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Post by rogerbuck on May 26, 2014 11:09:58 GMT
Hm ... I have been semi-regretting something I said on the thread about Michael Voris: My words ... contain a friendly challenge to Hibernicus, which I plan to expand on ... probably over on the Desmond Fennell thread. I've hardly read Fennell yet - but have just ordered Third Stroke Did It - based on John Waters' evident high regard for Fennell. In short, I imagine I will agree with Hibernicus that Fennell is too extreme ... but I suspect probably, as with Belloc, I will be more accepting of his shortcomings - rightly or wrongly. I find myself thinking of how St. John Paul II beatified Bl. Pius IX, a man who I imagine has similar shortcomings to all the above. Yet St. John Paul II could still see what was great in him. So yes, there is more to say. A friendly challenge probably coming up after I've read Fennell ... In a way, it will be an extension of something I said once before here: In this thread, as elsewhere, Hibernicus shows how very expert he is at deconstruction. And I am sincerely grateful. Elsewhere I acknowledged how grateful I am for his thoroughly confronting the horror of the scandals and his very evenhanded deconstructions. Evenhanded, as in deconstructing both the deniers and the propagandists. And I just drank deeply of his deconstruction of Cooney's book on Archbishop McQuaid. So I appreciate the deconstruction here ... Nonetheless, there can be a danger with too much deconstruction. One can miss beauty. I've decided to withdraw my impending "challenge" - at least for now, until I've thought more deeply - something that you, Hibernicus, are stimulating me to do, for which I am grateful. I am sorry if all this is too cryptic. Perhaps it is useful if I simply record that I find myself with near-schizophrenic reactions whilst reading - indeed studying - the archives of this fine board of which you are obviously the driving force and influence, Hibernicus. On the one hand, I want to say I've found your thinking very, very helpful to me. It is rare to see someone thinking so carefully over such a sustained period of time - obviously decades - with such a passion for fairness - as well as owning and identifying the faults of a movement with which one is considerably identified with. You bring both an erudition and a drive for balance and justice that is indeed admirable. So thank you: this board's archives contain great gifts from you to me. On the other hand, I confess that in a number of things - like your deconstruction of Fennell above, but also a number of others - I wonder if you might be in danger of "throwing the baby out with the bathwater". That is, when I "finish" reading Fennell, I wonder if I will agree with you about the dirty bathwater, but still feel he is saying something very, very important which elicits Waters' respect and maybe that of others on this thread. In terms of the Voris thread, I reacted, I confess, to what I saw as you conflating Voris and Belloc, missing Belloc, I thought, by focussing - to my mind - too much on the dirty bathwater that is definitely there in Belloc. The risk for me, I suppose, is a too-facile acceptance of people's flaws. The risk for you may be (?) a certain puritanism. But I can't say that yet. I need to go into this much more carefully - and, again, thank you for providing me the stimulus to do so. So shutting up on this subject for now ...
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Post by hibernicus on May 27, 2014 19:22:43 GMT
I would say Belloc and Fennell are actually quite different thinkers. Belloc places great value on clarity of expression - that Gibbonian prose, that broad sweep through history and over the world, are very powerful - and he does have a coherent worldview. The big problem is what he leaves out, and the underlying assumptions behind a lot of it. Fennell is a much more cryptic and fragmented thinker, who is always saying that he has some great insight that explains everything, but never expounds it fully or coherently. One reason why I find him so disappointing in the end is that he invites collaboration but is unwilling to accept it - so that what seems like openness becomes evasion.
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Post by maolsheachlann on May 27, 2014 21:49:42 GMT
I feel a bit bad for him, he's taking quite a pasting in this thread. Kudos to him simply for being a Catholic intellectual in this era.
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 3, 2014 22:46:38 GMT
Des Fennell had a letter in the IRISH TIMES last week which shows him at his most irritating. HE asks why "populist" parties in the European context are denounced, since surely democracy is all about giving the people what they want, and what can be wrong with that? This is an example of faux-naivete and refusal to engage with the other side's arguments. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of political science could explain that: (1) "Populist" is used as a term of abuse because it implies that the populist adopts policies on the basis of "what the people want" without asking whether they are consistent with one another (e.g. UKIP in Britain simultaneously advocating tax cuts and large increases in defence spending), how they could be made to work (e.g. calling for the breakup of the EU without ever discussing how it might be put into practice). This leads to a strong suspicion that the populist cares niether for policy nor the people, but only about getting into power
(2) What the people want and what is good for them are not the same thing - as Plato pointed out 2500 years ago. A lot of us wanted what BErtie was giving in economic policies at the time, but we regret it now. The basis of representative democracy is that the representative owes the people to do what seems best to him, even if the voters disagree.
(3)It is possible for a majority position to be immoral. Dr Fennell has denounced the policies of the Stormont government many times, even though those policies were supported by a majority.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Jun 6, 2014 9:04:08 GMT
An interview with Desmond Fennell in today's Irish Times where he laments Ireland's lack of interest in thinking and in philosophy. He has a point but I think it's a mistake to equate philosophy in a general sense with academic philosophy, and a still greater mistake to equate thinking and the scrutiny of ideas with philosophy. I think everybody is engaging with ideas all the time-- not necessarily in a very sophisticated way, but it happens. As philosophers never cease to tell us, you can't NOT do philosophy, you can only do bad philosophy or good philosophy. (Of course, philosophers differ drastically amongst themselves as to what counts as good philosophy.) I really don't think that Western man can be too culpable in ignoring academic philosophy when the philosophical luminaries that they've been presented with for the last fifty years or so are the likes of Foucault, Derrida, Barthes and Baudrillard. I think fewer people, through no real fault of their own, would be aware of more solid thinkers like Robert Nozick or John Rawls or Alasdair McIntyre or John Searle. (I know very little of them myself, and nothing of Searle, but I understand he is a serious philosopher rather than a case of pseudo-intellectual posturing such as Foucault etc. That is the distinction I'm drawing.) The truth is that serious philosophy, both today and traditionally, is a technical intellectual discipline that requires a specialist knowledge of concepts and vocabulary that most people don't have the time to acquire. I know I don't. All a layman can hope for is a smattering of it. I don't accept that philosophy should be the vehicle of public debate, except insofar as philosophy underpins all debate anyway.
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Post by Askel McThurkill on Jun 9, 2014 13:52:24 GMT
I think that Fennell's argument is that we don't give thinking the thought we should give it...and the fact that the state doesn't sponsor academic thought as part of the general promotion of arts and culture. Furthermore, there is little appreciation of the Irish contribution to philosophy. The names Johannes Scotus Eriugena and George Berkeley come to mind, but there are others. I'm not sure that the awareness of Eriugena and Berkeley are anything near what they should be. And I would hardly put someone like Richard Kearney in the same breath. In fact I have seen much nonsense from Irish academic philosophers in recent years.
Given how freely we talk about Ireland's tremendous literary tradition or the interest of Irish people in politics or, to stick with the spirit of this forum, how seriously theological and religious matters have been treated in Ireland, one would think there was much more scope for the discipline of philosophy. But I think a lot of beginners dismiss it readily - linguistic analysis and logic can be very dry. Ideally, the humanities should be woven around philosophy. Literature (in English or otherwise) history and the social sciences should have a basis in philosphy. No one should be let near law without it and it provides a necessary perspective for the sciences. The question is how to impart it on those who simply wish to make money - education is seen as instrumental in Ireland; if anything, commerce graduates need to have the philosophic discipline drilled into them to see there is another way.
In France and other continental countries (Spain comes to mind), there is provision for philosophy at second level. But I remember hearing a very secular minded friend saying that Maynooth missed a golden opportunity to make philosophy the cardinal course in a general arts degree. I agree.
Another matter, many lay theological graduates, including some who optain higher degrees in theology, do so without a basis in philosophy. I think this very dangerous. Secondly, if we are talking about philosophical and theological disciplines, we could go off on a separate tangent on the classical languages, which are all but obsolete in secondary schools these days. Remember, it is not so long ago in Maynooth that you didn't get near theology if your Latin and Greek wasn't first class. Not only that, but after 1st Divinity, you were expected to have enough Hebrew to read the Old Testament unaided. A different time just a short time ago.
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 13, 2014 20:43:55 GMT
The Fennell interview contains two features that exemplify my problem with Fennell: (1) When he recalls RTE telling him they don't want him as an art critic because "you bring your philosophy into it" he treats this as hostility to philosophy in general, rather than to his philosophy in particular. (2) He remarks quite flatly that Irish anti-intellectualism is a post-colonial hangover because we were taught philosophy was reserved for the English masters. Perhaps that is so, but he seems to assume this is true without even considering that there might be more than one explanation - for example, that nationalism involved placing a high value on solidarity for the sake of survival and hence discouraged investigations which might be divisive or disturbing. I think there is a great deal to be said for his view that much of the mindset of modernity is disturbing (examples might be the brutal power-worship and moral relativism that characterise much of modern popular culture, or the idea which underlies a lot of literary fiction that we can only be free and happy if we first embrace nihilism and realise that the only meaning in the universe is what we make ourselves)and that this is connected in some ways to consumer capitalism (there was a very interesting art critic called Peter Fuller who used to argue that it wasn't coincidental that Charles Saatchi is one of the biggest collectors of nihilistic conceptual art, because as an advertiser he favours reducing everything to a punchline, and because consumer capitalism is fundamentally nihilistic in its encouragement of unlimited desire, so that we will try to fill the hole in our souls by ceaselessly purchasing stuff). The trouble is that Fennell doesn't address why people might be attracted to such a worldview, and what flaws there were in previous worldviews that led to the growth of this one. I would also agree that Fennell overrates Kearney - he seems to think that we should esteem Kearney just because he is Irish, without reference to the content or merits of what Kearney actually says. Old-style versions of Catholic university education were centred on philosophy in theory - the problem was that the philosophy tended to be mechanical (here's x, here are his errors, that's all you need to know about X) leading in reaction to a sort of Socratism without content (here's X, now I want you to think as an Xite for the next semester without reference to Catholicism, and if you turn into an Xite permanently that's fine for you) which even in the hands of a genuinely Catholic philosopher ends up pretty self-defeating.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Jun 13, 2014 21:43:56 GMT
From Richard Keaney's Wikepedia entry:
"Richard Kearney has recently established an ongoing artistic and multimedia project called "Hosting the Stranger". The project's core themes are host and guest; violence and reconciliation; embodied imagination and the sacred."
Aaaaaand that's all I need to know.
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 15, 2014 13:35:21 GMT
I don't know if I referred elsewhere on this board to Richard Kearney's proposed solution to the question of how the existence of God is compatible with the existence of evil. He declares that after Auschwitz it is immoral to believe in a transcendent and omnipotent God, but that we can believe in God whose existence is contingent on human belief and goodness. This is a good example of Professor Kearney's tendency to try to have it both ways and produce absurdities, which is visible throughout his work, since by definition a contingent being is not God (and by implication if God depends on humanity, humanity is higher than God). I call this "Richard Kearney's Tinkerbell theory of God". (In the stage version of JM Barrie's PETER PAN the fairy Tinkerbell will die if people cease to believe in fairies, and at one point the cast appeal to the audience to save her "Clap your hands if you believe in fairies".) As between Kearney and Dawkins, I have more intellectual respect for Dawkins (which isn't saying much), even though Dawkins is not Irish (though his wife is Anglo-Irish BTW). For this UCD gave up neo-Thomism (which after all derives from an Italian and a Greek, though the Italian had an Irish teacher.) No doubt Des Fennell would say this is very post-colonial of me. I'm afraid that Des Fennell's view that we ought to esteem Irish philosophers simply because they are Irish reminds me of the Spider claiming superiority over the Bee in Jonathan Swift's (An Irishman!) allegory THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS: EXTRACT "Not to disparage myself," said he, "by the comparison with such a rascal, what art thou but a vagabond without house or home, without stock or inheritance? born to no possession of your own, but a pair of wings and a drone-pipe. Your livelihood is a universal plunder upon nature; a freebooter over fields and gardens; and, for the sake of stealing, will rob a nettle as easily as a violet. Whereas I am a domestic animal, furnished with a native stock within myself. This large castle (to show my improvements in the mathematics) is all built with my own hands, and the materials extracted altogether out of my own person." END OF EXTRACT en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Battle_of_the_Books_and_Other_Short_Pieces/The_Battle_of_the_Books
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Post by assisi on Jun 15, 2014 19:13:08 GMT
I don't know if I referred elsewhere on this board to Richard Kearney's proposed solution to the question of how the existence of God is compatible with the existence of evil. He declares that after Auschwitz it is immoral to believe in a transcendent and omnipotent God, but that we can believe in God whose existence is contingent on human belief and goodness. This is a good example of Professor Kearney's tendency to try to have it both ways and produce absurdities, which is visible throughout his work, since by definition a contingent being is not God (and by implication if God depends on humanity, humanity is higher than God). I call this "Richard Kearney's Tinkerbell theory of God". (In the stage version of JM Barrie's PETER PAN the fairy Tinkerbell will die if people cease to believe in fairies, and at one point the cast appeal to the audience to save her "Clap your hands if you believe in fairies".) As between Kearney and Dawkins, I have more intellectual respect for Dawkins (which isn't saying much), even though Dawkins is not Irish (though his wife is Anglo-Irish BTW). For this UCD gave up neo-Thomism (which after all derives from an Italian and a Greek, though the Italian had an Irish teacher.) No doubt Des Fennell would say this is very post-colonial of me. I'm afraid that Des Fennell's view that we ought to esteem Irish philosophers simply because they are Irish reminds me of the Spider claiming superiority over the Bee in Jonathan Swift's (An Irishman!) allegory THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS: EXTRACT "Not to disparage myself," said he, "by the comparison with such a rascal, what art thou but a vagabond without house or home, without stock or inheritance? born to no possession of your own, but a pair of wings and a drone-pipe. Your livelihood is a universal plunder upon nature; a freebooter over fields and gardens; and, for the sake of stealing, will rob a nettle as easily as a violet. Whereas I am a domestic animal, furnished with a native stock within myself. This large castle (to show my improvements in the mathematics) is all built with my own hands, and the materials extracted altogether out of my own person." END OF EXTRACT en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Battle_of_the_Books_and_Other_Short_Pieces/The_Battle_of_the_Books Hibernicus your first paragraph, a rebuttal of one of Kearney's ideas, is a good illustration of the kind of debate that would be welcome. Indeed there are many examples of quality discussion on this board. Maybe Fennell doesn't 'esteem' these thinkers, but mentions them as examples. Indeed he cannot esteem them all as their views and ideas will clash. If there was more philosophic/theological discussion (in Ireland) and it was more visible then we may entice in others thinkers. It may also prompt some people to look beyond the accepted group think pedalled by the main media outlets.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Jun 15, 2014 19:34:09 GMT
Irish Catholic thinkers, especially priests, seem to have had a penchant for continental philosophy in the last thirty years or so. I attended the lectures of Fr. Brendan Purcell in UCD-- he was an interesting fellow, but his lectures seemed to be more about literature than philosophy to me. Nothing that you could refute or support with solid arguments. Journals like The Furrow and Studies and Doctrine and Life, and the various publications of religious orders, seem full of such fuzzy philosophising.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Jun 15, 2014 19:43:53 GMT
I never understood this 'after Auschwitz it's not possible to do such-and-such' attitude-- most famously Adorno's 'to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric'. I'm not denying any of the horror of the Holocaust. But moral obscenities have been perpetrated since before the beginning of history. If it was possible to write poetry, laugh or believe in a loving deity before Auschwitz, it's possible to do so after.
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 16, 2014 22:00:57 GMT
Oddly enough, there is one type of religion which IS unquestionably invalidated by Auschwitz - the nineteenth-century liberal variety which believes everything must be getting better and better because that is the way God so decrees. Oddly enough, this is precisely the variety which a lot of Catholic liberals seem hellbent on resurrecting, with their view that if civilisation is heading in a certain direction every Christian must accept that as what God wants.
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Post by Askel McThurkill on Jun 18, 2014 8:08:42 GMT
I know this quip is more Fennell than Kearney; maybe if Des Fennell considered, it might cast some light on Kearney. It's popular to ask how could there be a God after Auschwitz, but equally one might ask how could one not believe in Satan after the whole National Socialist experiment in German dominated Europe, or the Gulags of the Soviet Empire, or Mao's Cultural Revolution, or the individual campaigns of tin pot dictators from Pol Pot to Idi Amin, many of whom had western educations. Of course, one question is as absurd as the other. I wonder why someone like Kearney doesn't try Zoroastrianism as a possible answer to the problem of evil. Or Manichaeanism.
Anyway, the nub of the problem here lies in a subjective rather than an objective approach to reality, and this is why I, like Hibernicus, have more respect for Dawkins than Kearney. Dawkins at least stands for an objective reality; Kearney essentially believes meaning to be subjective. In which case, why is the make believe world of an infant in a play pen less valid than that of a highly cultured philosopher like Kearney? This is the problem with philosophy after Nietzche. Or the sort of stuff circulating in the 19th century anyway. Kierkegaard certainly had a point about the formalism of established Christianity at the time, but never considered the alternative; Dostoyevsky very aptly named the anti-hero of Crime and Punishment "Raskolnikov" - the name means "schismatic" in Russian, specifically referring to the sub-schisms of the Old Believers schisms dating back to 17th century Russia, which is still an issue in the 21st century. But anyway, these precede the subjective philosophies of the 20th century (yes, I know there is much more; this is a comment rather than an essay). I think the reason why Belloc and Chesterton are so popular in this context is because they stand for something rather than anything and the likes of Kearney misses the point of Auschwitz, that the appropriate response to it is to recover the objective rather than drift further in the subjective, which could lead to a great many mini Auschwitzen if we're not vigilant. The legal language of the Nuremberg Tribunal and the UN Declaration of Human Rights have had a succession of coaches of eight driven through them over several decades - this is what we need to watch and the self-indulgent like Kearney don't seem to get it.
This is where I have a bit more respect for Fennell (ok, I've already likened Kearney to an infant) in that he is trying to respond to evil. He's also trying to come up with an answer from within the Irish tradition. The trouble is that all his experience has been based on going it alone and that he himself is like an Irish exemplar of one of Dostoyevsky's "Raskolniki", someone cut off. Of course, if he is reading this, no doubt he'll correct my Russian, which is far inferior to his.
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 19, 2014 21:29:18 GMT
What exactly is the alternative Kierkegaard didn't consider? I take it you mean that Kierkegaard was a fideist (i.e. didn't believe faith could be supported by reason). Oddly enough, the Danish critic George Brandes believed that if Kierkegaard had lived longer he would either have become an atheist (like Brandes himself) or a Catholic. I would say that Fennell is something of a fideist, in that he seems to believe he has received a direct insight/understanding of the horror of modernity (I use these terms very loosly, read MY SWEDEN YEAR for a clearer sense of what he has in mind), and that anyone who disagrees or does not understand is shown by that very fact to be blind and not worth arguing with.
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