Fragmenta Philosophica

The Warp and the Woof

Because of other pursuits - with consequent erosion of my blogging time - I've seriously contemplated "packing it in," as they say. But I am sufficiently saddened at the thought of abandoning this modest endeavor that I have resolved to keep plugging away, as time and my mercurial interest permit.

As often is the case, a recent zinger from Roger got me thinking about things ... Regulars here will have noticed that Right Reason (RR) is the latest addition to my de facto blogroll. Despite, to my taste, some unevenness in the quality of output - understandable enough for a new undertaking; the writing here evidently suffers from the same, without the excuse - I recommend the site. I conceive of it as a sort of conservative Crooked Timber - a team effort by advised academics and other writers.

I was initially drawn to RR because of the participation of another new discovery for me, the "maverick philosopher" (Bill Valicella), as well as some other "names" - Wallace Matson and Roger Scruton amongst them.

Scruton is a very interesting thinker, who first got my attention with his piece on Godless Conservatism some years back (available here). I have profited from his insightful work, Modern Philosophy, which (forgive the cliché) contains both much to agree and disagree with. I'm not happy with major aspects of his treatment of Nietzsche - he seems to concede far too much to the vogue postmodernist interpretation (in contradistinction to which, see this charming piece). But he separates himself mightily from the herd in a footnote concerning "virtue ethics" wherein he adverts to various selections from Plotinus' Enneads.

In the same note, he explicitly exempts himself from the circle of admirers of MacIntyre's After Virtue; and as I see it, the esteem for Plotinus, and the disdain of MacIntyre, are very much of a piece. Although with, e.g., Dependent Rational Animals, MacIntyre circled back to an ethical view  with a quasi-Aristotelian entelechy at its center, in After Virtue he famously repudiated The Philosopher's "metaphysical biology." But that is exactly what we get from Plotinus. For example, treatise 1.4 begins thus:

"Are we to make True Happiness one and the same thing with Welfare or Prosperity and therefore within the reach of the other living beings as well as ourselves? There is certainly no reason to deny well-being to any of them as long as their lot allows them to flourish unhindered after their kind."
(from the unreliable, but beautiful, MacKenna translation).

A.H. Armstrong translates the same passage as follows:

"Suppose we assume the good life and well-being to be one and the same; shall we then have to allow a share in them to other living things as well as ourselves? If they can live in the way natural to them without impediment, what prevents us from saying that they too are in a good state of life?"

Such a notion explicitly ties the optimal modus vivendi of a thing (its "flourishing") to its inherent capacities and potentialities - its "nature"; the various brute animals and plants each have their own kind of flourishing, no less than humans. This is indeed a metaphysical biology, and recalls an (in)famous passage from Aristole's Ethica Nicomachea, where he meditates upon the "proper function" (ergon) of man:

"To call happiness the highest good is perhaps a little trite, and a clearer account of what it is, is still required. Perhaps this is best done by first ascertaining the proper function of man. For just as the goodness and performance of a flute player, a sculptor, or any kind of expert, and generally of anyone who fulfills some function or performs some actions, are thought to reside in whatever is his proper function, so the goodness of man would seem to reside in whatever is his proper function. Is it then possible that while a carpenter and shoemaker have their own proper functions and spheres of action, man as man has none, but was left by nature a good-for-nothing without a function? ... The proper function of man, then, consists in an activity of the soul in conformity with a rational principle or, at least, not without it." (I.7, trans. Ostwald).

In one of the best modern commentaries on Aristotle's thought of which I'm aware, Jonathan Lear writes,

"It may at first seem odd to a modern reader to suppose that man has a function. And the inference ... looks weak. If that argument provided the only reason for thinking that man has a function, Aristotle's ethics would rest on a shoddy foundation. But, as so often with Aristotle, we must look to his overall philosophical outlook, to understand the argument in a particular passage. If we accept that Aristotle has already argued that every natural organism has a nature, and that man has a distinct nature, a unique inner principle of change and rest, it follows obviously that man's function is to live an active life which expresses his nature." (emphasis in original; Aristotle: The desire to understand, p. 163).  An excellent exegesis of those wider metaphysical-biological considerations which ground Aristotle's viewpoint may be found in "The Metaphysical and Psychological Basis of Aristotle's Ethics" by T.H. Irwin, in Essays on Aristotle's Ethics, ed. Amelie O. Rorty.

A more obscure work - but not on that score any less of value - is the very interesting Thomism and Aristotelianism by Harry Jaffa, in which various of St. Thomas' de facto innovations vis-a-vis Aristotelian doctrine (under the guise of elucidations) are catalogued. Of particular note here is how Thomas apparently reads "natural law" into Aristotle. That vexed locution might simply mean - I take it to mean - that there are ethical truths; to that extent, one could call Aristotle as a friendly witness in a dispute over natural law. But Thomas goes further, proposing that natural law qua law must be "promulgated" - something incompatible with the autism of the Umoved Mover. And further, Thomas wishes to make room for the theological virtues - and man's putative cosmic vocation - by imputing to Aristotle the un-Aristotelian view that "perfect happiness" is unattainable "in this life."

An upshot of exposing Thomas' innovations is the underscoring of Aristotle's ethical naturalism - in the context of which Scruton's "Godless Conservatism" is grounded (or "ground-able") in a challenging and vigorous manner. Whether the city can in fact function without gods is another, and fascinating, question ...

Kaufmann

Walter Kaufmann is mostly known, if known at all, as a translator of and commentator upon the works of Nietzsche, Hegel, and Goethe.

One of my friends is somewhat dismissive of Kaufmann's own philosophical work, labelling him "Nietzsche redivivus." This friend is an orthodox Roman Catholic, and does not look kindly on  Kaufmann's sustained critique of Christianity, across such works as The Faith of a Heretic and Critique of Religion and Philosophy. There's definitely something of the Nietzschean in Kaufmann's criticisms, though far more of interest, to my mind, is the striking fact that Kaufmann was raised in Germany as a very pious Lutheran, and then converted to Judaism in his early teens - inauspiciously, near in time to the Nazi advent. Kaufmann would later emigrate to the States, and made quite a name for himself early on as the ressurector of Nietzsche's reputation here; belying the vogue view that there was an evident straight line from his thought to the scourge of Nazism.

The imprint of Nietzsche is evident on Kaufmann's mature thought, not least in his penchant for a galvanizing turn of phrase. I'll share a few favorites of mine, drawn from some of his works.

The intensity of great philosophy and poetry is abnormal and subversive; it is the enemy of habit, custom, and all stereotypes. The motto is always that what is well known is not known at all well.
(Critique of Religion and Philosophy).

Godless existentialism is pictured as the philosophy of our age: the modern poet is not offered the fine edifice of Thomism, as Dante was; he is confronted, we are told, by a bleak doctrine that proclaims that man is not at home in the world but thrown into it, that he has no divine father and is abandoned to a life of care, anxiety, and failure that will end in death, with nothing after that. Poor modern man!

In fact, a disillusionment that used to be the prerogative of the few has become common property; and what exhilirated Socrates and Shakespeare, who were in a a sense sufficient to themselves, is founding depressing by men who lack the power to find meaning in themselves.
(From Shakespeare to Existenstialism).

While refusing to permit himself the least ambiguity in matters of faith, a man may nevertheless find that some kind of religious language, both in its traditional form as we find it most notably in the Bible - for example, in the 90th Psalm - and in spontaneous outbursts, now blasphemous, now desperate, is emotionally more adequate for him, more of a relief for an overflowing heart, than any other idiom he commands. If he could compose a first-rate poem, that might be still more adequate; but he cannot, and in his present quandary he addresses God. He does not believe anything about God and accepts no dogma of any sort. He does not feel more tolerant of the theologians than before. He turns to God as one might turns to a Shakespearean outcry or a Negro spiritual or a walk up a mountain, without belief.

(Critique)

One of the central fallacies of the liberal faith is the sweet assumption that distributive justice involves only rewards, and that there is no reason why society should not be able to make everybody happy. The same conceit underlies most talk of a "just peace." In fact, problems of distributive justice do not arise unless something that is desired by many is too scarce to satisfy all. This means in practice that it is possible to disappoint all, but usually impossible to please all. Even if everybody should be pleased, it would not follow that each got what he deserved ...

(Without Guilt or Justice)

Perhaps the single best example of the common lack of high standards in questions of honesty is our tendency to think in labels. Terms like existentialism, pragmatism, and empiricism, liberalism and conservatism are, more often than not, so many excuses for not considering individual ideas on their merits and for not exposing oneself to the bit of thought. For less educated people, words like Jew and Catholic, Democrat, Republican, and Communist do much the same job. These labels have some uses that are perfectly legitimate, but frequently they function as an aid to thoughtlessness and permit people to appear to think when they are merely talking.
(The Faith of a Heretic)

Oenophilia

Wine, my friend, how do I love thee?

Not - according to The Philosopher - as a friend: "it would surely be ridiculous to wish wine well; if one wishes anything for it, it is that it may keep, so that one may have it oneself."
(Ethica Nicomachea, Bk. VIII, Ch. 2)

Yep.

Calling All Marxists

Yes, I know ... By design, Volume I of Das Kapital employs "abstract" or "simplifying" assumptions about value which Volume III qualifies, as the latter endeavors to meet the actual dynamics of supply-demand head-on; how, under the pressure of competition, exchange-values can and do greatly diverge from original labor-input values.

And I agree there's a real question as to whether Marxian value and an analysis based on marginal utility are even addressing the same question(s). On its face, the latter is an account of valuation, not value.

But I'd be interested to know how anyone who still credits Marxian value, at least as a heuristic (or, better, as an apprehension of something basic and undeniable about economy and production), answers the basic "Austrian" contention:

"... a suit is not eight times as valuable as a hat because it requires eight times as much labor as a hat to produce. It is because a finished suit will be eight times as valuable [Ed. sc., desired-demanded] as a finished hat that society is willing to employ eight times as much labor for the suit as for the hat."
(Roepke, paraphrasing Wicksteed, in Economics of the Free Society, p. 20,  n. 2)

I don't offer this so much as a challenge as an opportunity to understand how Marxists respond to marginal utility - beyond taking it as the fetish of modern "vulgar economists," that is.