I am somebody

I'm excited to have been invited to participate in the "I am an American Philosopher" interview series.

1. What does American philosophy mean to you? It means a pursuit of wisdom and happiness informed and guided by the best and brightest lights in our heritage, pre-eminently Emerson's repudiation of "borrowed traditions and living at second hand" and his affirmation of the ever-renewing "present hour"; Thoreau's sunny dawn spirit ("to be awake is to be alive," "the sun is but a morning star"); James's "really vital question for us all... What is life eventually to make of itself?"; Dewey's democratic commitment to "the continuous human community in which we are a link"; John McDermott's culture of experience; John Lachs's celebration of immediacy. It is pragmatic, pluralistic, melioristic, impatient with scholastic obfuscation, eager always to identify some practical difference our ideas might make in our lives and communities. And particularly noteworthy in this semiquincentennial year, American philosophy signifies political freedom from tyranny and mental freedom from dogmatic slumber.

2. How did you become an American philosopher? I became disillusioned with my undergrad Political Science major at the University of Missouri and, motivated by Will and Ariel Durant's Story of Philosophy and Carl Sagan's Cosmic Connection, went looking for something more expansive. I found what I was looking for in Mizzou's philosophy program. Professor Peter Markie, just a shade older than my cohort, came to our Friday afternoon "Hegel Society" meetups at Michael's Bar and Grill on campus and made philosophy seem cool. Professor Alex von Schoenborn, though contemptuous of Durant, made it seem profound (and told me my essay on Fichte and Schelling reminded hin of T.S. Eliot). Professor Joe Bien, chain-smoking his unfiltered Pall Malls in class (we hadn’t yet heard about second-hand smoke in the 70s), made it seem (stereotypically) Existential. 

My pal Andy Cling, a year ahead of me in the program but just a day after n life (now recently retired from the University of Alabama in Huntsville), went down to Nashville for grad school at Vanderbilt and sent back positive reports. I followed him, and there found American philosophy via John Lachs, John Compton, Michael Hodges, John Post, and a raft of congenial pluralists and fellow students.

3. How would you describe your current research?

I'm an applied ethicist (environmental and bioethics), so I'm always researching and reflecting on the dangers humans engender for ourselves with our Dr. Seussian "Onceler" approach to commodified nature and, lately, with a potentially dehumanizing infatuation with artificial "minds" devoid of human feeling.

I've long taught a course on the Philosophy of Happiness, and intend to write more about how to flourish in troubled times. "How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness" is, as James said, crucial.

I'm a peripatetic (in the walking-and-thinking sense), and want to emulate public-facing scholarship akin to our recent MTSU Lyceum speaker Megan Craig's Thinking in Transit: Explorations of Life in Motion (co-authored with Ed Casey).

And I want to turn my long collaboration with a former student, who earned a post-retirement philosophy degree, into a book on the value of philosophy as a "golden years" pursuit. Also, I'm inheriting a retired colleague's Existentialism course so I look forward to teaching and researching that for the first time (inspired by another of our recent Lyceum speakers, Mariana Allesandri).

4. What do you do when you’re not doing American philosophy?

I walk the dogs, watch baseball, read fiction and history, post to my blogs, Substack, and Blue Sky (where I channel William James), and I try to promote American philosophy (I'm current president of the William James Society). And I travel, and just hang out, with my wife (who happens to share a birthday with William James, and so I never forget).

5. What’s your favorite work in American philosophy? What should we all be reading? It's hard to pick just one. James's Pragmatism, I suppose, or his collected correspondence. But I'm extremely fond of the essays addressed to students at the end of Talks to Teachers, "on some of life's ideals" - especially "On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings". But I also think we should all be reading good literary fiction, which remains the best virtual reality technology humans have yet devised. I'm teaching "Philosophy in Recent American Fiction"; there's a lot of it. My personal favorite contemporary novelist is Richard Powers. Everyone should read Overstory, Bewilderment, Playground... and maybe go back to his incredibly prescient anticipation of AI from 1995, Galatea 2.2. The message for students these days is simpler, though: Read books. I'm always quoting Twain at them: there's no practical difference between someone who doesn't read and someone who can't. We see the spoiling fruits of increasing functional illiteracy all around. It's scary. But I do still have confidence in the top crop of this generation of students. They're bright. If they can resist distraction and stay engaged, they'll do us proud.

A World Appears

Michael Pollan's new book on consciousness, A World Appears, was released Tuesday. He announced it on Substack.* I was pleased to be able to express there my appreciation and gratitude:

Enjoyed the opening chapter on my commute from Nashville to Murfreesboro this morning. Excellent! And may I offer a much-belated thanks, Michael, for your having taken the time back in '99 [or maybe a bit earlier] to respond with constructive comments to the unsolicited draft chapter of my Vanderbilt dissertation on William James and consciousness. It was such a generous act on your part, and came for me at the most opportune moment. And now I'm president of the William James Society (wjsociety.org) - thanks in no small part to your kind encouragement.

That's not idle flattery. Michael's positive reinforcement was a shot in the arm at a time when I needed one. We corresponded after the publication of his second book, A Place of My Own, and discovered our mutual interest in the permeable boundaries of nature and culture (and of John Dewey's exploration thereof). I'm still envious of Michael's "place":

 

How to Stop Ruminating and Reclaim Your Mind | Michael Pollan

*https://open.substack.com/pub/michaelpollan/p/a-world-appears-appears?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios

Life is short (how to spend it wisely)-podcast

"Evacuation Day"

I've been invited by a journalism student to comment on our school's upcoming "Evacuation Day" celebration and reading of the U.S. Declaration of Independence on March 17.

1. Dr. S mentioned that your class was taking the lead in the reading of the Declaration of Independence on the Honors College lawn. I was curious if you had any comments on that. 
2.  You had mentioned in your email from yesterday about how the NEH grant would go towards looking at America's founding and all. What does it mean to be able to explore and learn about America's founding and early years from a humanities standpoint? 
3. Any other specific comments 

1. I'm happy to participate, with my Honors Intro class (or "CoPhilosophy," as I prefer to call it) in the Evacuation Day commemoration and reading of the Declaration of Independence. It will be a timely reminder of the great privilege it is to live in a free and democratic society, and of the great fragility of freedom and democracy when its citizens are distracted and its leaders dishonest and uncommitted to honoring the nation's founding ideals. I agree with the historian Walter Isaacson, who identifies the second sentence of the Declaration as "the greatest ever written": We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

2. The humanities disciplines (history, languages and literature, the arts, communications, philosophy, religious studies) are committed to interpreting and enhancing the human experience and the conditions of human flourishing. The American revolution, with its dedication to universal freedom, justice, individual rights and dignity, and everyone's right to pursue happiness in a society bound constitutionally to those values, was one of the great humanistic milestones in our history. We ought often to celebrate that, and to insist that our leaders honor it. We must hold them and ourselves accountable for failing to uphold and sustain the founders' legacy. Let's hope March 17 reinvigorates our commitment to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and justice for all.

3. I'd like also to take this opportunity to invite MTSU students to consider the American Culture minor (I am its current advisor).* I don't think there's ever been a more important moment for those who believe in American ideals to study the conditions under which they may succeed or fail.

*American Culture Minor Philosophy and Religious Studies Advisor: Phil Oliver The 18-hour interdisciplinary minor in American Culture is intended for students who want to explore a variety of disciplines as a way of thinking about U.S. culture. This minor is ideal for students who have wide-ranging interests. It is also an excellent choice for students who are politically engaged and want to understand contemporary U.S. culture and its problems. It is especially suited for students who wish to highlight the liberal arts element of their education.

Free bird

 Alysa Liu's improbable comeback, her gold medal performance yesterday in Milan, and above all her demeanor in celebrating and lifting up her disappointed Japanese competitors who took silver and bronze, are an inspiration. And she's just 20 (after "retiring" at 16). 

Hope I'm as joyous and free, two-plus years after my retirement. That impends after next year, unless I can somehow arrange to lose the commute. Took me twice as long to get to school as it should have yesterday. And normal days are too often harrowing, with so many seeming to think of I-24 as the Bristol Speedway. 

Maybe the most inspiring thing about Alysa is the way she took charge of her own destiny and got out from under the shadow of her stage-managing parent. He'd sapped her joy in skating. She took it back. Good for her. She (like the USA women's hockey team) was truly a "free bird" on ice.

"That's what life is about: learning"

Before she stood atop the podium, Alysa Liu stepped away from the ice.

Her advice to young athletes (and people generally)? "Don't let anyone push you past your breaking point… you are the only one that knows your limit."

Proof that rest isn't quitting — it's growth.

==
Another impressive young Olympian, Eileen Gu:

“I spent a lot of time in my head, but not in an egotistical way” - She is indeed a "thoughtful young woman," neuro-plastic as we all are but actually meta-cognitively aware of the fact and using it to her deliberate advantage. Much smarter than, for example, the Vice-President...

Not a slave to fashion

Dean Lyons was pleased to see me sporting our department's Philosophy tee-shirt, on the College of Liberal Arts's "Tee-shirt Tuesday," when I ran into her at the library. (She was wearing our Religious Studies colleagues' shirt.) The selfie was her idea.

Many of our colleagues always seem to "forget" it's Tuesday. Not me. I'm happy not to have to think about what to wear to school. One less thing.

Happy Prez's Day

David McCullough quotes Abigail Adams on George Washington:

"He is polite with dignity, affable without familiarity, distant without haughtiness, grave without austerity, modest, wise, and good. He was a good man. There are traits in his character which perfectly fit him for the exalted station he holds." Thr 

—

That's the sort of character we need in the White House.

pbs American Experience

And it's their great-grandson Henry's birthday...

It’s the birthday of the writer Henry Adams, whose memoir, The Education of Henry Adams (1918), came out the year he died. He was the great-grandson of John Adams, and the grandson of John Quincy Adams, which left the sensitive, introverted boy burdened by an almost stultifying sense of responsibility to play a prominent part in the world. But Adams preferred to be an observer only, later writing of himself that he “never got to the point of playing the game at all; he lost himself in the study of it, watching the errors of the players.” After attending Harvard, he traveled extensively through Europe, became a political journalist for a time, and eventually returned to his alma mater in 1870 to teach medieval history.

He wrote two novels, Democracy (1880), which he published anonymously, and Ester (1884), a comic romantic tale about the battle of the sexes that he published under a pseudonym. He also wrote numerous biographies and The History of the United States of America: 1801–1817 (nine volumes; 1889–1891), which is considered a neglected masterpiece.

Unlike many autobiographies, The Education of Henry Adams is really a record of Adams’s introspection rather than his accomplishments. Adams had long since come to the conclusion that his traditional education had failed to help him come to terms with the changing world — changes that included the discovery of X-rays and radio waves and radioactivity, a world war, and the invention of the automobile — and that was the thrust of his memoir. But, while the memoir was an intimate portrait of his own life, Adams avoided any mention of his wife, Clover, whom he was in love with and who committed suicide 13 years after they married. WA

==

Henry once wrote a pessimistic letter to William James, suggesting that entropy in the universe (according to the 2d law of thermodynamics, etc.) doomed humanity to misery and meaninglessness. 

WJ's reply was classic:

...The "second law" is wholly irrelevant to "history"—save that it sets a terminus—for history is the course of things before that terminus, and all that the second law says is that, whatever the history, it must invest itself between that initial maximum and that terminal minimum of difference in energy-level. As the great irrigation-reservoir empties itself, the whole question for us is that of the distribution of its effects, of which rills to guide it into; and the size of the rills has nothing to do with their significance. Human cerebration is the most important rill we know of, and both the "capacity" and the "intensity" factor thereof may be treated as infinitesimal. Yet the filling of such rills would be cheaply bought by the waste of whole sums spent in getting a little of the down-flowing torrent to enter them. Just so of human institutions—their value has in strict theory nothing whatever to do with their energy-budget—being wholly a question of the form the energy flows through. Though the ultimate state of the universe may be its vital and psychical extinction, there is nothing in physics to interfere with the hypothesis that the penultimate state might be the millennium—in other words a state in which a minimum of difference of energy-level might have its exchanges so skillfully canalisés that a maximum of happy and virtuous consciousness would be the only result. In short, the last expiring pulsation of the universe's life might be, "I am so happy and perfect that I can stand it no longer." You don't believe this and I don't say I do. But I can find nothing in "Energetik" to conflict with its possibility. You seem to me not to discriminate, but to treat quantity and distribution of energy as if they formed one question... Letters of William James, June 17, 1910.

WJ died later that summer. 

When my time comes, let his words be my epitaph:

"I am so happy...that I can stand it no longer."

69!

  

What a terrific birthday: catfish by the river, chocolate cake, Nashville Sounds tickets in April, and the charmed company of the best family I've got. 

#Lucky #Grateful #Day-to-day

69

That's a big number, in the human calculus. I've now outlived my muse WJ, creeping up on Hamlet's undiscovered country. Thinking of it as bonus time. But of course, it's all been bonus time— from 2.14.57 on, in my case. We who are here are all bonus babies. We are the lucky ones, as Richard* rightly said. I'm just happy to be here. Think I'll ink that. 

 

And this. 

 

* 

Sacred matter

During our peripatetic walk in #3 yesterday, The subject of materialism versus immaterialism came up. Some (like Descartes) think of a matter as mere, crudely deficient in potentiality and incapable of giving rise to all the rich and animated phenomena of life. William James thought otherwise:

"To anyone who has ever looked on the face of a dead child or parent the mere fact that matter COULD have taken for a time that precious form, ought to make matter sacred ever after. It makes no difference what the PRINCIPLE of life may be, material or immaterial, matter at any rate co-operates, lends itself to all life's purposes. That beloved incarnation was among matter's possibilities."

—William James, Pragmatism lecture 3 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5116/5116-h/5116-h.htm#link2H_4_0005

Good message

New England fans this morning

Positive change

Our power is on again in Nashville, we've been told. We'll head home tomorrow.

Last week in the hotel was pretty stressful, but this week at the Airbnb just 15 minutes from school is something I could get used to. It would mean more delightful walks on the Stones River Greenway, like the one the dogs and I enjoyed Monday; and more chance encounters with old students on non-teaching days, like I had yesterday.

That Greenway walk reacquainted me with Bertha Chrietzberg, whose efforts enhanced the quality of life of countless walkers over the years. She was a true meliorist, someone who achieved her potential and left the world better than she found it. And gave me a new talking point when we encountered Aristotle in class.