Contemporary Culture

Analytic Philosophy’s Chess Paradigm

Analytic Philosophy has thus a double function: it provides quiet green pastures for intellectual analysis, wherein its practitioners can find refuge from a troubled world and cultivate their intellectual games with chess-like indifference to its course; and it is also a keen, shining sword helping to dispel irrational beliefs and to make evident the structure of ideas

Ernest Nagel, “Impressions and Appraisals of Analytic Philosophy in Europe” (1936)

I pass, finally, to the remaining Part of the Ethics, which concerns the means, or way, leading to Freedom. Here, then, I shall treat of the power of reason, showing what it can do against the affects, and what Freedom of Mind, or blessedness, is. From this we shall see how much more the wise man can do than the ignorant. But it does not pertain to this investigation to show how the intellect must be perfected, or in what way the Body must be cared for, so that it can perform its function properly. The former is the concern of Logic, and the latter of Medicine

Spinoza, Ethics 5 Preface
Fischer vs. Spassky in Reykjavik (1972)

Following in the spirit of Nagel’s “impressions” of analytic philosophy, let me begin with an impression I have long had about analytic philosophy—put simply, the hierarchical ladder of success for analytic philosophers seems to favor those who are good puzzle solvers, or more precisely those who were or are mathematical and/or chess prodigies who have turned their sights to doing philosophy instead. As an impression I am making no solid claims to the accuracy of my observation, but I decided to write this blog post after having recently read (admittedly late to it) Liam Kofi Bright’s blog post where he claims analytic philosophy is a degenerating research programme. This also brought to mind a number of blog posts from the NewAPPS days with Eric Schliesser (here, here, and here). With these caveats, I’ll throw out a few comments as to why I agree that analytic philosophy was destined to degenerate from the start, and precisely because it sought, as Nagel approvingly observed, “find refuge from a troubled world and cultivate their intellectual games with chess-like indifference to its course…”

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By Jeffrey Bell, ago

King Omicron

…the idiom of war between king and people draws on and is expressive of an even deeper structural reality—the ability to step outside the moral order so as to partake of the kind of power capable of creating such an order is always y definition an act of violence, and can only be maintained as such…This is not just war; it is total war. Insofar as the sovereign intends to apply such compulsion to an entire population within a given territory, it ultimately must always be. (The only limitation on such total war is that the sovereign cannot wipe out the entire population, or his sovereignty would itself cease to exist.) Hence…the tendency for modern states to frame their greatest projects in terms of some sort of unwinnable war: the war on poverty, crime, drugs, terror, and so forth

David Graeber, “Notes on the politics of divine kingship”
COVID-19 virus SARS-COV-2 OMICRON strain, covid-19 South African variant B.1.1.529 omicron 3d rendering

With the omicron variant spreading rapidly throughout the world, quickly overtaking the delta variant as the dominant strain infecting people now, the media coverage of omicron has highlighted a key motivation behind biopower, to use Foucault’s term. Namely, the health of a population becomes the justification for policies and powers that rely on the perpetuation of the very fears that lend legitimacy to the powers in the first place. These fears, however, are at the heart of sovereignty itself in that its power involves the power to kill, or it is a power at war with the very people over whom the power is wielded. Drawing from Carl Schmitt, Graeber points out that Schmitt reminds us, appearing “like some embarrassing uncle,” that “sovereignty…consists above all in the ability to set the law aside” (458). Moreover, Graeber adds, and with recurrent events no doubt in mind, when the “police regularly get away with murder [they] are simply exercising that small–but lethal–bit of royal power that has been delegated to hem by its current holder, an entity we refer to as ‘the people'” (ibid.). But such powers only emerge intermittently, and the war between sovereign power and those over whom it is exercised settles, Graeber argues, into an uneasy truce that takes on various forms including, for instance, the modern state’s unwinnable wars on ‘poverty, crime, drugs, terror,’ and omicron.

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By Jeffrey Bell, ago

We the People…

In a news story about H. Scott Apley, a republican City Council member in Texas, who died of Covid, the writer highlights, with intentional irony, no doubt, one of Apley’s tweets from April. In the tweet, Apley responded to a doctor who had praised the Pfizer vaccine, claiming it is safe and effective, and effective against variants as well. In his response to the doctor, Apley claimed: “You are an absolute enemy of a free people.” Apley surely meant what he said, for freedom is one of those principles most agree upon, but as the previous post pointed out, what is done in the name of such universal principles sometimes results in harm being done. In the story about Apley’s death, for instance, the writer reported that there are many people who are blaming the republican party for Apley’s death since it has peddled in misinformation and skepticism about masks and vaccines, and it has done this in the name of freedom. In Louisiana, for instance, which is where I happen to live, we have had freedom rallies and protests at school board meetings where the threat, as those who attend these rallies and protests largely see it, is a government that is forcing us against our will to wear masks and get vaccinated. Why has there been so much anger and frustration vented at masks and vaccines? Why the vitriol rather than compassion, concern, and doing what one can to help during a pandemic? I want to explore a possible answer.

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By Jeffrey Bell, ago

“____ lives matter”

There is a lot that rides on how one fills in that blank these days. In the wake of the George Floyd killing, Black Lives Matter was a rallying cry by the many who saw in this incident yet another example of the racial inequality that exists in general in our society and that is exemplified, most terribly, in the way police officers exercise lethal force. Blacks, they point out, are much more likely than whites to die when they encounter a police officer, and black parents are much more worried than their white peers for the safety of their young adult male children should they be stopped by the police. For many others, however, the black lives matter movement ignores the fact that all lives matter, that nobody should unjustifiably lose their life.We should not single out a particular group, blacks, to rally behind and instead we need to seek justice for anyone, black or white, who wrongly loses their life at the hands of a police officer. The trial and conviction of Derek Chauvin, they point out, is an illustration of how the justice system should work in securing justice for all lives. Most police officers, they argue, are doing their job as they are supposed to, and they do so while taking on all the risks involved in patrolling the streets. After all, this line of reasoning concludes, blue lives matter just as much as black lives.

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By Jeffrey Bell, ago