Guerrilla Aesthetics and the Lobotomizing of the American Mind.

In June of 2018 there is still no response to my many communications nor to inquiries by others into my matters.

There is increasing public danger from continued official silence in connection with this situation.

No rejection of my communications has taken place. 

No documents have been returned to me. 

Many persons in multiple jurisdictions are simply ignored by U.S. officials, relegated to silence, their humanity and rights left unprotected as are my rights.

There are no explanations for this illegal and unethical silence from American officials and judges nor for the indifference of 
U.S. media to a matter of some public urgency.

My home telephone has been obstructed. I am unable to make calls as family members are also precluded from communicating with me in a time of crisis in our lives. 

I will ignore all intrusions into my life or threats against me. 

The usual computer crime, alterations of the text, censorship efforts have obstructed my attempts to post this essay. It is appalling and disgusting that persons are still allowed to deface these writings using N.J. government computers.

I will continue to write. 

The next essay to be published at this blog examining New Jersey issues will be sent to Justice Elena Kagan of the U.S. Supreme Court; Jefferson B. Sessions, Esq., U.S. Attorney General; and to the Cuban Embassy to the United States of America. 

I am sure that U.S. public officials are simply delighted to be made a part of this story and events by New Jersey's continuing lethargy or incompetence in failing entirely to deal with the matter despite the increasing danger to innocent members of the public.   

Primary Sources:

Frank Bruni, [Fintan O'Toole] "Aristotle's Wrongful Death," (Op-Ed) The New York Times, "Sunday Opinion Section," May 27, 2018, p. 3. ("Manhola Dargis Strikes Again" and "'The Reader': A Movie Review.") 

Michael Esfeld, "Quantum Entanglement and a Metaphysics of Relations," Studies in the History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 35 B (Dec. 2004). ("Entanglement, Dialectic, Scientific Hermeneutics and Holism, or Scientific Neo-Hegelianism.")

Dennis Overbye, [Manohla Dargis] "Quantum, Not Theory," The New York Times, October 22, 2019, p. D1. (Quantum computing aligned with a number of issues in "multi-variance" theory much to the surprise of "Dennis Overbye.")  

Peter Gratton, Speculative Realism: Problems and Projects (London: Bloomsbury, 2014). (Is "Speculative Realism" only another footnote to Immanuel Kant?)  

Francis Halsall, "Art and Guerrilla Metaphysics: Graham Harman and Aesthetics as First Philosophy," Speculations: A Journal of Speculative Realism, V (2014). (Available online.) ("Kantian Aesthetics as First Philosophy.")  

Graham Harman, Guerrilla Metaphysics: Phenomenology and the Carpentry of Things (Chicago: Open Court, 2005). ("Speculative Realism and Phenomenological-Hermeneutics in the Kantian-Hegelian tradition.")

The word "guerrilla" may be spelled "guerilla" or, according to Fowler and others "guer(r)l(l)a."  

The Oxford Companion to the English Language contains several articles dealing with the varieties of usages in connection with "doubled consonants." 

The origins of the English word  "guerrilla" are from the Spanish guerillero. 

I enjoy making use of these different correct spellings in order to annoy persons in New Jersey who should know better than to offer incorrect corrections. 

It is amazing to me that I still have to explain these things.     

Secondary Sources:

Mortimer Adler, Philosopher at Large: An Intellectual Autobiography 1902-1976 (New York: Collier, 1977), pp. 15-35.

G.E.M. Anscombe, Intention (New York: Cornell U. Press, 1979, 2000), pp. 79-94.

A.J. Ayer, The Problem of Knowledge (London: Penguin, 1956, 1980), pp. 176-223.

A.J. Ayer, The Philosophy of the Twentieth Century (New York: Vintage, 1980, 1984), pp. 262-267. 

Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim (London: Penguin, 1954, 1988). (The great coming of age novel in English literature.)

Martin Amis, The Rachel Papers (London & New York: Vintage Books, 1973, 1992). (A postmodernist "Lucky Jim.")

Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays On Liberty (Oxford & New York: Oxford U. Press, 1969, 1986), pp. 118-173. 

Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), pp. 141-243. (Still crazy after all these years?) 

Aryeh Botwinick, Michael Oakeshott's Skepticism (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2011), pp. 29-49.

Malcolm Bradbury, Eating People is Wrong (London: Arrow Books, 1959, 1989). (A novel dramatizing the philosophical controversy discussed in my essays "Why I am not an ethical relativist" and "John Finnis and Ethical Cognitivism.")

Michael Caine, Acting in Film: An Actor's Take On Movie Acting (New York: Applause, 1990, 1987), pp. 137-146. (Acting on screen, stage, in life, or creating fictional as well as non-fictional "characters" -- all are matters of "art.")   

Roger Caldwell, "Review of Charles Taylor's The Language Animal," Philosophy Now, April/May, 2018, p. 38.

Kenneth Clark, Civilization: A Personal View (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), pp. 1-33. ("The Skin of Our Teeth.")

R.G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1938), pp. 286-300. (This work was reissued in the fifties unchanged from the original edition and is about to be republished because it continues to be cited by scholars in both traditions.)

Arthur W. Collins, Thought and Nature: Studies in Rationalist Philosophy (Indiana: Notre Dame U. Press, 1985), pp. 180-243.   

Roger Crisp, "Iris Murdoch on Nobility and Moral Values," Justin Broackes, ed., Iris Murdoch: Philosopher (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 2012), pp. 275-295.

Bruce Duffy, The World as I Found It (New York: Technor & Fields, 1987). (Analytical philosophy's founders in "wonderland.") 

Michael Dummett, The Logical Basis of Metaphysics (Cambridge MA: Harvard U. Press, 1989). ("Anti-Realism and Analytical Philosophy.")

Michael Dummett, The Nature and Future of Philosophy (New York: Columbia U. Press, 2001), pp. 30-38, pp. 115-136. (Truth is essential even in semantic theories or analytical logic.)

Michael Dummett, "Reply to John McDowell," The Philosophy of Michael Dummett, pp. 367-368.

Ronald Dworkin, Law's Empire (Cambridge MA: Harvard U. Press, 1986), pp. 400-413.

Terry Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), pp. 366-415.

Marc Elliot, Cary Grant: A Biography (New York: Three River Press, 2004), pp. 235-244.  

Nick Everett, "Review of Colin McGinn's Inborn Knowledge," Philosophy Now, April/May, 2018, p. 40. (I admire Professor Everett, but I find this review somewhat unfair to Colin McGinn's thinking which is indebted to Jerry Fodor and Noam Chomsky neither of whose writings are discussed in this review.)  

John Finnis, Intention and Identity: Collected Essays Volume II (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 2015), pp. 279-313. ("Neo-Thomism, Idealism, and Analytical Jurisprudence as well as Metaphysics.")

Eckart Foster, The Twenty-Five Years of Philosophy (Cambridge MA: Harvard U. Press, 2012), pp. 17-153. (The discussion of Kant and the extensive bibliography is well worth the cost of this book.) 

M.E. Fox & A.C.F.A. d'Avalos, "The Necessity of Moral Realism," Philosophy Now Ultimate Guide, Issue 1: Ethics (2018), p. 8. (Defending moral realism and cognitivism in ethics.)

Paul Franco, Michael Oakeshott: An Introduction (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2004), pp. 24-56, pp. 81-116. 

Michael Freeman & Andrew E. Lewis, eds., Law and Literature: Current Legal Issues, Volume 2 (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1999), pp. ix-xxv.   

Markus Gabriel, Transcendental Ontology: Essays in German Idealism (London: Continuum, 2011). ("German Idealism in the Twenty-First Century.") 

Michael O. Garvey, "In Memoriam: Rev. Ernan McMullin, Notre Dame Philosopher of Science," University of Notre Dame Office of Public Affairs and Communications, February 9, 2011, available online. ("Critical Realism in the Catholic Tradition fusing Kant with Neo-Thomism.")

A.C. Grayling, ed., Philosophy 2: Further Through the Subject (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1998), pp. 72-268. (Articles by Christopher Peacocke, Michael Dummett, John Worrell.)  

Marjorie Grene, Dreadful Freedom: Introduction to Existentialism (Chicago & London: U. Chicago, 1948, 1959, 1965), pp. 10-12.

Marjorie Grene, A Philosophical Testament (Chicago & La Salle: Open Court, 1992), pp. 52-64.

Paul Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste (Cambridge MA: Harvard U. Press, 1979). (Still the leading authority on Kant's aesthetics.) 

Graham Harman, "Vicarious Causation," Collapse (2007), 2, p. 204. ("Are we free to believe in free will?") 

G.W.F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit (New York: Dover, 2003, 1st. Ed., 1807), pp. 370-395. ("The Beautiful Soul.")

Sebastian Horsley, Dandy in the Underworld: An Unauthorized Autobiography (London: Harper Perennial, 2007), pp. 284-296. (Please see again Michael Caine's examination of acting on- and off-screen.)  

Christina Howells, Mortal Subjects: Passions of the Soul in Late Twentieth Century French Thought (London: Polity, 2011), pp. 24-69. (The most impressive scholarly work of Continental philosophy in the French tradition that I have read for many years and, perhaps, the most important book listed among my sources for this essay.)

Christina Howells, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Sartre (Cambridge UK: Cambridge U. Press, 1992), pp. 318-353 ("Conclusion: Sartre and the Deconstruction of the Subject"). 

Christina Howells, Derrida: Deconstruction From Phenomenology to Ethics (London: Polity, 1999), pp. 6-23, pp. 72-95.   

Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (Evanston: Northwestern U. Press. 1970, 1st Ed., 1938), p. 135 (D. Carr translation). (More timely than ever in offering strong warnings against scientism.) 

Adrian Johnston, Time Driven: Metapsychology and the Splitting of the Drive (Evanston: Northwestern U. Press, 2007). (Professor Johnston describes his position on foundations as "transcendental materialism" which is a synthesis, to the extent that it is coherent, of Kant's "transcendental idealism and critical realism" with a Hegelian twist that features a curious form of holism.)

Adrian Johnston, "Contigency, Pure Contingency -- Without Further Determination: Modal Categories in Hegelian Logic," RJPH, Volume 1 (2017). (Available online. The "transcendental" part of Professor Johnston's theory is becoming larger than the "materialism." See my forthcoming citations of Charles Taylor's books.)

Adrian Johnston, "The Weakness of Nature: Hegel, Freud, Lacan and Negativity Materialized," Hegel and the Infinite, pp. 159-179.  

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (New York: Hackett, 1996, 1st ed., 1781, 2nd Ed., 1786). (This is the most recent English language translation that I know of, but I prefer the Kemp-Smith classic. Everybody is drinking at this well.)

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment (New York: Prometheus, 2000, 1st ed. 1790), pp. 106-130 (J.H. Bernard translation). (The most important text for the new aesthetics is this book by an obscure philosopher.)

David Lodge, Small World (London: Penguin, 1984). (Authenticity and literary theory in "novel" form.)

William Lyon, ed., Modern Philosophy of Mind (London: Everyman, 1995), pp. xlv-ilxviii. 

John MacMurray, Reason and Emotion (London: Faber & Faber, 1935), pp. 45-55. ("John Finnis and Ethical Cognitivism.")

Bryan Magee, Ultimate Questions (Princeton U. Press, 2016), pp. 59-68. 

Bryan Magee, ed., "Isaiah Berlin Interview With Bryan Magee," Talking Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1978, 2001), pp. 1-27.

Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do With Our Brain? (New York: Fordham U. Press, 2008). (Sebastian Rand translation.)

Catherine Malabou, "Is Confession the Accomplishment of Recognition?: Rousseau and the Unthought of Religion in the Phenomenology of Spirit," Slavoj Zizek, Clayton Crockett, Creston Davis, eds., Hegel and the Infinite: Religion, Politics and Dialectic (New York: Columbia U. Press, 2011), pp. 19-50.

Herbert Marcuse, An Essay On Liberation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), pp. 42-72.  

Paul Marshall, "Transforming the World Into Experience," Journal of Consciousness Studies, 8 (1), (2001), pp. 59-76. (A new version of the transcendental deduction grounded in neurology and Critical Theory.) 

John McDowell, Mind and World (Cambridge MA: Harvard U. Press, 1996). (An updating of Kant by way of one of the most famous of the so-called "Pittsburgh Hegelians" with a liberal sprinkling of analytical philosophy on top of the text like sugar on a plum cake.) 

John McDowell, "Values and Secondary Qualities," Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, ed., Essays On Moral Realism (Ithaca & New York: Cornell U. Press, 1988), pp. 166-181. (A defense of ethical cognitivism and moral realism.) 

John McDowell, "Referring to Oneself," Lewis Edwin Hahn, ed., The Philosophy of P.F. Strawson (Chicago: Open Court, 1998), pp. 129-146.

John McDowell, "Dummett On Truth Conditions and Meaning," Randall E. Auxier & Lewis Edwin Hahn, eds., The Philosophy of Michael Dummett (Chicago: Open Court, 2007), pp. 351-367.

Colin McGinn, Problems in Philosophy: The Limits of Inquiry (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1993), pp. 62-79. 

Alasdair McIntyre, Marcuse (London: Fontana, 1970), pp. 62-73, pp. 74-86. 

Thomas Meaney, "Doctor Zeitgeist," The New Yorker, February 26, 2018, p. 28. ("Frank Bruni" a.k.a. "Jennifer Shuessler" is indeed a "meaney" in this profile of Peter Sloterdijk.) 

Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency (London: Continuum, 2006), p. 124. (Fusion of a semi-rationalistic epistemology locating our most secure knowledge in a priori mathematical forms with scientific materialism where matter is understood as "energy" and "reality" is never perfectly knowable in itself in the Kantian tradition. See page 41 of Peter Gratton's Speculative Realism.)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception (London: Routledge, 2002). (Colin Smith translation.) (This classic of the phenomenological tradition is in the midst of a new wave of popularity and influence.)   

Iris Murdoch, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (London: Penguin, 1992), pp. 436-450.

Christopher Norris, "'Second Nature,' Knowledge and Normativity: Revisiting McDowell's Kant," Diametros (March, 2011), pp. 64-107. (Christopher Norris is entirely correct about everything, as usual, or so he claims.)

Christopher Norris, Derrida (Cambridge MA: Harvard U. Press, 1987), pp. 172-193. 

Christopher Norris, Truth Matters: Realism, Anti-Realism and Response-Dependence (Edingburgh: Edingburgh U. Press, 2002, 2005), pp. 23-57.

Christopher Norris, Minding the Gap: Epistemology and Philosophy of Science in the Two Traditions (Amherst: U. Mass. 2000), pp. 231-259.

Christopher Norris, Quantum Theory and the Flight From Realism: Philosophical Responses to Quantum Mechanics (London & New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 194-230. ("Speculative Realism" by any other name smells just as sweet.)

Michael Oakeshott, The Voice of Liberal Learning (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2001), pp. 62-105.

Michael Oakeshott, "Political Education," Peter Laslett, ed., Philosophy, Politics and Society (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1967), pp. 1-21. 

Michael Oakeshott, Experience and Its Modes (Cambridge UK: Cambridge U. Press, 1933, 1995), pp. 9-81, pp. 169-247. 

Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1962, 1980), pp. 97-221. 

Walter Pater, "The Renaissance," Harold Bloom, ed., Selected Writings of Walter Pater (New York: New American Library, 1974), pp. 17-63.

Christopher Peacocke, The Realm of Reason (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004, 2005), pp. 148-197.

Nicholas Rescher, "Evaluative Metaphysics," W.H. Capitan & D.D. Merell, eds., Metaphysics and Explanation (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh U. Press, 1964), pp. 62-73. 

Sebastian Rodl, Self-Consciousness (Cambridge MA: Harvard U. Press, 2007). (The new absolute idealism.)

John Ruskin, "English Art," Mathew Hodgart, ed., Selected Prose of Ruskin (New York: New American Library, 1972), pp. 324-326.

George Santayana, The Sense of Beauty: Being the Outline of Aesthetic Theory (New York: Dover, 1955, 1896), pp. 111-173.

Roger Scruton, Art and Imagination: A Study in the Philosophy of Mind (London: Metheuen & Co., Ltd., 1974), pp. 15-71. ("Guerrilla Aesthetics" from an unexpected source.) 

Roger Scruton, The Aesthetic Understanding: Essays in the Philosophy of Art and Culture (London & New York: Methuen, 1983), pp. 138-243.

John Searle, "The Storm Over the University," Paul Berman, ed., Debating P.C.: The Controversy Over Political Correctness On College Campuses (New York: Dell, 1992), pp. 85-124. (Still unsurpassed in discussing these issues.) 

Peter Sloterdijk, Critique of Cynical Reason (London & Minneapolis: U. Minn. Press, 1987), pp. 217-325.

James Staunton, Kenneth Clark: Life, Art and Civilization (New York: Vintage, 2016), pp. 30-38.

Grant Sterling, "Review of Bryan Magee's Ultimate Questions," Philosophy Now, December 2017/January 2018, p. 46. (I believe Bryan Magee's book is beautifully written and important, but Mr. Sterling's reservations should be noted.) 

Galen Strawson, Things That Bother Me: Death, Freedom, the Self, Etc. (New York: NYRB, 2018). (Good old British common sense combined with analytical philosophy and logical sophistication. I wonder from which parent Mr. Strawson derives his interest in philosophy?)

Galen Strawson, "The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility," Gary Watson, ed., Oxford Readings in Philosophy: Free Will, 2nd Edition (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 2003, 2nd Ed., 2010), pp. 212-228. (Mr. Strawson, Jr. argues against free will in assessing moral responsibility.)

P.F. Strawson, "Freedom and Resentment," in Oxford Readings in Philosophy, Free Will, 2nd Edition, pp. 72-93. (Mr. Strawson, Sr. argues for free will in assessing responsibility and "resentment" in denials of responsibility.)

P.F. Strawson, Individuals (London: Methuen, 1959). (P.F. Strawson is one of the greatest philosophers of the century and vitally important, whatever tradition of philosophy attracts the student, is this book on "persons" and "identity.")

P.F. Strawson, The Bounds of Sense (London: Methuen, 1966). (P.F. Strawson's discussion and analysis of Kant makes the Prussian philosopher an empiricist and, controversially, minimizes Kant's transcendental idealism. However, this work making use of the original title of the First Critique, is indispensable for serious students of philosophy today.) 

P.F. Strawson, "Reply to John McDowell," The Philosophy of P.F. Strawson, pp. 146-147.

Charles Taylor, The Language Animal: The True Scope of the Human Linguistic Capacity (Cambridge MA: Harvard U. Press/Belknap Press, 2016).

Charles Taylor, "Iris Murdoch and Moral Philosophy," Maria Antonaccio & William Schreiber, eds., Iris Murdoch and the Search for Human Goodness (Chicago: U. Chicago Press, 1996), pp. 3-29. (Professor Taylor recognizes Iris Murdoch's supremacy on discussions of the moral development of the person.) 

Charles Taylor, The Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge MA: Harvard U. Press, 1989), pp. 25-53, pp. 185-199.

Charles Taylor, Hegel (Cambridge UK: Cambridge U. Press, 1975), pp. 148-171, pp. 214-225. ("Stuart Hampshire and Iris Murdoch On Freedom of Mind.")

Mario Vargas-Llosa, Notes on the Death of Culture: Essays On Spectacle and Society (New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2012), pp. 97-123 (John King translation).

Ian Ward, Law and Literature: Possibilities and Perspectives (Cambridge UK: Cambridge U. Press, 1995), pp. 142-154. 

Lloyd Weinreb, Legal Reason: The Use of Analogy in Legal Reasoning (Cambridge UK: Cambridge U. Press, 2005), pp. 14-15.

Jeannette Winterson, Art Objects: Essays On Ecstasy and Effrontery (New York: Vintage, 1995), pp. 153-164. (See the Michael Caine book above.)  

"How is this class going to help me in my life?"

The "culture wars" of the past four decades resulted in a loss of  power by adherents of traditional views of the role of the humanities in American higher education. The liberals won; the conservatives lost.

There has been a gradual shift in U.S. universities, especially, away from the civilizing and educating function that was understood to be the primary responsibility of the undergraduate "training" of young people towards a more vocational view of what higher education is "for" (or means today) as persons are directed to careers and "majors" that, allegedly, are more likely to lead to employment after graduation. ("Nihilists in Disneyworld" and "America's Nursery School Campus.") 

Rather than a solid grounding in liberal arts it is "felt" by many so-called "experts" that the basis of today's university programs should be found in the hard sciences or business studies, industrial arts perhaps, or finance and management, to say nothing of the wonderful world of computer science and accounting for fun and profit:

"History is on the ebb. Philosophy is on the ropes. And comparative literature? Please. It's [sic.] an intellectual heirloom cherished by those who can afford such baubles, but disposable in the eyes of others." (NYT, May 27, 2018, p. 3.)

Much of this discussion concerning current options in universities is based on profound confusions. 

Education was defined, traditionally, as distinct from -- or even opposed to -- vocational training. Persons concerned to maximize their "employability" (this is the term used in the article) after graduation were encouraged to look into the joys of air conditioning and refrigeration repair, automobile mechanics was always a good option for such individuals, while those persons who claimed to have a genuine intellectual vocation were instructed to enroll in liberal arts schools, or large universities offering solid concentrations in the arts and humanities and/or sciences, allowing for some exposure of the full panoply of human inquiries across disciplinary boundaries to every single student. 

To expect mastery of the classics or a secure grasp of logic to translate immediately into a six-figure salary in Manhattan's Wall Street or a spot on the U.S. Supreme Court for your 24-year-old "genius child" with $200,000 in student loans may be unrealistic; but this is hardly a reason to get rid of the philosophy department at your local state college or to change your child's major from English Literature to "Feminist Approaches to Marketing" (I am not inventing this trendy major):

"[The University of Illinois] is pairing certain majors in the liberal arts -- for example, anthropology and linguistics -- with computer science. [Assumption College of Mass.] is doing away with a host of traditional majors in favor of new ones geared to practical skills. [Define "practical."] Goodbye arts history, geography and, yes, classics. Hello data analytics, actuarial science and concentrations in physical and occupational therapy." (N.Y.T., May 27, 2018, p. 3.)

"Mr. Bruni" reasons with unusual clarity concerning this vexing issue:

"Assumption is hardly an outlier. Last year the University of Wisconsin at Superior [sic.] announced that it was suspending nine majors, including sociology and political science, and warned that there might be additional cuts. The University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point [sic.] recently proposed dropping 13 majors, including philosophy and English, to make room for programs with 'clear career pathways.' ..." (N.Y.T., May 27, 2018, p. 3.) 

Is the issue of whether an academic "discipline" has a "clear career pathway" a matter for university bureaucrats or senior faculty to decide on behalf of students considering that such professionals have usually spent their entire working lives in universities? 

Administrators and academics usually know very little about the potential job market five years into an uncertain future.

University professionals may be expected to know something about the works that have shaped civilization and science over centuries so as to be able to advise students about what they need to know today in order to be educated human beings whatever jobs they come to hold during their lifetimes. 

The decision concerning a field of study must belong to the adult student as opposed to faculty members with their own interests and claims of relevance to consider who, at best, may advise young people based on their areas of specialization. 

Mr. Bruni's conclusion is somewhat puzzling:

"But I worry that he's suggesting an either/or where there needn't be one." (N.Y.T., May 27, 2018, p. 3.)

I have read this sentence several times. I cannot say with confidence what, if anything, these words mean or to what they may refer. ("Whatever happened to the liberal arts?")  

Perhaps the author(s) of this text would benefit greatly from a liberal arts education assuming that some of the contents of this article is truthful or something other than a lie. ("Is the universe only a numbers game?") 

Education, it seems to me, is first and foremost about the personal enrichment or inner-life of the student, as a human being, however that person earns a living when he or she is out of school is a very different matter even as true education must remain a life-long concern. ("Is there a democratic right to an elite education?")  

To suggest that such a view of authenticity in higher education is "elitist" is to decide that, on the basis of a person's economic class, he or she is precluded from being called to the intellectual life, or becoming a fine artist, theoretical scientist, philosopher, or jurist.

Excluding poor or working class young people from such noble lives is something I cannot accept because it is this very dubious "practicality" that is the true elitism. It seems very convenient for wealthy or privileged "elites" to claim that there is "no more room at the top," no more need for intellectuals from the working or middle classes. Education for the children of the poor (or workers) should focus on "employability" [sic.] after graduation, we are told, while privileged students may spend a year reading poetry at Oxford University. ("Whatever" and "What is education for?")

My response to this controversy will draw on recent developments in Continental thought focusing on the aesthetics of judgments in politics, law, moral thinking and the sciences to argue that a genuine and well-rounded education may now be more necessary than ever and should be, as much as possible, available to everyone who desires it, if we are to benefit from the contributions of all sectors of our society to resolving the great injustices and intellectual difficulties that we struggle against as a people.

Speculative realism, other "realisms," anti-realism, and the persistence of philosophical problems in a scientific age.

Twentieth century intellectual history is, largely, an account of disillusion with various ideologies and belief-systems, including scientism and the wonders of technology. 

Efforts to find a "scientific" approach to philosophical or other humanistic and/or theoretical inquiries mostly ended in failure. It became painfully clear to many of those who consider the matter that philosophy is not (and cannot be) a science, nor very scientific.

Given the limitations of scientific method important philosophical and artistic questions (or problems) simply cannot be resolved or even examined very effectively by using scientific methods exclusively. ("John Finnis and Ethical Cognitivism.") 

Whatever success science may claim in coping with empirical reality will be of limited value in struggling with other kinds of "realities" that are crucial today.

Analytic or analytical philosophy sought to develop linguistic and logical discipline or sophistication in the service of traditional philosophical inquiries. ("Robert Brandom's Reason in Philosophy" and "Is clarity enough?") 

Philosophy in the analytical tradition was bound to become, we were assured by A.J. Ayer and many others, only a "handmaiden to the sciences" rather than the "Queen of the Sciences" as traditional classifications required.

This understanding of the scope and limits of philosophy and concerning the potentially infinite capacities of the sciences to resolve all problems for humanity is mistaken. 

Debates over the threat of nuclear winter and out-of-control pollution are still unresolved. Science -- like the totalitarian ideologies that happily envisioned the "perfectibility of man and woman" -- was due for a humbling recognition of "finitude" or necessary limitations and constraints. 

The reason why some questions cannot be answered by objective scientific methods is that these inquiries focus on subjective phenomena and the many mysteries of human life. For example, philosophical inquiries examining consciousness, inner-awareness, values, aesthetics, the passions, spirituality and other issues that are not merely empirical but cultural-emotive and, nevertheless, just as "real" as scientific concerns -- often more important to people's lives than scientific questions -- even if they are also more demanding of theoretical understanding are beyond what (or more than) science alone can handle. ("The Return of Metaphysics.") 

Among these matters of continuing philosophical concern is the presence of evil in human nature and societies, or the finality of death and its effects on personality as well as culture. 

A new controversy has emerged about whether science is as much an enemy as a friend to humanity since gas chambers and nuclear weapons were created by the same scientists who discovered antibiotics and invented pesticides. 

The "journey of enlightenment" that must result in disillusion if it is to lead to wisdom also describes accurately the adventure of Anglo-American jurisprudence in our era. From positivism to American realism and policy analysis then to process-based theories of law and finally to the grudging recognition of law's necessary philosophical component and regrettable affiliations with such subjects as economics and psychology along with the welcome recognition of genius in the form of synthetic or fusion theories, notably in the works of Ronald Dworkin, there is an admission, finally, that lawyers and judges are not so much "engineers" as "interpreters" and administrators of society's values in resolving ethical-political-jurisprudential conundrums that must have scientific and humanistic aspects besides their technical legal difficulties. ("What is Law?")  

One of my favorite American philosophers summarized this hard-won wisdom about science effectively, first, as a young woman immediately after America's defeat of Nazism, when everything (briefly) seemed possible, and later, when it became the responsibility of philosophers to remind "winners" and "survivors" of the horrors of the Holocaust and dangers of the nuclear age:  

"The inadequacies of scientifically-oriented philosophies to explain the genesis of values is more conspicuous perhaps, though not essentially different, in the position of the school now variously called 'logical positivism,' 'scientific empiricism,' or the like; for here the emphasis on modern logistic methods, on the one hand, and, on the other, the explicit restrictions of the facts that mathematics and logic works on, to spatiotemporally locatable sense-data have doubly removed the subject-matter of philosophy from any relevance to the felt reality of the individual consciousness. But it is, for the existentialist [or the entire Continental tradition,] only within the confines of that reality, unwillingly flung into its world, yet freely making a world of it, [through creative interpretation,] that good and evil, importance and unimportance can originate."

Ms. Grene's argument is now widely accepted:

"Values are created, in other words, only by the free act of an agent who takes this or that to be good or bad, beautiful or ugly, in the light of his endeavor to give significance and order to an otherwise meaningless world. Now positivistic ethics is, as it wants itself to be, descriptive, not normative; it describes men's [and women's] value judgments as behavioristic psychology described the paths of rats in mazes. And, although such descriptions may be detailed and accurate, they have ... little to do with the problems of mortality -- as little as the positivist's manipulations of artificial symbol-symptoms [analytical logic] have to do with the infinite shades and subtleties of meaning of what are deprecatingly called 'natural languages.' Whatever the shortcomings of his Puritan fanaticism, in one respect at least Kant's ethics was undeniably correct: there is no good or evil apart from will and there is ... no will apart from freedom." 

Marjorie Grene, Dreadful Freedom, pp. 10-11. (Professor Grene, it should be recalled, was a zoologist and evolutionary biologist as well as a philosopher.) 

For a new statement of this idea in a currently fashionable reinvention of the wheel please see Peter Gratton's discussion of "Speculative Realism" and the Kantian background of the new aesthetics: "Correlationism and Its Discontents," Speculative Realism, pp. 13-38. 

The post-World Warr II British rejection of metaphysics and retreat into the cloistered pursuit of logical and linguistic game-playing (granting the undeniable methodological achievements of the analytic tradition) struck many philosophers as hesitation before the necessary confrontation with the horrible revelations concerning human nature made evident by the many nightmares of recent history: 

" ... philosophical analysis leads to skepticism; so give it up, chaps, forget philosophy and play another game of squash. Indeed, that was on the whole the spirit of British philosophy for many years, [after the war,] the era of ordinary language philosophy. Philosophy became clever reflection on British idioms or for that matter English behavior ..."

Marjorie Grene, A Philosophical Testament, p. 55. 

All philosophy began to lose its importance to a civilization that found "cleverness" not nearly enough of a response to new ethical and metaphysical dilemmas -- dilemmas sometimes created by science and technology as well as by "wayward" Continental philosophers, like Martin Heidegger, who discovered that the "world was darkening" and that only a man, like Adolf Hitler, could bring us to the light: 

"Only a god can save us!" Heidegger insisted.

The arts, once again, thrived, however, and philosophers along with other thinkers (lawyers included) discovered in human creativity and imagination as well as in the indestructible human capacity for play and love the possibilities of renewal. 

The arts and aesthetic thinking have become central at least for the Continental tradition in considering social and political problems. ("Stuart Hampshire and Iris Murdoch On Freedom of Mind" and "Law and Literature" then "Ronald Dworkin on Law as Intepretation" and ''Interstellar': A Movie Review.")

Genuine education in the humanities has, therefore, become crucial once again to thinking well in politics and law and in the contemplation of human cultures, because subjectivity and identity have become matters of artistic achievement and concern for all of us at a time when religions are less meaningful and we are frightened of what the sciences are uncovering and manufacturing to say nothing of humanity's self-destructive tendencies. 

This is not to deny the importance of science or the beneficial effects of technology. 

It is merely to recognize that there are things that science cannot do and, given what science is, will never be able to do, for which other disciplines and practices have been developed that are just as necessary to human happiness (or survival) and not to be denigrated in a civilized society that has lost its connection to traditional religions. 

What is called for today is a return to the classics in higher education and not abandonment of the Western tradition. It is important to restore foundational values that have always defined our society as we move into the future -- values that cannot be left behind because they are part of what we are and must be, even if these same values may need to be re-interpreted, always, for a new age and set of challenges. ("Manifesto For the Unfinished American Revolution.") 

"Back to the Future."  

Writing of what he calls Graham Harman's "Guerrilla Aesthetics" Francis Halsall suggests that "speculative realism," as a form of complementary "metaphysics" or "object-oriented philosophy," is essentially imaginative or creative thinking and judgment about the nature of the real. "Speculative" realism, in other words, is a kind of artistic "fictionalism" or literature: 

"We make pictures of ourselves," Iris Murdoch comments, "then we come to resemble the pictures." 

As a novelist or film-maker "imagines" or postulates something to be "real" so the philosopher unifies scientific knowledge and disciplined rational thought to create/reveal the ultimate meanings of the world(s) that, simultaneously, we must constantly bring into existence through our experiencing natures (or by experiencing):

" ... aesthetic reflection and judgment are employed in metaphysical speculation into what a mind-independent reality might be like. This is a distinct strategy within speculative realism which I will identify with an aesthetic turn in contrast to the mathematical/objectivist strategies exemplified by Meillasoux and Brassier." 

Halsall, "Art and Guerrilla Metaphysics," p. 383.  

Mind-independent reality is always a paradoxical or Quixotic notion since it is only minds that can speculate about what a mind-independent reality would "look or be like."

This is far from the first occasion on which Continental thought (or, indeed, Western philosophy) has taken an aesthetic turn. From Romanticism to existentialism then hermeneutics, after Hans-Georg Gadamer's revolutionary work Truth and Method, there has been a European tendency to move in the opposite direction from the positivist trajectory of Anglo-American analytical thought that is seen as aiming at an impossible scientific (or semi-scientific) method in philosophy. ("Is clarity enough?") 

Analytical philosophy's efforts to answer ultimate questions logically and clearly has excluded from discussion and explanation the obscure and paradoxical features of human existence that are precisely what requires philosophical attention in the first place.

Human nature and all that gives rise to metaphysical curiosity as well as the need for meaning does not lend itself to the methods that work best in the laboratory particularly as the "setting" of discussion shifts from university classrooms to society. 

The paradox, of course, is that human animals are empirical entities (or objects) besides being linguistic-cultural "persons" dwelling in a natural environment and also in cultural-linguistic spaces. 

"Persons" are best studied both scientifically and humanistically, then, with the proviso that complete understanding of these bizarre creatures is unlikely.  

The phenomenological tradition which may be more dominant now than ever before began with this humanistic insight of mystery at the source of the self; the surrealists further developed the idea of the unreality(ies) in social networks and minds; hermeneutics and now speculative realism have sharpened the intuition of "plasticity" to its most fruitful expression by allowing for key insights into the challenge we face at a moment of digital, image-saturated, and commodified social spaces that multiply by the second where the inner-life (to the extent that it survives) is displaced, instantly and constantly, from the deepest recesses of the individual psyche to collective cinematic forms, advertising messages, celebrity-worship or -surrogacy, increasing psychological fragmentation and emptying the subconscious leaving us baffled, shocked, or confused about what we have become or how to survive this predicament of disintegrating identities in a media age.  ("'Ex Machina': A Movie Review" and "Why philosophy is for everybody.") 

"These [heightened] tendencies are the transcendental aspects of the Kantian tradition, of idealism, and of phenomenology [also hermeneutics and humanistic Marxism,] all of which argue that the two starting points for philosophy in general and for ontology in particular are, firstly, consciousness, and secondly, the relationship of that consciousness to the world." 

Halsall, "Art and Guerrilla Metaphysics," p. 385 (emphasis added).

Consciousness and the "world" are more illusory and malleable or "fictional" than ever before. 

Consciousness and our world are works of art. 

The boundary (if there is or ever was one) between internal and external "realities" has largely vanished. To say this may be to describe the classic condition of the insane person: "I am what is real. The world is me." (''Westworld': A Review of the T.V. Series." and "David Stove's Critique of Idealism.") 

This leads to the far from comforting thought that our "situation," existentially speaking, is so crazy that being insane or adopting bizarre surreal interpretations -- especially if they are very "speculative" -- concerning " the self and existence" seems trendy and clever at the local coffeehouse (or university cafeteria) but may well get one confined to a mental hospital in any other setting. 

It would be nice to think that it is merely Western philosophy that has taken a wrong turn, again, but it may be far worse than this: 

"If all the world is insane," Cervantes wonders, "then what is insanity?"

The setting (intellectual and otherwise) in which we must think today is strange in lots of ways that philosophers cannot change and may be unable to improve, but this is merely to underline the need for philosophical wisdom and the impossibility of failing to reflect all of this craziness in the abstract theories of our times. 

Given the challenges of this historical situation a return to the time-honored educational tradition centered on the classics and formal study of history along with exposure to great art in order to cultivate character and wisdom (or the "best" realization of persons in a moral and aesthetic sense) is attracting intellectuals from all points on the political spectrum even as an equal number of others seem to reject standards and truth entirely as "outdated" values and concepts. ("Whatever" and "America's Nursery School Campus.")

Do we seek to regain a sense of the trajectory of Western civilization and of who we are today? Or do we surrender to the madness and engage in Nietzschean celebrations of "polymorphic perversity" and nihilism? ("The Wanderer and His Shadow" and "Drawing Room Comedy: A Philosophical Essay in the Form of a Film Script" then, again, "John Finnis and Ethical Cognitivism.") 

"Human beings are and can only be what they understand themselves to be and the world that human beings inhabit is not [primarily] a world of things, but of meanings. The understanding of these meanings requires an understanding of understanding itself. It is a consequence of the relation between human beings and understanding that their inherited culture is not an addition to human beings, but is essentially what makes a human being human. 'A man is his culture,' and 'what he is, he has to learn to become.' ..."

John Searle, "The Storm Over the University," p. 115.

Philosophy and the arts are truth-seeking and truth-revealing endeavors. Like science these ancient disciplines and practices (law also) are cognitive activities providing explanations of what is real and good, or defining truth for all of us. ("Is truth dead?")

"Literature, like all the arts, involves explanation, classification, discrimination, organized vision. Of course, good literature does not look like analysis because what the imagination produces is sensuous, fused, reified, mysterious, ambiguous, particular, art is cognition in another mode."

"Iris Murdoch in Conversation With Bryan Magee," Talking Philosophy, p. 235.

To appreciate the cognitive yield of great art the best technique is still the guided examination of masterpieces created by the greatest artists and thinkers of our civilization that a good university education affords -- or should afford -- to all students. 

This is not "elitism" in the pejorative sense, but it is "elite" in the meritocratic sense of cultivating taste and what is "best" in persons (accepting the notion that there is such a thing as "best") through sharing in the finest achievements of the human intellect. 

The "best" intellectual company will produce better transformations in any student/person regardless of ethnicity or race and gender. 

This is something (what is the best work created over centuries?) which can be determined fairly and objectively, I believe, despite gender, race, and other such concerns and aspects of persons. In fact, learning to make such determinations and distinctions is the primary purpose of a life-long education in the humanities and sciences. 

It is necessary to continue to insist that "race, gender, sexual-orientation, ethnicity or religious and political affiliations" do not establish the limits of our humanity.

"Lobotomizing" the American Mind.   

Race, gender and sexual orientation have become obsessive concerns for many trendy academics. 

Obsession with "otherness" and "Political Correctness," defined exclusively in chi-chi cultural terms, has come at a great cost in competence and ethics.

It is dismaying and infuriating not only that P.C. persons -- self-described, evidently, as "multi-gendered" or "queer theorists" subject to human "reassignment" whatever that means -- find it necessary to deface or alter and try to destroy my writings because they seem too inarticulate to protest or argue effectively without committing computer crimes. This includes altering the space between my sentences.

Judith Butler is unlikely to censor or destroy the writings of an adversary in debate. ("Judith Butler and Gender Theory.")

That members of what Harold Bloom calls "The School of Resentment" have sufficient political power in the worst parts of the country to get away with despicable crimes, like sadistic torture and censorship, is depressing and frightening for America's future. Eventually, of course, only their writings will be considered non-offensive or sufficiently "inclusive" so as to be allowed to exist or not to be vandalized and censored online.  

In response, I suppose, "multi-gendered" persons will speak of the terrors associated with, say, Donald J. Trump and Harvey Weinstein. Actually, experiencing the hatred of such people because of my opinions allows me to have a better understanding of exactly how and why Mr. Trump was elected in the first place and to feel sympathy for Mr. Weinstein in his self-inflicted agony. ("'This is totally amazing!'-- Donald J. Trump.") 

Traditionally-minded scholars, whether Leftists or Conservatives, have the effrontery to insist on competence and standards in intellectual work transcending all topics or source material as well as partisan politics.  

Insistence on standards is unforgivable to many so-called "feminists." 

I do not see why, however, since many of the finest scholars and writers in America and elsewhere, persons who meet or set the highest standards for intellectual work, happen to be women and feminists. (See the Christina Howells books cited above.)

Lives and careers of men who assert the need for standards have been destroyed by these so-called "P.C.-feminists." The horror stories are too numerous and ugly to reproduce here. (See John Searle's essay listed above and several recent collections that bring the controversy up-to-date.) 

Scholarship and intelligence are "gender-neutral" and very democratic achievements or human talents. 

We seem to have reached a point at which being a man (of any or all races) and also a university professor is a category of guilt.

Competence is re-described these days as somehow offensive to multi-gendered "others."

Is it now a crime to be a white man and well-educated or affluent? Does this generalized hostility to "privileged" white males explain the attacks against Brett Kavanaugh? Donald Trump? Joe Biden? ("Shakespeare's Black Prince" and "John Searle and David Chalmers On Consciousness.") 

Teaching young people to absorb this hatred of men while speaking in a hideous jargon made up of euphemisms and calumnies may be to "identify" as a moron and "present" as an idiot even as one's gender is required not to "conform" to what used to be called "normality" or even decency. ("'The Scarlet Letter' and the #Me Too Moment.")   

Intelligence is desperately needed today. Scholarship is vital. Being well-read and articulate are the hallmarks of the educated person even if that person finds it necessary to equate Gloria Anzaldua with William Shakespeare, or more modestly, if he or she fails to see the achievements of each writer with a recognition of appropriate limitations of scope and influence for any contemporary writer by comparison with Shakespeare and a handful of others. (Again: "Shakespeare's Black Prince.") 

Before we do away with English and philosophy departments America should reconsider "Women's and Queer Studies" departments and, much worse, academic grants provided by taxpayers for the study of something called: 

"Othering the Multi-Gendered Other in a Gendered Society." 

Let us try talking to one another again, including arguing when necessary, in a civil fashion, while avoiding efforts to harm one another through New Jersey-like behind-the-back attacks and lies, or orchestrated outrage and/or claims of victimization, to say nothing of victim-status competitions among various minority groups and/or genders, or sexual-orientations. 

If you are as smart and educated as you can be the jobs will come to you no matter who you are.