GOD AS A POISON AND THE ANTIDOTE

(This entry is in the same vein as another one, in the Religion section, titled The Second Coming Of God. [It was posted on my blog on January 16^th, 2011, as part of my mega-entry And When She Was Good, She Was Horrid.] But this one is specifically addressing Nietzsche’s criticism of God and Christian morality in Ecce Homo, Why I Am A Destiny, Section 8:

“The concept of God was invented as a counter concept of life: everything harmful, poisonous, slanderous, the whole hostility unto death against life is synthesized in this concept in a gruesome unity!”
I hope that by now the reader can easily figure out why an entry like this shows up in the Wishful Thinking section. My preoccupation with the “usefulness” of God as the absolute standard in developing a common moral and juridical ground for the vast multiplicity of world cultures, is already rampant in this section, and the discussion continues here. I am however giving my reader a clue, why this entry is not about my quarrel with Nietzsche with regard to his disrespectful treatment of God in the passage quoted above, which I don’t mind at all. In so far as my intent goes, the sting is in the tail! Which means, look for the solution in the last paragraph of this entry, where Nietzsche’s comparison of God to poison is interpreted… homoeopathically. [As a matter of fact, in the revised version of this entry, this homoeopathic idea is now running throughout it all, for clearer effect.])

As I am developing my thinking on the philosophical concept of God, I suspect that Nietzsche is tempted to see God as a concept of religious indoctrination only, the “opiate of the masses” of sorts, in other words, an awfully potent poison, and, in such a capacity, a legitimate object of criticism. Those of us who are sincerely religious ought to join Nietzsche in his condemnation of such practices of all religious cults and established religions which abuse religion for the purpose of discipline, organization and indoctrination of their captive flocks. In other words, I am taking into very serious account Nietzsche’s objections to “God” as poison and this ought to help me tremendously, to focus and clarify my chief point of disagreement with Nietzsche, in the sense that I see God homoeopathically, as an antidote! (For all those who are baffled by my last phrase, I am recommending a study of the fundamentals of homoeopathy. One suggestion, however: the reader should not start looking for popularized digests and other poor man’s guides to homoeopathy, but seek the works of the masters, such as Hahnemann, Clarke, and Kent. Incidentally, I would strongly recommend these three to others, too, who have a special interest in human psychology, as I do not know a better psychology manual than the works of the great homoeopaths.)

I mean, the renewed and rejuvenated God of our time, the only source of absolute morality, and the banner for the humanity’s struggle against immorality. In this monumental struggle, anyone who is not with Him is against Him. The main task of God’s people is to determine, which side is God’s side, and the right answer is by no means obvious...

Inasmuch as God is now seen as the only antidote, the value of such concepts as ‘the beyond’ and ‘the soul’ becomes so obvious that the following Nietzschean passage will also require… not a refutation, mind you, but a meaningful philosophical revaluation of its basic terms: “The concept of the beyond, the true world, invented in order to devaluate the only world there is, in order to retain no goal, no reason, no task for our earthly reality! The concept of the soul, the spirit, finally even immortal soul, invented in order to despise the body, to make it sick, holy, to oppose everything that merits to be taken seriously in life: nourishment, abode, spiritual diet, treatment of the sick, cleanliness, and weather.” (ibid.)

It ought to come out clear by now that our purpose in appealing to the concept of God and His concomitant attributes of the Absolute and the Ideal, is not to counter life, nor to devaluate the only world there is, but to bring the world closer to an ideal where nations immersed in their seemingly irreconcilable differences may ultimately discover their common ground. Yes, even if we accept the Nietzschean premise of God as poison don’t we know that the worst poison can also be the best and, often, the only cure? And so it is in this case, nota bene!

 

E PLURIBUS UNUM

(In my development of an Absolute Standard, to be applicable to the concept of International Justice, there was an attempt on my part to write a separate entry under the straightforward title The “Word Of God” As The Absolute Gold Standard. That title has since been retired, and with it, the separateness of the entry in question.

Now, so that there will be no lingering ambiguity about it, what exactly did I mean by the phrase The Word of God? This term is often used as a synonym to the Holy Scriptures and The Bible, in Christian parlance. The same is true of the Moslems in maintaining the sacredness of the Koran as the Word of God, etc. There is a direct correlation here to how each religious group views its particular religion, and its particular Scripture. In my usage of the term Word of God, I am making no reference to any religious tradition, but only to the abstract, transcendental understanding that I apply to the transcendence of all particular religions in my two-storied temple metaphor (see my posting of October 1, 2011). I hope that this is well understood by the reader.

And finally, my use of the old American motto in the title of this entry is not merely a playful reference to the familiar Latin phrase. E pluribus unum worked pretty well in the American experience (the American Civil War was a tragic exception that only proved the rule), and this fact obviously has a direct relevance to the subject of this entry.)

On a number of important occasion, I have talked about the term “The Word of God” evolving as a kind of gold standard of international justice. Here is an interesting extension of this term, provided by Hobbes, in the 36^th Chapter of his Leviathan:

“When there is mention of the word of God, or of man, it does not signify a certain part of speech, such as grammarians call a noun or a verb, but a perfect speech, whereby the speaker affirms, denies, commands, promises, threatens, wishes, or interrogates. The Word of God is also the dictates of reason and equity.” (I am responsible for the underlining.)

The most significant point of Hobbes’s quotation is that the word of God does not signify a certain part of speech, but a perfect speech. Reiterating one of my central arguments in the development of the concept of international justice, the purpose and the end result of such justice is not a better way of ‘international law enforcement,’ but a common search for the ideal, the Absolute; and the God in the word of God is not the God of a particular religion, but the common source of Absolute Authority, the God of Philosophy.

In order to arrive at the doorstep of the common God, all nations ought to conceptualize themselves as the diverse worshippers of a two-storied temple, where each nation, or rather each culture, has its own room on the ground floor, while the doorstep of their common God is upstairs on the upper floor, where there are no partitions. Thus, this line parallels the line of my entry Allegory Of A Two-Storied Temple, in suggesting a solution to the problem of all these world religions, biting at each other’s throats, instead of providing our troubled world with an integrated moral backbone, making them consistent with Lichtenberg’s enlightened view of religion: “All the different religions are only so many religious dialects.”

This allegory works both in its application to normal international relations, the enlightened way of doing business with each other, and also in finding the only solution to the complex dilemma of common ethical denominator, where the discovery of common ethics is complicated by the apparent incompatibility of their respective religions and denominations. See my other entries on the subject of transcending from the Gods of religions toward the One Absolute God of the philosophical abstraction, that is, ascending to the “upper floor” of the same temple. E Pluribus Unum.

THE MOST DIFFICULT TASK ON BEHALF OF PHILOSOPHY

(This particular entry started as my light-hearted comment on the Nietzschean passage in Jenseits 11, and in that capacity it was supposed to have stayed in the Sources and Comments. But, promptly, I digressed from it into the familiar territory of Philosophy and Science, picking up Philosophy and Religion along the way, which might have turned this entry into something fit for the Philosophy section, except that these matters are so conspicuously entrenched in my International Justice piece, that it has suddenly become more suitable for the futuristic/wishful thinking section, provided that the unavoidable redundancy with several other sections is understood, and excused.

No matter what, I still have this wishful thinking left in me, that one day religion might become compatible with both philosophy and science. At least, I entertain this hope for Russian Orthodox Christianity, whereas I have no such hope for American Protestantism, too self-important and politicized for its own good; nor for Europe, where religion has become irrelevant; nor for Roman Catholicism, which has become too involved in the priest sex abuse controversy, and has lost too much of its former authority, to be effective in endeavors of this nature.)

When will our pusillanimous modern-day philosopher finally pluck his courage and invade, with the intent to repossess, philosophy’s formerly own, but cowardly relinquished domain of science? When will he also dare to apply his supposedly philosophical brain to thinking about religion, not as some foreign country to be left alone, but as a perfectly legitimate territory of philosophical inquiry, given up for no good reason? No answer!

Perhaps, it is too difficult to regain the erstwhile philosopher’s paradise, with all those forbidding creatures (but by no means Seraphim!) guarding the gates of the lost Eden? Well, difficult, but not impossible.

My return to this commendable subject has been prompted, in this case, by a fleeting comment I once made elsewhere, on Nietzsche’s critique of Kant. The following is that comment; do not be surprised that it looks kind of out-of-place in this section. It… sort of… is!

How many more times would Nietzsche be willing to kick the shadow of the old Kant, to punish him again and again for his arrogance and folly in chasing the windmills of semantics in pursuit of the ephemeral synthetic aprioris?

As he reminds us, again, in Jenseits 11, “Kant was proud of his table of categories, saying: ‘This is the most difficult thing that could ever be undertaken on behalf of metaphysics.’”

The irony is of course that Kant’s “greatest achievement” turns out to be an unwitting hoax, on his part. We have to agree with Nietzsche that “synthetic judgments a priori should not be possible; in our mouths they are nothing, but false judgments.” But then he goes on with this stunning admission that “only the belief in their truth is necessary.” Why so? For the very simple reason that Kant had found his own justification for the existence of an absolute moral authority in his ‘scientific’ proof of the existence of the synthetic apriori judgments, which would become his stepping stone to the discovery of the “categorical imperative.” With this in mind, it is understandable that, in Nietzsche’s mildly sarcastic words, “people (in his Germany) were actually beside themselves with delight over this new faculty, and when Kant, further, discovered a moral faculty in man, for, at that time, the Germans were still moral, and not yet addicted to Realpolitik.”

And now comes an intriguing question, in connection with this Nietzsche’s discussion. What would be the real thing, not this ridiculous matter of synthetic aprioris of Kant’s self-delusion that could echo his proud statement: “This is the most difficult thing that could ever be undertaken on behalf of metaphysics?”

As I said before in various contexts, I am highly skeptical of anybody’s efforts to develop a general theory of philosophy, that would contain in itself, in purely abstract form, a revelation of God, be that the elusive Cartesian mathematical formula of Creation, or some neo-Pythagorean discovery in a new transcendental geometry of certain basic truths about God, or another set of esoteric mystical adventures in Kaballah and theosophy, and what-not else.

But I have a suggestion that, in my view, must certainly meet Kant’s description as the most difficult thing that could be undertaken on behalf of philosophy in general, and on behalf of science in general, and lastly on behalf of the human race-- also in general. This great mission is a reconciliation of science and religion, by building a common bridge between the absolute standards of morality and the relativist qualms of practicality, between the absolute and the temporal or, as I say in my Lecture Summary on International Justice, between abstract terms and their specific applications.

In order to build this bridge, religious thinkers must recognize the deadlock that their ethical mission faces, as long as they keep promoting a specific religion into the position of the master religion, the gold standard. This effort is doomed, because the God of religion is not the absolute God of philosophy. He is limited, not infinite, relative, not universal. There is only one God who transcends religious sectarianism, and the task of philosophy is to rediscover Him.

It is up to the thinkers to reconcile philosophy proper with its currently runaway extensions, the philosophy of science and religious thought, which most difficult task of philosophy we have effectively given up.

If we do, and only if we do, the moral necessity to come up with something as pathetic and philosophically indefensible as Kant’s synthetic judgments a priori, ceases to exist, and we can pride ourselves on achieving the most difficult thing in philosophy, namely, our rediscovery of God as the universal and absolute moral and legal standard, which, from then on, will be authoritatively applied to the International System of Law and Order.

Don’t ask me, though, as to how we can prove the existence of God, whom we are so eager to get into the picture. Indeed, anyone who believes that he can come up with such a proof is deluding himself and others. But then, let us remember that God does not need to be proven. We can and must accept Him by definition! In that case, I bet, even the hardcore atheists wouldn’t mind…

GEOMETRY OF BALANCE

(This is obviously a tongue-in-cheek entry, although the geometrical argument in it is solid in its own right, especially considering the manner of its application to the subject matter.)

Before we move to the series of entries virtually equating bipolarity with balance, a question may be asked whether two points do indeed constitute a balance. We know that a bicycle (two wheels!) is a precariously unbalanced machine, and a tricycle is preferred for the safety of young children. By the same token, a two-legged chair is famously unstable, and at least three legs are needed to sit on one without a major problem.

To this legitimate argument I shall respond that indeed we need more than two points to ensure the balance of an object on a physical surface, but, come to think of it, how many points does a human being require to keep his or her balance? The last time I checked, we humans have been endowed with two legs to keep our balance on, and to use more than two points (walking on all four or on three with the help of a stick) is an unmistakable sign of either immaturity or disability. Taking this point further still, increasing the number of balance points may even spoil the equilibrium, by depriving the main two points of support of the authority to keep the proper balance.

Mathematically and philosophically speaking, the essential guarantee of stability is dichotomy. On the other hand, only God is self-sufficient enough to ensure the perfect stability of His own “fulcrum.”

(This entry is being followed in the section by the entry Bipolarity As A Condition Of Stability, posted on my blog on November 12^th, 2011, and by a series of others, posted subsequently, to which series I am now addressing the interested reader.)

 

 

BALANCE AS THE KEY TO WORLD PEACE

This entry opens the subsection on balance, stability, and global security. Paradoxically, we are presently in the section on “wishful thinking,” while the terms pertaining to our subsection appear as solid rational terms which are hardly ever associated with “wishful thinking.” But, of course, the so-called “new world order” is in itself a paradox, being based not on those respectable rational terms, but on the delusional assumption of one superpower’s hegemony, which has effectively substituted them all after the collapse of the USSR.

The American insistence on her single-superpower hegemony in the post-coldwar era has produced a veritable tectonic shift in the groundwork of international relations. A brattish fantasy has become the apparent reality, geopolitical sanity has been reduced to wishful thinking, which is exactly why it is being considered in this section, and what used to be wishful thinking of yore, something like “world peace,” is now deemed an infantile, long-outdated grotesque naïveté among the real-politikers, reduced to a propagandistic ploy by the respective agitprop machines of individual states and groups of states.

Come to think of it, world peace is still more than an ephemeral possibility. The key to world peace, though, is not the hopelessly idealized goodwill of humanity, but a far more practical and perfectly sober concept of balance, as long as it is realized by all sides as the only way to ensure stability, predictability, and common sense in international relations, condemning unilateralism as a surefire guarantee of conflict and war. Need I say that this essential concept of balance is utterly incompatible with the existing insistence on unipolarity that has come to characterize the new “American” twenty-first century, spinning off into global terrorism, reckless political and economic manipulation on an unprecedented scale, and, of course, a truly apocalyptic decline of Western free society, as it was universally recognized, and admired as such, during the cold war era, despite the inevitable slips and setbacks.

To make my point clear, whereas the lowest point of the cold war, America’s war in Vietnam, was a tragic result of certain geopolitical misconceptions, but still an exception, rather than the rule, this American century’s war in Iraq, as well as many other “little” wars and wars to come, have all been wars of inexcusable and self-defeating folly of geopolitical hubris and cluelessness, all of them bit by bit undermining Western civil liberties and the very concept of civil society…

The rest of this subsection will hopefully shed some light on what I call “balance.”

THE ETHICS OF JUSTICE

The question whether Justice as-such, in the sense of law enforcement, is moral (obeying the law is “good,” even if the law itself is “bad”?) or amoral (which removes the ethical inconsistency of the previous clause), leads us to a curious paradox, hidden in the phrase the ethics of justice. On the other hand, should one admit that justice is amoral, why on earth should such an arrangement then be pursued at all?

Was the justice system of the Third Reich “good” for a majority of citizens of Hitler’s Germany, at the same time as it was manifestly bad for the minority, and for an overwhelming majority of other nations? In order to determine whether a justice system of an individual country is “good” or “bad,” we must go outside the experience of a single country, appealing, in the final analysis, to what can be ideally termed “ideal justice,” or, in practical terms, to the elusive concept of “international justice.”

Yes, the solution to this paradox lies in the very nature of International Justice deriving its soundness from the common morality of its pledged covenanters, becoming a sort of international “morality by consensus,” the closest thing to God’s Law that is conceivable in the otherwise laic reality of our world of two hundred Caesars. It is perhaps this excellent international multiplicity of earthly Caesars which creates the necessity for all of them to appeal to a higher authority, and, in this need, an opportunity to rediscover our common God as the Judge, and thus to return a mutually acceptable religious morality to the concept of Justice.

The idea of a common global justice for the future, which is what I have been driving at, all the time, in the course of this prolonged discussion, is a direct appeal to the common humanity of the major world cultures, whose religious differences must not obscure their basic ethical commonness which alone can translate into the universal social application, and promote both the desirability of “World Peace” (as a properly defined philosophical concept), and its practicality (as its most important application).

Yet even justice based on commendable religious morality is a very complicated thing. Religious zeal with the best intentions on the part of the believers can easily translate into a gross injustice. International justice must not be entrusted to a majority rule, or be a church decision, for that matter. It must be a joint product of an enlightened international body, an elite group, which is competent enough to allow individual veto right among themselves… Difficult, but not impossible! There is already a workable system of international law in existence, and so the point is not to invent a new system, but to dramatically improve on the existing one. It is quite clear, for instance, that the issue of capital punishment, being conspicuously unresolved to anybody’s satisfaction, within the existing international justice system, complicates the emergence of ethical justice, where a consensus may exist as to what law is “good” and what law is “bad.”

But the bottom line here is that a truly moral person must always prefer a Don Giovanni to a Tartuffe, albeit with the reservation that both of them are still sinners. We must dispense with all that useless wishful thinking, regarding the voluntary conversion of a hypocrite: there can be no Ideal where hypocrisy rules… After all, the Ideal belongs to the Faith, and not to the Practice. Memento communismi!

JUSTICE AS TRADE

(With this entry I have once more returned to the justice theme of my Wishful Thinking section. Quite a few of its sisters have been posted on my blog already and it would be too cumbersome to identify them all. The reader may look up a whole cluster of justice entries posted in November, 2011, including the entry Nostalgia For The Old World Order, mentioned by title below.)

I can see why Hobbes sees justice in obeying the law, and he would have bequeathed to us a perfect definition of moral justice, had he referred to the ideal, or God’s Law. But, considering that most national laws in history (or should I say, more accurately, all of them?) have been… well, man-made, and far from perfect, a reasonable alternative and a much more down-to-earth definition of justice is required, to reconcile the idea of justice with morality. Otherwise, “justice” is just another empty word, unusable in building up the concept of international justice, which, as I said before, is unthinkable in separation from the conception of the ideal.

Therefore, I find what Nietzsche has done about it supremely commendable, even if his idea of justice cannot stand unchallenged. He basically opens up a philosophical discussion on the origin and meaning of justice, creating the tools for probing deeper into the matter than anyone had gone before. Here is Nietzsche in Human, All-Too-Human (92):

“Justice (fairness) originates among those who are approximately equally powerful: where a fight would mean inconclusive mutual damage, there the idea originates that one may come to an understanding and negotiate one’s claims. The initial character of justice is the character of a trade. It has gradually come to appear as if a just action were unegoistic; but the high esteem for it depends on this appearance.”

Having written my brief initial comment, which I am still keeping intact in my entry Nostalgia For The Old World Order, coming later in this section, I am disappointed how little exuberant praise has been given to Nietzsche for this masterpiece of political and psychological insight into the nature of human society, and the future of its world order, if, of course, that future be world peace and a continuation of the human race, and not its self-destruction through one superpower’s will to hegemony, and the other’s compulsion to manipulate behind the scenes, even if such shadowy reactivity, rather than a forceful and direct self-assertion in the limelight of history, be to the peril of all and to the benefit of none.

I will soon return to this important Nietzschean passage, which will provide me with a bridge between the theme of International Justice and my next theme, dealing with the concept of geopolitical bipolarity.

THE POWER OF MONEY

Es ist eine alte Geschichte, doch bleibt es immer neu… (Heine)

When money becomes power, this power is inevitably and infinitely more obnoxious and pernicious than the power of the sword or the power of tradition, not to mention the generally ephemeral power of Plato’s or Francis Bacon’s knowledge.

In the hoary past, money and power were usually separated, as the powerful detested “finance.” In modern times, money and power continue to be separated in Russia, while under pure socialist systems money has very little value to begin with. It is not hard to deduce from the general outline of history that a merger of money and power somehow coincides with the full-blown emergence of financial capitalism, but nostalgia for the good old days before the world plunged into its first “world” war is not advisable until we acquaint ourselves with this Lord Byron’s complaint dating back to the pre-Victorian age:

Who hold the balance of the world? Who reign

O’er conquerors, whether royalist or liberal?

Who rouse the shirtless patriots of Spain?

(That make old Europe’s journals squeak and gibber all.)

Who keep the world, both Old and New, in pain

Or pleasure? Who make politics run glibber all?

The shade of Buonaparte’s noble darling?

Jew Rothschild, and his fellow Christian Baring.

Thus, according to Byron, the evils of financial capitalist power ought not to be somehow attributed to the evil vapors of the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries. A statement of record!

All I have to do now is to repeat my opening verse. Apparently, “es ist eine alte Geschichte, doch bleibt es immer neu!” (And, incidentally, I will take Heine over the Rothschilds anytime! But that’s me, of course.)

SEVENTY-TWO YEARS AGO…

June 22^nd, 1941. On this day of unspeakable tragedy that forever changed the lives of every Russian, and of the generations to follow, Hitler invaded Russia…

An ungrateful Europe, whose freedom from Nazism was purchased with Russian blood, may not remember, or bother to celebrate, the 9^th of May (1945), as Victory Day, and is even less mindful of the significance of today’s date, as if it were only for the Russians to observe.

Too bad! For, seventy-two years ago on this day Hitler lost World War II…

…WARS AND RUMORS OF PEACE…

Amidst wars, revolutions, and repressions, amidst acts and fears of terror, and other terrible expressions of a surge of human misery around the world, out of Washington, DC, comes a ray of blinding light: President Obama’s breathtakingly daring proposal of a dramatic reduction of the nuclear weapons--- by a whole one-third!--- in the arsenals of the United States and Russia…

First, the good news. Yes, I have been saying it for over two decades, and I am saying it again today. Russia’s demise as the other superpower has been grossly exaggerated. And here now is an adequate reminder of this fact. President Obama has made his sweeping arms control proposal not to the Chinese, allegedly the other superpower, not to the Hindustani nations, not to the nuclear-empowered members of the European Union, not to the North Koreans, and not even to the friendly Israelis. He has made it to the Russians, in the old tradition of superpower arms control pas de deux. Let the nuclear demons of war be reduced by a third to under a thousand on each side! And the earth shook, only nobody has taken this event for an earthquake, because the world is too busy shaking with earthquakes of far greater relevance to humanity, earthquakes not related to superpower might, but to superpower impotence…

So, let us reduce American and Russian nuclear stockpiles, and not just by one third, but by a half. Will that make a difference? Will that have any effect at all on the real-life wars, revolutions, repressions, terrorism, and fears of terrorism anywhere around the world? Indeed, none of the world’s ongoing horrific problems have anything to do with nuclear weapons. On the contrary, we may well argue that the possession of these weapons has actually reduced the threat of global war, and may have already prevented quite a few deadly conflicts from happening.

The truth of the matter is that this latest plastic olive branch of “virtual” peace out of Washington is an exercise in unbelievable hypocrisy. Over the last three decades, most American “peace initiatives” have been, frankly, misbegotten. Nobody in their right mind would suggest that the Taliban-Al Qaeda alternative to erstwhile Soviet influence in Afghanistan brought America anything good, or that Iraq without Saddam Hussein and Libya without Qaddafi are better off today than before the United States had spent the first $billion, liberating them. Nobody in their right mind and propaganda-free would ever suggest that Syria under the secular regime of Assad is a worse evil to the Syrians, the Israelis, and the West, than any feasible alternative that America and the West have to offer.

As for the actual arms control proposal to the Russians, it is an unworkable sham that does not even score any points in the game of perceptions. Without any special deference to the Russians, accepting it would be insanity on their part. During the last two decades, the United States has adopted an unmistakably aggressive anti-Russian stance, seeing Russia’s nuclear weapons as perhaps the only obstacle to America’s domination of the world. The dramatic expansion of NATO, breaking all promises to the Russians, and the preoccupation with ABM in Europe, utterly undermining the core deterrent principle of MAD, plus all other developments in the area of strategic conventional weaponry on the part of the United States, have made the reliance on a substantial nuclear arsenal (far in excess of the suggested reduction limits) a cornerstone of Russia’s defensive posture, and any self-respecting American military expert must admit this plain fact of life…

It is clear by now that the latest American arms control proposal does not hold water, even without us mentioning the glaring omission of all other members of the nuclear club in this “bilateral” arrangement. In the hallowed US-Soviet arms control past, the nuclear arsenals of the British and the French, both being NATO members, were always factored in the bilateral picture... But let us not dwell on this once important subject, as today it is a different, more important set of parameters of the proposed deal that makes all such "small" details superficial and inconsequential.

APTE DICTUM ONE MORE TIME

(This is my fourth installment of “apte dictum” aphoristic entries. For the earlier installments, see November 3^rd, 2010; January 7^th, 2011; and May 14^th, 2011.)

(19-187)

Those who have known no tragedy, have known no glory.

 (19-188)

There are different ways of playing the hero, and martyrdom may well be the easiest of them.

(19-189)

An ultimate act of love cannot sometimes be distinguished from an act of direst hatred…

(19-190)

The hidden agenda of every revolution is Carpe Diem.

(19-191)

All that’s freedom is not good. (Paraphrasing All that glitters is not gold.)

(19-192)

Live Free or Die: The new slogan of modern imperialism.

(19-193)

Any zeal is a form of religion.

(19-194)

The greater the challenge, the richer the reward. The smaller the opposition, the lower the morale of the warrior, and the paltrier his harvest.

(19-195)

They say, “Father of this,” “Father of that.” I ask, Who, in this case, is the Mother?

(19-196)

There is not so much danger in oversimplifying the complicated as in overcomplicating the simple.

(19-197)

Evil-minded philosopher: Philucifer.

(19-198)

My jocular name for Adolf Hitler is “Man Of The Prinzip,” as in Führerprinzip.

(19-199)

The rest is… hopefully, nothing…

(19-200)

The modern excesses of financial capitalism have changed the most famous phrase in the United States Declaration of Independence, to read: wealth, property, and the pursuit of affluence.

(19-201)

Man is a force of nature turned into a tool by woman.

(19-202)

Prepare to be unprepared!

(19-203)

Fiat Veritas, Pereat Vita. “Translated” into English as “You cannot handle the truth!” (A Few Good Men.)

(19-204)

The reason for America’s worst troubles as a nation is that she often fails to understand what the Clintonian ‘is’ is.

(19-205)

“The mule loves a heavy burden,” says the proverb. But then, no blasphemy intended, doesn’t Christianity worship the Mule qui tollis peccata mundi? The Lamb is just another aspect of it. (From a “biography.”)

(19-206)

“A Bush in the Cheney Shop:” a perfect epigram for that infamous Administration…

(19-207)

It is amazing how many American critics these days are ready to confess America’s impotence and America’s incompetence, rather than to admit that America is wrong.

(19-208)

Paraphrasing Goldwater, criticism in the service of Democracy is a virtue.

(19-209)

Theology is philosophy on sacred ground.

(19-210)

(Courtesy of the Sphinx.) What is wrong with the New American Century?

It’s not the dog, but the fleas!

(19-211)

In most people’s brains, there are not only white cells and gray cells, but also prison cells, in which they incarcerate their God-given free spirit.

“CONSOLATION” POSTSCRIPT

This is a postscript to my earlier entry “…’Tis A Consolation Devoutly To Be Wished” (posted on June 17^th, 2013). On second thought, it ought to have been included with the entry itself. But on “first thought,” at the time, I was so delighted by my clever play on words (substituting Hamlet’s radical solution to the problem of life, “consummation,” by Nietzsche’s “thoughtful” solution, his “powerful comfort,” that is, consolation), that I felt that any explanation of my substitution would spoil the splendid challenge to the reader, to figure it all out.

However, having reread the entry posted on my blog, I thought that perhaps I may have been too clever for this entry’s own good. What if some reader, well-versed in “To be or not to be,” should attribute the title to my misquotation of Shakespeare, rather than to a deliberate wordplay, mating Shakespeare with Nietzsche, and thus lose the original intent of the misquotation altogether?..

For the sake of avoiding a confusion of this nature, and to allow a better appreciation of the cleverness of my entry’s title, I am presently providing this prosaic, but probably necessary elucidation.

GROSS NATIONAL HAPPINESS

This preposterously weird term, particularly intensified in its bizarre effect by the double meaning of gross, is, nevertheless, a legitimate economic term under the aegis of the so-called economics of happiness, which is basically a concerted effort, conducted under different names, to quantify the concept of happiness within the socio-economic sphere.

Quantification of collective happiness over collective misery is something to be logically expected from the utilitarian mantra, courtesy of Jeremy Bentham and others. Whichever amount (happiness versus misery) in the analyzed action’s inequation is greater wins either the utilitarian applause or censure. Therefore, there is nothing revolutionary in the modern concept of Gross National Happiness itself, and the only two kinds of difference which can be found among the myriads of competing suggestions are how to name the term, and what parameters are to be considered in the computation.

The following is an abstract from Wikipedia’s page on one of such projects, predictably titled most properly as Gross National Happiness. Although this long passage is demonstrably unoriginal on my part, I am quite happy to have found this curious needle in the haystack of the Internet and brought it to my reader for his or her personal edification.---

The concept of Gross National Happiness (GNH) was developed in an attempt to define an indicator which measures quality of life or social progress in more holistic and psychological terms than the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). As a chief economic indicator, GDP has numerous flaws, long known to economists. GDP measures the amount of commerce in a country, but counts remedial and defensive expenditures (such as the costs of security, police, pollution clean-up, etc.) as positive contributions to commerce. A better measure of economic wellbeing would deduct such costs, and add in other non-market benefits (such as volunteer work, unpaid domestic work, and various unpriced ecosystem services) in arriving at an indicator of wellbeing. As economic development on the planet approaches or surpasses the limits of ecosystems to provide resources and absorb human effluents, calling into question the ability of the planet to continue to support civilization, many people have called for getting Beyond GDP (the title of a recent EU conference), in order to measure progress not as the mere increase in commercial transactions, nor as an increase in specifically economic wellbeing, but as an increase in general wellbeing, as the people themselves subjectively report it. GNH is a strong contributor to this movement to discard measurements of commercial transactions as a key indicator and to instead directly assess changes in the social and psychological wellbeing of the populations.

The term was coined in 1972 by Bhutan’s former King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, who opened up Bhutan to the age of modernization. He used the phrase to signal his commitment to building an economy that would serve Bhutan’s unique culture based on Buddhist spiritual values. At first offered as a casual remark, the concept was taken seriously, as the Centre for Bhutan Studies developed a sophisticated survey instrument to measure the population’s general level of wellbeing.

…Like many psychological and social indicators, GNH is easier to state than to define with mathematical precision. Nonetheless, it serves as a unifying vision for Bhutan’s five-year planning process and all the derived planning documents, which guide the economic and development plans of the country. Proposed policies in Bhutan must pass a GNH review based on a GNH impact statement that is similar in nature to the Environmental Impact Statement, required for development in the United States.

While conventional development models stress economic growth as the ultimate objective, the concept of GNH is based on the premise that some forms of economic development are uneconomic, a concept that is advanced by the nascent field of ecological economics. Such development costs more in loss of ecosystem services, and in the imposition of “urban disamenities,” than it produces as a positive contribution to well-being. (The difficulty is, of course, that for many forms of development the gains are taken privately, while the costs the development imposes are born generally and publicly.)

The Bhutanese grounding in Buddhist ideals suggests that beneficial development of human society takes place when material and spiritual development occur side by side to complement and reinforce each other. The four pillars of GNH are the promotion of sustainable development, preservation and promotion of cultural values, conservation of the national environment, and establishment of good governance. At this level of generality, the concept of GNH is trans-cultural: a nation need not be Buddhist, in order to value sustainable development, cultural integrity, ecosystem conservation, and good governance. Through the collaboration with an international group of scholars and empirical researchers, the Centre for Bhutan Studies elaborated on these four pillars with greater specificity, coming up with eight general contributors to happiness, that is physical, mental and spiritual health; time-balance; social and community vitality; cultural vitality; education; living standards; good governance; and ecological vitality.

Although the GNH framework reflects its Buddhist origins, it is solidly based upon the empirical research literature of happiness, positive psychology and wellbeing.

The article proceeds with a discussion of subsequently elaborated qualitative/quantitative indicators within the general GNH framework.---

There is no exact quantitative definition of GNH, but its contributing elements are subject to quantitative measurement. Low rates of infant mortality, for instance, correlate positively with subjective expressions of wellbeing or happiness within a country. (This makes sense, for, it is no large leap to assume that premature death causes sorrow.) The practice of social science has long been directed toward transforming subjective expression of large numbers of people into meaningful quantitative data; there is little difference between asking people “How confident are you in the economy?” and “How satisfied are you with your job?”

GNH, like the Genuine Progress Indicator, refers to the concept of a quantitative measurement of wellbeing and happiness. The two measures are both motivated by the notion that subjective measures, like wellbeing, are more relevant and important than more objective measures like consumption. It is not measured directly, but only the factors which are believed to lead to it.

A second-generation GNH concept treating happiness as a socioeconomic development metric, proposed in 2006, measures socioeconomic development by tracking 7 development areas including the nation’s mental and emotional health. GNH value is proposed to be an index function of the total average per capita of the following measures:

1 Economic Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of economic metrics such as consumer debt, average income to consumer price index ratio, and income distribution.

2 Environmental Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of the environmental metrics such as pollution, noise, and traffic.

3 Physical Wellness: Indicated via statistical measurement of physical health metrics such as severe illness.

4 Mental Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of mental health metrics such as usage of antidepressants and rise or decline of psychotherapy patients.

5 Workplace Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of labor metrics, to include jobless claims, job change, workplace complaints and lawsuits.

6 Social Wellness: Indicated likewise via direct survey and statistical measurement of social metrics such as discrimination, safety, divorce rates, complaints of domestic conflicts and family lawsuits, public lawsuits, crime rates.

7 Political Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of political metrics such as the quality of local democracy, individual freedom, and foreign conflicts.

The above seven metrics were incorporated into the first Global GNH Survey.

The reader may ask why so much attention has been given to this particular subject, while a great variety of other economic activities of this nature have been ignored? It is no big secret that I am not a big fan of all sorts of socio-economic gimmicks such as direct surveys and their statistical measurements, as all these are terribly subjective and predominantly manipulative, allowing the survey conductor to shape their questions as they please, and thus condition the answers to suit their particular agendas and to come up with expected results, thus turning an overwhelming majority of such surveys into shameless con games.

But this particular item is both a curiosity in itself (being allegedly rooted in the Buddhist tradition and thus not a new-age fluke, but probably a sincere undertaking carrying some traces of religious morality) and one certainly deserving to make an example of. (If we must talk about such things at all, why don’t we pick this one, of the lot?)

“…’TIS A CONSOLATION DEVOUTLY TO BE WISHED…”

(If you think that this entry may be rather sinister, and flirting with the macabre, forget about it! This is merely a literary-philosophical rumination over Shakespeare and Nietzsche…)

Hamlet’s celebrated soliloquy on man’s irresolution over “to be, or not to be?” (in other words, his “suicide monologue”) seems to have found the perfect answer in Nietzsche, whose genius has given a rebirth to philosophy and psychology as Siamese twins! Here is his definitive solution to Hamlet’s dilemma, as given in Jenseits (157):

“The thought of suicide is a powerful comfort: it helps one through many a dreadful night.”

The key word here is “thought.” For, now, here is Shakespeare again: “To die, to sleep, no more! But that we dread of something after death: the undiscovered country…” The thought, not the act, this is what makes all the difference! As long as one thinks about it as an option, but not as a done deal, one stays clear of the edge beyond which lies “the undiscovered country.” Like a Colossus bestriding the two worlds, one foot in this world, and the other foot in the next (which is none other than Hamlet’s “undiscovered country”), our mind, in the previously cited Nietzschean aphorism, bridges the chasm between the two: while pleasantly musing on the easy escape from a ‘thousand natural shocks’ of our daily existence, it allows us a return, rather than a one-way ticket, that is, a safe and assured journey back from the unknown.

ABSURDISM AS A PHILOSOPHY. PART II.

“Man is born to live, and not to prepare for life.”

This deeply philosophical gem from Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago has been superficially interpreted, particularly in the West, as Pasternak’s criticism of Soviet Communist utopianism, with its emphasis on the future at the expense of the present. Less attention here is given to the fact that this “criticism” can be just as much addressed to all Christian religion, with its eschatological emphasis on the afterlife at the expense of the here and now. Yet, Pasternak was a profoundly religious man of assimilated Jewish extraction, raised in the Russian Christian Orthodox tradition, and as such he has always been embraced by the Russian Orthodox Church, despite his ostensible doctrinal attack on Christian/Communist wishful thinking.

Pasternak is important in this entry on Absurdism, because what he says here, circa 1955, sounds very much like what Camus had to say back in 1942, in his Myth of Sisyphus. But whereas Pasternak does not seem to offer a clear answer to the problem, Camus’s solution is all there, for everybody to see: accept the absurdity of life for what it is, enjoy this absurdity, and thus find happiness: even Sisyphus can be happy, having accepted such a solution!

…Mind you, this is not a political or theological statement of some sort, but pure deep philosophy. By the same token as the Russian Church has seen no offense in Pasternak’s attack on one of its basic tenets, the philosophy of Absurdism is not an atheistic statement, either. It is merely an invitation to think with an expanded horizon, and surely this kind of expanded thought cannot possibly derail a sincere believer from his road to the hereafter, but, on the contrary, should strengthen his faith by strengthening his power of reason. This is not to say, of course, that Camus was a closet believer in God, which was probably not the case, but only that his philosophy of Absurdism, even though heavily permeated with Christian terminology and symbolism, does not really intrude in, or incompatibly contradict, the Christian or any other religious doctrine.

Camus’ essay The Myth of Sisyphus is an exceptional work of philosophy. My initial intent was to include its retelling in this entry, making it “informative,” as earlier promised, but on last thought I chose against it. I would rather encourage the reader to read the whole essay than try to fit it into a capsule, which was exactly what I did in the original version of this entry. Meanwhile, I shall limit myself to just a few words of my own here.

Camus’ challenge in Sisyphus is not to God, but to man. Trying to find a meaning in the world around us is a folly: the world is a hard, inhospitable place which cannot be understood through reason or science. (Isn’t this awfully consistent with Christian theology, which installs Satan as the ruler of the world?) We tend to build our life on the hope for a better tomorrow, but tomorrow is actually our enemy. Our friend is today, as today we are alive, whereas tomorrow we may be dead…

So, does Camus want us to “abandon hope,” bringing forth a disturbing Dantian association? Curiously, we could find a strong similarity here with the classic Christian insistence on repenting today, thus, effectively, “abandoning hope” of repenting tomorrow, as tomorrow may be too late (Matthew 25:1-13).

This is by no means to say that Camus is quoting from the Scriptures, but only that the atheist philosopher Camus and religion are not that incompatible, as no genuine philosophy is ever incompatible with genuine religion.

…Another point, or rather a restatement of Camus’ key point, is that the world in itself is by no means absurd. It is only when our natural quest for understanding the world meets its inherent illogic, that absurdity reveals itself. There are certain ways to address this inevitable state of absurdity: by complete frustration, depression, and eventual suicide; or by an attempt to escape from it via irrational means, such as hope, etc., which only perpetuates absurdity, instead of overcoming it. Camus’ positive solution is to accept the absurd, to embrace it as a delightful philosophical conundrum, thus not succumbing to it, but mastering it! Can you sense the hidden undertones of the Christian solution of conquering death by death? Here, once again, is our “atheist philosopher” Camus by no means incompatible with Christianity. As I am compelled to repeat, no genuine philosophy is ever incompatible with genuine religion!

So where is Sisyphus here? Yes, here he comes. Let us not be shocked by Sisyphus’ plight in hell, but let us identify with Sisyphus, see a Sisyphus inside us. And by our pursuit of Sisyphus’ happiness, we shall find our own.

“…All Sisyphus’ silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing. Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols. In the universe suddenly restored to silence, the myriad wondering little voices of the earth rise up. Unconscious, secret calls, invitations from all the faces, they are the necessary reverse and price of victory. There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night. The absurd man says yes, and his effort will henceforth be unceasing. If there is a personal fate, there is no higher destiny, or at least there is but one which, he concludes, is inevitable and despicable. For the rest, he knows himself to be the master of his days. At that subtle moment, when man glances backward over his life, Sisyphus returning toward his rock, in that silent pivoting, he contemplates that series of unrelated actions, which becomes his fate, created by him, combined under his memory's eye, and soon sealed by his death. Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to see, who knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go. The rock is still rolling.

I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He, too, concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

…In conclusion of this entry, we may return to where we started. We may suggest a possibility that both Camus and Pasternak may be attacking capitalism, with its mentality of saving for the rainy tomorrow, no less than they are attacking either communism or Christianity. But we are obviously not going that far, emphasizing only the generalness of their common point, which, I repeat, has a general philosophical significance, and must not be crudely reduced to an attack on anything in particular.

ABSURDISM AS A PHILOSOPHY

[Being closely related to the earlier entry Philosophy Of The Absurd Is Philosophy Too (posted on February 1^st, 2012 ), via the keyword Absurd, plus to the entry My Take On Sisyphus (posted on April 3^rd - 4^th, 2013), which ought to follow this one, this is a mainly informative (which should explain my reluctance to post it before) yet genuinely interesting (which should explain my decision to post it now) entry, which starts with Kierkegaard, and then focuses on Camus. Both Kierkegaard and Camus have been allotted entries of their own (to be posted later), but surely each of them merits more than one, and so does the subject of absurdism. See also my entry Religion And Absurdity in the Religion section.]

The concept of the absurd is generally understood as the human urge to find a meaning in existence and our failure to do so. It starts with Kierkegaard who was the first to use the word “absurd” philosophically in the following note made by him in 1849 in his Journals:

“What is the Absurd? It is, as may quite easily be seen, that I, a rational being, must act in a case where my reason and my powers of reflection tell me: you can just as well do the one thing as the other, that is to say, where my reason and reflection say: you cannot act, and yet here is where I have to act... The Absurd, or to act by virtue of the absurd, is to act upon faith ... I must act, but reflection has closed the road so I take one of the possibilities and say: This is what I do, I cannot do otherwise because I am brought to a standstill by my powers of reflection.”

It is important to realize that whenever we appeal to the notion of the absurd, the option of a rebellion or an attempted revolution against absurdity is, in itself, absurd. Kierkegaard wishes to transcend the absurdity of existence by taking the path of faith. In my understanding, he sees that under certain conditions we may be genuinely unable to make a moral choice, in exercising our freedom of choice (whenever “I am brought to a standstill by my powers of reflection”), and, paradoxically, our irrational faith becomes our substitute for rational morality in all such situations! Here is a good point to run by the atheists and all other believers in the separation of morality and faith…

Thus, according to Kierkegaard the path of faith seems like a reasonable way out of our moral predicament. But this is not the path suggested by another great thinker who lived a whole century after Kierkegaard, and whom we will be discussing in-depth for the remainder of this entry.

Absurdism is the philosophy generally attributed to the French philosopher-writer Albert Camus and he has certainly deserved this attribution by generously writing about the meaning of the absurd and by his explicit philosophical treatment of absurdity in his celebrated 1942 essay Le Mythe de Sisyphe.

(This is the end of Part I. Part II will be posted tomorrow.)

LINGUISTIC PHILOSOPHY OF THE MODERN ERA

(This entry follows my previously posted entry Definitions, Definitions, Definitions!)

Linguistic philosophy is also known as analytical philosophy, and is closely linked to logical atomism and logical positivism. (There is another term for it: philosophical analysis.) The towering figure behind this, or rather all these, is one of my favorite thinkers, Lord Bertrand Russell, who calls it by yet another name: The Philosophy of Logical Analysis. As a structural linguist, I used to study this fascinating subject at Moscow University, and I did familiarize myself with it in great detail. This does not make my job easier, though, as I am trying to draw the reader’s attention to this manifestly worthy subject, but it will take me several time- and effort-consuming stages of work to bring this entry into a proper shape, later on. (Mind you, however, that this is by no means some kind of treatise on linguistic philosophy, and it isn’t even a Russell, or, later, a Wittgenstein, entry. The first topic is too large for consideration in a single entry, like this, whereas if anyone is looking for my notes on Russell or Wittgenstein, they can be found in the Magnificent Shadows section, to be posted later.)

My great interest, as a Moscow University student (ages ago!), in the one-man science of the paroemiology genius Grigori Permyakov has already been given attention in other sections of this book, but, with regard to this particular Philosophical section, it ought to be noted that Permyakov’s structural paroemiology had a distinctive philosophical foundation to it, which I can trace to the linguistic philosophy of one of my best beloved shadows of the more recent origin, whose death, in 1970, happened during my adult lifetime, thus building a bridge between the rather lackluster present and the much cherished and, perhaps, too generously glorified past. I am referring of course to Bertrand Russell, who once claimed that his life had been driven by three overwhelming passions: unrequited love, elusive truth, and agonizing compassion for the pains of mankind.

Any man who is capable of such breathtakingly simple and profound formulation already deserves the title of the philosophe extraordinaire, but Russell is an inexhaustible living well of inspired thinking of the first magnitude, a rarity for this intellectually impoverished age, and his extraordinary linguistic philosophy is a living proof for it, even if taken in isolation from all other accomplishments of his genius.

Here is a long quotation from Russell himself, which explains the origins of his theory of “logical analysis” which is yet another word for his linguistic philosophy. The quotation is severely abbreviated to save space. For the full representation of this quotation, please read Chapter XXXI: The Philosophy of Logical Analysis in Russell’s already profusely quoted History of Western Philosophy.

In philosophy ever since Pythagoras there has been an opposition between men whose thought was mainly inspired by mathematics (Plato, Thomas Aquinas, Spinoza and Kant) and those who were more influenced by the empirical sciences (Democritus, Aristotle and Locke). In our day a school of philosophy has arisen that sets to eliminate Pythagoreanism from the principles of mathematics and to combine empiricism with an interest in the deductive parts of human knowledge. From Frege’s work it followed that arithmetic and pure mathematics generally is nothing but a prolongation of deductive logic: this disproved Kant’s theory that arithmetical propositions are synthetic and they involve a reference to time. The development of pure mathematics from logic was set forth in detail in Principia Mathematica, by Whitehead and myself.

It gradually became clear that a great part of philosophy can be reduced to ‘syntax.’ Some suggest that all philosophical problems are syntactical, and when errors in syntax are avoided, philosophical problems are either solved, or shown to be insoluble. I think this is an overstatement, but there can be no doubt that the utility of philosophical syntax is great.

Bertrand Russell’s philosophical path started with logic, moved on to perception, and finally found itself in linguistics, namely, in semantics. This is consistent with the paths of his associates and colleagues, such as Whitehead, Carnap, and Wittgenstein, the last of which wrote this in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: The object of philosophy is the logical (read linguistic: that is what logical boils down to!) clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.(He is saying that ‘philosophy’ means philosophizing.) A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations. (The task of all genuine philosophers is to make themselves clear, as he proceeds to summarize.) The result of philosophy is not a number of philosophical propositions, but to make propositions clear.

Wittgenstein eventually came to the conclusion that our whole world exclusively consists of our linguistic experience, which led him to the suggestion that all philosophy is a critique of language. The question of greatest importance to philosophy is why do we use this particular word or expression?

I myself believe that reducing all philosophy to linguistic usage and its analysis may be going too far in one direction, at the expense of others, but this particular direction constitutes a necessary part of philosophical pursuit, a condition sine qua non.

I take a certain pride in my insistence on “definitions, definitions, definitions!!!” even if such an insistence is not entirely original. But giving the due credit to the linguistic philosophers of the twentieth century, I am taking credit for my dogged pursuit of linguistic analysis as the preamble to all examinations, political and philosophical, which has suffered terrible and deliberate abuse at the hands of modern manipulators, for whom linguistic obfuscation is the commonest tool of their trade.

DEFINITIONS, DEFINITIONS, DEFINITIONS!

How many languages does an educated person speak? Ten or twelve, or even more, counting a phrase here and a phrase there?

How many languages can one understand? Sometimes none, including one’s own native tongue!

The following quotation from myself comes handy, perhaps, in clarifying this uncomplicated charade.---

“How often do we engage ourselves in a passionate debate, marveling at the complexity of issues involved, yet hardly realizing that all this complexity proceeds from the simple fact that we don’t know what we are talking about.” (From my already much-quoted March 2003 article Democracy or the Republic?)

I said it before and I will say it again, definitions, definitions, definitions! This time, however, I might say it differently, appealing to an authority of nineteen hundred years ago, the honorable Epictetus.

Talking about definitions, and our uncritical use of poorly, if at all defined terminology, which turns us into slaves of the powers that are shoving their own calculated usage down our throats, here is another precious excavation, from Epictetus’s Enchiridion: “First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak.”

Bravo, Epictete! How current!

So is it that simple? Hardly. Here comes the great Wittgenstein complicating our life with his Philosophical Investigations. Meaning is determined by usage, he insists. There is no meaning without a context, and the very same phrase can mean very different things depending on who says it, when, where, and why. In other words, whenever we are talking about something going by a certain name, it is more likely that we are talking about different things than by a remarkable coincidence we happen to hit the same bull’s eye.

So is it that difficult? Hardly. There are two “rules of engagement” to follow in a discussion of that nature. One is to convey our contextual meaning to our interlocutor, demanding the same from the other party. The other is to be aware of the conceptual problem here, and to stay alert to ambiguous or untested usage.

Definitions, definitions, definitions. Insisting on them up front in any discussion, and presuming nothing on a hunch, ought to take care of what would otherwise present us with an insurmountable difficulty.

Simple? No!