Alan Jacobs

This naturally invites questions about the practical value of Mr. Rorty’s own ideas. He thinks they will free us from the worship of science and from the notion that we can attain a “God’s-eye view” of the world or learn to speak “nature’s own language” (as opposed to the many languages that we invent). This liberation will make us better liberals in the broadest sense of the term: we shall be able to appreciate a diversity of views and thus be in a healthier position to continue the conversation of mankind. What we must do is see science and philosophy as on a par with imaginative literature. Naturally, this sort of stuff goes down well with some literature professors, who now find that they own Plato and Newton as well as Shakespeare and Milan Kundera.

The main problem with this idea is that not even Mr. Rorty himself can stay faithful to it. By his own lights, he ought to argue not that pragmatism is right but that it is useful. In fact, for the most part he uses good old-fashioned philosophical arguments to support it. It is hardly surprising that he seldom gives reasons for believing that pragmatism is somehow more helpful than its alternatives, since that is a most implausible claim. Science has been pretty successful even though most, if not all, of its major practitioners have taken themselves to be describing the world. How can Mr. Rorty be so sure that it would be even more successful if they dropped this idea?

And how does he propose to prevent the conversation of mankind from degenerating into the blathering of mankind? The Rortyan vision of heaven on earth, in which people merely tell enlightening tales and abjure the search for truth, sounds like a gathering of tipsy old sea dogs swapping dimly remembered stories of past voyages of discovery. If the earlier explorers had all been Rortyan pragmatists, the sea dogs would have had nothing to reminisce about.

Pretty Things & Monsters: A soldier and his squirrel.

Bradbury insisted he was not a hard science fiction author, but instead a writer of fantasy. Ultimately, I’d argue the Anthropocene needs a non-fantastic literature that directly grapples with the problem of managing a planet so that it can remain the sole (known) home in the universe capable of providing life support and a passage through the void to a rich array of animals, plants, minerals, microbes and more. This literature will need Bradbury’s optimism and imagination, heralding a new “green morning,” rather than the end of nature we find in Blade Runner’s dystopian portrait of a world whose only hope lies in migration to other presumably, less ruined planets or Frankenstein’s suggestion that we will be undone by our own creation.

Nothing tests one’s intellectual honesty and ability to apply principles consistently more than free speech controversies. It is exceedingly easy to invoke free speech values in defense of political views you like. It is exceedingly difficult to invoke them in defense of views you loathe. But the true test for determining the authenticity of one’s belief in free speech is whether one does the latter, not the former.

The anti-US protests sweeping the Muslim world have presented a perfect challenge to test the free speech convictions of both the American right and the Democratic party version of the left. Neither is faring particularly well.

I am usually collaborating with the interesting dead… Rilke or Cicero or Shakespeare or Dante or Conrad or Verdi… these are the living dead with whom we all work, and sometimes we have to knock quite loudly on the tomb to get them to play a part in living art.

Martin SImpson, my favorite guitarist, playing “She Slips Away.” I’d love to own one of those gorgeous Stefan Sobell guitars, but even if I could afford it I’m not worthy of it.

oldhollywood:

Sylvia Sidney & Henry Fonda in You Only Live Once (1937, dir. Fritz Lang) (via)

What about the other writers, editors, and presenters at the Register and EWTN media? How are they supposed to know how to do their jobs now? If a man like Burger, who spent 11 years working for the paper, can get fired for quoting an interview subject accurately, and for reporting words said by the interview subject that are by no means out of character for that subject, then there’s really no way to know where the land mines are. Who can possibly feel confident in doing his or her job as a journalist or host in a situation like that? Who wants to work under those conditions?

I don’t know what’s going on at that newspaper, but the firing of Burger under this utterly unbelievable pretense makes it seem that under EWTN’s stewardship, the most important thing is preserving the image of a beloved priest, not honoring the truth, not practicing basic journalism, and not treating fairly an employee who faithfully served the newspaper for 11 years. It is unprofessional. It is un-Christian. It is wrong.

Might be good to have the occasional sliver of cricket on that right-hand column.

Can the Lascaux paintings be saved?