysics than the Scholastics. Teaching Hegel without any reference to the impact of the Napoleonic Wars misses the reality that he lived, as the old saw had it, in interesting times, and was reacting to them. Far too often "intellectual history" that fails to set ideas firmly within the larger milieu in which they are articulated makes of them a "thing", free-floating, inhuman, rather than all-too-human responses to a received heritage in a particular political, social, and cultural setting. We can adopt the thought, for example, of Plato (one of my fellow students at Catholic University of America considered himself a thoroughgoing Platonist), but we should do so only with the understanding that Plato was an Athenian living two and a half millennia ago; he was responding as much to his time and place as any one.
As Charles Taylor makes abundantly clear, the past few hundred years of western intellectual life includes not only Christian theology and thought; it also includes countervailing ideas that pushed Christian thought further and further from its pride of place. I think any class on the history of Christian thought should also include this reality as well.
The complexity of the intellectual inheritance of we children of the west should, given even a passing glance via a survey class, provide the opportunity to understand that the narratives we often choose are only partial and artificial. That doesn't mean they cannot inform our lives. It only means that we should always be aware that we should never lay claim to any cultural narrative, be it Christian, Jewish, or secular, without an awareness that it is not the sum total of the meaning of what it means to be fully human.
Offering a class such as the one outlined and defended in this article would go a long way toward more fully presenting our cultural inheritance and giving young men and women tools with which to be more honestly children of the west.
[I]t’s not my business what my students do with the knowledge and skills I give them, least of all when it comes to their own spiritual lives or lack thereof. What is my business is giving them the tools they need to take stock of the cultural inheritance that has, for better or worse, been forced on us all, in different ways and to varying degrees, and to open the door for them to consciously and creatively reappropriate elements of that inheritance if they choose or else articulate their reasons for rejecting it entirely. To my mind, such a goal is not only compatible with liberal education, but it is at the very core of what we try to do in the humanities: to help our students come to the point of making their own critical and informed judgments about their stance toward their cultural inheritance, or put differently, to be active rather than passive in their relationship to culture.
I understand that for many, dealing with the Christian aspect of our cultural heritage may be too emotionally charged for a variety of reasons, either because of traumas associated with religion or else because of the fear of "losing one’s faith" through critical investigation. I am very conscious of that reality, and for that reason I would never propose making a course in theology a general education requirement at a secular institution and would in fact fight against any such proposal. Yet even if we can choose to avoid a class on Christian thought, none of us can choose not to have been born into a culture that has been deeply informed by Christianity. There are very good reasons to wish we had not been chosen for this particular inheritance, reasons that should be obvious to us all. Nevertheless, we owe it to ourselves to at least take an inventory. That’s how I view my teaching of the Christian tradition — helping my students to take an inventory. They can’t go back in time and decide not to have received some form of Christian inheritance, in all the varied ways they have received it, but I would hope that after taking my class they are in a better position to decide what to do with it.
The stock of ideas that make up our cultural inheritance includes a hefty amount of Christian ones. A university education that seeks to make its students not only more informed, but better critical thinkers, should definitely include these ideas. Setting them out honestly, which includes being critical of them, makes these young men and women more aware of what it means to be children of the western cultural tradition.
I would add that many survey classes in western thought could benefit from a more rounded approach. For example, teaching Descartes as the first "modern" thinker (his Meditations and Discourse on Method are usually the first texts read in a class on "modern philosophy" could benefit from making clear that such a designation is arbitrary; Descartes himself would have no idea what it would mean) includes the caveat that he saw himself as providing a better approach to talking about God and a better metaphysics than the Scholastics. Teaching Hegel without any reference to the impact of the Napoleonic Wars misses the reality that he lived, as the old saw had it, in interesting times, and was reacting to them. Far too often "intellectual history" that fails to set ideas firmly within the larger milieu in which they are articulated makes of them a "thing", free-floating, inhuman, rather than all-too-human responses to a received heritage in a particular political, social, and cultural setting. We can adopt the thought, for example, of Plato (one of my fellow students at Catholic University of America considered himself a thoroughgoing Platonist), but we should do so only with the understanding that Plato was an Athenian living two and a half millennia ago; he was responding as much to his time and place as any one.
As Charles Taylor makes abundantly clear, the past few hundred years of western intellectual life includes not only Christian theology and thought; it also includes countervailing ideas that pushed Christian thought further and further from its pride of place. I think any class on the history of Christian thought should also include this reality as well.
The complexity of the intellectual inheritance of we children of the west should, given even a passing glance via a survey class, provide the opportunity to understand that the narratives we often choose are only partial and artificial. That doesn't mean they cannot inform our lives. It only means that we should always be aware that we should never lay claim to any cultural narrative, be it Christian, Jewish, or secular, without an awareness that it is not the sum total of the meaning of what it means to be fully human.
Offering a class such as the one outlined and defended in this article would go a long way toward more fully presenting our cultural inheritance and giving young men and women tools with which to be more honestly children of the west.
Saturday Rock Show
From Fear of a Blank Planet, one of those enigmatic songs, maybe about running away, maybe about contemplating suicide, but definitely about escaping from the terror of existence. Enjoyed seeing and hearing this life last August. This video played above and behind them.
What an awesome band. . .
What an awesome band. . .
Friday, February 19, 2010
The Nightfly?
In August, 2008, someone asked McCain and Obama for their favorite songs.
Apparently, the Pope doesn't want to be outdone.
The picks range from the conventional - Revolver is number one - to the surprising - Dark Side of the Moon is number two - to what can only be called odd.
Don't know what else to make of this.
Apparently, the Pope doesn't want to be outdone.
The picks range from the conventional - Revolver is number one - to the surprising - Dark Side of the Moon is number two - to what can only be called odd.
Don't know what else to make of this.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
One Door Closes, Another Door Opens
Probably won't finish until tomorrow. But, need to start.
This thread, as quite a few do, gets interesting.
In order to honor ER's plea, I am shifting attention here, if for no other reason that I think Feodor's rather childish non-response response to the on-going discussion deserves an honest reply.
First, as a general rule, rage at God is neither new nor interesting, at least to me. The desire for a recognition of our common humanity, for the suffering caused in large measure by our own greed and lack of care for our fellow human beings is one I certainly share.
Yet, I cannot but think that "a pox on all your houses because you're not as angry as I am" is only a childish ranting at the silence of history and universe in the face of the real desire for us to acknowledge that we cause the innocent to die.
At what point does a recognition that we all share in a responsibility for the lives of our fellow human beings become a substitute for acting to change that? At what point do we surrender the explicit necessity to make the world a little more just, a little more humane, for the satisfaction of being right?
I have no need to justify my faith, my actions, or my words, before Feodor's tribunal of self-proclaimed prophetic utterance. His remarks are, for the most part, banal and trivial. His concerns, on the other hand are not.
He offered the silence of God in the face of humanity's propensity for profound evil as a challenge to the proclamation that God speaks. God is silent. God is speaking. It is never either/or. It is always both/and. The world will not, does not, and cannot alter its course because we stand over the broken bodies of our children, our parents, our brothers and sisters - even those we will never meet - and scream out our rage to the silence around us. That shriek certainly satisfies our refusal to take it lying down; stopping there, though, is petulance.
Which is why Wiesel, for all his profundity, does not satisfy. Ditto Richard Rubenstein, Richard Dawkins, or Feodor. Petulance is unbecoming. As a professor of mine in college remarked, shit or get off the pot. More than anything else, that sums up my approach to the Christian faith. Either get in the game, or get out of it; kibitzing from the sidelines about how we're all wrong, about how we are all missing the point, about our own faults and failures, is a distraction.
The suffering of today's unfortunates is no different in kind from the sufferings of millions over the course of human history. Misery has been the lot of the vast majority of human beings. So has God's love for them even in the midst of that misery. Occasionally, that love was brought to life in a parish priest offering the sacrament, or some folks offering bread or soup. Even a radical who demanded that the entire order be reset to end that misery. Since time hasn't stopped, history marches on, and human beings are imperfect and as bound to hate as to love, the question of suffering will go on. The answer, as far as my very limited abilities and vision can tell, is that love is stronger than death. It may not be much.
It may, though, be just about everything.
This thread, as quite a few do, gets interesting.
In order to honor ER's plea, I am shifting attention here, if for no other reason that I think Feodor's rather childish non-response response to the on-going discussion deserves an honest reply.
First, as a general rule, rage at God is neither new nor interesting, at least to me. The desire for a recognition of our common humanity, for the suffering caused in large measure by our own greed and lack of care for our fellow human beings is one I certainly share.
Yet, I cannot but think that "a pox on all your houses because you're not as angry as I am" is only a childish ranting at the silence of history and universe in the face of the real desire for us to acknowledge that we cause the innocent to die.
At what point does a recognition that we all share in a responsibility for the lives of our fellow human beings become a substitute for acting to change that? At what point do we surrender the explicit necessity to make the world a little more just, a little more humane, for the satisfaction of being right?
I have no need to justify my faith, my actions, or my words, before Feodor's tribunal of self-proclaimed prophetic utterance. His remarks are, for the most part, banal and trivial. His concerns, on the other hand are not.
He offered the silence of God in the face of humanity's propensity for profound evil as a challenge to the proclamation that God speaks. God is silent. God is speaking. It is never either/or. It is always both/and. The world will not, does not, and cannot alter its course because we stand over the broken bodies of our children, our parents, our brothers and sisters - even those we will never meet - and scream out our rage to the silence around us. That shriek certainly satisfies our refusal to take it lying down; stopping there, though, is petulance.
Which is why Wiesel, for all his profundity, does not satisfy. Ditto Richard Rubenstein, Richard Dawkins, or Feodor. Petulance is unbecoming. As a professor of mine in college remarked, shit or get off the pot. More than anything else, that sums up my approach to the Christian faith. Either get in the game, or get out of it; kibitzing from the sidelines about how we're all wrong, about how we are all missing the point, about our own faults and failures, is a distraction.
The suffering of today's unfortunates is no different in kind from the sufferings of millions over the course of human history. Misery has been the lot of the vast majority of human beings. So has God's love for them even in the midst of that misery. Occasionally, that love was brought to life in a parish priest offering the sacrament, or some folks offering bread or soup. Even a radical who demanded that the entire order be reset to end that misery. Since time hasn't stopped, history marches on, and human beings are imperfect and as bound to hate as to love, the question of suffering will go on. The answer, as far as my very limited abilities and vision can tell, is that love is stronger than death. It may not be much.
It may, though, be just about everything.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
The "Not-Mount-Vernon-But-They-Still-Owned-Slaves-So-It's-All-Good" Statement
It's always fun to read conservatives talk about the Constitution. Especially Ed Meese, who violated it more times than most conservatives can count (unless they aren't wearing shoes and have a couple vestigial toes; then they might be close).
A couple things about this "statement". One bullet point toward the end reads:
I guess I missed that part every time I read where the Founders wrote that Congress has the power to regulate commerce. Apparently, they meant "regulate by not regulating" which is a bit like going to war for peace.
The nice thing about being a conservative is you are able to destroy the country and never have to apologize for it. It's always someone else's fault, especially if they are liberal, the first black President, and have an African surname. And besides, everything would have been fine if the American people didn't notice how much they hated George W. Bush.
A couple things about this "statement". One bullet point toward the end reads:
* It encourages free enterprise, the individual entrepreneur, and economic reforms grounded in market solutions.
I guess I missed that part every time I read where the Founders wrote that Congress has the power to regulate commerce. Apparently, they meant "regulate by not regulating" which is a bit like going to war for peace.
The nice thing about being a conservative is you are able to destroy the country and never have to apologize for it. It's always someone else's fault, especially if they are liberal, the first black President, and have an African surname. And besides, everything would have been fine if the American people didn't notice how much they hated George W. Bush.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Not The God We Think
The advent of the so-called "new atheists" a few years back - Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, with the late addition of long-time religion-basher Christopher Hitchens and now, it seems, philosopher Donald Dennet - was an occasion for much garment-rending, attempts to "prove" them wrong. There is, in fact, a cottage industry among conservative Christian publishing houses that continues to pour out volumes taking their arguments to task.
I kind of miss them. Especially Harris. Talk about low-hanging fruit. Dawkins, however, isn't much better, really. His major work on religion, The God Delusion, was only the opening salvo in what he understood to be the on-going project of completely destroying religion from human life.
Good luck with that.
I honestly am not fazed by atheists. Arguing with them tends to be futile; as the "arguments" (such as they may or may not be) in both Dawkins and Harris show pretty clearly, what they insist Christianity is, and what all Christians in all times and places think and do, bears no resemblance to anything resembling the complexity and contradictory nature of Christian life and belief. Their "defense" - that Christian theology is intellectually untenable fluff, beneath their notice - is a dodge. Reveling in a self-imposed ignorance, they blithely insist they have the scoop on "religion", when they prove, over the course of thousands of words, they are as ignorant as fence posts. Taking them seriously is really not worth my time.
As I remarked last week, if we are to be clear about who this God is we Christians claim to encounter in Jesus Christ, we need to think in a Trinitarian way. While it is true it is difficult to find specific references to the doctrine in the Bible, the Trinity is a good way of talking very specifically about this particular God, how this particular God has chosen to encounter us.
This is the crux of my complaint about much of the "atheism". Whether it's Dawkins' claim to have given a definitive definition of "God" and gone on to "prove" the impossibility of that God's existence, or the kind of general rejection of the "sky fairy", most of this babble has little to do with the God whom Jesus Christ calls "Father", and whom we encounter through the power of the Holy Spirit.
In other words, most of the arguments of the "new atheists" are nothing more than a bunch of people who don't know what they're talking about insisting they know more than anyone else how people think, and telling them that what they think is wrong. My response is, no, we don't think about God that way, because in the first and last instance, God isn't some "thing" about which we "think", but the reality we encounter as a people called out by Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. Ours is not the God we think; ours is the living God who in turn gives life.
In the first and last instance, this is my own doctrine of God. This is why the Trinity is necessary to understanding who we are as Christians. Ours is not some posited universal Idea; ours is this very specific God who has done very specific things in the past; is continuing to do them even now; and will do them in to the future. We believe these things - we don't "know" them; knowledge is such a tenuous thing in any case; belief shapes who we are far more than something as mundane as "knowledge" - because this particular God has moved among us in very specific ways.
I know of no way of starting to say who God is other than this way.
I kind of miss them. Especially Harris. Talk about low-hanging fruit. Dawkins, however, isn't much better, really. His major work on religion, The God Delusion, was only the opening salvo in what he understood to be the on-going project of completely destroying religion from human life.
Good luck with that.
I honestly am not fazed by atheists. Arguing with them tends to be futile; as the "arguments" (such as they may or may not be) in both Dawkins and Harris show pretty clearly, what they insist Christianity is, and what all Christians in all times and places think and do, bears no resemblance to anything resembling the complexity and contradictory nature of Christian life and belief. Their "defense" - that Christian theology is intellectually untenable fluff, beneath their notice - is a dodge. Reveling in a self-imposed ignorance, they blithely insist they have the scoop on "religion", when they prove, over the course of thousands of words, they are as ignorant as fence posts. Taking them seriously is really not worth my time.
As I remarked last week, if we are to be clear about who this God is we Christians claim to encounter in Jesus Christ, we need to think in a Trinitarian way. While it is true it is difficult to find specific references to the doctrine in the Bible, the Trinity is a good way of talking very specifically about this particular God, how this particular God has chosen to encounter us.
This is the crux of my complaint about much of the "atheism". Whether it's Dawkins' claim to have given a definitive definition of "God" and gone on to "prove" the impossibility of that God's existence, or the kind of general rejection of the "sky fairy", most of this babble has little to do with the God whom Jesus Christ calls "Father", and whom we encounter through the power of the Holy Spirit.
In other words, most of the arguments of the "new atheists" are nothing more than a bunch of people who don't know what they're talking about insisting they know more than anyone else how people think, and telling them that what they think is wrong. My response is, no, we don't think about God that way, because in the first and last instance, God isn't some "thing" about which we "think", but the reality we encounter as a people called out by Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. Ours is not the God we think; ours is the living God who in turn gives life.
In the first and last instance, this is my own doctrine of God. This is why the Trinity is necessary to understanding who we are as Christians. Ours is not some posited universal Idea; ours is this very specific God who has done very specific things in the past; is continuing to do them even now; and will do them in to the future. We believe these things - we don't "know" them; knowledge is such a tenuous thing in any case; belief shapes who we are far more than something as mundane as "knowledge" - because this particular God has moved among us in very specific ways.
I know of no way of starting to say who God is other than this way.
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