I’ve always thought that there is a conceptual link between spontaneous order (in the Hayek sense), conversation (in the Oakeshottian sense) and jazz. Here is a small squib from a libertarian blog that makes such a link though I’m not a libertarian as such.
Oakeshott as Conservative
Rob Devigne (or maybe it’s really Jack Nicholson) looks at Oakeshott’s ostensibly conservative stance – as several in this volume point out, this is very tricky territory indeed. Oakeshott is not a conservative that even most self-avowed conservatives would typically recognise.
The identification of Michael Oakeshott with conservatism is fraught with debate. To be sure, some analysts consider Oakeshott to be the modern incarnation of Burke. Moreover, during the closing decades of the twentieth century, conservative thinkers in the United Kingdom made the greatest claims to Oakeshott. Yet, different features of Oakeshott’s thought have made it possible for him to be read as a liberal, pragmatist, historicist, existentialist, postmodernist, as well as, a conservative. What, then, is conservative in Oakeshott’s political philosophy?
Repercussions: A Celebration of African-American Music
Check out this rarely seen and not easily available series: the DVDs are available from some libraries featuring performances from Big Mama Thornton, Joe Liggins and the Honeydrippers, Lowell Fulson, Lloyd Glenn, Charles Brown, Big Jay McNeely, and Margie Evans with Dick “Huggy Boy” Hugg and Johnny Otis.
Breaking away from the well-traveled blues trail connecting the Mississippi Delta with Chicago, this program searches for fresh insights about R&B in an entirely different direction: the migratory route that runs from the South to the California coast, where work opportunities abounded during World War II. With its jazzy instrumentation and strong gospel flavor, R&B spread like wildfire, eventually becoming a fundamental element of rock ‘n’ roll.
Smith on the death of Hume
Letter from Adam Smith, LL.D. to William Strachan, Esq.
Kirkaldy, Fifeshire, Nov. 9, 1776.
DEAR SIR,— It is with a real, though a very melancholy pleasure, that I sit down to give some account of the behavior of our late excellent friend, Mr. Hume, during his last illness.
Though, in his own judgment, his disease was mortal and incurable, yet he allowed himself to be prevailed upon, by the entreaty of his friends, to try what might be the effects of a long journey. A few days before he set out, he wrote that account of his own life, which, together with his other papers, he has left to your care. My account, therefore, shall begin where his ends.
He set out for London towards the end of April, and at Morpeth met with Mr. John Home and myself, who had both come down from London on purpose to see him, expecting to have found him at Edinburgh. Mr. Home returned with him, and attended him during the whole of his stay in England, with that care and attention which might be expected from a temper so perfectly friendly and affectionate. As I had written to my mother that she might expect me in Scotland, I was under the necessity of continuing my journey. His disease seemed to yield to exercise and change of air, and when he arrived in London, he was apparently in much better health than when he left Edinburgh. He was advised to go to Bath to drink the waters, which appeared for some time to have so good an effect upon him, that even he himself began to entertain, what he was not apt to do, a better opinion of his own health. His symptoms, however, soon returned with their usual violence, and from that moment he gave up all thoughts of recovery, but submitted with the utmost cheerfulness, and the most perfect complacency and resignation.
Upon his return to Edinburgh, though he found himself much weaker, yet his cheerfulness never abated, and he continued to divert himself, as usual, with correcting his own works for a new edition, with reading books of amusement, with the conversation of his friends; and, sometimes in the evening, with a party at his favorite game of whist. His cheerfulness was so great, and his conversation and amusements run so much in their usual strain, that, notwithstanding all bad symptoms, many people could not believe he was dying. “I shall tell your friend, Colonel Edmondstone,” said Doctor Dundas to him one day, “that I left you much better, and in a fair way of recovery.” “Doctor,” said he, “as I believe you would not choose to tell any thing but the truth, you had better tell him, that I am dying as fast as my enemies, if I have any, could wish, and as easily and cheerfully as my best friends could desire.” Colonel Edmondstone soon afterwards came to see him, and take leave of him; and on his way home, he could not forbear writing him a letter bidding him once more an eternal adieu, and applying to him, as to a dying man, the beautiful French verses in which the Abbé Chaulieu, in expectation of his own death, laments his approaching separation from his friend, the Marquis de la Fare.
Mr. Hume’s magnanimity and firmness were such, that his most affectionate friends knew that they hazarded nothing in talking or writing to him as to a dying man, and that so far from being hurt by this frankness, he was rather pleased and flattered by it. I happened to come into his room while he was reading this letter, which he had just received, and which he immediately showed me. I told him, that though I was sensible how very much he was weakened, and that, appearances were in many respects very bad, yet his cheerfulness was still so great, the spirit of life seemed still to be so very strong in him, that I could not help entertaining some faint hopes. He answered, “Your hopes are groundless. An habitual diarrhoea of more than a year’s standing, would be a very bad disease at any age: at my age it is a mortal one. When I lie down in the evening, I feel myself weaker than when I rose in the morning; and when I rise in the morning, weaker than when I lay down in the evening. I am sensible, besides, that some of my vital parts are affected, so that I must soon die.” “Well,” said I, “if it must be so, you have at least the satisfaction of leaving all your friends, your brother’s family in particular, in great prosperity.” He said that he felt that satisfaction so sensibly, that when he was reading, a few days before, Lucian’s Dialogues of the Dead, among all the excuses which are alleged to Charon for not entering readily into his boat, he could not find one that fitted him; he had no house to finish, he had no daughter to provide for, he had no enemies upon whom he wished to revenge himself. “I could not well imagine,” said he, “what excuse I could make to Charon in order to obtain a little delay. I have done every thing of consequence which I ever meant to do; and I could at no time expect to leave my relations and friends in a better situation than that in which I am now likely to leave them. I therefore have all reason to die contented.” He then diverted himself with inventing several jocular excuses, which he supposed he might make to Charon, and with imagining the very surly answers which it might suit the character of Charon to return to them. ” Upon further consideration,” said he, “I thought I might say to him, Good Charon, I have been correcting my works for a new edition. Allow me a little time, that I may see how the public receives the alterations.” But Charon would answer, “When you have seen the effect of these, you will be for making other alterations. There will be no end of such excuses; so, honest friend, please step into the boat.” But I might still urge, “Have a little patience, good Charon; I have been endeavoring to open the eyes of the public. If I live a few years longer, I may have the satisfaction of seeing the downfall of some of the prevailing systems of superstition.” But Charon would then lose all temper and decency. “You loitering rogue, that will not happen these many hundred years. Do you fancy I will grant you a lease for so long a term? Get into the boat this instant, you lazy loitering rogue.”
But, though Mr. Hume always talked of his approaching dissolution with great cheerfulness, he never affected to make any parade of his magnanimity. He never mentioned the subject but when the conversation naturally led to it, and never dwelt longer upon it than the course of the conversation happened to require: it was a subject, indeed, which occurred pretty frequently, in consequence of the inquiries which his friends, who came to see him, naturally made concerning the state of his health. The conversation which I mentioned above, and which passed on Thursday the 8th of August, was the last, except one, that I ever had with him.
He had now become so very weak, that the company of his most intimate friends fatigued him; for his cheerfulness was still so great, his complaisance and social disposition were still so entire, that when any friend was with him, he could not help talking more, and with greater exertion, than suited the weakness of his body. At his own desire, therefore, I agreed to leave Edinburgh, where I was staying partly upon his account, and returned to my mother’s house here, at Kirkaldy, upon condition that he would send for me whenever he wished to see me; the physician who saw him most frequently, Dr. Black, undertaking, in the mean time, to write me occasionally an account of the state of his health.
On the 22d of August, the Doctor wrote me the following letter:
“Since my last, Mr. Hume has passed his time pretty easily, but is much weaker. He sits up, goes down stairs once a day, and amuses himself with reading, but seldom sees anybody. He finds that even the conversation of his most intimate friends fatigues and oppresses him; and it is happy that he does not need it, for he is quite free from anxiety, impatience, or low spirits, and passes his time very well with the assistance of amusing books.”
I received the day after a letter from Mr. Hume himself, of which the following is an extract.
Edinburgh, 23d August, 1776.
MY DEAREST FRIEND,—I am obliged to make use of my nephew’s hand in writing to you, as I do not rise today.
“I go very fast to decline, and last night had a small fever, which I hoped might put a quicker period to this tedious illness, but unluckily it has, in a great measure, gone off. I cannot submit to your coming over here on my account, as it is possible for me to see you so small a part of the day, but Doctor Black can better inform you concerning the degree of strength which may from time to time remain with me. Adieus” etc.
Three days after I received the following letter from Doctor Black.
Edinburgh, Monday, 26th August, 1776.
“DEAR SIR,—Yesterday, about four o’clock, afternoon, Mr. Hume expired. The near approach of his death became evident in the night between Thursday and Friday, when his disease became excessive, and soon weakened him so much that he could no longer rise out of his bed. He continued to the last perfectly sensible, and free from much pain or feelings of distress. He never dropped the smallest expression of impatience; but when he had occasion to speak to the people about him, always did it with affection and tenderness. I thought it improper to write to bring you over, especially as I heard that he had dictated a letter to you desiring you not to come. When he became very weak, it cost him an effort to speak, and he died in such a happy composure of mind, that nothing could exceed it.”
Thus died our most excellent and never to be forgotten friend; concerning whose philosophical opinions men will, no doubt, judge variously, every one approving or condemning them, according as they happen to coincide or disagree with his own; but concerning whose character and conduct there can scarce be a difference of opinion. His temper, indeed, seemed to be more happily balanced, if I may be allowed such an expression, than that perhaps of any other man I have ever known. Even in the lowest state of his fortune, his great and necessary frugality never hindered him from exercising, upon proper occasions, acts both of charity and generosity. It was a frugality founded, not upon avarice, but upon the love of independency. The extreme gentleness of his nature never weakened either the firmness of his mind or he steadiness of his resolutions. His constant pleasantry was the genuine effusion of good nature and good humour, tempered with delicacy and modesty, and without even the slightest tincture of malignity, so frequently the disagreeable source of what is called wit in other men. It never was the meaning of his raillery to mortify; and, therefore, far from offending, it seldom failed to please and delight, even those who were the objects of it. To his friends, who were frequently the objects of it, there was not perhaps any one of all his great and amiable qualities, which contributed more to endear his conversation. And that gaiety of temper, so agreeable in society, but which is so often accompanied with frivolous and superficial qualities, was in him certainly attended with the most severe application, the most extensive learning, the greatest depth of thought, and a capacity in every respect the most comprehensive. Upon the whole, I have always considered him, both in his lifetime and since his death, as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man, as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit.
I ever am, dear Sir,
Most affectionately yours,
ADAM SMITH
Oakeshott Companion Cover
Here is a low res preview of the dust-jacket for the Companion – two months to go . . .
Les Paul stories
Some nice recollections of the great technological innovator.
Understanding the Internalism-Externalism Debate: What is the Boundary of the Thinker?
Here is a forthcoming paper from the VERY excellent Brie Gertler.
Since the work of Burge, Davidson, Kripke, and Putnam in the 1970’s, philosophers of language and mind have engaged in extensive debate over the following question: Do mental content properties—such as thinking that water quenches thirst—supervene on properties intrinsic to the thinker? To answer affirmatively is to endorse internalism (or “individualism”); a negative answer is an expression of externalism. There is no consensus about the correct answer to this question; a 2009 survey indicates that a bare majority of philosophers now characterize themselves as externalists.1 The recent literature on this topic largely focuses on the implications of externalism and internalism. There is no consensus here either. Philosophers are sharply divided as to whether externalism is compatible with privileged access to one’s own thoughts; whether externalism implies that we can achieve knowledge of the external world from the armchair; whether internalism is compatible with physicalism about the mental; and whether internalism implies that thoughts are incommunicable. Disagreements are philosophers’ stock in trade. But the disputes just mentioned have proven exceptionally intractable. The culprit, I think, is an ambiguity in the terms “externalism” and “internalism”, which they inherit from an ambiguity in the notion of “intrinsic to the thinker” operative in these disputes. As employed in the debate over mental content, “externalism” and “internalism” are associated with a shifting set of claims encompassing a heterogeneous array of topics; these include the organism’s contribution to thought contents, links between the individual and her community, the epistemic availability of thoughts, and relations between phenomenal character and intentional content. I will argue that this ambiguity is ineliminable. Any way of explicating “intrinsic to the thinker” will clash with the usual taxonomy of leading externalist and internalist views, or construe these positions as involving claims that are standardly regarded as orthogonal to them—and, in some cases, explicitly rejected by their most prominent exponents.2 The moral is stark. The sense that there is a substantive, defining commitment of externalism or internalism—even one that is vague or underspecified—is illusory. There is no univocal thesis of externalism or internalism. The ambiguity of “externalism” and “internalism” helps to explain why contributors to this literature often seem to be arguing at cross-purposes, disagreeing about the truth and implications of externalism and internalism, and about the nature of the evidence that could resolve these disputes. Now this ambiguity would not be too worrisome if its effects were confined to disputes about mental content. But because the claims associated with externalism and internalism cover a diverse range of topics, philosophers routinely invoke externalism or internalism (or purported implications thereof) in evaluating a range of other questions—in the 2 philosophy of language, epistemology, and the philosophy of mind. These include: Does the meaning of an utterance correspond to elements understood by the speaker? Do thinkers generally enjoy privileged access to their own mental states? Can we know contingent facts about the external world through introspection and a priori reasoning? Does phenomenal character supervene on intentional content, or vice versa? Can content be naturalized? The ambiguity endemic to discussions of externalism and internalism thus threatens progress on a broad spectrum of philosophical questions.
Marshall Baron
I want to bring your attention to someone I knew some 35 years ago – Marshall Baron. I never forgot Marshall: thanks to his sister Merle, she has done a terrific service to the world by bringing Marshall’s work to a wider audience via the web. Moreover, for us who were so privileged to have come into Marshall’s orbit it is very interesting to note that that the comments on the MB website have a recurring theme: Marshall’s kindness and deep knowledge of things that I now treasure. I now know of the Skowhegan School in Maine which Marshall attended (1966–1968), where I was lucky to visit decades after Marshall was there. Marshall you are alive and well in my mind: funny how things turn out in that I’m the most unlikely host/vehicle for the Marshall Baron memory/meme.
New Orleans: Mon Amour
Love NOLA: Ten things you learn from living in New Orleans
By Brett Will Taylor
Good grief. Yesterday marked the two-year anniversary of my move from Boston to New Orleans.
Has it really been two years? Has it only been two years? Forty-eight months in and it’s hard to remember ever living anywhere else. This city gets into your bones, your blood, your soul … erasing all that has come before and taking control of all that will follow.
That’s what love and lovers do, right?
And there’s no doubt that I love New Orleans. I’m also extremely grateful to her. Because, you see, in just two years, she’s taught me quite a lot. About living in New Orleans. About living, period. Love and lovers do that, too. Right?
Oakeshott on Civil Association
A trailer from Noel O’Sullivan‘s essay.
The distinctive achievement of Western political thought since the seventeenth century is the ideal of the limited state. Despite extensive theorizing about this ideal, however, there has always been profound disagreement about its precise nature and implications. The full extent of this disagreement has been especially evident during the decades since the Second World War, in the course of which sustained efforts have been made by a variety of thinkers to construct a coherent alternative to totalitarianism. In Friedrich Hayek’s view, for example, the limited state is principally characterized by a free market economy that facilitates human progress. For Karl Popper, it is characterized by commitment to creating an Open Society which rejects absolute truth and asserts the conditionality of all knowledge. In the early writings of John Rawls, the limited state is characterized by commitment to rational principles of distributive justice. For Robert Nozick, it means the minimal state. For Ernest Gellner, it is the political structure appropriate to what he termed “modular man.” For Jürgen Habermas, echoing Rousseau, it refers to a political order based on rational will formation. For Vaclav Havel, what characterizes the limited state is the promotion of spiritual integration instead of the spiritual fragmentation associated with totalitarian regimes. Still other interpretations of the ideal of the limited state are found amongst theorists of globalization and the European Union.
manwithoutqualities 