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Perhaps someone might say, “Socrates, can you not go away from us and live quietly, without talking?” Now this is the hardest thing to make some of you believe. For if I say that such conduct would be disobedience to the god and that therefore I cannot keep quiet, you will think I am jesting and will not believe me; and if again I say that to talk every day about virtue and the other things about which you hear me talking and examining myself and others is the greatest good to man, and that the unexamined life is not worth living, you will believe me still less. This is as I say, gentlemen, but it is not easy to convince you. Besides, I am not accustomed to think that I deserve anything bad. … Perhaps you think, gentlemen, that I have been convicted through lack of such words as would have moved you to acquit me, if I had thought it right to do and say everything to gain an acquittal. Far from it. And yet it is through a lack that I have been convicted, not however a lack of words, but of impudence and shamelessness, and of willingness to say to you such things as you would have liked best to hear. Plato’s Apology, extracts
A while back, in the process of assembling Schrödinger, the Buddha, and the Elephant, I shocked and awed myself with the realization that I, Mr. Stay-away-from-philosophers, was in agreement with Immanuel Kant on a basic point. The past day or two, trying to put this current je ne sais quoi together, I discover two FACTS. The FACT that Immanuel Kant was a badguy because he said things that Big Brother tells us are mean spirited, wrongheaded, and not in tune with the Spirit of the Times and Community Values [these times and the Loyalist Community, if you were wondering]. And the FACT that the reason he was unemotional, withdrawn, wrongheaded and hard to read and had headaches is that he had a braintumor which made pretty much all of his mature writing incomprehensible, wrongheaded nonsense.
I have to marvel at this. Is anybody listening? Whether he had a brain tumor or was a normal specimen of what he was, Kant is DEAD, folks – put away the tar and feathers. Wrongheaded nonsense or enlightened understanding, his philosophy is not affecting anybody but Philosophy majors who take a Kant course, so what is the big deal?
But of course, by saying that I am being wrongheaded and missing Big Brother’s point. The process of Gleichschaltung is not complete, and I must run and confess my errors to the comrades. We have to have these FACTS about Kant, or someone COULD take something he said seriously. And I actually told people I agreed with a Kantian tenet!
What started this, you ask? Well, a couple days ago I was temporarily without a book I was halfway through. We all know that is not how Sharif likes to live. Allways have at least two books in progress. So I picked off the shelf Sir Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici. I still have not gotten really into it, because I got hooked when I read the intro.
Wikipedia says of Browne, very mildly, “Browne has a paradoxical place in the history of ideas, being both a promoter of the new inductive science, and an adherent of ancient esoteric learning as well as a devout Christian. These allegiances have greatly contributed to his ambiguity in the history of ideas.”
Right, guys. In the comic series [or should I say Graphic Saga?] Bone, which I have also been reading on the recommendation of Kamal, the character Roque Ja is primarily concerned with determining which side everybody is on. Gotta polarize, folks. In Great Brotherton, you can EITHER be evil and sick and wrongheaded, OR you can be an enlightened diss-sputator. You can EITHER believe in the manifest destiny and ultimate victory of Scientism, OR you can be a snivelling park your brains at the door life-denying Funda Mental Case. Jesus says you cannot serve both God and Mammon, Big Brother says you cannot trust both God and ME.
So, Sir Thomas Browne crossed the line. He wants to have it both ways, to go both with science and with faith. But he cannot straddle the fence. That means, for Big Brother, he must be an enemy of Scientism and therefore unfriendly to Big Brother. I wonder if he had a tumor.
Here is what the intoduction, by M. R. Ridley, apparently a prolific writer of introductions, says of Sir Thomas:
“He is the kind of man whom it does one good to meet, even through the medium of the printed page, for he is the very pattern of the courteous gentleman… He seems incapable of an ungenerous thought, and incapable too – which is rarer – of an intolerant thought… His temper of mind is that of the first-rate scientist, who is prepared to examine any idea, not of the second-rate scientist who will not even examine an idea if it conflicts with his own preconceptions.”
There you go; Browne stands condemned. He hath spoken blasphemy; what further
need have we of witnesses? behold, now ye have heard his blasphemy. Sir Thomas had best stay away from Great Brotherton and 99% of all modern universities, that is all I can say. As Ridley says, “his scepticism is true scepticism, namely a readiness to examine, not a predetermined disposition to believe.”
Well, well. I have agreed with Kant. I get what Socrates was talking about. As a scientist and a Brownian sceptic I thank God that I am no longer trying to hold on to a niche at the university in Matthews. The unexamined life is not worth living. Nor is life in an academic institution where examining ideas without taking sides is heresy, corrupting the minds of the youth and not believing in the gods of the state.
Just a second – someone seems to be pounding loudly on my door.
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