Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

  One interpretation of certain of Nietzsche's somewhat cryptic comments is that the idea of equality -- that my life is worth as much as yours, or in a variant that no quantitative comparison can or should be made  between  my life's value and yours -- is a religious presumption at heart. It depends upon the background notion that we are all alike creatures of the same Creator and it will not long outlast the death of that idea. In that spirit, Brian Leiter has recently written a paper on the connection of ideas in Nietzsche's work. You can download it  via SSRN.  Or read a précis on his blog at typepad. Here's what may be the money quote (taken from that blog): Consider the Nietzschean Trolley Problem (apologies for anachronism): a runaway trolley is hurtling down the tracks towards Beethoven, before he has even written the Eroica symphony; by throwing a switch, you can divert the trolley so that it runs down five (or fifty) ordinary people, non-entities (say ...

I made San Antonio the destination of the trip I described over the two preceding posts because I wanted to attend a meeting of a group of admirers of Jacques Barzun there. Every second Sunday of the month they discuss his masterpiece, FROM DAWN TO DECADENCE, a history of western culture from 1500 to the present. The discussion was stimulating and amusing. I am grateful to all those I met there. I'll just convey some take-away thoughts now. Barzun defined "revolution" in a somewhat narrow way. Nowadays, if someone invents a new vacuum cleaner that can get the dust in the corners more easily than the older cleaners, he is likely to call it a revolutionary product. Even aside from marketing, you can find in dictionaries broad definitions of revolutions such as this: "far-reaching and drastic change." Thus, the late Helen Gurley Brown is both credited with and blamed for contributions to a "sexual revolution," the Vatican II council is said to hav...