Boydstun

Transfixing Paint

Schelling (1775–1854) and Poe (1809–1849) Morella (1835) Poe's Knowledge of German Schelling and the New England Mind

The proper link is: http://rebirthofreason.com/Spirit/Books/325.shtml

KP— Rand was continually and deeply at odds with Nietzsche, as shown in my Nietzsche v. Rand series. And surely any kinship in feeling she had with his outlooks went flat as she developed her philosophy. I have a favorite passage in Z, Before Sunrise, though only when I've stricken or bent some of that text. I read Nietzsche though I don't have any kinship to his spirit. Once I had studied him far enough, my overall feeling toward him was revulsion. In that I've some likeness with Rand's spirit. Indeed, I've much affection for her spirit. My feeling towards the spirit of Schopenhauer is some warmth. I see now that "Counsels and Maxims" is contained within my copy of volume II of his Parega and Paralipomena, which I've yet to study. What I've studied of him pretty well thus far are The Four-Fold Root of Sufficient Reason, On the Basis of Morality, and The World as Will and Presentation. I thought that he agreed with Kant in thinking that happiness and morality are regularly at odds, though he disagreed with Kant on what was the basis and content of right morality. I thought Nietzsche came to be at odds with Schopenhaur concerning the nature of the will and evaluation of the will. Certainly Nietzsche came to sharp disagreement with Schopenhauer on the rightness of indulging in empathy, compassion, and pity (starting at least by the time of Daybreak 133). He put Schopenhauer among those secularists still clinging to Christian virtues, which should be discarded, at least the ones distinctive of that religion. It's hard to think of Nietzsche thinking highly of happiness, his sights of blessedness being conflict and beings higher than we humans from which they, the higher, might emerge. Rand made enjoyment of life the purpose of morality (for genius and common person alike), unlike Schopenhauer or Nietzsche, it seems. Where Schopenhauer has the sensible goal for humans to be painlessness and not pleasure, Rand would spit, I'd think. And communion with Idea, Schopenhauer's redemption from life in art, is opposite the metaphysical import Rand sees in art. In quick sum, so far, I'm thinking you've got too much commonality among these three philosophers, at least in their mature views. Delicious topic. Stimulating. Thanks for sharing this.

Renewed link in the first sentence of this composition is here: link for my window into the book: I Am I.

They have selected Nikki Haley.

Restored link for Newman.

When I was a child being raised by my stepmother and my father, she had reason to impress on me the rhyme “Once a job is begun, never stop until it’s done.” Later, as a youth, I proved to be remarkably persevering for age 13 or so in projects taking a year to complete. As an adult, I can’t help but notice much stoppage in my papers requiring a long period to produce. I get distracted by new writing projects nested in, nested in, . . . . But I’ve still got that old perseverance. This composition “Dewey and Peikoff on Kant’s Responsibility” has gotten stopped short of completion; the most recent long stoppage has run for over a year now. To ensure some speed once I do return for the finish, maybe a year from now, I’m going to bank the resources for the remainder here. I have gotten hold of the needed materials, shown in the list below. This chronology I’ve put together should be a good help to me and to my online readers of the remaining work on this. 1914, July — WWI begins. 1915, May — Dewey’s book GERMAN PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICS (GPP). 1915, Oct. — William Hocking’s criticism of GPP: “Political Philosophy in Germany” and Dewey’s reply. 1915, Oct. — Kuno Francke’s “The True Germany”. 1916, Feb. — Dewey’s “On Understanding the Mind of Germany” (picks up Francke). 1916, March — Santayana’s book EGOTISM IN GERMAN PHILOSOPHY (EGP). 1916, Dec. — Dewey’s “The Tragedy of the German Soul” (his review of EGP). 1917, April — US enters WWI. 1918, Nov. — WWI ends. 1938 — Aurel Kolnai’s book WAR AGAINST THE WEST. 1942 — Second edition of GPP with Introduction by Dewey bringing the old text to bear on Nazism and WWII. Dewey’s Introduction is titled “The One-World of Hitler’s National Socialism”. 1943 — Review by Leo Strauss of GPP second edition. 1947 — E. M. Fleissner’s “In Defense of German Idealism”. 1948 — Frederic Lilge’s book THE ABUSE OF LEARNING – THE FAILURE OF THE GERMAN UNIVERSITY. 1950 — Walter Kaufman’s book NIETZSCHE, chapter 10 “The Master Race”. 1964 — Leonard Peikoff completes Ph.D. dissertation under direction of Sidney Hook. 1979 — Hook writes Introduction to JOHN DEWEY – MIDDLE WORKS, Volume 8, which includes Dewey’s GERMAN PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICS (1915) as well as Dewey’s “The One-World of Hitler’s National Socialism”, which was the Introduction to the reissue of GPP in 1942. 1982 — Peikoff’s book THE OMINOUS PARALLELS, with Introduction by Ayn Rand. 1998 — Randall Collins’ book THE SOCIOLOGY OF PHILOSOPHERS, chapter 12 “Intellectuals Take Control of Their Base: The German University Revolution”. 2004 — James Campbell’s “Dewey and German Philosophy in Wartime”. 2010 — Stephen Hicks’ book NIETZSCHE AND THE NAZIS. 2019 — Wolfgang Bialas, editor of the book: AUREL KOLNAI’S ‘THE WAR AGAINST THE WEST’ RECONSIDERED. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Prof. Roderick Long: Have you read Thomas Mann’s 1945-47 pamphlets “Germany and the Germans” and “Nietzsche in the Light of Contemporary Events”? Here they are: Click to access mann-germany-germans.pdf Click to access mann-nietzsche-contemporary.pdf I assign these pamphlets as part of my “Nietzsche and Modern Literature” course (where modern literature is represented by Thomas Mann, André Gide, D. H. Lawrence, and Ayn Rand). Mann had been a fairly pugnacious German nationalist during WWI, and had even broken with his Francophile brother Heinrich over it. The rise of Nazism led Mann to feel abashed over his earlier views. These pamphlets represent his nonfiction attempt to come to grips with his earlier views; his novel Doktor Faustus (which we also read) does the same in fictional form. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Thanks again, Roderick, for the papers by Mann. I see that Mann’s writings at the time of WWI on that war as well his writings relating to WWII after it finished are folded into Rudiger Safranski’s ROMANTICISM – A GERMAN AFFAIR. Several years ago I was in the book stalls at an APA meeting and purchased a book titled THE GERMAN STRANGER – LEO STRAUSS AND NATIONAL SOCIALISM (2011). The author is William H. F Altman, and the vendor mentioned to me that Dr. Altman had shifted from teaching at the university level to teaching high school, specifically the high school system where I live, here in Lynchburg VA. I finally began to study this book when I resumed this project. After coming down here near dueling-banjo’s territories, he has continued to compose more books. Two more of his arriving at our house next week for the present project are: FRIEDRICH WILHELM NIETZSCHE: THE PHILOSOPHER OF THE SECOND REICH (2014) and MARTIN HEIDEGGER AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR: Being and Time AS FUNERAL ORATION (2015).

I wasn't saying that any real people are living a life by purely imitation. I was making a thought experiment. I don't know about Mormons in particular, stansfield, but all people have some way or other of responding to the circumstance that when anyone dies, that is the total absolute end of that individual. Only memories and presence in some minds continuing for a while after one, continue one somewhat for that while. Some people will do almost anything to avoid squarely facing that fact, including burning fellows at the stake for rocking the collective religious psychosis denying the plain fact of full death. Objectivists and the way they should assimilate their mortality is not enormously different from others acknowledging that the natural world is all there is. Except that, for one important thing, the Objectivist knows that it is only in the circumstance of being alive that there are such things as alternatives, aims, problems, health, bettering, or making worse. So not only does the Objectivist leave behind God's backing as source of moral standards (however correct some of those rules might be from a purely rational standpoint), the Objectivist has a particular natural source of values, aside other natural-value theories subscribed to by other secularists. The major virtues in Rand's moral philosophy are some usual ones at least in name. But when she defines them, they are often given a different, new meaning. And they end up having a stronger unity with each other than usual. Then too, some traditional virtues are rejected in this ethical theory. Along the roadway in front of a neighborhood shopping center near our home, there recently appeared some signs, presumably for some local organized charity, saying "Give good." If I understand correctly, the meaning includes a usual tying of giving to others less fortunate as of great moral significance. Actually, many people's notion of what morality is is most typified by such giving as in "yes there is a Santa Claus for children everywhere you find unselfish love." The Objectivist will dispute that such gifts are the core of what is the moral. It is unlikely these different, contrasting understandings result in no differences in actions. I don't think, however, that your search for radical differences in actions because of radical differences in morality is a reasonable expectation. Most human actions are overdetermined: multiple sufficient reasons are in play in the head of the decision maker for a given decision. Similarly, many variations among different individuals in accounts, radically different, of what is moral action in a situation need not be revealed by radical differences in actions. Moreover, as Rand conveyed in her Galt's Speech, any success and joy attained in any human life was on account of living in some accord with the moral code she was putting forth.

What meanings do the behaviors have to the agents? What is the understanding of the scope and context of the behaviors among people who all do the same acts such as deciding on what education they should pursue, acts such as making a living, acts such as driving safely, or acts such as being in and buoying a romantic relationship? Does not a more examined and self-conducted and understood life make one more alive? Is not human life with one's living mind among others more life than life of the wild animals? and are not the animals such as a fox or chipmunk more and higher life than plants? Is not "behavior" most fitting to actions of that middle group, the non-human animals? Who would want to imitate all the acts and whole arc of a human self-directed life and not instead be directing one's own acts and arc best one can? The former, the pure imitation, warrants focus on mere human behavior, the latter on a life that is actually human. I share the distinctive policy and practice you mentioned for yourself. Who cares about radical differences in such things in comparison to wisdom in such things?

The question of what can be a reason to choose to live had a forerunner in the Medieval question of what reason(s) God might have for choosing to create the world. The obvious problem is that since God lacks nothing, It could have no reason to alter Its situation. God is described as a living being by many a writer. I think that ascription of life is due to an unconscious knowing that (as Rand pulled into consciousness) value has to be based in living things, that intelligence requires a living-existence, and that human relationship to an inanimate thing is not much in comparison to living things, especially persons. But God's essence is its existence; It cannot not exist. That is an enormous difference between the living existence of God and the living existence of a human. There are Biblical texts saying or implying that God created the world to show its glory. To stay self-consistent, it should not be thought that God was in need of a display of its glory. Perhaps a better idea is that God accidentally created the world, one that displays its glory and naturally elicits human praise. It seems, however, that God should not have accidental activities, for that seems an imperfection. It's fine that we have accidents in the course of our living existence, but God is not a being with our limited knowledge and power. We should notice that Howard Roark creates buildings that show his glory, and he is in love with them, but the glory lies in his integration of a building's function and its beautiful form. There is a function giving him reason to design the particular building. It's hard to see how God could have any function outside Its own necessary living- and knowing-existence. One might think God would be bored since all that is to be known—Itself and, by the lights of Newton, co-eternal space—is already known to It. But God is something of an eternal instant, which ameliorates such problems (or fogs them over). And time gets going only upon creation of the world. Moreover, God could not have such an imperfection as boredom. Aquinas has it that God created the world on account of God's perfection, eternity, and love. God cannot sing along with the Beatles "I need someone to love." But God—what with Its living, intelligence, and perfection—could have the great out-flowing sort of love and choose to open that gate, creating others (us) with active intellect, with saturation in love, and having free will, making them (us) genuine companions. And creating a world for them to be. All actual living-existence is aside the alternative of death. A necessary eternal living-existence is a contradiction. All living intelligence is fallible. Infallibility and omniscience are nought. But the human out-flowing of love for living things, including self, and the out-flowing of creative intelligence are conditions of our lives (out-flowingness in anything living was discerned by Guyau in his 1885). Having reasons for choosing continuation of one's life is under one's out-flowing living nature and the circumstance that life worth choosing is life having its own justification, a wholeness, a completeness. In choosing suicide literally, one is judging that one's best-made life ends now. In choosing any irrationality in one's life, one is departing from human life that is best.

On Galt's Speech and the Philosophy of Objectivism

Campi Flegrei – Yikes!

Concerning the human soul, Aristotle has it that though all sectors of it are separate from the human body, only one sector is separable from the body (Miller 2012). The separable constituent of soul is the active intellect (DA 430a17, 22–23). What had been traditionally called the active intellect, Miller denotes as the productive capacity of the mind. It can continue to exist when the body dies, whereas the other constituents of soul die with the body. Powers of nutrition, perception, and desire die with the body (DA 413b14–15). “The principle in plants is also a sort of soul. For this alone is shared by both animals and plants, and it is separated from the perceptive principle, although nothing can possess perception without it” (DA 411b28–30). “Matter is potentiality, while form is actualization” (DA 412a10). “The soul must be a substance as the form of a natural body which possess life potentially. / But a substance is an actualization. Therefore it is the actualization of a body of this sort. . . . The soul is the first actualization of a natural body which possess life potentially. . . . / [The soul] is the substance corresponding to the account, and this is the essence of a particular sort of body” (DA 412a,b). In Parts of Animals Aristotle develops explanatory resources he thinks required for a successful study of animals and animal life. He argues for the explanatory priority of final/formal causes over efficient/material causes. In the natural science of animals, in Aristotle’s view, the starting point of the science should be that entity which is to be, by the activities: the mature healthy animal. That end is the governing cause in animal life, and it is the source of the necessity in the sequential formation and the operation of the parts of the animal, unlike necessity in geometry or in mathematical astronomy (PA 639b12–640a6; Meta. 996a29–31; Phys. 200a15–23). Further: Gotthelf 2012, 155-58; Lennox 2021, 83–85, 88, 138, 162–68, 273; and Leunissen 2010, 81–89, 155–75. The soul in vegetative life—nutrition, growth, and reproduction—belongs to plants and also to animals, including humans, in the view of Aristotle. This sort of mortal soul in vegetative life, I gather so far, is not something conceivable to the medieval Scholastics nor to Descartes. They really could not conceive of any teleology in nature that is not, even if invisibly, by an intelligent director. So far as I understand the history so far, Aristotle’s posit of vegetative teleological causation in living things, setting the ends which efficient causation shall bring about finally gets revived seriously (in an unsung way) in the last couple of centuries, during which modern science has uncovered those efficient causes bringing about the ends set by vegetative teleological causation. References Aristotle c.348–322 B.C.E. On the Soul (DA), F.D. Miller, translator. 2018. New York: Oxford University Press. ——. Parts of Animals. W. Ogle, translator. In Barnes 1984. ——. Aristotle Metaphysics. C.D.C. Reeve, translator. 2016. Indianapolis: Hackett. ——. Aristotle Physics. C.D.C. Reeve, translator. 2018. Indianapolis: Hackett. Barnes, J. 1984. The Complete Works of Aristotle. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Gotthelf, A. 2012. Teleology, First Principles, and Scientific Method in Aristotle’s Biology. New York: Oxford University Press. Leunissen, M. 2010. Explanation and Teleology in Aristotle’s Science of Nature. New York: Cambridge University Press. Lennox, J.G. 2021. Aristotle on Inquiry – Erotetic Frameworks and Domain-Specific Norms. New York: Cambridge University Press. Miller, F.D. 2012. Aristotle on the Separability of Mind. Chapter 13 of The Oxford Handbook of Aristotle. C. Shields, editor. New York: Oxford University Press.

Yesterday the voters rejected Gov. Youngkin's abortion-banning ploy, which he had used in campaigning for Republican candidates around the State. The Democrats now narrowly hold both legislative chambers in Richmond,* making a bit more secure the present law which does not prohibit abortions until the third trimester (i.e., after 26 weeks of gestation).

“It’s very clear where I stand on this,” Youngkin said after the Henrico County rally. “We’re running a big advertising campaign. … I believe Virginians can come together around a bill to protect life at 15 weeks with full exceptions for rape and incest and when a mother’s life is at risk.” Today is election day in Virginia for the State legislature, and NO, Gov, we cannot come together on your abortion ban. It is at around 26 weeks of gestation that a fetus reaches a condition in which it can be supported outside the womb of the mother. Until then anyone forcing a woman to carry the fetus to term is impressing her into their service, just as when this State had the forced labor that is slavery. No compromise.

See also: Newman Hartford Nozick Rasmussen and Den Uyl

That song by Randy Newman includes the line “You give me reason to live.” As the reader knows, the song is the expression of one in the throes of a sexual romance. Ayn Rand writes “My morality, the morality of reason, is contained on a single axiom: existence exists—and in a single choice: to live” (AS 1018). The moral is correct value that is chosen and understood, in Rand’s view. Animal consciousness has the function of preserving life of that sort of animal. For humans the feature of rationality in consciousness has the function of preserving human life. It would make as little sense to speak of a goodness preceding the occurrence of life in the universe as to speak, in general metaphysics, of any features at all beyond existence. That said, the makeup of existence by its traits differs from the makeup of life by its ends-seeking traits. The unity of ends-seeking parts to the whole that is a living thing is unity of a different order than unity of sodium and chlorine in salt. Among ends-seeking traits of a living thing are an ensemble of them necessary for making up that particular species of life and its individuals. Paramount among such traits for human life is rational consciousness. We can have rationality before knowing what it is and knowing we have it and that one can modulate it. We can experience sexiness in human life before knowing about reproduction and psychological cravings for sexual romance and biological function(s) of those cravings. We can be choosing life and rationality before knowing much about what they are and much of why they are good to choose. Before knowing one could and should not remove one’s living activity that is rationality. Before knowing one has been making life continue and directing choices to that end. Including dancing in celebration, inspiration, and worship of that end. Coming to know one can choose to end life, one comes also to know one can choose to continue life, along with its requirements, as one has been doing heretofore less consciously. Now one is four-square in choice to live or die as a moral choice, that is, choice with understanding. In some circumstances, choosing to end life is the morally right choice. Decision for that alternative will have in mind also the other alternative, and its requirements, as precedent and surround in that human life. In choosing that there be life, we can have rationally chosen that there be value, a value-occasion, but not what are the requirements of value, which is something not open to our choice (to borrow from Nozick 1981).

I've made it to 75 today, and I'm still learning and writing fine! (Birthday gift from my husband in the link – design by Eero Aarnio in 1960's.)

Representative Dean Phillips (D) Launches Candidacy in Democratic Primaries against President Biden from Opinion piece in CNN 28 October 2023:

SR Begat QM

ACLU Argues Trump Gag Order in Federal Election Subversion Case Is Unconstitutional

Tad, you're correct, I've heard, to use "all youse all" for an audience of three or more. You're sounding normal to me, just with above-average introspection to report. Be that as it may, I thought I'd add that I have certain flash-sketch images of scenes in memory that were set when I first read the scene in literature. The final scene of Hank Rearden in his office with the farewell salute from the mills and Galt and Dagny etc, etc, in the abandoned rail tunnel. I don't seem to have any particulars of what their faces look like other than being man's or woman's and being White, but such images and movements in the scenes as I do conjure do not change upon re-reading the book. And I doubt they'd get displaced by any filmmaking of those scenes. At least one dream researcher Hobson proposed that the stories we make in our dreams are handicapped attempts to make sense of images that are being randomly presented to the dreamer. I've noticed that Freud was right in one thing at least about the phenomenology of dreams, for what it is worth, and that is that frequently objects or actions or problems in dreams are residue of real waking experiences of the preceding day. I think sometimes the day residue can be from experience of television or film images. I still recall a dream from before 1980 during which I became awake. It was just of a nude blonde woman, details of her body indefinite, but she was vertical and as without support and amidst wind-billowing satins and shears, all of it in bright slightly golden light accompanied by my feeling of the greatest preciousness and attractive beauty. (I don't recall if I was having one of those involuntary you-know-whats.) I entered it into a poem I wrote a few years ago called "Dream to Sleep". By her face and hair, I knew well enough that she was not any particular person I'd known at all. Indeed, I'd say she mostly matched ads from 1960's television for Breck. I have a curiosity, Tad. Imagine having a glove on your left hand. In your mind, take it off and turn it inside out. Pull it onto your right hand. Does it seem like it should fit the right hand? Does it seem a verdict is not reached by this mere imagining? It was in the early 1990's I think that psychologists and neuroscientists found the sequence of brain activities that support human abilities to turn objects over in the mind. I don't know if there has been similar research on inversions such as in the glove transformation. (I've tried it with a real glove, and it fits. That might be useful someday.)

Here is the response: