A bit north of Beech Gap, NC 215.
The Most Beautiful Time of the Year
The autumn color is creeping in, but the days are warm and delightful (when there isn't a hurricane). For the next little while, things will be very beautiful in my part of the world. I'll try to get some photos to share with all of you.
Ride Down Easy
As I was telling Mr. Hines in the comments below, there's a bit left but so far we seem to have gotten down easy. All the same I believe in the Havamal: "Praise the day at evening." Let's hope the last part goes down easy.
Hurricane Planning
I've been through some several hurricanes in my life but none like Helene two years ago. Hopefully this one won't go too badly; we are due perhaps seven inches of rain instead of 17, everything isn't already sodden from weeks of rain beforehand, and the wind locally is only expected to gust to 60. There is some flash flooding predicted but nothing like the mass destruction of Helene or even the quite deadly Tropical Storm Fred, the flooding of which topped 23 inches at nearby Lake Toxaway and swept more than thirty people away never to be found just over the ridge down the Pigeon River valley. Still, with the recent memories somewhat fresh we are all giving a little attention to preparation.
I evacuated from one with my family, one other time sent them on and myself stayed behind to ride herd on things at home -- that time I caught the last train and then the last bus out of DC before the storm hit. Otherwise I have mostly slept through them. Since it's not really in my hands anyway, I always figure we'll just have to see how it turns out.
New York City?!
I had a brief flashback to this old commercial when I saw this from the NYT today for a slow-cooker chili recipe. Now you can make chili in a slow cooker, if you must, and with proper care (scroll to 'braise' and then ff.) it will only be a little less good than something made in a cast iron Dutch oven. However, the old commercial continued to rear its head as I read on:
A great chili should be richly spiced, with layers of deep, savory flavor. Here, that big flavor comes from the usual contenders, but also from the unexpected additions of unsweetened cocoa, soy sauce and Worcestershire....
I can see the cocoa, which might do something like it does in some Mexican moles; but I'm not sure I need English Sauce in my chili, nor soy sauce either.
Maybe for April Fool's Day.
Hunter S. Thompson and the Cornell Case
I'm not going to join in the Cornell festival of blame, about which I know nothing that is not in the newspaper. However, I was reminded very strongly of the Hunter Thompson book I reviewed recently. The reason is that this sort of subject matter getting sensational newspaper stories and big press conferences by policemen and prosecutors was what, Hunter argued, turned the Hells Angels from around a hundred guys in California into what it became after.
The sensationalist stories spilled purple prose and raised all sorts of accusations; however, on inquiry Hunter found that the charges were generally dropped or not upheld if prosecuted, and anyway it always seemed like the club had no need to go out looking for girls to assault because lots of girls were looking for them. The girls sought out the club, a fact that amused Hunter quite a bit -- not just girls, though lots of girls, but also lots of other ordinary middle class people. The media sold a story that the run to Bass Lake one year was going to be an orgy of destruction, but what all that newspaper ink accomplished was to bring out lots of tourists who wanted to see the show. In spite of some small tension, Hunter's editor had a rather disappointing story after the affair of people mostly getting along and camping out. A lot of beer was drunk, including by visiting girls.
A lot of sex may also have been had during the drinking and camping on the beach. At least some of the stories in the book are reported as rather enthusiastic seeking-out of the club just for the drinking and very wild sex. That was what brought them out.
I suspect fraternities and sororities can be a milder version of this. I'm not saying that is what happened here, but I do notice the parallel between the wild, hair-on-fire print accounts and then the emerging details that come later on.
The grandstanding public figures also have strong parallels in both sets of cases. I predict that this grandstanding will end up doing actual harm to the cause they claim to be interested in defending. Hunter is quite vocal in defending the idea that rape is extremely serious and deserves to be punished, though he takes care to be a good journalist and paint a fair picture of what he actually learned about the cases he mentioned. I was struck by the irony that it was not the governors or the police chiefs or the New York Times who went to the trouble to get the facts right, but the gonzo journalist.
Rhyming is Important
I might share a couple of my opinions with you; but I'm not going to share them because I think they're smart, I'm going to share them with you because they rhyme... I ain't traveling around trying to change nobody's mind.
Liberation and the Firearm
Reason magazine notes that women are better-armed than ever. American women, anyway -- but without much division other than that.
They add that the big surge in women's gun ownership has occurred since 2018 and, almost without exception, is seen across the board without regard to race, age, income, party identification, or education.... "Ownership is demographically diverse: 45.7% of validated gun owners are female, 25.6% do not identify as White (alone), and the gap in ownership rates between White Americans (34.6%) and Black Americans (33.0%) has narrowed to less than two percentage points," Georgetown University's William English wrote last month, of numbers from the National Firearms Survey....Smart and Morral add that women with children have been especially quick to acquire guns. The shift "has been driven almost entirely by single (not cohabitating) mothers, a group that may have been particularly affected by changing attitudes toward personal empowerment and safety concerns during a period of rising violence." Women mostly own handguns, which are closely identified with self-defense.
I've taught several women to shoot myself.
Sophistry, V
By the ~25m mark, Fr. Ripperger is onto a topic he is ascribing to sophistry where he actually disagrees with Aristotle completely. This is a point where I also disagree with Aristotle, so I don't say that as a criticism of the position he is advocating, just again his ascribing that position to "sophistry."
The particular point he is describing as sophistry (which it isn't) and a violation of natural law (which it is) is the controlling of education by the state rather than the family. He has quite a lot to say about this, so feel free to watch that part of the video directly; I don't think anyone who is a regular here will much disagree with his position.
Aristotle, however, does disagree with it. In Rhetoric I he is clear that, because the state is made up of families to which we are naturally attached, the law needs to settle "as many points as possible" so that very little judgment is left even to magistrates where their natural ties might incline them to favoritism. In Politics VIII.1-2 he speaks to the law and education in a way that clarifies that education of the youth is particularly a state matter, not a family matter:
None will doubt that the legislator should direct his attention above all to the education of youth; for the neglect of education does harm to the constitution. The citizen should be molded to suit the form of government under which he lives.... [S]ince the whole city has one end, it is manifest that education should be one and the same for all, and that it should be public, and not private- not as at present, when every one looks after his own children separately, and gives them separate instruction of the sort which he thinks best; the training in things which are of common interest should be the same for all. Neither must we suppose that any one of the citizens belongs to himself, for they all belong to the state, and are each of them a part of the state, and the care of each part is inseparable from the care of the whole. In this particular as in some others the Lacedaemonians are to be praised, for they take the greatest pains about their children, and make education the business of the state.
...That education should be regulated by law and should be an affair of state is not to be denied, but what should be the character of this public education, and how young persons should be educated, are questions which remain to be considered. As things are, there is disagreement about the subjects. For mankind are by no means agreed about the things to be taught, whether we look to virtue or the best life.
That could hardly be clearer. It is directly opposed as a view to the one Fr. Ripperger is (rightly, in my opinion) advocating, but it is nevertheless not a sophistic position but Aristotle's own. Likewise, to say as the good father does that this is a post-Protestant position is clearly disproven by the citation; it is in fact the ancient position of Aristotle and the Aristotelians.
The medieval Aristotelian position, which is to say especially St. Thomas Aquinas' position, is less clear. Aquinas follows Aristotle very, very closely in the Summa Theologiae but he is mostly following Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Physics, and Metaphysics. Aquinas wrote a commentary on the first two books of the Politics only. Insofar as we can piece it together, Aquinas seems to have agreed that the family and not the state had jurisdiction over the education of the young -- but, perhaps like the Church's general endorsement of monarchy during the middle ages, this might partly be because that was the only live option.
I talk a lot about Aristotle here because I think he is of continuing value, and could in many respects restore the habit of thinking things through of which Fr. Ripperger is really also lamenting the loss. Even Aristotle wasn't right about everything; on this point, as well as a few others, he was in my opinion quite wrong.
Sophistry, IV
What Fr. Ripperger raises first is the use of emotion in place of argument. By invoking emotional activity, as he notes, those attempting to persuade you of the rightness of their cause do a great deal to disable your ability to reason about the matter at all. In this he is in perfect agreement with Aristotle except in assigning that to the Sophists. Aristotle assigns to the Sophists modes of arguments that deceptively play with words or use ambiguities to make what are otherwise -- or on the surface -- rational arguments.
However, the use of emotional argumentation is also rejected by Aristotle, and right off the bat (just as Fr. Ripperger raises it first). In the very first few lines of Rhetoric I, Aristotle knocks out this entire mode of argumentation as illegitimate.
Rhetoric is the counterpart of Dialectic. Both alike are concerned with such things as come, more or less, within the general ken of all men and belong to no definite science. Accordingly all men make use, more or less, of both; for to a certain extent all men attempt to discuss statements and to maintain them, to defend themselves and to attack others. Ordinary people do this either at random or through practice and from acquired habit. Both ways being possible, the subject can plainly be handled systematically, for it is possible to inquire the reason why some speakers succeed through practice and others spontaneously; and every one will at once agree that such an inquiry is the function of an art.Now, the framers of the current treatises on rhetoric have constructed but a small portion of that art. The modes of persuasion are the only true constituents of the art: everything else is merely accessory. These writers, however, say nothing about enthymemes, which are the substance of rhetorical persuasion, but deal mainly with non-essentials. The arousing of prejudice, pity, anger, and similar emotions has nothing to do with the essential facts, but is merely a personal appeal to the man who is judging the case. Consequently if the rules for trials which are now laid down some states-especially in well-governed states-were applied everywhere, such people would have nothing to say. All men, no doubt, think that the laws should prescribe such rules, but some, as in the court of Areopagus, give practical effect to their thoughts and forbid talk about non-essentials. This is sound law and custom. It is not right to pervert the judge by moving him to anger or envy or pity-one might as well warp a carpenter's rule* before using it. Again, a litigant has clearly nothing to do but to show that the alleged fact is so or is not so, that it has or has not happened. As to whether a thing is important or unimportant, just or unjust, the judge must surely refuse to take his instructions from the litigants: he must decide for himself all such points as the law-giver has not already defined for him.
Emphasis added.
Aristotle does not reject all sorts of emotion, however: he is specific that he is rejecting a set of prejudicial emotions -- he names especially anger, envy, pity. These emotions should never be raised in political rhetoric because they warp the judgment such that it is difficult to measure correctly even if you are devoted to it. This is the point that Fr. Ripperger makes explicitly.
Of special interest to me is that Aristotle does what I take to be characteristic of his ethics in admitting another class of emotions as a proper standard -- specifically, the feelings of respected members of the community about what is most worthy of honor. As we saw in the EN, this is the ultimate standard of right for Aristotle: not that which receives honor, but that which in the minds of the best is the thing that most deserves honor.
In fact, it is in this book of the Rhetoric that Aristotle goes so far as to paint that relative honor that is deserved by different things as a universal standard of value, something that will allow a community to weight incommensurate goods against each other. Rhetoric I.7 contains a long meditation on this in which Aristotle invokes the sense of what his honorable, what is base, what is noble, and what is fine. These are things sensed by a faculty like sight or smell, what we used to call 'a sense of honor.' It is emotional at least as much as it is rational, and it is -- you will remember from the EN -- based first upon inherited stories heard as part of a good upbringing, and later and more maturely on experienced judgment informed by learning to train one's self to the habit of virtuous action.
I will quote only a small part of it; the whole meditation is available at the link.
Again, that which would be judged, or which has been judged, a good thing, or a better thing than something else, by all or most people of understanding, or by the majority of men, or by the ablest, must be so; either without qualification, or in so far as they use their understanding to form their judgement. This is indeed a general principle, applicable to all other judgements also; not only the goodness of things, but their essence, magnitude, and general nature are in fact just what knowledge and understanding will declare them to be. Here the principle is applied to judgements of goodness, since one definition of 'good' was 'what beings that acquire understanding will choose in any given case': from which it clearly follows that that thing is hetter [sic] which understanding declares to be so. That, again, is a better thing which attaches to better men, either absolutely, or in virtue of their being better; as courage is better than strength. And that is a greater good which would be chosen by a better man, either absolutely, or in virtue of his being better: for instance, to suffer wrong rather than to do wrong, for that would be the choice of the juster man.
So it is not that emotion per se should be omitted from rhetoric, or from political decision making. In some sense it is necessary to making decisions, especially because a sense of what is worthy of honor is what allows us to compare unlike things -- should we buy butter or guns? Is it better to be wealthy or free? To judge that is to ask if it is nobler to be wealthy or free: which state is more worthy of honor?
* It's interesting to contrast this analogy to a warped carpenter's rule to the use he makes of the Lesbian rule in Nicomachean Ethics V.10. There, a flexible (leaden) rule is both bendable/moldable but still also a reliable standard. Here, a rule warped by these emotions is not reliable any longer. Aristotle is talking about a similar case there, one in which a judgment (such as by a magistrate) has to be made because the law has to be applied to the particular facts of a particular case. There is something about these particular emotions that makes the rule warped and useless, rather than flexible and moldable to the facts of the case.
Sophistry, III
We begin to find a criticism of sophistry in Plato, but much of it is delivered by Socrates in his arguments with the famous Sophists. In these dialogues, it is left to the judgment of the reader who had the better of the argument: very often, Socrates claims not to have had, though readers often come to the conclusion that he was at least on firmer ground in his claims not to know than his opponents were in their claims to knowledge. These are worthy and valuable, and you will find commentaries on a few of these dialogues on the sidebar.
Aristotle's Rhetoric frames the sophists as intentionally deceptive in a way that Socrates usually does not. This is the ground from which Fr. Ripperger is operating. Aristotle only mentions the sophists a few times in that work, and in Book I he is raising them to clarify differences rather than to criticize, whereas Book II doesn't mention them by name at all. The criticism comes in Rhetoric III, in a discussion of synonyms and metaphors. These are intensely valuable to thinking, Aristotle rightly notes -- readers of the Hall regularly encounter the necessity of analogy to reasoning about the physical world. However, these things give rise to ambiguity, and ambiguity can also be used to deceive. The sophists are said to be deceivers in this way:
Language is composed of nouns and verbs. Nouns are of the various kinds considered in the treatise on Poetry. Strange words, compound words, and invented words must be used sparingly and on few occasions: on what occasions we shall state later. The reason for this restriction has been already indicated: they depart from what is suitable, in the direction of excess. In the language of prose, besides the regular and proper terms for things, metaphorical terms only can be used with advantage. This we gather from the fact that these two classes of terms, the proper or regular and the metaphorical-these and no others-are used by everybody in conversation. We can now see that a good writer can produce a style that is distinguished without being obtrusive, and is at the same time clear, thus satisfying our definition of good oratorical prose. Words of ambiguous meaning are chiefly useful to enable the sophist to mislead his hearers. Synonyms are useful to the poet, by which I mean words whose ordinary meaning is the same, e.g. 'porheueseai' (advancing) and 'badizein' (proceeding); these two are ordinary words and have the same meaning....Further, there is a third consideration-one that upsets the fallacious argument of the sophist Bryson, that there is no such thing as foul language, because in whatever words you put a given thing your meaning is the same. This is untrue. One term may describe a thing more truly than another, may be more like it, and set it more intimately before our eyes. Besides, two different words will represent a thing in two different lights; so on this ground also one term must be held fairer or fouler than another. For both of two terms will indicate what is fair, or what is foul, but not simply their fairness or their foulness, or if so, at any rate not in an equal degree. The materials of metaphor must be beautiful to the ear, to the understanding, to the eye or some other physical sense. It is better, for instance, to say 'rosy-fingered morn', than 'crimson-fingered' or, worse still, 'red-fingered morn'. The epithets that we apply, too, may have a bad and ugly aspect, as when Orestes is called a 'mother-slayer'; or a better one, as when he is called his 'father's avenger'. Simonides, when the victor in the mule-race offered him a small fee, refused to write him an ode, because, he said, it was so unpleasant to write odes to half-asses: but on receiving an adequate fee, he wrote"Hail to you, daughters of storm-footed steeds? "though of course they were daughters of asses too. The same effect is attained by the use of diminutives, which make a bad thing less bad and a good thing less good. Take, for instance, the banter of Aristophanes in the Babylonians where he uses 'goldlet' for 'gold', 'cloaklet' for 'cloak', 'scoffiet' for 'scoff, and 'plaguelet'. But alike in using epithets and in using diminutives we must be wary and must observe the mean.
The latter of the emphasized points (emphasis added) is the one logician and poet Lewis Carrol makes in Through the Looking Glass: "‘When _I_ use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean–neither more nor less.’" From Aristotle's time, we have a refutation of that claim.
Thus, the most basic point about sophistry in the negative sense that the world has today -- and has had since Plato and Aristotle's time -- is that it is rhetoric that is intended to deceive, rather than rhetoric that is intended to enlighten, illuminate, or improve.
Probably the clearest example of sophistry in contemporary language for us is the Motte & Bailey Fallacy, which is well known to readers of the Hall or of AVI's place. That is not the one that Fr. Ripperger leads with, however. The next piece will explore his opening example.
Sophistry, II
Now let us take up from the beginning the question, what the accusation is from which the false prejudice against me has arisen, in which Meletus trusted when he brought this suit against me. What did those who aroused the prejudice say to arouse it? I must, as it were, read their sworn statement as if they were plaintiffs: “Socrates is a criminal and a busybody, investigating the things beneath the earth and in the heavens and making the weaker argument stronger and teaching others these same things.” Something of that sort it is. For you yourselves saw these things in Aristophanes' comedy...
Plato, Apology, 19a (Emphasis added)
The good father mentions that Plato was the first to write about sophistry; he doesn't explain why. The reason is that Socrates was put to death over charges of this type. Insofar as Plato is a reliable narrator of Socrates' trial, we see that his accusers didn't try to explain how he did it, only claiming that he did it (and taught others to do so as well -- 'corrupting the youth of Athens' was the actual charge).
Sophia in ancient Greek means 'wisdom.' One place where the ancient Sophists would have disputed with Father Ripperger was over Ripperger's central claim that they were not concerned with the truth of the claims being disputed. Readers of the Hall are familiar with two of the more famous Sophists, especially Protagoras but also Gorgias. These two did in fact run schools that included rhetoric as a means of obraining and wielding political power. However, neither seem to have thought they were doing something dastardly by doing so. The ancient claim that this is a path of wisdom is not ridiculous.
Rhetoric as a means of obtaining and wielding power is nonviolent, and indeed not even coercive: people agree to go along with the arguments. The charges leveled against Socrates are akin to buyer's remorse, anger after the fact that an argument that was accepted -- 'buy this car!' -- had consequences the buyer later didn't like. The worst thing that can be said about Gorgias and his followers was that they convinced people to go along with things that they later regretted. It might be that power corrupts necessarily, and that any system for seeking and obtaining power is going to be in some sense morally wrong. Contrasted with conquerors like Genghis Khan, however, the Sophists' road to political power looks mild indeed.
As far as 'not caring about the truth,' Protagoras in particular had a claim about the nature of truth that is opposed to the one that Father Ripperger advocates. For the Catholic, there is a God who knows all and whose knowledge entails capital-T Truth about the world. That was not true in ancient Greece, where even the gods could be wrong about things. Protagoras believed, and argued openly, that what the truth is depends on human interpretation, because human minds are the only interpreters of the facts of the world to which we have any easy access. This was normally framed as "man is the measure of all things." It is at least sometimes true. Is it hot today? Today we can look at a thermometer and get an objective reading as to the ambient temperature, but 'whether it is hot' is a human interpretation that obtains regardless of what the thermometer might say. If you feel hot, you are hot.
When we get to politics, which is the sphere in which rhetoric is most significant because rhetoric is the method of politics in democratic societies like ancient Athens, consulting with others turns out to be both important and legitimate. Aristotle didn't write the Rhetoric to advise against the practice, but to discuss how to do it well and how to avoid doing it badly. That is what Gorgias or Protagoras thought he was doing too. For both, success was an important part of the criteria for 'doing it well.'
You can see why on Protagoras' model. If man is the measure of all things, convincing all the men in your society that your view is correct is equivalent to establishing that the view is true. Such truths can then be used as grounds for progress. If we all agree that it's hot today, it is hot and perhaps we can go to the beach to swim. If we all agree that Mexican food would be good for dinner, that's the truth and we can act on it. Soon we shall all have delicious food and margaritas: far better a world than if we spent the evening arguing about where to eat, and never coming to a conclusion!
The charge was unfair pointed at Socrates, Plato suggests, partly because Socrates didn't seek any political power. Partly, too, Socrates was unusually willing to accept that he didn't know what the truth was: he might lead you into an argument in which, to extend the metaphor, you decided that you couldn't agree on dinner and might therefore end up going hungry. This state of confusion about the truth is called aporia, and Socrates seems to have often sought to convince people not 'of what was true,' but that they really didn't know and should think about it some more. That was where real thinking, and not just rhetoric, began to take place. This transition to deeper and truer thinking, Plato seems to have believed and suggests that Socrates did, was noble.
You can contrast this with the opponents of sophistry, those who accused Socrates and had him executed. Their response to words was to marshal the power of the state to kill off one of its loyal citizens. Socrates' loyalty is demonstrated in the Crito, where he accepts the punishment rather than defying the state when given the opportunity to escape.* The shift from rhetoric to violence is sharp, and it isn't obvious that the violent are the ones on the right side of it.
Thus, when we are talking about sophistry, we should take some care. If the inquiry helps us identify bad sorts of arguments and avoid them, it is well. If it turns into a sort of dividing of our community that licenses violence against those with whom we disagree, that is the error that ancient Athens made in executing Socrates.
* Xenophon gives a different account, and those two differing accounts are the limit of our sources.
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