| Wednesday, January 31, 2007 | |
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Debates, Past and Future
By Diana Hsieh @ 1:00 PM   
Trey Givens blogs a report on a recent debate on the UN between critic Dr. Yaron Brook and defender Dr. Gilligan. (One of these days, opponents of Dr. Brook in debate will realize that they must show up prepared!)Speaking of debates with Dr. Brook, Boulder's Philosophy Department (or more precisely, its Center for Values and Social Policy) will be hosting a debate on just war theory between Yaron Brook and Martin Cook on March 13th from 7:30 to 9:30 pm in the lovely Wittemeyer Courtroom of the Wolf Law Building as part of its "Think!" series. Martin Cook is a professor of philosophy at the Air Force Academy -- and one of the preeminent just war theorists in the country.  E-mail Diana Hsieh
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The Twist
By Diana Hsieh @ 6:55 AM
I very much enjoyed this story of a girl learning to defend herself against neighborhood bullies. And I'll definitely remember the advice to stab and twist.
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| Monday, January 29, 2007 | |
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No Children Allowed!
By Diana Hsieh @ 4:13 PM
Not too long ago, Mike M. posted a quick but good rebuttal to the standard complaint that Objectivism ignores children. It's worth reading, mostly as ammunition for the next time you hear that charge.
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| Sunday, January 28, 2007 | |
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Threats from Allah
By Diana Hsieh @ 8:33 AM
I refuse to comment on this letter on principle: I don't argue with threats, particularly not divine threats communicated by human proxy. Still, I thought it interesting enough to repost. (Since I haven't written anything on Islam of late, it must be in response to some earlier post.)From: mohamed sobah (sobahihavandhoo@yahoo.com)Lovely, no? E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Saturday, January 27, 2007 | |
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Horse Training
By Diana Hsieh @ 5:04 PM
The beginning of this (short) video is rather sappy, but if you survive that minute or so, you'll see some of the most amazing horse training possible to man. A person would have to have a superb relationship with his horses -- total trust on all sides -- to do that. (Yes, the horses would have to trust the man just as much as he must trust them.)
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| Friday, January 26, 2007 | |
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Hand Art
By Diana Hsieh @ 7:21 AM
Wow, this hand art is just amazing. I particularly like the first picture, as the hand-shape is so clear, yet disappears as soon as you focus on the eagle. (I also really like the giraffe and the zebra.)
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| Wednesday, January 24, 2007 | |
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Christian Hysteria
By Diana Hsieh @ 9:09 PM
This comic strip on Christianity is absolutely priceless. When I have an office, it'll be the very first thing I post on the door. (Via Glenn Friedman.)Labels: Religion E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Tuesday, January 23, 2007 | |
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OCON 2007
By Diana Hsieh @ 11:56 PM
Hooray! The schedule for the 2007 OCON in Telluride, Colorado has been posted.Without a doubt, the highlight of the conference will be Leonard Peikoff's six lectures on "The DIM Hypothesis": Dr. Peikoff's forthcoming book, The DIM Hypothesis, identifies three different modes of integration, i.e., of interrelating concretes, such as individual percepts, facts, choices, etc. The book then demonstrates the power of these three modes in shaping Western culture and history.This course will not be a repetition of his earlier course by the same name, now available for free from ARI's web site. In fact, I'd highly recommend that first course as preparation for this summer's course. I'm also very excited by some of the optional courses, but I'll blog about those later. E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Monday, January 22, 2007 | |
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Some Goodies
By Diana Hsieh @ 10:14 PM
Here are some goodies that I've recently found:I'm no socialist, and [Atlas Shrugged] was written in a time when socialism was being tested empirically. There was evidence that it might even be working. Now we know differently. But we didn't then, which may explain why Rand felt the need to write it: to justify her own belief that socialism was a mistake. She was right about that.Yup, Ayn Rand's rejection of socialism was just a lucky guess. Her knowledge of human nature, economics, and even her experience in Soviet Russia couldn't have been relevant. And sheesh, even her capacity to write Atlas Shrugged was also a matter of luck, since she was born with the "ability to focus on long term goals." How could it be otherwise, since we're all just equal bundles of good and bad luck? The basic thrust of Reconstructionism is that the United States should be remade according to biblical law in preparation for the second coming of Christ. So, Reconstructionists are famous (infamous) for advocating the death penalty for homosexuality, adultery, and witch craft, among other "crimes." Now, lest you think this is some fringe movement of the fringes of the Christian fringe, I'll simply state that Reconstructionism is a driving force in the religious right, ask you to do your own research, and leave it at that...He then comments a bit about the embrace of Christian Reconstructionist Gary North by some libertarians. It's good stuff. Labels: Religion E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Sunday, January 21, 2007 | |
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John Lewis in Denver
By Diana Hsieh @ 7:11 PM
John Lewis will be in Colorado toward the end of this upcoming week. He'll be a busy man! (John is an insightful and vivacious speaker; I highly recommend any of his lectures.)Event #1 What: CU Boulder Campus Lecture "The Individualist Alternative to the Political Left and Right" by Dr. John Lewis When: Thursday, January 25, 2007, 7:00 pm Where: Wolf Law Building (WLFL 207) Contact: Jim Manley, Club Leader, jim.manley@objectivistclubs.org American politics is divided today, between the political left and the right-so goes the prevailing wisdom. But the wisdom is wrong: the conservatives' support for the welfare state at home and for "nation-building" overseas shows how close the traditional left and right really are. In this talk, Dr. Lewis will demonstrate how common principles of altruism and statism align both camps in opposition to the sovereign individual-and have offered Americans a false alternative between deadly socialist policies. A true alternative would understand the individual--ethically, politically, and economically--to be the starting point of a proper politics. It is only the individual which exists, and the protection of his rights is the only purpose of a proper government. This is because, ethically, life as a rational man is the only proper standard for a moral code, and individual happiness its only purpose.Event #2 What: Young Aristotle Competition and Dinner Lecture "Early Greek Lawgivers: Solon of Athens and the Discovery of Freedom under Law" by John Lewis When: Friday, January 26th, 2007, 5:30 pm Where: Ridgeview Classical Schools, 1800 South Lemay Avenue, Fort Collins, Colorado 80525 Cost: $10 per ticket, reserve with Joe Collins, jcollins@ridgeviewclassical.com About the event: You are cordially invited to the third annual Young Aristotle Competition, Friday January 26 at 5:30 p.m. at Ridgeview Classical Schools, 1800 South Lemay Avenue, Fort Collins, Colorado 80525. This year's event will feature a dinner talk by historian John Lewis Ph.D. of Ashland University. The title of the talk will be "Early Greek Lawgivers: Solon of Athens and the Discovery of Freedom under Law." Due to fundraising and a generous grant, we are able to offer the dinner and talk for $10.00. Tickets are expected to sell out and can be purchased from Joe Collins at Ridgeview. His contact is jcollins@ridgeviewclassical.com. Please consider joining us for a night of ideas and scholarship and see why Ridgeview is, for the second year in a row, the top high school in the state of Colorado. Rational education is taking hold in northern Colorado.About the lecture: One of the great Greek discoveries is that of freedom: the right of each person to live his own life as he wishes, and to conduct his individual affairs free from the coercions of others. This discovery was incomplete, and limited to adult male citizens--yet it set the background for all later advancements in freedom. Part of this discovery was the need for laws: objective rules, justly created in open discussion, used to bring order to human life, and carved into stone for all to see. The men who brought these ideas, and these laws, to the Greeks were the lawgivers: men of wisdom and justice, who created just laws.If you can't make it up to Fort Collins by 5:30, you might still be able to attend the lecture, as that likely won't start until about 6:40. You can e-mail jcollins@ridgeviewclassical.com about that. Event #3 What: Seminar on Fighting Socialized Medicine with Dr. John Lewis When: Saturday, January 27, 2007, 11:00 am to 2:00 pm Where: Dixon's Restaurant, 16th and Wazee, Downtown Denver Contact: For more information and to RSVP, please contact Lin Zinser, lin@zinser.com About John Lewis John Lewis is assistant professor of history at Ashland University and contributing editor of The Objective Standard. He holds a Ph.D. in classics from the University of Cambridge, and is an Anthem Fellow for Objectivist Scholarship. His research interests are in ancient Greek and Roman thought, military history, and their connections to the modern day. He writes for The Objective Standard, and for Capitalism Magazine. E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Thursday, January 18, 2007 | |
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What Went Wrong with Robert Tracinski's Account of the Ancient Greeks?
By Diana Hsieh @ 11:30 PM
This evening, Robert Mayhew asked if I might be interested in posting the following essay on Robert Tracinski's discussion of the role of philosophy in the ancient world in his "What Went Right?" essays. I am happy to do so. (For those unfamiliar with his academic credentials, Robert Mayhew is a professor of philosophy at Seton Hall specializing in ancient philosophy.) Bewarned: The essay is fairly long. It is also well worth a slow read."What went wrong with Robert Tracinski's account of the ancient Greeks?" Robert Mayhew In the first half of the penultimate installment of "What Went Right?" ("The Summit and the Foundation"), Robert Tracinski presents a view of the development of ancient Greek philosophy, and its relationship to classical Greek culture generally, that is deeply flawed. Further, these flaws seem to stem not simply from his ignorance of the subject matter, but from a desire to have his alternative to the Objectivist philosophy of history seem to fit the facts. Tracinski writes: "The development of Greek culture at its height did not go . . . from abstract philosophy down to art and the sciences. It went the other direction. . . ." He then presents a survey of some of the (purportedly pre-philosophical) achievements of the ancient Greeks. (All dates are BC. A minor point: few of these dates are known with the precision Tracinski's presentation suggests, and I have altered some of them accordingly, though nothing of importance follows from these revisions.) Tracinski then asks: "How does all of this relate to the history of Greek philosophy?" He answers (sort of): Greek philosophy made some important innovations beginning with Thales (c. 624-526 BC), there was in these early years no strong differentiation between philosophy and science or the other specialized fields, and the views of the early Greek philosophers were a confusing maelstrom, ranging from those who taught that change was impossible (Parmenides, 515-480 BC) to those who taught that there was nothing but change (Heraclitus, c. 535-475 BC). Philosophy did not fully emerge as a separately defined field until Socrates (c. 470-399), who defined the specific questions addressed by the discipline.This does not really answer the question he posed, as it does not indicate the relationship between philosophy and the Greek cultural accomplishments that he surveys. Rather, it tells us that the first philosopher made some important innovations (no examples are given) but that philosophy in its early years was confusing and not properly distinguished from science. He sums up: Notice the pattern: Greek art, literature, science, history, and medicine reached a crescendo of achievement in the second half of the 5th century BC--while Greek philosophy reached its crescendo of achievement one to two generations later, in the middle of the 4th century BC. In short, Aristotle was a product of the Golden Age of Athens, not the other way around.If Tracinski were simply commenting on when the various disciplines reached their peaks, this might count as an interesting observation--though it is certainly questionable (not to say absurd) to claim that ancient Greek science reached its peak in the fifth century. (How much of fifth century science is better than Aristotle's?) But even assuming that Tracinski has his facts straight, notice that it does not follow that if art, literature, medicine etc. "reached a crescendo of achievement" before philosophy reached its crescendo, then therefore art, literature, medicine, etc. must have come to be and/or developed independently of philosophy. Yet in some sense this is what he wants to claim. Recall his statement: "The development of Greek culture at its height did not go . . . from abstract philosophy down to art and the sciences," rather it "went the other direction"--i.e., from art and the sciences up to abstract philosophy. What Tracinski wants us to conclude is that the greatness that is classical Greece had little to do with philosophy--though he conflates this idea, with another (more obviously true) one: that Aristotle did not come at the beginning of the development of classical culture, but at its end. We receive a stronger, more open, indication of his actual conclusion a bit later: This history suggests a progression that should, in fact, seem natural and unsurprising: that new ideas arose first from achievements in the special sciences--from physics, mathematics, history, medicine, biology, and politics. These achievements were paralleled by advances in literature and art, which expressed, often in implicit, non-verbal form, the new conception of human life that was suggested by advances in other disciplines. Then at the end of this process, a great philosopher was able to explain what made all of those previous achievements possible, to identify their implicit method, and to draw, in explicit terms, the widest implications for our conception of human life and potential. I cannot here reply to everything in this installment which I find objectionable, nor can I take the time to deal with the interesting issue of why ancient Greek philosophy and culture did not continue to progress after Aristotle. I am concerned most of all with correcting Tracinski's presentation of the history of ancient Greek philosophy. But to fully understand where he goes wrong, it is necessary to point out that he equivocates on the meaning of "philosophy." Let me begin by making the following distinctions: First, "philosophy" in its broadest sense refers to a person's (or culture's) basic ideas about reality and man. It is in this sense that we can say, for example, that ancient Egypt was driven by a philosophy of death; it is also in this sense, I believe, that Ayn Rand claimed that "religion is a primitive form of philosophy" ("Philosophy and Sense of Life"). Second, "philosophy" also (and primarily) refers to the science that studies the fundamental nature of reality and man. Used in this sense, we would exclude the basic beliefs of pre-philosophical cultures, and say, for example, that philosophy was born in Greece (but did not exist, as such a discipline, in Egypt), and distinguish philosophy from religion. Finally, we can also speak of good philosophy and even the pinnacle of philosophy (in the ancient world, Aristotle's). I mention these distinctions because Tracinski moves back and forth between the second and third of these--between when philosophy per se appears and exerts an influence, and when it reaches its pinnacle--and he gives the first sense little consideration (or credit) in assessing the role of philosophy in history. But the view that philosophy is the prime mover in history certainly includes (where relevant) philosophy in this most basic sense--especially when dealing with such an early period as archaic Greece. This is important to the present discussion, because it means that one cannot legitimately claim (certainly not without further argument) that philosophy could yield little or no influence in ancient Greece before it was fully developed and distinguished as an independent discipline (which is what Tracinski implies). The basic world-view of the ancient Greeks (their philosophy in the broadest sense) was already (before Thales) very good--relative to other cultures in the ancient Mediterranean. (I have in mind the implicit philosophy or basic ideas that we find in Homer and Hesiod, c. 8th-7th centuries.) It was essentially a this-wordly and pro-man outlook, which valued reason and argumentation. As primitive or pre- philosophies go, it provided an excellent potential background for development--a potential that was eventually actualized. But it was still primitive--it was still a conception of the universe as a place inhabited by supernatural deities that one was supposed to accept simply because they had always been believed in--by one's family and one's city. A somewhat transitional figure is Solon (late 7th, early 6th century). In my blurb on the back of John Lewis' recent book on Solon, I say that he is arguably the first (and only) presocratic political philosopher. He saw the world as a rational, intelligible cosmos (albeit inhabited by some version of the Olympian gods), and he believed that the ancient Greek polis or city-state ought to be organized according to rational principles. The first philosopher proper--the person who deserves the title Father of Philosophy--is Thales of Miletus (early 6th century, a younger contemporary of Solon), for he did something truly revolutionary. He was the first person in human history to attempt to explain the universe in rational, naturalistic terms--that is, with arguments and without any reference to anthropomorphic gods (e.g., Zeus, Poseidon). The assumption driving Thales was that the universe is an intelligible place, and the human mind is capable of grasping fundamental truths about it through reason (as opposed to "truths" revealed by seers or Delphic oracles or Muse-inspired poets). Thales predicted an eclipse--something inconceivable on the mythological world view, which held eclipses to be omens from the gods (and in one archaic poem, proof of the feebleness of man's mind). He held that everything was made of or came from water, and on the basis of this it seems he argued that earthquakes were the result of movements of the earth floating on water. This is not cutting edge philosophy or science by our standards, but it is a giant leap away from the traditional attribution of earthquakes to Poseidon's anger. Thales' basic outlook--rational, this-worldy, man-centered--set the trend for the next couple of centuries. Thales did not simply make "some important innovations." Not long after Thales (and two other Miletian monists, Anaximander and Anaximenes), another Ionian--Xenophanes of Colophon--presented an alternative to the monism of Thales (Xenophanes holding that all things were earth and water) and for the first time, as far as we know, presented explicit arguments against the existence of the Olympian gods. (Xenophanes himself seems to have been some kind of pantheist.) In the history of presocratic philosophy that followed Thales and the other early Ionians, there continued to be errors, less-than-probative arguments, and major confusions--perhaps most of all about what did and did not count as philosophy. (Most ancient philosophers--including Aristotle--combined philosophy with what we now properly consider the separate sciences. See Ayn Rand's comment on the problem with Thales' approach to philosophy, Journals of Ayn Rand, pp. 698-99.) And there were definitely some dead ends--the Pythagoreans, Heraclitus and Parmenides, for the most part--but the basic progression moved in the spirit of Thales. Incidentally, there is no reason to single out Anaxagoras' achievements in the field of science, nor to count what he did as science in contrast to philosophy. (Presenting him as a scientist was extremely tendentious on Tracinski's part.) And on an important related issue, there is no reason to treat the Hippocratic corpus (mostly 5th-4th century, no works of which can be confidently attributed to Hippocrates) apart from ancient philosophy. That corpus has only recently begun to get the attention it deserves, and it is clear that many of the most important works in it (including On the Sacred Disease) represent fusions of philosophy and science in the manner of the presocratics, except that most of them also deal with medicine. (For example, many of the Hippocratic treatises contain presocratic-like cosmologies of their own--see On Breaths and the very different On the Nature of Man, to name just two.) We turn finally to Socrates. Tracinski claims that "Philosophy did not fully emerge as a separately defined field until Socrates." This is inaccurate, as Socrates was interested in moral philosophy alone. As the Roman philosopher Cicero observed: Socrates I think--indeed it is universally agreed--was the first to divert philosophy from matters which nature herself wrapped in obscurity, with which all philosophers before him had been concerned, and apply it to ordinary life, directing its inquiries to virtues and vices, and in general to good and evil. Celestial phenomena he regarded as beyond our comprehension, or at any rate, however well we might understand them, as irrelevant to the good life. (Academia 1.4.15)Cicero says that Socrates diverted philosophy away from one area--that which interested the presocratics primarily--and focused it on another: moral philosophy. (The sophists--whatever their differences from Socrates--made pretty much the same move, and for the same reason: their conviction that we cannot know anything about the fundamental nature of physical reality. There were exceptions, however: Prodicus of Ceos was a sophist who dabbled in the study of nature, and at least two of the works in the Hippocratic corpus were arguably written by sophists or thinkers influenced by sophists.) From Thales and the Ionian materialists through the Atomists, Empedocles, and Anaxagoras to Diagoras of Apollonia, and including the unknown authors of the bulk of the works of the Hippocratic corpus, we are dealing with the progression of one cultural movement--the history of ancient Greek philosophy. One might claim that Socrates and the sophists temporarily changed its primary focus, but his student Plato put all the parts together and became the first systematic philosopher. He may have placed less of an emphasis on the issues that we now properly consider science and not philosophy--e.g., the movement of the planets, the nature of matter--but he certainly did deal with them, as did his student Aristotle (to say the least). Again, what I have described (as briefly as possible) is basically one ongoing development--one series of accomplishments (and confusions and errors)--from Thales in the early sixth century to Aristotle in the fourth. In light of this development, it simply makes no sense to say: first there were major developments in medicine and history and the arts, and then there were the major developments in philosophy. (I'll have something to say on the arts shortly.) They all developed at the same time and no doubt influenced each other--in complex, fascinating ways that specialists try to detail--and there was no doubt a spiraling effect. But there is no reason to think that anything other than philosophy--especially the basic philosophical outlook that I sketched at the outset--was the most fundamental force driving the culture. That is to say--in general terms (though an historian of ideas would try to show the details of the steps)--without the first moves made by philosophers like Thales and Xenophanes, beginning in the 6th century, and those who carried the torch after them, there could not have appeared the Hippocratic On the Sacred Disease or Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War in the last quarter of the fifth century--or for that matter, Aristotle in the fourth. I'd like to turn briefly to Greek art. I know very little about ancient Greek architecture and sculpture, so I have little to say on the connection between those arts and philosophy. But I think I can say with some confidence that they reflect a rational, pro-man outlook, and reasonably speculate that it is unlikely that this was in no way an effect of the basic ideas that I have described. These basic ideas--this-worldy, pro-reason, and man-centered--were in the air; they were part of the culture, and I would be surprised if architecture and the visual arts did not feed off of them, while also fueling them. I do have sufficient knowledge of ancient Greek drama to say something a bit more substantial about how the development of philosophy helped to make possible the achievements of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. In fact, I would say that many if not most of the great ancient Greek plays have conflicts driven by the cultural conflict between traditional Greek religion and the emerging philosophical outlook. (This is hardly an original or idiosyncratic observation on my part; one encounters it all over the place in the secondary literature.) In his great Oresteia, Aeschylus attempts to resolve a problem with the traditional conception of justice, and the religion it is based on--which in some respects he admires--namely: how to prevent the application of justice (which is crucially important to a civilized existence) from descending into bloody tribal vengeance. His brilliant solution (whatever its flaws, and largely borrowed from political developments around him) involves the application of reason and law to the execution of justice. It seems highly unlikely that such a trilogy of plays could have been written outside a cultural context like the one I have described. In Sophocles' Antigone, we see a clash between an individualist defender of moral absolutes rooted in the existence of the gods (but presented in language that is highly philosophical for a play) and a social-subjectivist conception of morality and politics that may reflect certain views of the early sophists. In Oedipus Rex, Sophocles is again struggling with an intellectual conflict--between his admiration for the new, pro-reason, fifth century enlightenment outlook (he clearly admires the intellectual acumen and confidence of Oedipus, who scholars have long noted uses language and concepts similar to those employed in contemporary intellectual circles) and his concern over the ongoing attacks on traditional religion, which he seemed to think gave morality its foundation. For instance, Oedipus Rex contains criticisms of the notion of prophecy--perhaps the most important aspect of ancient Greek religious practice--which were no doubt in the air in the second half of the fifth century. Euripides was simultaneously the most explicitly philosophical Greek playwright and the one most at odds with the spirit of Greek philosophy. For example, it has long been argued that in the Medea, he is responding to and rejecting the Socratic view that no one knowingly does what is wrong--for on Euripides' view, reason is impotent in the face of irrational emotion. (In lines 1078-80, Medea says she knows or understands [manthanô] what evil deeds she is going to dare to do, but her anger or spirit [thumos] overpowers her faculty of deliberation [bouleumatôn]. She is planning to kill her own children to get revenge on Jason.) And his Bacchae is in effect a hymn to the irrational that is clearly aware of (and at odds with) the pro-reason outlook of contemporary ancient Greek philosophy. Setting aside the creative genius of these playwrights, which is primary, the greatness of ancient Greek drama is at least as much the product of what came before it as it is material which helped to make possible later philosophical achievements. At some level, Tracinski seems to be aware of some of these problems with his account. I think this is why he conflates philosophy exerting an influence and philosophy reaching its peak. All that he is really able to conclude from his (flawed) presentation of the development of ancient Greek culture is the entirely non-controversial point that Aristotle arrives late in the history of Classical Greece. But even on this point, Tracinski is tendentious: "the greatest Greek philosopher, Aristotle, comes last, after most of the important developments in Greek science, politics, literature, and art." Why not add "and philosophy"? (Aristotle certainly comes after most of the important developments in ancient Greek philosophy.) Because that would not fit the broader conclusion Tracinski wants us to come to (the one not supported by the evidence), namely, that philosophy did not have the primary causal role in the history of ancient Greece that many of us think it had. Again, he seems to be aware that something is amiss with his account, because elsewhere he says "the achievements of earlier scientists (and scientist-philosophers), laid the foundations for Aristotle." Tracinski writes that "The role of the philosopher, historically, is not as the sole motor of all progress, but rather as the observer, defender, promoter, and intellectual amplifier of that progress." (This is unclear. Is the "but rather" meant to contrast the list of roles that follow with being a motor or with being the sole motor? Does he think the philosopher's role is exhausted by being "the observer, defender, promoter, and intellectual amplifier of that progress"?) I prefer to speak of philosophy and not simply of philosophers. And in my view, good philosophy is the fundamental (not sole) motor of all progress, and it is so, in part by being "the observer, defender, promoter, and intellectual amplifier of that progress," but most of all, and at its best, through the identification, demonstration and dissemination of fundamental truths--truths that make possible a culture open to all that the other disciplines and activities contribute to human progress. The purpose of Tracinski's discussion of the ancient Greeks is to show that philosophy--whatever its merits and importance--is not the prime mover in human history. The same is true, he believes, of the philosopher. This explains the lukewarm nature of Tracinski's portrait of Aristotle (at least that's how it comes across to this Aristotle-scholar): Aristotle is a product of the Golden Age of Athens, a catalyst and source of the later Classical revival. I prefer (and I'll end with) Ayn Rand's more accurate and reverential account of Aristotle's influence, as it is relevant to the issue of the role of philosophy in history: If we consider the fact that to this day everything that makes us civilized beings, every rational value that we possess--including the birth of science, the industrial revolution, the creation of the United States, even the structure of our language--is the result of Aristotle's influence, of the degree to which, explicitly or implicitly, men accepted his epistemological principles, we would have to say: never have so many owed so much to one man. ("For the New Intellectual") E-mail Diana Hsieh
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Orange Crimefighters
By Diana Hsieh @ 5:47 AM
Hey, why doesn't America have these cute little orange crimefighters? They're "filled with a thick florescent ink that glows in the dark, and has a strong smell. Police dogs in Japan are actually trained to be able to track this particular odour (said to be similar to rotting pineapples), and are taught that it is the smell of a criminal." (Via Boing Boing.)
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| Wednesday, January 17, 2007 | |
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Unbeatable Concentration?
By Greg @ 3:40 PM
With the movie of Atlas Shrugged edging toward production, it is natural that we'll see articles about Rand and the book and its adaptation -- like the recent one that appeared in the NY Times and other rags, talking about the many abortive attempts at bringing Atlas to the big and small screen. What jumped out in that one was the writer pinning a lot of the trouble on Rand's supposedly conspiracy-tinged outlook.Not so good, but that was a veritable puff-piece compared to the most recent article I've seen float by. The sneering potshots are nonstop, beginning with the paranoia thing, moving to a hit on The Fountainhead's famous sex scene and "ironies" of the book's movie production, and then switching directions to launch into an extended riff on the Standard Litany of ugly, uninformed smears of Rand, Objectivism, and even O'Connor -- you know, the mythology spawned and tremendously reinforced by the Brandens, then uncritically swallowed and passed on by so many like this writer. (But please, let's all remember that the Brandens' viciously dishonest accounts are marginal and old news and aren't doing any any real damage. Not.) Oh, and along the way there was the routine condescension with a cute connection-by-nonessentials to Scientology: "Her essays and her novels appeal to people who might like to be intellectuals but lack the necessary curiosity and energy. My observation suggests that she attracts devotees who are also candidates for Scientology -- which, like Objectivism, was a novelist's creation." He wraps it up with another smirking bit of intimidation combined with a slap that contradicts Rand's enduring success: "Even the failures of Ayn Rand (such as her prose) have their own foolish charm. There's something persistently funny about Rand and Randians, though no Randian will ever quite see the joke. It is not possible to have a sense of humour and take Ayn Rand seriously." Wow, to pack so much ignorant garbage and content-free disagreement into so few words is quite an achievement. Now I'm morbidly curious to see if any piece on the way to the movie's release will somehow manage worse. E-mail Greg
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| Tuesday, January 16, 2007 | |
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Conservatism, Past and Future
By Diana Hsieh @ 10:32 AM
Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution blogs about the evolution of conservatism -- and cites Brad Thompson's article The Decline and Fall of American Conservatism as "an Objectivist viewpoint" on the topic. It might be worth jumping into the debate, as it seems wholly un-Wonkette-like.
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| Monday, January 15, 2007 | |
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Conservatism
By Diana Hsieh @ 6:13 AM
Hooray! Brad Thompson's excellent 2006 OCON lecture "Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea" is now available from the Ayn Rand Bookstore. Here's the description:This lecture examines the intellectual history of the neoconservatives and their plan for governing America. Dr. Thompson introduces the neocons by tracing the evolution of their thought from their youthful Trotskyism in the 1930s to their anticommunist liberalism in the 1940s and '50s and finally to their development of a new kind of conservatism in the 1960s and beyond.Also, someone recently pointed me to this conservative attack on Brad Thompson's excellent article "The Decline and Fall of American Conservatism" from The Objective Standard. The critic begins with some serious confusions about Thompson's basic position, plus some Divine Command Theory: "As always with libertarians, he offers a subjective philosophy rather than an objective set of standards for behavior, which is what morality requires and is why morality is dependent on God." More inanity ensues. And to top it off, the post ends with the following: "For all his talk of conservatism, there is nothing of America or its Judeo-Christian/Western inheritance that his egoism would conserve. This kind of extreme selfishness is the rot that has destroyed the rest of the West and conservatives do well not just to reject it but to fight against it tooth and nail." Well, at least he knows who his enemies are. Labels: Recommendations E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Sunday, January 14, 2007 | |
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Socrates and the Triple Filter Test
By Greg @ 8:45 PM
(Sent my way by a mysterious stranger. :^)In ancient Greece (469 - 399 BC) Socrates was widely lauded for his wisdom. One day the great philosopher came upon an acquaintance who ran up to him excitedly and said, "Socrates, do you know what I just heard about one of your students?" "Wait a moment," Socrates replied. "Before you tell me, I'd like you to pass a little test. It's called the Triple Filter Test." "Triple filter?" "That's right," Socrates continued. "Before you talk to me about my student let's take a moment to filter what you're going to say. The first filter is truth. Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true?" "No," the man said, "actually I just heard about it and..." "All right," said Socrates. "So you don't really know if it's true or not. Now let's try the second filter, the filter of Goodness. Is what you are about to tell me about my student something good?" "No, on the contrary..." "So," Socrates continued, "you want to tell me something bad about him, even though you're not certain it's true?" The man shrugged, a little embarrassed. Socrates continued. "You may still pass the test though, because there is a third filter - the filter of Usefulness. Is what you want to tell me about my student going to be useful to me?" "No, not really." "Well," concluded Socrates, "if what you want to tell me is neither True nor Good nor Useful, why tell it to me at all?" The man was defeated and ashamed. This is the reason Socrates was a great philosopher and held in such high esteem. It also explains why he never found out that Plato was banging his wife. E-mail Greg
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| Saturday, January 13, 2007 | |
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What Happens When A Country Bans Handguns?
By Paul @ 8:00 PM
You get a lot of stories about criminals with knives (and vigilantes with swords).
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| Friday, January 12, 2007 | |
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The Christian Bear
By Diana Hsieh @ 5:46 PM
This joke was forwarded from a friend...An atheist was taking a walk through the woods "What majestic trees! What powerful rivers! What beautiful animals!" he said to himself. As he continued walking alongside the river he heard a rustling in the bushes. Turning to look, he saw a 7 foot grizzly charging towards him. Labels: Religion E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Thursday, January 11, 2007 | |
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Wonkette and the Election Debate
By Diana Hsieh @ 6:40 AM
Wonkette "discusses" the Ayn Rand Institute's recent press release on Schwarzenegger's plan for universal health coverage. The scare quotes are deliberate; the post mostly consists of some snide comments based on the strawman that Objectivists "find something wrong with the idea of making basic medical care available to the self-employed and working poor."However, some of the comments are worth reading on the principle of "know your enemy." For example: Property, contrary to many libertarians, is not a natural right or law. If no natural right to health coverage, there is no natural right to property, either. So from a pragmatic standpoint, why should we put the arbitrary right to property above the arbitrary right to health coverage?Pathetically enough, the comments after that mostly devolve into "Fuck the Randians" kind of insults. That's the state of the political debate on the left these days. It's a consequence of its ideological vacuum. People with an ideology, however wrong, defend it vigorously with arguments. They attempt to persuade others of it. That's what the left used to do, but no more. They are ideologically dead, even if not yet politically dead. (The only exception seems to be the environmentalists, but that's illusory: environmentalist philosophy is a wasteland of mediocrity without any powerful intellectual force driving it. I'm not alone in that view: my environmentalist philosophy professor, himself an egalitarian environmentalist philosopher, was of that general opinion.) Also, in the election debate, I recall that some Objectivists advocated voting for Schwarzenegger because he opposed the Democrats' proposal for socialist medicine in California. I read a bit of the news about that bill and his veto: it was glaringly obviously that Schwarzenegger acted on no principle whatsoever. So now -- surprise, surprise, those very Californians will likely enjoy the Republican version of socialist medicine. E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Wednesday, January 10, 2007 | |
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Rational Christian
By Diana Hsieh @ 8:51 PM
Oh delightful: It's a "rational Christian" response to Ayn Rand's ethics. Here's my favorite bit:Ayn Rand rightly claims that "A" cannot be "non A" but she misapplies this principle in her critique of Christianity. For example, when Christ said that "the first shall be last and the last shall be first" there is no true contradiction (i.e. "A" being "non A"), as Ayn Rand claims, because the both cases in which the words "first" and "last" are used within the context of the passage have different applications and reasons for usage. Jesus was simply saying that in this world a person is considered "first" or "last" for different reasons than why a person is considered "first" or "last" in God's kingdom. Again, there is no real contradiction (i.e. there is no "A" equated with "non A").Gee, I wasn't aware that Ayn Rand criticized Jesus on "the first shall be last and the last shall be first" on the grounds of the Law of Identity! Fancy that! Oh, and somehow, although the author does not specify how, Ayn Rand's ethics depends upon the theory of evolution. I never knew that either. Amazing! E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Tuesday, January 09, 2007 | |
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Gifts from Dogs
By Diana Hsieh @ 3:08 PM
Oh goodness, it's yet another problem of supposed equality between man and beast:Dear Miss Manners:Miss Manners replies: Your relatives' dog probably lives at the same address as they do. However, you need address only the lady when writing, if you ask her to extend your thanks to her family.In this case, the writer of the letter seems to be overly sensitive, in the sense of reading the cute humor of including the dog in the list of gift-givers more seriously than appropriate. Of course, if the people actually insist that others treat the dog as a family member, then that's another issue. Yet in such a case, including the dog on the list of gift-givers wouldn't be the real problem at all, the general demand would be. E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Monday, January 08, 2007 | |
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9th Annual Rocky Mountain Philosophy Conference
By Diana Hsieh @ 6:46 AM
I'm pleased to post this announcement for all kinds of reasons that I probably ought not specify in print:CALL FOR PAPERS E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Sunday, January 07, 2007 | |
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Skidboot
By Diana Hsieh @ 7:54 AM
Wow, now this dog is downright amazing. I've never seen such excellent language-parsing skills in a beast.E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Saturday, January 06, 2007 | |
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ARI's Free Books for Teachers in Action
By Diana Hsieh @ 1:53 PM
Now this blog post is interesting. In it, a teacher discusses her introductory lesson on Anthem. Yes, it's very confused by Objectivist standards. However, she's using the copies of the novel and lesson plans provided for free by the Ayn Rand Institute. Some of the comments on the post are from other teachers also using the book sets. I hope she'll post more as the students work through the text, as I really wonder what they'll say about the book itself. E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Friday, January 05, 2007 | |
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Essays on Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead
By Diana Hsieh @ 9:05 PM
Last night, my pre-ordered copy of Robert Mayhew's new anthology Essays on Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead arrived. It looks quite excellent. Here's the table of contents from the publisher's web site:Part 1: The History of The Fountainhead
Part 1: The History of Anthem
Last but not least is the anthology on my favorite novel by Ayn Rand: Essays on Ayn Rand's We the Living. Part 1: The History of We the Living
E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Thursday, January 04, 2007 | |
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More @#&!% Snow
By Diana Hsieh @ 4:32 PM
While I know that I ought to accept metaphysically-given facts as such, I'd really like to throw a tantrum at the feet of Mother Nature right about now. I'm so completely sick of snow. Despite very warm temperatures today of just over 50 degrees, we still have about a foot of it on the ground. Now look at our upcoming forecast:Augh! I'm supposed to have a long-overdue hair cut and highlight tomorrow -- already delayed once from the first snowfall before Christmas. I can't take it anymore! E-mail Diana Hsieh
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How Integrated are You?
By Greg @ 7:51 AM
Which are you more interested in: what is actual or what is possible? In approaching others, is your inclination to be objective, or personal? Do you go more by facts, or by principles? Are you more comfortable in making logical judgments, or value judgments? Which rules you more: heart or head? Do facts speak for themselves, or illustrate principles? Is it a greater error to be too passionate, or too objective?Those are from a Myers-Briggs test for programmers that a friend |