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Archive for the ‘Humanities’ Category

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Poetry by Troy Camplin

In Art, Artist, Arts & Letters, Creative Writing, Creativity, Humanities, Poetry, Writing on September 20, 2011 at 7:58 pm
Troy Camplin holds a Ph.D. in humanities from the University of Texas at Dallas. He has taught English in middle school, high school, and college, and is currently taking care of his children at home. He is the author of Diaphysics, an interdisciplinary work on systems philosophy; other projects include the application of F.A. Hayek’s spontaneous order theory to ethics, the arts, and literature. His play “Almost Ithacad” won the PIA Award from the Cyberfest at Dallas Hub Theater.
 

 

Introduction

In the unbelievable and unknown –
In the unrefined and those without thought –
In the unremarkable and unwise –
We find our leaders
We find our heroes
We find our artists
I see it – there is a sun on the horizon –
The rosy fingers of an ancient dawn –
A rebirth of everything from everything we have torn apart –
A world in fragments – no longer a world –
Fragments gathered up –
A world reborn from the fragments –
A world reborn from the past, the ancients –
Greeks, Romans, Chinese, Africans, Arabs, Indians, and aborigines –
Yet –
I am not a postmodernist
And I am not a classicist
And I am not a romantic
And I am not a modernist
And I am not a naturalist
No –
I am each of these – and none
I am the moon and the sun
I am the earth and the sea
I am woman and man
Seriousness and fun
Fragments and unity
Plurality and one

An Astrology

I stand, stare at the Cantor dust of stars,
Stand alone in the open field of grass
That glows in the silver of the moon brass
And dark emerald under a rising Mars.
I wage a silent war within my mind
As I wait in vain for a happiness
These stars cannot bring me. My loneliness
Soaks into the ground to be left behind.
I turn away from Mars and search the sky –
The false-star Venus must be out among
The stars and darkness, a beacon for me
To connect my life to, so I can fly
And leave this lonely-soaked ground a far-flung
Memory. I want to love and to be.

 

Etre Sartre

In France was an atheist, superb
At finding new ways to disturb –
A communist brand,
A Nazi’s friend, and
Philosophy based on a linking verb.

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Foucault’s Nietzschean Genealogy

In Art, Arts & Letters, Historicism, History, Humanities, Literary Theory & Criticism, Philosophy, Politics, Rhetoric, Western Philosophy, Writing on September 17, 2011 at 10:02 am

Allen Mendenhall

“Genealogy […] requires patience and knowledge of details, and it depends on a vast accumulation of source material.  Its ‘cyclopean monuments’ are constructed from ‘discreet and apparently insignificant truths and according to a rigorous method’; they cannot be the product of ‘large and well-meaning errors.’  In short, genealogy demands relentless erudition.  Genealogy does not oppose itself to history as the lofty and profound gaze of the philosopher might compare to the molelike perspective of the scholar; on the contrary, it rejects the metahistorical deployment of ideal significations and indefinite teleologies.  It opposes itself to the search for ‘origins.’”

                                      —Michel Foucault, from “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History”

This brief passage by Foucault has three references to Nietzsche.  The essay from which the passage is drawn demonstrates Foucault’s immense debt to Nietzsche, citing as it does no other thinker but Nietzsche (save for a fleeting reference to Paul Ree, whose term “Ursprung,” or “origin,” Nietzsche adopts).  Of all Nietzsche’s ideas and practices, genealogy is the one that Foucault cultivates most impressively.  Genealogy is a methodology by and with which one documents or tracks the development of ideas and their relation to human organization.  In other words, genealogy traces knowledge to its systemic formations across various networks of discourse.  That is why genealogy “requires patience” and “depends on a vast accumulation of source material.”  It is a process, and processes take time to work out. 

Genealogy does not recover origins because origins are not recoverable.  Origins are fluid, not fixed; they are not, strictly speaking, origins at all—if, that is, “origins” is taken to mean single, absolute causes or definite, immutable sources.  Rather, for Foucault, “origins” is a term of convenience—perhaps strategically essentialized—referring to sets of beliefs and activities that constitute discursive structures mobilized by numerous truth claims.  That is why Foucault can employ the term “origins” in one sentence and then, in a subsequent sentence, seemingly reverse course by calling origins “chimeras.”  The point is not to define or explain origins; the point is to discredit the idea of origins as self-evident and immanently knowable. 

Origins themselves are inaccessible; the emergence and development of structures based on ideas, however, are not only accessible, but also edifying.  Foucault’s genealogy, therefore, seeks to collect data about numerous truth claims and then to explain how these data form and shape culture.  As Foucault says of genealogy, “It opposes itself to the search for ‘origins.’”  Note the quotation marks around “origins.”  Those marks suggest an intent to divest that term of its expressive purchase.  Origins are knowable only as points of loss or complication, only as intricate and multifaceted constructs that, when examined closely, signify multiple and heterogeneous phenomena and that thus enable and sustain further inquiry.     Read the rest of this entry »

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Friedrich Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals: A Critical Précis

In Art, Artist, Arts & Letters, Ethics, Humanities, Law, Philosophy, Rhetoric, Western Civilization, Writing on September 1, 2011 at 11:44 pm

Allen Mendenhall

We remain unknown to ourselves, we seekers after knowledge, even to ourselves: and with good reason.  We have never sought after ourselves—so how should we one day find ourselves?  It has rightly been said that: ‘Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also’; our treasure is to be found in the beehives of knowledge.  As spiritual bees from birth, this is our eternal destination, our hearts are set on one thing only—‘bringing something home.’

                                             —    Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

Nietzsche employs an aphorism to open the third essay of On the Genealogy of Morals (GM).  That approach seems fitting for this critical précis, the aphoristic epigram to which quotes none other than Nietzsche himself.

The opening declarative here—“We remain unknown to ourselves”—signals the ancient Greek imperative: “Know thyself.”  That Nietzsche converts the imperative to a declarative is suggestive.  The imperative expresses a command: the emphatic utterance of an authoritative demand (“do this”).  The declarative is a descriptive assertion: the positive utterance of fact or opinion.  The imperative, if issued by the right person and not meant as merely advisory, presupposes the power to enforce or induce the substance of the command.  A speaker that commands another to know himself assumes that the other will act, can act, or ought to act in accordance with what he, the speaker, orders.  The speaker of a declarative statement, on the other hand, conveys information; the transmission of data from the speaker to the listener does not necessarily signify a desire that the listener act, or refrain from acting, in accordance with the data or the speaker’s wishes. 

Nietzsche uses the declarative to describe our epistemic state or to posit an idea about our epistemic state.  His articulation necessarily undermines the idea that we already have answered the call to know ourselves.  Either we have ignored the command to know ourselves (“We have never sought after ourselves”), or we have failed to comply with it—or both.  To the extent that Western philosophy could, at Nietzsche’s moment, be reduced to these two words—“know thyself”—Western philosophy had, if we believe Nietzsche’s declaration, failed or decayed.  What Nietzsche seeks to posit, in more assertive or, one might say, more declarative terms, is a radical rewriting and reinterpretation of knowledge itself.  To know ourselves, we must know what we know and how we know it, or know what we think we know and how to overcome it.  We have blurred the distinction between knowledge and morals; we have internalized weak epistemic truth claims across time; a genealogy of morals is necessary to trace and thereby illuminate our understanding of ourselves. Read the rest of this entry »

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Dragon*Con Convention in Atlanta

In Arts & Letters, Fiction, Georgia, Humanities, Literature, News and Current Events, News Release, Writing on August 31, 2011 at 8:25 am

Allen Mendenhall

The Dragon*Con convention will take place in Atlanta from September 2 through September 5.  The convention features events and workshops about science fiction and fantasy, gaming, comics, literature, art, music, and film.

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The Comedy of Errors at the New American Shakespeare Tavern

In Arts & Letters, Humanities, Literature, News and Current Events, News Release, Shakespeare, Theatre on August 31, 2011 at 8:16 am

Allen Mendenhall

Tomorrow marks a preview of The Comedy of Errors, directed by Drew Reeves and performed at the New American Shakespeare Tavern in Atlanta.  Performances begin on September 3 and last through September 11, with additional performances on September 17, September 23, September 29, and October 2.  View show information here.

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AJC Decatur Book Festival

In Arts & Letters, Creative Writing, Essays, Fiction, Humanities, Literature on August 31, 2011 at 7:56 am

Allen Mendenhall

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Decatur Book Festival will take place this weekend (September 2 – 4, 2011).  Click here for more details.  The festival features lectures and book signings by over 300 others.  The complete list of authors is available here.

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Power Made Perfect in Weakness

In Art, Arts & Letters, Communication, Creative Writing, Emerson, Essays, Humanities, Law, Literature, Poetry, Shakespeare, Teaching on August 28, 2011 at 1:30 pm

Allen Mendenhall

I wrote the following piece about three weeks ago, while I was vacationing in Destin, Florida, with my family.

If we expect others to rely on our fairness and justice we must show that we rely on their fairness and justice.

—Calvin Coolidge

My wife and I are on vacation in Florida.  Yesterday morning, over a cup of coffee and a doughnut, sitting on the balcony and reading the newspaper amid sounds of seagulls and the grating roll of morning waves, I noted that one Michael Stone—a blind man, XTERRA champion, and 10-time Ironman triathlete who recently published a book, Eye Envy—will speak at the University of North Florida on August 13.  I haven’t read Stone’s book, but it’s apparently a resource not only for those suffering from vision-loss any degenerative disease.

Stone began to lose his sight in 2004.  His blindness is a result of a rare disease called cone-rod dystrophy.  Despite his handicap, he has accomplished amazing things, but not without the help of others.  During races, he relies on guides, who shout directions and warnings to him.

I’ll never understand why God makes some people handicapped and others not, why some must rely on others, and some must be relied on.  Someday and for a time, everyone relies on someone or something and is relied on by someone or something.      Read the rest of this entry »

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Thoughts on an Essay about Pragmatism

In American History, Arts & Letters, Communication, Essays, Ethics, Humanities, Literary Theory & Criticism, Literature, Nineteenth-Century America, Pragmatism, The Literary Table, Western Civilization on August 20, 2011 at 8:42 pm

Allen Mendenhall

The following post appeared here at The Literary Table.

Lately I’ve been reading a subject of interest to the lawyers, theologians, writers, and philosophers at the table: pragmatism.  (Pragmatism finds a way of encompassing any interest whatsoever.)  The following discussion is brief and does not do justice to the nuances of my subject: Ruth Anna Putnam’s essay “The Moral Impulse” (in The Revival of Pragmatism, Morris Dickstein, ed., Duke University Press, 1999).  Nevertheless, I proceed with eyes wide open. 

Putnam opens by referencing William James’s pragmatist metaphysics and its reliance upon feelings and the sensorial to get at the religious or moral.  This reference provides Putnam wide latitude to articulate her arresting point that people participate in moral value systems because they always retain agency even if their actions seem like products of habit.  People do not act in putatively moral ways simply because they are conditioned or determined to do so; they act in those ways because they want to do so.  The want is the moral impulse.  That one should act or think on an impulse does not evacuate that action or thought of all intelligence.  “It is not,” Putnam assures us, “to say that one does not have or has not given intellectually compelling reasons for that position” (63).  In fact, as James himself suggests, we may—notice he does not say ought to or must—entertain any moral impulses so long as they lead us toward critical currents of thought that have not been invalidated even if they have not been validated.  Using such Jamesian refrains as her starting-point and hesitating over the usefulness of a now catch-all signifier like “pragmatism,”[1] Putnam announces her intention to explore moral beliefs in the work of James and Dewey.  Her focus is on those moments of convergence and departure, with slightly more emphasis on the departure.  Without touching on all Putnam’s arguments about James and Dewey and their agreements and disagreements, I will here note one of Putnam’s more sustained and striking observations, which addresses the difference between James’s and Dewey’s moral values: the difference which, it turns out, is at the heart of her essay.

Having shown that James sees the question of free will in terms of determinacy and indeterminacy without essentializing that binary opposition, and having shown that Dewey rejects James’s position as a dualism that is fundamentally flawed, Putnam resorts to James’s position to lump Dewey into a determinist camp and James into a free will camp (which does not seem the same as an indeterminacy camp, but I will not get into that).  Putnam then resorts to Dewey’s position by implicitly allowing that these polarized categories will not do; for she suggests that Dewey questioned the amount of personal agency a person could achieve in a world that, in light of quantum physics, does not seem deterministic (64).  At any rate, her point in playfully adopting both a Jamesian and Deweyian perspective at once seems to be that despite the seeming differences between them, James and Dewey both “understand that morally significant choices express who we are and shape who we will be,” and that “this relation between character and conduct leaves room for choice, for moral growth or deterioration, even for dramatic reversals” (64).  The human mind makes deliberate choices based on evaluative criteria gained by experience in the tangible world.  That, I suspect, is a statement with which James and Dewey and I daresay even Putnam would agree. Read the rest of this entry »

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Konrad Graf on Action-Based Jurisprudence

In Austrian Economics, Humane Economy, Humanities, Jurisprudence, Law, Liberalism, Libertarianism, News Release, Politics on August 14, 2011 at 7:54 pm

Allen Mendenhall

Konrad Graf, who, with me, contributes to Prometheus Unbound: A Libertarian Review of Fiction and Literature, has published the following essay in Libertarian Papers:  “Action-Based Jurisprudence: Praxeological Legal Theory in Relation to Economic Theory, Ethics, and Legal Practice.”  Here is the abstract to the piece:

Action-based legal theory is a discrete branch of praxeology and the basis of an emerging school of jurisprudence related to, but distinct from, natural law. Legal theory and economic theory share content that is part of praxeology itself: the action axiom, the a priori of argumentation, universalizable property theory, and counterfactual-deductive methodology. Praxeological property-norm justification is separate from the strictly ethical “ought” question of selecting ends in an action context. Examples of action-based jurisprudence are found in existing “Austro-libertarian” literature. Legal theory and legal practice must remain distinct and work closely together if justice is to be found in real cases. Legal theorizing was shaped in religious ethical contexts, which contributed to confused field boundaries between law and ethics. The carrot and stick influence of rulers on theorists has distorted conventional economics and jurisprudence in particular directions over the course of centuries. An action-based approach is relatively immune to such sources of distortion in its methods and conclusions, but has tended historically to be marginalized from conventional institutions for this same reason.

This piece is striking for a number of reasons, not least of which is the way it came about.  As the Mises Economics Blog explains,

This is an interesting, provocative analysis of libertarian theory that highlights the strength of the Mises Institute’s approach and model of openness. First, this piece was inspired by the author’s participating in a Mises Academy course.

Second, the author is not a professional scholar or academic. In days past such authors–who are often the source of new ideas–would be shut out by credentialism and the iron grip certain institutions had over the few avenues of publication. The open model of the Mises Institute’s Libertarian Papers–rigorously double-blind peer-reviewed but open to private scholars as well as academics, as its focus is on ideas–breaks free of this hidebound model.

Third, the article is 75 pages long, much longer than many journals can accept. But this is no problem for the Libertarian Papers model as it is online, not centered on paper.

To sum up, this provocative piece was stimulated by the Mises Institute’s being on the forefront of technology (Mises Academy), not to mention the gargantuan volume of free, online resource such authors are able to draw on (Mises.org), and then was offered a publishing platform (Libertarian Papers) despite its length and the author’s private, “non-credentialed” status. In my view, this is all to the good and a testament to the heroic work done by the Mises Institute.

Libertarian Papers is edited by Stephan Kinsella.  Visit Kinsella’s website here.  Visit Mises Academy (which inspired Graf’s article) by clicking here.

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Anamnesis Journal and Debates Over the New Natural Law

In Arts & Letters, Conservatism, Essays, History, Humanities, Jurisprudence, Law, Liberalism, News and Current Events, News Release, Politics, Religion, Rhetoric, Western Civilization on August 12, 2011 at 4:19 pm

Allen Mendenhall

Over at the web-essay section of Anamnesis: A Journal for the Study of Tradition, Place, and ‘Things Divine,’ Professors R. J. Snell and Thaddeus J. Kozinski have weighed in on debates over the New Natural Law theory.

Here is Snell’s thesis:

Despite differences in particular religious commitments, a significant number of theists share reservations about the natural law. Natural law theory overlooks the Fall, arrogates the domain of revelation, attempts obligation without divine command, and treats God in the generic and thus in terms alien to the believer—just some of the many objections.In this short essay I offer a broad defense against these charges, particularly claiming that understanding natural law through human subjectivity recognizes how humans actually know and so consequently preserves the uniqueness and transcendence of God.

Appealing to authorities within the religious tradition may go some distance in answering objections, for theology and sacred text tends to vindicate the natural lawyers, especially if the religion has a doctrine of creation. But the charges may have particular traction against the so-called New Natural Law Theory (NNL), with its first-person perspective. As Christopher O. Tollefsen explains, the NNL takes seriously “considerations concerning the nature of human action,” particularly intentions as “agent-centered, or first-personal … from the point of view of the agent as seeking some good.” It is, he continues, “only by adopting the perspective of the acting person that an agent’s action can be best understood.”

Here is Kozinski’s thesis:

I commend R.J. Snell for his excellent essay “God, Religion, and the New Natural Law.” His thesis: “understanding natural law through human subjectivity recognizes how humans actually know and so consequently preserves the uniqueness and transcendence of God” is defended rigorously, and is, to my mind, true. However, in allying his argument with those of the New Natural Law school, I think he does himself a disservice.There is nothing in his thesis in terms of data, premises, argumentation, and conclusions that requires such an alliance, for everything he claims about the indispensable role and even primacy of subjectivity, experience, understanding, and judgment in ethical inquiry and practice rings true on its own and is clearly in accordance with the philosophia perennis in general and Thomistic ethical philosophy in particular. Whereas, the major claim of the New Natural Theory, that is, the adequacy of practical reason alone to ground and explain ethical theory and practice, does not ring true and is in, at least prima facie, contradiction with traditional Catholic and Thomistic moral philosophy and theology.

Though I agree with Dr. Snell that the modern and postmodern “turn to the subject” is the most appropriate beginning to inquiry about the natural law, and maybe the most effective motivation for obeying it, in our present public milieu of deep worldview pluralism, it is only a beginning. Moreover, even a sound, systematic Thomistic defense of the relative self-sufficiency of practical reason for knowing and living out the natural law can be misleading if it neglects to include a discussion of these four realities:  1) the mutually dependent relation of speculative and practical reason; 2) the subjectivity-shaping role of social practices; 3) the tradition-constituted-and-constitutive character of practical rationality; and 4) the indispensability of divine revelation in ethical inquiry and practice.

These essays are good introductions to the New Natural Law Theory.  For more about this branch of jurisprudence, see the following web-based essays and articles (some of them approving of natural law and some of them critical):

Joseph W. Koterski, S.J.  “On the New Natural Law Theory.”  Modern Age (2000: 415-418).

Phillip E. Johnson.  “In Defense of Natural Law.”  First Things (1999).

Christopher Tollefsen.  “The New Natural Law Theory.”  LYCEUM, Vol. X, No. 1 (2008).

David Gordon’s review of Robert P. George’s In Defense of Natural Law.  Review title: “New But Not Improved.”  The Mises Review.  Vol. 5, No. 4 (1999).

Larry Arnhart.  “Darwinian Conservatism as the New Natural Law.”  The Good Society, Vol. 12, No. 3 (2003).

The Daily Dish.  “The ‘New’ Natural Law.”  The Atlantic (Dec. 23, 2009).

David D. Kirkpatrick.  “The Conservative-Christian Big Thinker.”  The New York Times Magazine (Dec. 16, 2009).

“The Gospel of Life: A Symposium.”  First Things (1995). 

This list is hardly exhaustive.  It shows only a few scholarly and popular pieces.  No discussion of natural law theory should fail to mention John Finnis and Robert P. George, whose books and articles are well-known and oft-discussed.  Anamnesis, edited by Peter Haworth, is sure to come out with more compelling pieces related to topics discussed here at The Literary Lawyer.  Please read Anamnesis and, if you feel so inclined, leave a comment in the “comments” section of the web-based fora.