Another Great Battle

How can anyone who speaks a Western tongue, especially those among us who purport to be educated, afford not to study philosophy? I ask you! I implore you! Quo vadis? Whither goest thou without any understanding of whence we have come and who we are? And this is to say nothing of where we hope to go. In the works of Voltaire, we find a reference to a letter from Henry IV, the King of France, to an ill-knighted person by the name of Crillon, who, most unfortunately, arrived after a great battle had been fought. To the tardy Crillon, Henry IV wrote: "Hang yourself, brave Crillon! We fought at Arques, and you were not there."

We stand today on the edge of another great battle, that between humanistic learning in our nation and in our universities on the one hand, and the shallow, opportunistic, and personally aggrandizing appeal to the bottom-line principle of sheerly economic accountability on the other hand. Unlike Crillon, I plan to be at this battle and I trust that you will do likewise, for to do less is to abandon all that is distinctively human. I tell this to our children and to my students. I ask them to pass the message to their children and to their students. Philistines and purveyors of the shallow are everywhere. They pervade the university as well as the marketplace. It is our task to sustain and celebrate the wisdom of the past on behalf of our obligation to make possible the wisdom of the present. More than seventy years ago, William James said that philosophy bakes no bread. True enough, nor does it build bridges or clone cells. Yet a society that only bakes bread, builds bridges, and clones cells is a society that has failed to realize its deepest mission. The ancients knew well that time will seize us, in time. Our task is to think deeply about the most quixotic of all cosmic events, namely, the utterly transient yet powerful existence of a human life. Three millennia of philosophical speculation have addressed that paradox. And it is to that same ambivalence between power and fragility that we address ourselves once again. Ultimate conclusions are beyond our reach, but the quality of our endeavor is a gauge of the worthiness of our cause. Those of us who have bartered the present for a paradisiacal future, much less a career, have missed the drama of the obvious. Philosophy teaches us that every day, everyone has access to the depth of being human. We should not await salvation while the parade passes by. The nectar of a guaranteed human future is illusory and the height of self-deception. Our death is imminent. Philosophy sanctifies our reflective effort to ask why and, above all, philosophy makes an effort to tell the truth. In our time, what could be a more outlandish and coveted activity?
-John J. McDermott, "The Cultural Immortality of Philosophy"

Moon Rhetoric

20 July 2009 is, of course, the fortieth anniversary of the lunar landing. It's a fitting day to look at the rhetorical leadership of President Kennedy. On 25 May 1961 (shout-out for Amy Gore's birthday), Kennedy delivered a speech arguing for a push to the moon before the end of the decade of the sixties. In the speech above, Kennedy clarifies and hones that argument, 12 September 1962, at Rice Stadium in Houston, Texas.

In the opening of the speech, Kennedy presents a condensed stadial theory to describe the development of human technologies related to learning, progress, and the invention of transportation. This theory is presented to inoculate listeners from the naysayers and Eeyores among us who would advise caution and safety over risk-taking and adventure. It is rhetorically astute that Kennedy presents the theory in a condensed form to hold the audience's attention and to keep them focused on the question of our immediate readiness for such a mission.

Man in his quest for knowledge is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead whether we join it or not.

Kennedy places repeated emphasis on the importance of learning and knowledge that the mission to the moon serves. This is appropriate, of course, because he is delivering the speech at a university, but it is significant for another reason, which is that by speaking about the advantages of knowledge in deliberate contrast to an effort to seek military advantage, Kennedy shows himself a true liberal.

For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and the planets beyond.

First and foremost, this line is important because it is an echo of one of the most crucial lines in American rhetorical discourse. That line was spoken by earlier adventurers and explorers who were willing to leave their homes and homeland to venture into new territory: John Winthrop on the Arbella announced to the first settlers of Massachusetts Bay Colony that the eyes of the whole world are upon us. Fitting that the line should be echoed by a Massachusetts man. Fitting, too, because Kennedy shifts attention from America as promised land to America as world leader in a quest to explore space and to learn from our vast environment.

We have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding. Yet the vows of this nation can only be fulfilled if we in this nation are first, and, therefore, we intend to be first.

This powerful statement points again toward a pursuit of knowledge in contrast to a pursuit of warmongering or the arms race. I can't help but think of all the talk of WMD in the war on terror when I read this line, or Mr. Reagan's push for a Star Wars system to protect us from Soviet missiles - in direct opposition to the leadership Mr. Kennedy shows of pursuing peace, knowledge, and understanding. Of course I am aware that Mr. Kennedy's record on WMD is far from flawless in the sense that he contemplated their use and allowed them to become the cause of major incident. Nevertheless, contradictions and dissembling notwithstanding, I can't help but want to get in line behind a desire to explore space for knowledge and understanding rather than for the purpose of putting armaments in the sky. The contrast in leadership is worth noting. I also wonder in passing if anyone has ever done a study of the origins of the phrase "weapons of mass destruction." I was a bit surprised to find that phrasing in this speech.

Another important element of the speech is the recurring theme of competition. The historian David McCullough has noted the importance of rivals in history, for they play an essential role in driving individuals to accomplish great things and in shaping them and providing them motivation. The rival, and of course it is mentioned and criticized, is the Soviet Union. I can't help but think that we should thank the USSR for helping us accomplish our goal to walk on the moon before the end of the decade of the sixties.

What is worth mentioning is the fact that Mr. Kennedy repeatedly refers to rivalries and motivation using metaphors drawn from the world of sport. "Why does Rice play Texas?," is a brilliant line - for the occasion, of course, as it draws the most applause, but also because I think it sends an implicit message to the Soviet Union that the USA is capable of thinking of our own rivalry in a sportsmanlike way. Again, he could have chosen military metaphors, or some other more aggressive way to express himself, but indeed he did not. I think that is to his credit (and probably to Ted Sorensen's, too).

A few more things worth mentioning:

*Mr. Kennedy's excellent use of clear examples, like 10,000 automobiles with their accelerators to the floor.

*Mr. Kennedy's clapping of his hands for emphasis as he nears the conclusion - as if to encourage a round of applause, but also to draw the audience toward assenting to the plan.

*Mr. Kennedy's reference to the heat of September days in Texas really get the audience excited. If you've lived in Texas, you know what he means.

In conclusion, it's clear to me that the speech shows considerable leadership in the push to explore space and to land a man on the moon. It would be nice if our readers, if there be any, could comment on their thoughts about JFK's speech. I would be particularly interested in hearing from those who might remember Kennedy's moon rhetoric or who might be willing to share their memories of the day humans walked on the moon.

(A copy of this essay was cross-posted at www.omninerd.com.)

Attitudes Toward Money

I recently had a piece published in the Kenneth Burke Journal. Here is the abstract:

Attitudes toward the pecuniary are peculiar. One reason we misunderstand money is because it defines and answers to both our animal nature (necessity) and our symbolic nature (property). In this paper I trace the genealogy of Kenneth Burke’s attitudes toward money in the “Epilogue: Prologue in Heaven” to show how Burke’s logological approach toward money is original and in tension with claims offered by competing, economic attitudes toward money. Money sits forever at the nexus of our animal and symbolic nature because it simultaneously holds the place of value and signifies what we value. By stressing animal limits and symbolic infinity, Burke invites us to ponder the extent of human cooperation and the boundaries of human strivings. As attitudes, these invitations reveal that Burke wanted to re-appropriate the money symbol to the realm of logology and religion – away from capitalism – to exhibit the potential justice at the heart of human experience. That justice, however, only inheres so long as the tension between animal and symbol is respected in our pursuit of needs through symbolic action. Burke strings the tension between animal and symbol along the lines of a conversation between The Lord and Satan. Along the way he shows us a Lord sympathetic to our money crimes as well as all others and a loyal opposition that laughs at our infirmities. In this way, Burke works to redeem human commerce from its worst propensities by showing its relationship to the Word.

You can read the complete article here. What follows is some background on Kenneth Burke that may be useful before reading:

Kenneth Burke was the most influential literary and rhetorical critic of the 20C. He was an American thinker through and through, influenced strongly by William James and Thorstein Veblen, but also Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and Aristotle. He is best known for his invention of the Pentad, a way of seeing texts (and the world) using a model derived from the theatre. The Pentad is after the deepest understanding of human motives possible. Burke is after Yes, No, and Maybe, frames of acceptance, rejection, and acceptance/rejection. As Jim Aune taught me, the Pentad is Burke's way of looking at the world from a God's eye view. Burke is searching for a Grammar and a Rhetoric of Motives, a theory that captures how symbols motivate human being(s). The Pentad is best thought of as a reworking of classical rhetoric's theory of the topics (topoi) with a dramatic dimension. Every investigation of human motive, if it wants to be as complex as human motive, must see all five of the following at once as well as recognize how ratios between the five elements can develop to further explain motive. Each of the elements corresponds to a particular philosophy and the parts of a dramatic story.

1. ACT: What is being done? Realism: plot.
2. SCENE: What is the context? Determinism: spectacle.
3. AGENT: Who is doing? Idealism: character.
4. AGENCY: What is it good for? Pragmatism: diction.
5. PURPOSE: What are human beings striving for? Mysticism: thought.

In addition to the Pentad as a way of explaining human motive, KB presented a corresponding "Definition of Man," from an essay of the same name that defines man as:

1. Symbol using animals, implying that much of our reality is propped up symbolically. Symbol-use should contain no temptation for flattery because it includes symbol misuse.

2. Inventor of the negative: there are no negatives in nature. Everything in nature simply is what it is.

3. Separated from our natural condition by instruments of our own making.

4. Goaded by a spirit of hierarchy, moved by a sense of Order. One might say obsessed by order. Add to this, language is intrinsically hortatory (see Richard Weaver's essay, "Language is Sermonic").

5. Rotten with perfection. The goadings of hierarchy with which we poke one another, instead of actually perfecting us, are often a source of our greatest, most glaring imperfections.

KB's interest in combining complex analysis of human motives within the broad context of human affairs (what he called the "human barnyard") sprang from his experience as a youthful intellectual during the Great Depression. His earliest works, including Counter-Statement, Permanence & Change, and Attitudes Toward History exemplify a deep interest in symbols and the way symbols build systems of significance.

Because his project was begun in the midst of the Great Depression, KB was often preoccupied by the money symbol. My piece looks at money as a symbol, a symbol of symbols, and how it both distracts from and brings us to God (the Idea of Order). It examines Burke's preoccupation with money in a dialog he wrote between The Lord and Satan that appears as an epilogue or post-conclusion at the end of his book The Rhetoric of Religion. The "Epilogue: Prologue in Heaven," is an imagined conversation between The Lord and Satan that takes place before the world was created. I am looking for understanding of money as a symbol, a symbol of symbols, and how it both distracts from and brings us to God (the Idea of Order).

In some ways I mimic Burke's writing style, which some may find enlightening and others baffling. One critic, Joseph Frank, said, "The Rhetoric of Religion, like everything else that Mr. Burke has written, is highly original, brilliantly stimulating, infinitely suggestive, and ultimately baffling."

Summer Reading

It has been a long, long time since I bought books. For me, that doesn't mean I haven't bought an occasional book or two here and there over the last six months. However, it has been months since I placed a big order, you know, ten or more books at a time through Barnes & Noble. The reason I've been holding off was that I've been drafting a book of my own and didn't have the sort of time I wanted to devote to reading.

So there I was at Barnes & Noble this afternoon to pick up a special order that arrived a few days ago. My wont is to browse the magazines for a few minutes, Italian soda in hand, and then pick up the books I ordered and spend an hour or two in the store perusing my soon to be acquisitions. I was chatting with one of the booksellers who was explaining to me that they were moving all the book sections around to different places because the economy. That's what she said. Apparently, what this means in practical terms is that philosophy is given a much smaller section by the bathrooms and the number of Bibles has exploded exponentially. It also means that more of the books I want to read have to be special ordered (which I'm used to) and pre-paid (which I despise). It's not that I mind buying books via the internet or pre-paying, but I very much prefer the fun of picking my books up at the store in person, on the rare occasions that I order brand new books, so as to while away an afternoon and enjoy a soda.

I spent the best part of tonight reading widely among them. I'm in the habit of reading many books at a time. Kathy thinks I'm crazy for this and doesn't understand how I can follow everything that's going on at once. I think of my books as friends with whom I'm having a conversation, with the lovely benefit that I can shut them off at any time or pick up where we left off even if I'm less than presentable or whenever it's convenient for me.

Anyway, here's a list of what I bought today, in no particular order:

1. John Lukacs, Last Rites (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2009). I confess that I am enamored of Lukacs. I think he's rather brilliant. I've read a lot of his work, and unfortunately the first part of this one seems a little repetitive, but there were a few gems, including:

*Knowledge, neither "objective" nor "subjective," is always personal. Not individual: personal. The concept of the "individual" has been one of the essential misconceptions of political liberalism. Every human being is unique: but he does not exist alone.

*It took me, an antimaterialist idealist, perhaps forty or fifty years to recognize, suddenly, that people do not have ideas: they choose them.

*History is larger than science, since science is a part of history and not the other way around. First came nature, then came man, and then the science of nature. No scientists, no "science."

A great introduction to Lukacs' work is his recent essay in the American Scholar.

2. G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World. This was recommended to me by Philip Blond (not personally, but still). See this clip. The other day I read Hilaire Belloc's The Servile State, which I enjoyed very much. I understand that he and Chesterton share a theory about the economy known as distributism. I think I share it, too, although I don't know how much energy I really have for a return to fiefdoms.

3. Moses Maimonides, A Guide for the Perplexed. I have no idea when I'm going to have time to read this enormous book, but I hope I do. I read the first few chapters and it whetted my appetite for his scriptural interpretations.

4. Hesiod, Theogony, Works & Days, and Testimonia, Edited and Translated by Glenn W. Most (Cambride & London: Harvard University Press, 2006). I can't really remember why I ordered this book, but I think it has something to do with the titles of the works - all concepts I'm interested in - and my understanding that Works & Days is an early argument for the fact that hard work is somehow connected to justice.

5. Carlo Ginzburg, The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, trans. John and Anne Tedeschi (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983). Ginzburg's The Cheese and the Worms is one of my all time favorite books. Ever. Aune said this one measures up well with that one. 'nuff said.

6. Slavoj Zizek and John Milbank, The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009). This book is much bigger than I thought it was: tiny print and 303 pages. I like the idea of a postmodern atheist and a theologian debating God, and the one saying to the other: "in my atheism, I am more Christian than Milbank." At first, that intrigued me, but now I think it's a rather stupid thing to say. I hope I have time to read it soon.

7. Mark C. Taylor, Confidence Games: Money and Markets in a World Without Redemption (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 2004). I really should've read this sooner. I thoroughly enjoyed the Preface and the Introduction. The Preface is more the kind of writing I like, personal and direct. I don't believe we're in a world without redemption, but I am provoked by the connections Taylor promises to draw between markets and religion:

In retrospect, it is clear that God did not simply disappear but was reborn as the market. In contemporary society, the market has become God in more than a trivial sense. The terms many economists and analysts use to describe the market implicitly suggest language once reserved for God: the market is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. Since the market knows best, it should be allowed to operate according to its own principles with minimal interference from humans, whose knowledge is unavoidably limited.

Funny, not a lot of people are talking about markets that way now, but still, it's a critique of the dominant theology of the day.

8. John Milbank, The Future of Love: Essays in Political Theology (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2009). Wow, now you don't see a lot of books published in Oregon. Anyway, I'm excited to read the first essay: Divine Logos and Human Communication.

9 & 10. Volumes II and III of Philip Rieff's trilogy Sacred Order/Social Order: The Crisis of the Officer Class: The Decline of the Tragic Sensibility and The Jew of Culture: Freud, Moses, Modernity, both published by the University of Virginia Press. Volume I was a rare treat, indeed. If these are half as good . . .

11. John D. Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997). Not only did I get to meet Caputo and hear him speak in May, but this book was recommended by Adam as one of the best books he'd ever read.

When I placed the order a few weeks back I picked up The Philosopher's Quarrel, about Hume and Rousseau, David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature, and Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. I will have no shortage of new things to read this summer. I'm sure I won't tackle all of these, or perhaps even most of them, before school starts in the fall. The good thing is I have no compunction about unread books on my shelves. It's a sign of days ahead, of hope, and of a longing for leisure. May you have many days of reading pleasure this summer is my prayer.