Vidal/Buckley Debate, 1968

A lot of wit, wisdom and political theater.  As for Vidal, I find him a fascinating character, first-rate essayist, second-rate writer (A Thirsty Evil?), but I don’t follow his thinking to his grimmer vision of America, the empire.  He has been condemning it for well over 40 years now, and he’s still around (here’s the Nation’s bio of him, which in the best sense, I wonder if he didn’t write himself). 

Maybe being a hero to some is better than a leader to all.

Addition: The debate gets heated.  Really heated.

Another Addition:  Buckley will be missed.  One deeper dispute between the two men stems from Vidal’s adherence to certain principles (I will call them aesthetic), which allow him to illuminate the plight of the poor and the racial divide, as well as observing (too cynically for me) the nature of politics.  What I admire in Buckley is that he, perhaps through compassion though more through honor and nationalistic pride, stands for the troops in Vietnam and the political realities this created.

Father John Neuhaus on Martha Nussbaum in the NY Sun: “The Liberty Of Conscience”

Father Richard John Neuhaus is skeptical of Nussbaum’s interpretation of the Religion clause in her book “The Liberty of Conscience.”   In this article, he suggests that:

“What Ms. Nussbaum does not see, or refuses to acknowledge, is that, both in theory and in lived experience, religious freedom in America was secured — and is today sustained — by religious conviction.”

and as a result:

“…she claims and clearly hopes, although in the absence of supporting evidence, that the growth of Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and other traditions is making America less Christian and more religiously diverse.”

Neuhaus seems to respect the depth of her thinking, but suspects her of partisanship.  He also seems upset that she does not include him, nor Christianity, into the rational-egalitarian project she’s promoting here in this interpretation of the Religion Clause, and also around the globe (we have free will enough to make moral choices, and we have worth just by being human). 

Nussbaum draws on Aristotle and John Rawls for her ideas, and she’s listed ten rights in Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach (Cambridge, 2000), which could perhaps back Neuhaus’s claims of partisanship to some degree. 

Her list includes the rights to emotion and to play (full list here).  While insightful, they seem like an American legal scholar and feminist’s attempt to extend egalitarianism, however usefully, as far as it will go, and there seem to be limits and problems that arise from this. 

To respond to both Neuhaus and just this one part of Nussbaum’s wide-ranging work, I find Daniel Deudney’s advice for libertarians compelling because I certainly have doubts about Christianity, as well as Nussbaum’s list of rights:  the basic right of freedom from violence. 

In fact, I’m not sure that the right to freedom from violence is an idea that feminists have always advocated.  Christians, too, preach it, but given its grim history, it’s not always practiced.

Perhaps Nussbaum will respond to Neuhaus.

Addition: Perhaps she doesn’t need to.

See Also: Scott McLemee’s: What Makes Martha Nussbaum Run? available here.  Also for a full list of Nussbaum’s basic Human Capabilities, see Dr. Jan Garrett’s Martha Nussbaum On Capabilities and Human Rights found here.

Monday Quotation: Oscar Wilde

I am not young enough to know everything.

-Oscar Wilde

Reihan Salam On Andrew Sullivan: Banning Legos in Seattle

Salam is guest blogging for Andrew Sullivan this week, and comments on this article from Rethinking Schools Online.  Here’s the subtitle and a quote from the article:

“Exploring power, ownership, and equity in an early childhood classroom”

Uh-oh…

“The children’s reaction to the winners of the trading game was a big warning flag for us: We clearly had some repair work to do around relationships.”

If only the complexity of human instinct fit into our ideas….and these political ideas…

Salam suggests that for these teachers:

“Challenging and reformulating Legotown means changing which kids are at the top of the Legotown hierarchy.”

So, the teachers of radical equality gave kids legos, observed them through radical egalitarianism-colored glasses, and are attempting to change their behavior….agreed.

Then again it’s Seattle, and I’ll comment more about that later.  Those of you who’ve been here might appreciate this kind of protest:

Addition: My suggestion is that the legal and economic structures in place are doing their work, a longer, better work than these idealogues.  I have yet to be convinced that Seattleites are really thinking beyond those structures, especially not the people at Rethinking Schools Online. 

Another Addition: Is there a lurking danger of people pursuing freedom and liberty too zealously? Here’s a good discussion at bloggingheads between a thoughtful conservative (Kantian libertarian?) and a thoughtful liberal.

Lunar Eclipse Video

This was taken from a time lapse video in Hawaii, on August 28th, 2007, not the recent one, I know, but the quality is high.

Apparently, the color of the eclipse is measured on the Danjon scale, and the February 20, 2008 eclipse was considered brick red, or L=3.  The light that does reach the moon is refracted through our atmosphere, the shorter wavelengths more likely to be deflected by small particles, the longer ones getting through, thus the moon appears red as the light bounces back to your eyes from its surface.

Or so I’ve found out. 

Addition:  February 20th eclipse here.

Visualizing Music: From Maps To Stars

Strange Maps has a map of the world with the borders of countries and landforms arranged as musical notes.  In the comments there’s a link to someone who’s played it.

Do you remember the comedian Steven Wright; balding with a monotone delivery, deep and off the wall insights?

Watch the 1st minute of this video as he plays the stars.

In the spirit of Steven Wright, I’d like to point out that women often use music to connect with men; for intimacy and to get them to open up.  This often bothered me because I felt I was inside the creative imagination and achievement of some other guy.  Jealousy? 

See Also:  The Music Animation Machine’s visualization of Bach.

What’s Next For Cuba?

Some ideas here, at Law At The End Of The Day, from someone with roots.

China?  Brazil? 

Addition: More here.

Lunar Eclipse And A Wednesday Poem: Matthew Arnold

Tonight, the lunar eclipse happened between 7:01 PST and 7:51 PST here in Seattle, and fortunately for us, it was a clear night.  In the penumbra of the earth’s shadow, there was just some darkening, but then the moon appeared inky black in direct shadow, and an overall reddish color for a few hours.    

Here’s a NASA page, which includes some great photos. 

For some reason I was reminded of a Matthew Arnold poem (which barely mentions the moon, and now that I look it, mentions a love, which is creepy in this context) as I stood in wonder and talked with a Muslim friend, who kept suggesting that such events were foreseen in the Koran.  Honestly, I was thinking of gravity, and the simplicity and depth of those laws.   It’s a strange life, sometimes. 

Dover Beach 

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Agaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

-Matthew Arnold

Goethe’s Color Theory: Artists And Thinkers

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe is perhaps Germany’s greatest poet and writer, best known for Faust.  Not so well known is Goethe’s theory of color (which claimed insights that could refute Newton).  Like many artists, Goethe isolated the effect color has in terms of experience, making profound observations on refraction…for example…but for which he didn’t have a workable theoretical framework.  To this, a certain type of philosopher might say:  he ignored the fact that his thoughts and his senses combine to form experience.  

Goethe from Steiner, from wikipedia:

“The colours therefore, to begin with, make their appearance purely and simply as phenomena at the border between light and dark…”

Colours arise at the borders, where light and dark flow together.”

Click here for a visual representation.

Goethe seems to have thought of light and dark in terms of a metaphysical dualism, from whose interaction color is born. 

Newton held that white light passing through a prism is diffused into its various wavelengths.  He also may have steered the discussion into wave-particle duality.

See Also: Wikipedia’s article, Physics Today article on his experiments, Goethe’s color triangle.

A Literary Look At Socrates In The Chronicle Of Higher Education

How to read Socrates?  Well, here’s one take.

I think that the interest classicists have in Socrates will always be hobbled by an important truth of classicism:  unchallenged metaphysical ideas in literature are precisely the ideas challenged in philosophy.  

Here’s another place to start, though you’re probably not going to find an ideal starting point;  which of course, might be reason enough to read and think about Socrates.