Digressions&Impressions

Seneca's Last Gasps; meditating joyful and brave thoughts (Letter 54)

1. My ill-health had allowed me a long furlough, when suddenly it resumed the attack. "What kind of ill-health?" you say. And you surely have a right to ask; for it is true that no kind is unknown to me. But I have been consigned, so to speak, to one special ailment. I do not know why I should call it by its Greek name; for it is well enough described as "shortness of breath." Its attack is of very brief duration, like that of a squall at sea; it usually ends within an hour. Who indeed could breathe his last for long? 2. I have passed through all the ills and dangers of the flesh; but nothing seems to me more troublesome than this. And naturally so; for anything else may be called illness; but this is a sort of continued "last gasp." Hence physicians call it "practising how to die." For some day the breath will succeed in doing what it has so often essayed. 3. Do you think I am writing this letter in a merry spirit, just because I have escaped? It would be absurd to take delight in such supposed restoration to health, as it would be for a defendant to imagine that he had won his case when he had succeeded in postponing his trial. Yet in the midst of my difficult breathing I never ceased to rest secure in cheerful and brave thoughts.

4. "What?" I say to myself; "does death so often test me? Let it do so; I myself have for a long time tested death." "When?" you ask. Before I was born. Death is non-existence, and I know already what that means. What was before me will happen again after me. If there is any suffering in this state, there must have been such suffering also in the past, before we entered the light of day. As a matter of fact, however, we felt no discomfort then. 5. And I ask you, would you not say that one was the greatest of fools who believed that a lamp was worse off when it was extinguished than before it was lighted? We mortals also are lighted and extinguished; the period of suffering comes in between, but on either side there is a deep peace. For, unless I am very much mistaken, my dear Lucilius, we go astray in thinking that death only follows, when in reality it has both preceded us and will in turn follow us. Whatever condition existed before our birth, is death. For what does it matter whether you do not begin at all, or whether you leave off, inasmuch as the result of both these states is non-existence?

6. I have never ceased to exhort myself with counsels of this kind, silently, of course, since I had not the power to speak; then little by little this shortness of breath, already reduced to a sort of panting, came on at greater intervals, and then slowed down and finally stopped. Even by this time, although the gasping has ceased, the breath does not come and go normally; I still feel a sort of hesitation and delay in breathing. Let it be as it pleases, provided there be no sigh from the soul.7. Accept this assurance from me: I shall never be frightened when the last hour comes; I am already prepared and do not plan a whole day ahead. But do you praise and imitate the man whom it does not irk to die, though he takes pleasure in living. For what virtue is there in going away when you are thrust out? And yet there is virtue even in this: I am indeed thrust out, but it is as if I were going away willingly. For that reason the wise man can never be thrust out, because that would mean removal from a place which he was unwilling to leave; and the wise man does nothing unwillingly. He escapes necessity, because he wills to do what necessity is about to force upon him. Farewell.--Seneca Letter 54 Translated by Richard M. Gummere (with minor changes)

After many long letters, Seneca returns to brevity with a letter that becomes poignant in light of his own end. For a few years after Seneca wrote this, Nero sentenced him to suicide. And it is not clear that by obeying the sentence, Seneca really wills it himself and so escapes necessity. Compare the contrast with a case in which Nero had sentenced him to die, and that in order to escape the mad emperor's henchmen, Seneca had committed suicide. In the latter case, Seneca can be said to escape necessity in virtue of his own actions. Perhaps there is no real distinction here.

Seneca has set the stage for being remembered for his fearless (and dramatic) death.  If you deny that he could anticipate the future, it is worth noting that in this letter the plane of necessity and death are treated in temporal symmetric fashion. Either way, it is not clear to me why Seneca returns to this theme which he had discussed more fully in (recall) letter 24 (among other places).

When I was a teenager, I was diagnosed with exercise asthma. But once diagnosed, it's been mostly under control except once: in the aftermath of my TIA (recall) in the Summer of 2013, my lung capacity collapsed mysteriously. My asthma medicine was changed, and since then it seems to have no impact on my life and not preventing a fairly active life-style. This last fact seems to disappoint the medical types which have attended to me in the aftermath of covid. (For my "covid diaries," see here;  here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here;  here; here, here; here; here; and here.) For, somehow they are all way more confident they can treat lungs than the spooky, cognitive problems I am dealing with.

I had classmates with debilitating asthma, and once (recall) nearly drowned as a kid, so I can imagine without great effort that an asthma attack could be a kind of practice in the what it's like of a last gasp. Seneca is explicit that physicians call the experience "meditating on how to die" [medici hanc 'meditationem mortis' vocant]. It's hard here not to think of those who claimed that philosophy is a meditation on death "Philosophiam esse meditationem Mortis"), which is often (but not always) associated with Socrates (Phaedo 64A). For a brief moment it looks like we have landed in the competition in the authoritative art of living between medicine and philosophy familiar from, say, the Symposium (including its comedy.)

But Seneca refuses the comic note, and he makes clear there is no competition but rather parallelism between art and philosophy. For, during his asthma attacks he practices another kind of meditation with silent exhortations [exhortationibus - tacitis scilicet] which seem to slow down the actual asthma attacks. The exhortations involve a kind of reminder to self that life is surrounded by death. 

The one time I have been in the presence of death -- my father's (recall) -- his last breath sounded like a deep snort of exhaustion not a gasping at all. But then again, he really was ready to die. Because his whole childhood had been surrounded by mysterious disappearances (recall), which turned out to be deaths, I wonder if he saw his whole life as a kind of lucky surplus and so made it easier to let go. I regret not asking him.  

Be that as it may, and as it happens, a lot of people familiar with my cognitive challenges since long haul covid has set on are encouraging me to take on meditation. (These are not just new age types, but also physicians and fellow long haulers.) Last week I went to my first public lecture. After twenty minutes I felt the onset of great fatigue. But I decided to stick it out by closing my eyes and pretending as if I was listening to the lecture from afar. I even asked a (modest) question, but half-way through the Q&A I realized I was not going to make it home without collapsing if I would stay longer. So I left. 

And if the medical specialists can't find anything -- this week I have lined up a number of appointments --, I have, in fact, toyed with trying out some of Seneca's exhortations filled with joyful and brave thoughts [cogitationibus laetis ac fortibus]. And if these work, I'll share my secret here, for free and joyfully.

Long Covid Diaries: Downs and Ups

It’s time for another long covid diary entry. (For my official "covid diaries" see here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here;  here; here; here;  here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here;  here;  here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here;  here; here; here; here; here; here; here; and here) As usual it’s a mixed bag.

I was so disheartened a month ago I didn’t want to do another ‘diaries update.’ To recap: the main remaining long-term effect of my long covid is the onset of migraine when I am socially overstimulated or cognitively multitasking, exercise (alas), and when I have lack of sleep. (Undoubtedly stress is a contributing factor.) I have been getting Botox shots in my neck every 12 weeks to combat this. It usually takes about 9-14 days for the Botox to make a noticeable difference. And then I am migraine free for about five to six weeks. Not ideal, but more manageable.

I got my last Botox shot around the time of my last update (the middle of December). And by January it was pretty clear that it was not working as usual this time around. In addition, we had rented a lovely home for the holidays, but it was located alongside the fairway of a tropical golf-course. And so every morning the mowing machines woke me and made a droning noise for a few hours. Even ear-plugs did not help much to cancel the noise and discomfort. I spent most of the holiday with a migraine or taking anti-inflammatories.

When we returned from holiday, I had my annual blood check. And my kidney functions looked dubious (a known side of effect of my anti-inflammatories). I wondered whether I was heading toward an awful choice between kidney failure and structural migraine.

I didn’t feel like sharing any of this because just the idea of writing it all up was disheartening. And I didn’t want to sound pathetic while so many other folk have far worse struggles. I also had a simmering irritation with my employer that after being on disability for two years, I had ended up teaching hundreds of hours above my assigned contract hours. But due to a combination of factors,the actual work load was even more than registered. (It’s not uncommon in my university, and so I knew it was not directed at me personally.)

At some point I pulled a muscle in my back — it hurt so much for several weeks — that I thought I had a hernia or pinched nerve. (My GP eventually disabused me of this.) With all of that going on I wasn’t sure I should head off to California for a week-long conference, "Is Philosophy Useful for Science, and/or Vice Versa?" at Chapman University. But the day before I left, I was an examiner for an external Viva at Cambridge. I ended up also meeting a number of academic friends for coffee there. Much to my surprise, I did not collapse and saw no need for any medication to pull me through.

When I arrived in California after a long day of flying, I was locked out of the (lovely) home assigned to me and needed the (very nice) campus security officer to let me in. All week I struggled with my back and with horrible jet lag. Unsurprisingly I started the week with a migraine. Yet, the day at Cambridge also had given me hope a corner had been turned, and I held on to that.

Then I received news that a new blood test showed that my kidneys are functioning fine. And, somewhat oddly, while I shuffled around Old Orange (I got myself a massage that made things worse) without sleep, the feared-for collapse didn’t occur. Rather, the Sun and the conference comradery evidently gave me a huge boost. Because I was scheduled as the final talk of the event, I allowed myself a fairly wide-ranging set of provocations (see here for the video recording).

When I returned to Amsterdam, jet-lagged and limping, for my large lecture course (this year 340 students), part of me wondered whether this would be my last semester teaching full time. In addition, I was very taken aback that during my first two lectures the students, while respectfully listening and showing their appreciation with an applause after, were not asking questions from the floor. It felt like lecturing to a wall.

Yet, it’s a month later and I have had no reason to take any anti-inflammatories since. I have had no migraines at all. I am sleeping soundly; for the first time in more than three years, I am not waking up every ninety minutes to three hours. During the last few weeks there have been only two mornings when I awoke thinking, ‘urrgg it’s back;’ but with meditation, a hot shower, and espresso the migraine or whatever was back would dissipate without meds. Luckily the students have also become much more lively.

I miss my family, but otherwise I am rather optimistic about life again. When possible, I keep planning carefully with plenty of rest-moments in between activities. I also try to avoid multi-tasking too much on a single day. So, I wouldn’t claim that I am where I was before I got sick. But I have a rich social life; still enjoy teaching; and am also more willing to accept lecture invites.

Because of my growing confidence about my health, I also have less anxiety before busy periods in my schedule. This week-end I am returning to the Ghent philosophy department for the first time to give a talk since I left there almost a decade ago. Next week, I’ll get another round of Botox shots, but I have wondered whether I should cancel. All in all I am clearly much better than three months ago. If the relentless Amsterdam grey weather wouldn’t indicate otherwise, I would say that ‘'Spring is in the air.’

Long Covid Diaries: On Gaukroger (RIP), Jongbloed (RIP), and Margaritaville

[This post was first published at: digressions.impressions.substack here. To receive new posts and support my work  consider becoming a paid subscriber at <digressionsimpressions.substack.com>]

One of the great joys of academic life is that, if you are receptive to it, you meet interesting new people. These are generally also younger than you — any campus is a steep pyramid in which the young vastly outnumber you at any age — and so you can avoid the slow vanishing of landmarks and shared habits that are so characteristic of natural aging and decay.

I mention this because on Friday, while at a lunch to mark the bittersweet departure of my co-author Federica Russo who landed a professorship in Utrecht {and so reminded me of the persistent dysfunctionality of my home university], I met bright young scholars with inspiring projects in the philosophy department. (It was my first encounter with the department in almost four years.) I was also reminded that these long covid diaries are sometimes read by more distant acquaintances. (For my official "covid diaries" see here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here;  here; here; here;  here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here;  here;  here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here;  here; here; here; here; and here.)

As I walked home over the bustling Rokin I was in a reflective mood not just because of the lunch. Earlier that day I had visited the practice of my dad’s foot reflexology therapist, Dorine van Saanten-Daane, who had grown into one of his friends. She had invited me to visit shortly after his death (recall), in part to mourn together and in part for me to experience what her therapy was like. I resisted at first because while I mourned my dad I didn’t want to have to navigate her sense of bereavement. And then lockdowns and my long covid got in the way.

As an aside, many years ago (in 2018), a student came up to my after a seminar. She turned out to be a friend of one of the children of Dorine’s long-time business partners. My student informed me (after establishing I was indeed the same Eric Schliesser that wrote Adam Smith: Systematic Philosopher and Public Thinker) that my book was proudly on display next to some memorabilia of my father’s in the practice. Back in the day when I asked Dorine about it she informed she had bought it after my dad’s death because he was so proud of me.

I think I decided to take her up on her invitation because on Monday I had told my GP about a tremor I have in my hands. My wife (a surgeon) increasingly noticed it. While it doesn’t hinder me at all in daily life (and don’t have any fixity), I do have a tendency to spill ground espresso beans when I try to put them in my Mocha. My dad used to have it, too. I always assumed it was a kind of effect of trauma with a childhood in a concentration camp. But I now think it runs in the family. (My sister revealed hers on Friday.) It seems to have only started after the onset of long covid, so it may have been triggered by it in me.

So when I visited the practice on Friday morning I discretely checked for the presence of my book. (Didn’t see it.) But later during our session Dorine did show me a tasteful collage of pictures and drawings/memorabilia connected to my dad placed on her desk. (In my mind I called it a ‘shrine.’) After some catching up I did receive a foot reflexology session which was divine although I missed most of it because I slept through it.

As regular readers know, my sister taught me a modest meditation technique that almost unfailingly puts me to sleep. Luckily Dorine took it as a big compliment seeing in it my trust and receptivity toward her. I suspected my sleep also had to do with the fact that I had been sleeping badly again because of my return to Amsterdam and the impending start of the academic year on Tuesday, my life had become more demanding with more socializing, multitasking, more meetings, and also more triggers of modest anxiety and organizational decision-making.

On the Rokin, as I was thinking of the invisible threads that still connected me to my dad’s life, I decided to write a post about Jan Jongbloed (1940-2023) an icon of my youth. Jongbloed’s passing didn’t go completely unnoticed, but it wasn’t a major event. Yet, Jongbloed was the goalkeeper in the two lost finals of 74 and 78. Unusually, even then, he played without gloves and he anticipated the ‘modern’ goalkeeper who is very much as much as the last defender as the first link in attack. He had incredible reflexes, was fearless, and had a sense of showmanship by making his saves look spectacular. (Go check it out on youtube.)

Jongbloed’s international career was incredibly long-lasting but erratic. He was never thought of as the best keeper of his era, and never played for a ‘big’ club. I saw Jongbloed play in for FC Amsterdam in a relatively empty Olympic stadium in one of the first professional matches I ever witnessed. (I believe we were taken there with the youth teams of AFC, where I played.) FC Amsterdam (then a relatively new creation that has united the professional activities of many of Amsterdam’s traditional neighborhood clubs) was, then, the other Amsterdam team. I liked listening to interviews of him because of his independence, and he spoke in the typical Amsterdam accent that was already disappearing when I was kid. FC Amsterdam soon relegated and folded.

When I was home I called my GP because I had not received a referral yet. As regular readers know, in England since May I get semi-regular botox shots in my neck in order to combat the side effects of migraine. I would like to get those in Amsterdam so I can reduce the number of visits to London while I am teaching. One of the most frustrating features of a ‘new chronic illness’ are the recurring, emotionally and physically exhausting efforts of having to get care when you are most vulnerable even after it’s been established it’s useful for you (and you are willing to pay out of pocket). In general, I don’t have libertarian sympathies, but the system of rationing and rules that structure all modern health systems does remind me of the enduring germ of truth in that philosophy.

As an aside, the initial impact of botox was spectacular. For about six weeks all my migraine related symptoms including cognitive fatigue and recurring tinnitus disappeared altogether. Unfortunately, in the second week of July, I got a modest flu on holiday and then about three weeks, the symptoms returned including the headaches. But since the second week of August, things have improved again. I do get bouts of cognitive fatigue (which is the first phase of migraine according to the neurologists at NHS’ long covid clinic in London), but I usually spot it before the headaches start and by meditating and modest rest/pause I don’t go through the next cycle of headaches. I want to continue with the botox, or at least give it a few more chances, because if I can avoid the headaches my quality of life is massively better.

The next morning I arose to news Jimmy Buffett died. I had never heard of Buffett when I stepped on Tufts’ Medford campus in the Fall of 1989. But several of my dorm-mates were from small towns in Massachusetts and Parrot Heads, and I tagged along to Great Woods to see and hear him. I loved the tailgating — a new experience — and (as we say now) the vibes. (Undoubtedly the smell of thousands of spliffs reminded me a bit of Amsterdam.)

During my sixteen years stateside, I endlessly listened to Songs You Know By Heart, especially after I got my convertible with my first pay-check (and mom and grandma’s help). I eat sliced mango nearly every day, and I always get a chuckle, then, humming a few bars from Last Mango in Paris. In fact, Come Monday (a surprisingly subtle ballad—’subtle’ one should not overuse around Buffett,), is one of my favorite songs.

In it there is lyric that goes,

Remember that night in Montana
When we said there'd be no room for doubt

Which unfailingly reminds me of my own road trip during the Fall of 1993, and uttered some such words myself in Missoula. I honor the memory of that night (the romance didn’t last), in part, by using ‘nescio’ as my email handle (and also the pen-name of one of my favorite writers).

This is all set up because I just received word from Helen Irving that Stephen Gaukroger (1950-1923) just died. I had my last lunch with Stephen outside at the Wells Tavern in Hampstead a few days before he was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor. Because it was my turn to treat, he had come up the hill down from Belsize Park where he and Helen owned an apartment. During our lunch he was unaware of his tumor, but in between academic gossip and talking about our work we did discuss his health because several other serious conditions required treatment after his Summer travel plans. I did share a sense of foreboding with my wife because I had noticed he was not planning any new major projects (see below).

I tend to think of Stephen as one of the great scholar of seventeenth century natural philosophy. His work on Descartes and Bacon helped inaugurate and participate in ‘the contextual turn’ of the study of history and philosophy of science. Because he was in distant Sydney, my first meeting with him was relatively late in my academic development. I suspect we first met at a HOPOS event about twenty years ago. But we first got to know each other at a small workshop Dana Jalobeanu had organized in Bucharest while I was in Leiden (so around 2007 or so). It was a consequential event for me because I first met several of my future PhD students, but also spent a long time talking with Stephen about the Leibniz and Huygens relationship while we were waiting for a delayed flight at the gate.

Not long after, my department was undergoing a merger and foreseeable budget cuts and Stephen invited me to apply for a position at the department he was building at Aberdeen alongside Catherine Wilson. This itself was a memorable trip because I first met the late M.A. (‘Sandy’) Stewart, who had retired but picked me up at the B&B I was staying at and we promptly got lost driving around an Aberdeen suburb looking for a fish restaurant. It was a tremendous opportunity, and I gave one of my best job talks ever. My better half couldn’t imagine living and being happy in Aberdeen (which she found too grey), and so I went to Gent and commuted for six hard year.

I got to know Stephen more personally only relatively recently in July 2016 when I arrived early for my first visit to Sydney because I was co-organizing the Hume Society event at the university. Stephen and Helen lived right near campus and I was invited to their lovely home filled with art. That Brexit Summer my family moved to London, and since we saw each other quite regularly on their visits to Belsize.

I knew Stephen primarily as a mild-mannered gentleman scholar who was touchingly in love with Helen whose achievements and impact he admired and he was incredibly proud of their daughter, Cressida (an accomplished Hume scholar in addition to her many other literary talents). In all my interactions with him you could tell he felt incredibly blessed with his life, his travels with Helen, and his career.

In formal retirement he has been incredibly productive, including a major series of enormous works, The Emergence of a Scientific Culture: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1210-1685; The Collapse of Mechanism and the Rise of Sensibility: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1680-1760; The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739-1841; Civilization and the Culture of Science: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1795-1935 all with Oxford University Press. This was a man who didn’t only write about the work ethic, but also instantiated it. Over lunch at the Wells, he admitted that this huge project was a way to stay busy while satisfying his curiosity. A ‘bit like my blogging’ I said, and we both laughed heartily.

I sometimes envied Stephen not so much for his ability to complete books, but for his un-flappable nature and his general sunny disposition. However, this did not prevent him from having strong opinions. One of his last academic interventions was a polemical review in TLS. And while I increasingly believe that most polemics are unfruitful (and so unnecessary), his review had gratified my greatly (about that, perhaps, some other time). We discussed it, and Stephen told me with a relish wholly unexpected by me of how he was galvanized into writing it, and he was not at all perturbed even pleased by the polemical reactions it generated. I saw a glimpse of more fiery elements in him previously unknown to me. I will miss him, his mentorship, and our regular meals and talks. I have made a mental note to read his The Failures of Philosophy later this Fall.

On Tuesday classes start, including a new lecture course that I should be preparing. My occupational physician taught me that I should not compare my health on a day to day basis, but over longer stretches. Compared to this day two years ago and even last year, I am massively better despite being down from the glorious symptom-free heights of June. I am a bit nervous about teaching two new courses in a rather full load of three courses (one semester long, two half-semesters) this Fall. I am a bit sad that these diaries have not concluded yet.

But I visited campus earlier in the week. I saw all the students on orientation boasting to each other in their nervousness; met with the tutors, Anna and Aris, who will co-teach one of my lecture courses, and had dinner with my exciting new colleague, Kevin Pham. Come Tuesday I start my lecture on Hobbes’s social contract with a discussion of excerpts from Plato’s Crito and Manegold’s Ad Gebehardum liber, and I am so excited to invite my students along on intellectual discovery to explore jointly the roots and nature of concepts that are authoritative today. Maybe the connections we’ll forge will develop in enduring conversations between us or among them, or play an unexpected role in their lives.

• This first appeared at: <On How to Teach Old Books, Burnyeat vs Strauss, Part II (substack.com)>a reader supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Burnyeat vs Strauss, Again

[This post was first published at: digressions.impressions.substack here. To receive new posts and support my work  consider becoming a paid subscriber at <digressionsimpressions.substack.com>]

In a famous polemical essay (1986) in NYRB, my (recall) teacher, Myles Burnyeat, distinguished between two ways of entering Strauss’ thought: either through his “writings” or “one may sign up for initiation with a Straussian teacher.” That is, as Burnyeat notes, Strauss founded a school – he quotes Lewis Coser’s claim that it is “an academic cult” -- with an oral tradition. In the 1986 essay, Burnyeat spends some time on the details of Strauss’ teaching strategy and style that he draws from autobiographical writings by Bloom and Dannhauser[1] as well as by aptly quoting Strauss’ famous (1941) essay "Persecution and the Art of Writing." Somewhat peculiarly, given what follows, Burnyeat does not comment on the surprising fit he [Burnyeat] discerns between Strauss’ writing and teaching!

Burnyeat goes on to imply that without the oral tradition, Strauss’ writings fall flat, or (and these are not the same thing, of course) lack political influence. I quote:

“It is the second method that produces the sense of belonging and believing. The books and papers are freely available on the side of the Atlantic from which I write, but Strauss has no discernible influence in Britain at all. No one writing in the London Review of Books would worry—as Stephen Toulmin worried recently in these pages about the State Department’s policy-planning staff—that Mrs. Thatcher’s civil servants know more about the ideas of Leo Strauss than about the realities of the day. Strauss has no following in the universities where her civil servants are educated. Somehow, the interchange between teacher and pupil gives his ideas a potency that they lack on the printed page.”

I want to draw out to two themes from this quote: first, I’ll focus on the reception of Strauss in the UK. And, second, on the way governing elites are educated. So much for set up.

 

First, this is an extraordinary passage once we remember that already in 1937 Michael Oakeshott wrote an admiring and insightful review of Strauss’ ,The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: its Basis and its Genesis (1936) that is very much worth re-reading. (In his earlier, 1935, essay in Scrutiny on Hobbes, Oakeshott alerts the reader that he is familiar with Strauss’ (1932) French article on Hobbes.) It matters to Burnyeat’s empirical claim because while Oakeshott, who did have an impact British political thinking, certainly is not a slavish follower of Strauss, one would have to be confident that none of Oakeshott’s teachings weren’t taken from Strauss at all. Writing in the London Review of Books a few years later (1992), Perry Anderson alerts his readers to non-trivial differences between Strauss and Oakeshott (which is compatible with my claim), and more importantly for present purposes, treats Strauss as a major influence on the then newish resurgence of the intellectual right (although that can be made compatible with Burnyeat’s claim about Strauss’ purported lack of influence in the UK).[2]

 

But even when taken on its own terms, there is something odd about Burnyeat’s claim. For, even if we grant that Strauss has no following at all in British universities by the mid 1980s, this could have other sources than the lack of potency of Strauss’ ideas. After all, there had been a number of influential polemics against Strauss in the United Kingdom. Most notably, the so-called ‘Cambridge school’ of historiography (associated with Pocock, Dunn, and Skinner amongst others) polemically self-defined, in part, against Strauss and his school; this can be readily ascertained by, for example, word-searching ‘Strauss’ in Quentin Skinner’s (1968) "Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas."[3] One can also discern, as I have noted before, such polemics by reading Yolton’s (1958) "Locke on the Law of Nature" in The Philosophical Review.[4] Yolton was then at Kenyon, but he had been an Oxford DPhil student of Ryle’s, who supervised his dissertation on John Locke.[5] Polemic is simply unnecessary with writings one foresees would have no influence or potency at all. So, I am afraid to say that Burnyeat’s presentation does little justice to even the broad outlines of the early reception of Strauss in the U.K.

 

As I noted, there is a second theme lurking in the quoted passage, namely Burnyeat’s interest in how civil servants are educated at university. This theme is developed by Burnyeat as follows in the NYRB essay:

The leading characters in Strauss’s writing are “the gentlemen” and “the philosopher.” “The gentlemen” come, preferably, from patrician urban backgrounds and have money without having to work too hard for it: they are not the wealthy as such, then, but those who have “had an opportunity to be brought up in the proper manner.” Strauss is scornful of mass education. “Liberal education is the necessary endeavor to found an aristocracy within democratic mass society. Liberal education reminds those members of a mass democracy who have ears to hear, of human greatness.” Such “gentlemen” are idealistic, devoted to virtuous ends, and sympathetic to philosophy. They are thus ready to be taken in hand by “the philosopher,” who will teach them the great lesson they need to learn before they join the governing elite.

The name of this lesson is “the limits of politics.” Its content is that a just society is so improbable that one can do nothing to bring it about. In the 1960s this became: a just society is impossible. In either case the moral is that “the gentlemen” should rule conservatively, knowing that “the apparently just alternative to aristocracy open or disguised will be permanent revolution, i.e., permanent chaos in which life will be not only poor and short but brutish as well.”

Burnyeat infers these claims from a number of Strauss’s writings in the 1950s and 60s which he has clearly read carefully. In fact, at the end of the second paragraph, Burnyeat adds in his note (after citing Strauss’ What is Political Philosophy? p. 113), “where Strauss indicates that when this argument is applied to the present day, it yields his defense of liberal or constitutional democracy—i.e., modern democracy is justified, according to him, if and because it is aristocracy in disguise.”

Now, even friends of mass education can admit that modern democracy is an aristocracy in disguise. This is not a strange claim at all when we remember that traditionally ‘democracy’ was associated with what we now call ‘direct’ or ‘popular’/’plebiscite’ democracy, whereas our ‘liberal’ or ‘representative’ democracy was understood as aristocratic in form if only because it functionally preserves rule by the relatively few as Tocqueville intimates. This fact is a common complaint from the left, and, on the right, taken as a vindication of the sociological ‘elite’ school (associated with Mosca, Pareto, etc.). It is not limited to the latter, of course, because the claim can be found in the writing of Max Weber on UK/US party politics (which Strauss knew well.)  

Of course, what matters is what kind of aristocracy modern liberal democracy is, and can be. And now we return, anew, to theme of the education of the governing elite(s) as Burnyeat put front and center in NYRB. That a liberal education can produce a ‘natural’ aristocracy is, in fact, staple of writings in what we may call ‘the conservative tradition’ as can be found in Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind. The idea is given a famous articulation in the writings of Edmund Burke (1791) “An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs.” (I have put the passage from Burke in a note.)[6]

So, as summarized by Burnyeat, Strauss simply echoes a commonplace about how Burke is understood by post WWII conservatives. What’s distinctive then is that Strauss is presented as claiming that the ancient wisdom he discloses is that trying to bring about a fully just society would re-open the Hobbesian state of nature/war, that is, permanent chaos. It won’t surprise that Burnyeat denies this is the unanimous teaching of the ancients (although when I took a seminar with him about fifteen years later he came close to endorsing this himself as a reading of the Republic). For, the closing two paragraphs of his essay, drive this point home:

“Strauss believed that civil society must, of necessity, foster warlike habits and make its citizens apply different rules of conduct to one another and to foreigners. The impossibility of international justice was a considerable part of what persuaded him that “the justice which is possible within the city, can only be imperfect or cannot be unquestionably good.” But Strauss spent his life extolling what he believed to be “the truth” on the grounds that it is the unanimous “wisdom of the ancients.” Hence something more than an academic quarrel is taking place when Strauss defends his eccentric view that Plato’s Socrates agrees with Xenophon’s in teaching that the just citizen is one who helps his friends and harms his enemies.

Plato’s Socrates attacks this very notion early in the Republic. No matter: Strauss will demonstrate that it is the only definition of justice from Book I which is “entirely preserved” in the remainder of the Republic. Plato’s Socrates argues passionately in the Gorgias for a revolutionary morality founded on the thesis that one should not return wrong for wrong. Strauss’s unwritten essay on Plato’s Gorgias would have summoned all his Maimonidean skills to show that Socrates does not mean what he says. Much more is at stake here than the correctness or otherwise of the common scholarly opinion that Xenophon, a military man, was incompetent at philosophy and did not understand Socrates. The real issue is Strauss’s ruthless determination to use these old books to “moderate” that idealistic longing for justice, at home and abroad, which grew in the puppies of America during the years when Strauss was teaching and writing.”

 

That Xenophon was incompetent at philosophy and did not understand Socrates is, in the context of the debate with Strauss, a petitio principii. That’s compatible with the claim that Burnyeat is right about this. But it's worth noting that this is characteristic of analytic historiography. For example, in his early (1951) review of Strauss, Vlastos also describes Xenophon as having a “pedestrian mind.” (593)

Even so, that international justice between states is impossible is not a strange reading of the Republic (or the other ancients). Plato and Aristotle are not Kant, after all. (Plato may have thought that Kallipolis could have just relations with other Hellenic polities, but I see no reason he thought that this was enduringly possible with non-Greek barbarians.) And if we permit the anachronism by which it is phrased, it strikes me that Strauss is right that for the ancients civil society must, of necessity, foster warlike habits and make its citizens apply different rules of conduct to one another and to foreigners (even if many foreigners could be treated in pacific fashion and in accord with a supra-national moral norms). Part of Plato’s popularity (recall; and here) in the nineteenth century was undoubtedly due to the plausibility of reading him as a pan-hellenic nationalist. It doesn’t follow from this, of course, that for Socrates whatever justice is possible within the city has to be attenuated or imperfect. It is, however, peculiar that even if one rejects Strauss’ purported “great lesson” and if one grants that Kallipolis is, indeed, the ideal city one should treat the effort to bring it into being as anything more than a dangerous fantasy; and while I wouldn’t want to claim that a “just society is so improbable that one can do nothing to bring it about,” it is not odd to wish to moderate those that try knowing, as we do, the crimes of the Gulag or the Great Leap forward, if that's really what Strauss taught.

• This first appeared at: <Burnyeat on Leo Strauss, again. - by nescio13 (substack.com)>a reader supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

 

On Patočka, T.S. Eliot and the Treason of the Intellectuals during the Culture Wars: with a surprising cameo of José Benardete

[I am phasing out D&I at typepad. This post was first published at: digressions.impressions.substack here. To receive new posts and support my work  consider becoming a paid subscriber at <digressionsimpressions.substack.com>]

Perhaps because I recognize in myself a warmth toward Spinozism, but I am always inordinately pleased when I can recognize and act on the play of chance. After a raucous pub lecture to the members of student-club of the political science department (aptly named Machiavelli) in the Amsterdam red light district, I received Jan Patočka' Living in Problematicity -- a slim volume of essays (selected and translated by Eric Manton) -- as a gift with a touching inscription from a former student. I knew that Patočka (1907-1977) was a philosopher and a courageous co-founder of Charta 77. His clandestine discussion groups and his lectures at the under-ground university are legendary. I had never read anything by him, although his work is becoming increasingly accessible in English.

Yesterday, while in transit, I read "Platonism and Politics," which is a very short meditation on Bendas' La Trahison des clercs (1927; often translated as: The Treason of the Intellectuals); recall this post). Because in preparing a syllabus for a class on conservatism, I had stumbled on a 1944 note by T.S. Eliot engaging with Benda, I had just been musing about the use of Benda by contemporary intellectuals -- I tweeted this on june 4 (and no, Tweeting is not Thinking) -- so this post was born.

I don't mean to suggest I randomly muse about Benda. As regular readers know, I write in a philosophical tradition that feels entitled to be unlearned. And so in our controversies over 'public [facing] philosophy' and 'responsible speech' we end up repeating, over and over again, the same trite clichés without any sense of embarrassment. And this lack of shame is, of course, characteristic of a modern clerisy (in Benda's sense). Since I am a blogger, feel free to read this as self-indictment. Okay, so much for set up.

Now, for sociological reasons I do not fully understand, while Benda is wholly unknown inside my tradition, he does repeatedly get invoked in relatively serious public essays. With the help of Google, here's a few examples of the kind of thing I have in mind:

• Mark Lilla December 7, 2021 Tablet Magazine (taken from his intro to a re-issue): Julien Benda’s The Treason of the Intellectuals, an essential intervention in 20th-century debates about intellectual responsibility, is the second sort of book. Cast into the agitated waters of European politics between the two world wars, it still floats ashore every decade or so, attracting readers with its stirring call to the independent life of the mind, free from the lures of power and authority.... he makes a practical case against practicality, an engaged case against political engagements.

• Elie Kedourie, August 1992, Commentary: The phenomena against which Benda was writing were much more visible in France than in England or the U.S. There was no movement here comparable to the Action Française in its intellectual prestige or in its spread within the academy and among the intellectual classes....But in today’s English-speaking world (as indeed in today’s France), we do now see a political commitment within the academy having to do neither with the character and definition of the body politic nor with the class struggle.

• George Monbiot, 14th May 2013, the Guardian: In 1927 the French philosopher Julien Benda published a piercing attack on the intellectuals of his day. They should, he argued in La Trahison des Clercs (the treason of the scholars) act as a check on popular passions. Civilisation, he claimed, is possible only if intellectuals stand in opposition to the demands of political “realism” by upholding universal principles. “Thanks to the scholars,” Benda maintained, “humanity did evil for two thousand years, but honoured good.”.. the need for a disinterested class of intellectuals which acts as a counterweight to prevailing mores. 

• Antony Julius (reviewing Berman), May 14, 2010, The New York Time: The masterwork, however, is still ­Julien Benda’s “Treason of the Intellectuals.” This book, written in 1927 by one of the leading French intellectuals of the early 20th century, may be regarded as the inaugural work of the line....For Benda, the intellectual betrays his vocation when he compromises his commitment to universalist values. The temptation to make such compromises, he argues, lies principally in the appeal of national sentiment, to which intellectuals are quick to subordinate themselves. And the role they assume as nationalists is to conceptualize political hatreds. 

I listed these because each of these essays is worth reading as a window on their own polemical moment as well as a kind of an evolution of a meme/trope. What's notable here is the subtle shift in character among what Benda was supposedly inveighing against: political engagement by intellectuals; academic activists/political commitment; a betrayal of universal principles understood as disinterestedness; a betrayal of universal principles in the service of nationalism. I don't mean to suggest there is a mystery here: each essay has slightly different polemical contextual target(s) and so each also subtly rejigs Benda to their own local political-polemical ends (including, in the case of Lilla, criticizing Benda). That's what intellectuals do, after all, right? In general, on a left-right axis, the left-intellectuals will invoke Benda to criticize intellectuals serving power and moneyed-interests, while the right-leaning intellectuals will invoke Benda to criticize intellectuals who serve some (what we now call) social justice cause. All sides (correctly) invoke Benda when criticizing a nationalist-friendly intellectual, unless it's their own nation and they are prudently silent.

Now, what I like about Patočka's little essay (it’s shorter than some of my digressions) is that he inscribes Benda in a debate over the reception of Platonism (or "true philosophizing in general"), and to what degree what one might call the possibility of serving a certain (spiritual) kind of 'higher calling" (in the sense of Republic 487a to which Patočka appeals explicitly) associated with it (but rooted in philosophy), is still possible after Nietzsche (who goes unmentioned) and his death of God (which is intimated in various ways) in modern conditions. In context, it's clear that this Platonism is associated with an interesting mélange of Plato and Husserl. I quote from Manton's translation to give you a sense of what he has in mind:

The ultimate meaning of Platonism is, I think, a spiritual universum, into which a person penetrates by means of a certain purely inner and active (but absolutely not mythical) purification. This purification or philosophy is at the same time the most important and most intensive praxis, solely able to give to the life of the individual as well as of society a necessary unity, to give life that inner center which one potentially keeps within oneself as the unfulfilled meaning of one’s life. Thus Plato’s political conception briefly means this: (1) there exists a single and coherent, truly human, spiritual behavior named philosophy; (2) the “object” of philosophy is not primarily the contents of this world; (3) the right of philosophy to establish norms for life consists in its inner truthfulness, in its absolute character; (4) all of human activity, not founded on philosophy and not illuminated throughout by philosophy, has the character of dissatisfaction, falsehood, and a lack of inner order.

Now, I am not interested here in trying to trace each of these claims back to Plato or, by contrast, to appeal to contemporary scholarship to show that any of this is only in a very attenuated sense to be found in Plato. Rather, let's stipulate with Patočka that this captures something of a familiar ideal. For Patočka, Benda's book raises two-fold question: the first is the Nietzschean one, is this ideal dead? The second-fold is, does the ideal “exist in a certain modified form even in our own lives?" Judging by the essays linked above, the answer to the first is: yes. And to the second, no. As Patočka suggests, Platonism so conceived "can only live where those vital hypothesis discussed above on which Platonism is built also exist."

Now Patočka is clear that his conception of Platonism is itself political in a higher sense (familiar, (recall) I hasten to add from Plato Republic,  592ab), although he gives a humanist spin on it (this is the debt to Husserl whom he quotes). Interestingly enough, for Patočka this entails that the impact of philosophy in life is "the permeation, gradually and usually distortedly, of philosophical concepts into the common human consciousness." This turns Platonism into a kind of Enlightenment project, despite the fact that philosophy itself is "a matter of the few." And, in fact, Patočka calls for a kind of 'new Enlightenment' ground in a new actualization of Platonism, while simultaneously criticizing what we might call the idol of collectivism. (I wouldn't be surprised if the essay were mined by biographers who see in it a prefiguration of his later courage under Stalinism with Czech characteristics.)

For, Patočka (who thinks Benda is confused on the proper task of intellectuals and the role of Platonism in this higher sense) what Benda get right (we might say) ‘formally’ is that proper myth, that is not falsehood but rather "an imaginative vestment of truth," is a useful instrument in the permeation of these concepts and for those (collectives) who do not wish to live a spiritual life. The main point of Patočka's essay is to call attention to the need for myths that express or manifest 'poetical, philosophical yearning.' The Spinozist in me understands this yearning, and Patočka grasps what makes Benda's diatribe so enduringly fascinating.

For Patočka the task of the clerisy is to use myths to help spread this new Enlightenment. This is not far removed (as I argue in this lecture) from how my friend José Benardete understood his task in his book on Infinity (although as always with José there are complications), so if you want an example of how this is supposed to work in the hands of a metaphysician go read it. I could stop here.

Interestingly and surprisingly enough, T.S. Eliot of all people, ridicules Benda: "Benda, as I remember, seemed to expect everybody to be a sort of Spinoza." In context, it's clear that Eliot's 'everybody' is 'every member of the clerisy.' Now, I lifted this sentence from the 1944 piece, which as a subtitle has ‘On the Place and Function of the Clerisy;" one of the questions Eliot asks in it is (unsurprisingly given that subtitle) what is the function of the clerisy. One of the proper functions of the intellectuals for him is to promote the right sort of change: "the chief merits of the clerical elite is that it is an influence for change." This leaves underspecified what change they promote, but it is at least sometimes compatible with Patočka's position.

In addition, according to Eliot it is, thus, inevitable that the clerisy ends up in conflict with the forces that defend the status quo: "To some extent, therefore, there is, and I think should be, a conflict between class and clerical elite." Eliot tacitly here presupposes that the ruling class is change averse. But even ruling classes can promote change if they think it will benefit them--this is something quite familiar in our own time; it does not follow we can always identify whether the clerisy is betraying its true vocation.

As I have hinted above, Eliot decouples the function of the clerisy from a higher calling. I don't mean to suggest he completely decouples it because for him "The clerisy can help to develop and modify [culture]; they have a part to play, but only a part, in its transmission." And presumably Eliot, who is no stranger to Platonism, does think that a culture might have a connection to a higher calling. In fact, when it does, then 'culture' just means an imaginative vestment of truth. Fair enough.

Now, Eliot recognizes a form of pluralism that Patočka finds difficult to accommodate (although it is compatible with his Platonism). For intellectuals share in being outcasts, and "are apt to share a discontent with things as they are, but the ways in which they want to change them will be various and often completely opposed to each other." And while it is tempting to say that the opposition is merely over means (again compatible with Platonism), it is, of course, not impossible that the disagreement is also over ends which begins to look incompatible with Platonism if the unity of the virtues is broken as Eliot himself suggests in the remainder of his notes (and hard to disagree with in 1944).*

However, this all must seem rather quaint. Ours is not an age that wishes to gamble on a revitalized humanism. The transgender-wars take place when capital and the heirs of the once noble tradition of the radical philosophers are betting on transhumanism. Even the very idea of a human right, let alone a culture in the bildung sense assumed by Eliot is suspect. Talking about culture without naming the social sins on which it rests seems also a real betrayal of humanity. No high minded stance seems to be able to survive scrutiny.

But it is no better that the poetical, philosophical yearning(s) are met exclusively by hucksters, or worse. And if Platonism is wholly exhausted, what now? And while I dislike the word ‘problematicity,’ perhaps, if you follow me on this substack voyage, this is the question, if it is a single question, we must answer or the ‘problematic’ we must resolve.

• This first appeared at: <On Patočka, T.S. Eliot and the Treason of the Intellectuals during the Culture Wars: with a surprising cameo of José Benardete (substack.com)> a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

---

*See especially his treatment "clerical small fry, we have what is called the intelligentsia...in Cairo and such places."

 

Long Covid Diaries: New Treatment

[I am phasing out D&I at typepad. This post was first published at: digressions.impressions.substack here. To receive new posts and support my work  consider becoming a paid subscriber at <digressionsimpressions.substack.com>]

It's been about five weeks since I switched Digressions to Substack and last wrote an entry in my covid diary. (For my official "covid diaries" see here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here;  here; here; and here.) It's time for an update on both. Also, some blog house-keeping at the end.

First, my new/replacement neurologist at the NHS long covid clinic in London was unhappy after listening to my narrative. Short version: much recovered by end of January; teaching went well in February/March, but have struggled since. Yes, I am doing much better since the last time one of his colleagues saw me (with apologies for canceling multiple appointments with me). But no, I shouldn't be taking naproxen so frequently at this stage in order to manage the effects of migraine.

The neurologist's concern was straightforward: I am not nipping the migraines in the bud, but rather masking symptoms.  Bottom line, he wanted me to try out the treatment plan the long covid clinic had prescribed to me in June 2022 in order to get the covid induced migraines under control. These are primarily triggered whenever I am cognitively multitasking, that is, socializing, for any amount of time.

In addition, I have noticed an odd new symptom. It's a kind of tinnitus when I lie down to go to bed when I am fatigued. The low grade, but persistent noise 'sounds' like an air-conditioner, generator, or vacuum-cleaner in the distance. Luckily, it doesn’t prevent me from falling asleep because the simple meditation my sister taught me still works like a charm. After some testing with sound-meters and earplugs, I realized the sound is purely cognitive. I only 'hear' it at night when I go to bed, but again only when I am especially tired or migraine-y. (Upon reflection, I suspect I have had this symptom since last Fall and I hereby apologize to the Kimpton hotel in Cambridge in insisting on a room change because of the outside noise I heard.) 

Problem is that the official June 2022 treatment plan involves rather serious meds, which were originally developed to treat high blood pressure, depression and/or epilepsy--all have serious (cognitive) side effects. I have not been especially eager to try any, especially if they prevent me from teaching, reading, and writing.

Now, a weird big glitch in the NHS is that the specialist generally does not send you home with the meds required (unless it falls under urgent care), and so I would need to go back with my treatment plan to my GP before I could start any of the treatments the neurologist prescribed. And at the moment any non-urgent appointment at my GP takes a lot of time to schedule. So by the time I met my NHS GP, I had devised an alternative plan.

As it happens when I first met my better half she suffered from awful, debilitating migraines that could last three or four days. But after a while she started a new treatment that has been very successful for her: Botox shots in the neck. Basically one poisons the muscles with Botox so that they can't reinforce a developing migraine with extra stress, and one cuts short the migraine cycle. In the NHS this is an approved treatment for migraine, but only after you try treatment with all the pills first. (Unfortunately, in Holland it's not an approved treatment of migraine so I can't get coverage there either.) Both the NHS neurologist and my GP warned me that if I skipped the pills I could never get reimbursed for the Botox shots, even if it worked. But the GP encouraged me to try it anyway, because he understood my apprehensions about the treatment plan.

So, about twelve days ago, I found myself in the most beautiful physician's office I have ever been in with one of the leading cosmetic eye surgeons of the UK (an old friend of my better half, who -- it was my birthday after all -- paid for my first treatment). fter going through the treatment with me, and ruling out some other medical issues, I got my first eight Botox shots at half dosage. (No, I didn't add a secret cosmetic treatment for eyes or chin!) The plan is to give it two to three weeks, and then, if necessary, add another dosage. If the treatment works, I would need the shots about two or three times a year.

After the first week of shots, I wasn't so sure. But in the second week I am seeing grounds for optimism. So, I'll report back later this Summer if the Botox shots have improved the quality of life structurally. It would be nice if it did because I start a full load of teaching in September. Before then, I am also key-noting this week in Utrecht and chairing a job search in the next few weeks so it would be nice not to live on Naproxen during this period. (I am not counting on that because I pulled a muscle in my back yesterday morning and I have had painful back spasms during the last 27 hrs! Hopefully, I can stand for my keynote on Thursday!)

So much for the Covid diaries update. As hinted in the previous paragraph, I expect to do almost no or very infrequent blogging until the second week of June. (This is the blog house-keeping.) Apologies for that in advance. 

I want to close with sincere thanks to all the subscribers to my Substack. The good news is that since I switched to Substack, I seem to have doubled my readership, especially because a sizable chunk of my audience continues to read these posts at Typepad (where, for the time being, I re-post them a day later).

Unfortunately, less than 10% of my substack subscribers pays, so it's too early to contemplate a career switch or even reducing my professional appointment. I had been kind of hoping to blog my way to more structural sabbaticals as a way to manage my long covid on my own terms; but so far no cigar.

Going forward, I will experiment with giving my paying subscribers -- thank you, you are the best! -- more frequent, exclusive content during the Summer. (I have done that only once during the first month.) If you have any suggestions or requests, please don't be a stranger.

Either way, I am really enjoying the more intense engagement that Substack generates. I receive a lot more correspondence again about my near daily musings. Merci. And watch this space in June.

• This first appeared at: <Long Covid Diaries: new Medical Treatment (and some blog house-keeping). (substack.com)> a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

On the latest controversy in the philosophical blogosphere.

[Over time I plan to phase out this blog at typepad. This post was first published at  digressions.impressions.substack here. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber at <digressionsimpressions.substack.com>]

At Leiterreports (here; here; here) and DailyNous another 'philosophy controversy' is playing out. I am sure most of my readers know that it was triggered by an autobiographical essay in Quillette accusing OUP, widely regarded as the leading press in English language professional philosophy [humble-brag: that's where I publish my stuff], of irregular editorial practices with a monograph and handbook chapter on one of the central topics in the contemporary culture wars. (The author has already found new homes for both works.) As has become clear, the handling editor was Peter M., who is widely regarded as the most prestigious philosophy editor within the field. (No, I work with the other Peter, O.) The author of the autobiographical essay is a senior professor at MIT, Alex Byrne.

Nearly all the people crying 'foul' now are people that happily participate in a system that is opaque, riddled with systematic conflicts of interests, editorial unaccountability, and that usually apparently does not cause them any friction. For, when I read Byrne's essay in Quillette, I was stunned by his surprise that he received 'bizarre' referee reports that do not substantiate their claims and that are uncivil. And that, after a life-time in the profession, he sincerely claims "a reviewer is expected to give reasons for her verdict." The tone of referees has been a widely discussed problem in professional philosophy (including in a thoughtful piece unrelated to culture wars in TLS by Tim Crane not so long ago.)

I was bemused to read in Byrne (and some commentators in the blogosphere) that "publication is practically guaranteed" for a handbook article. Twice in the last decade a handbook chapter drafted by me was rejected: once with the suggestion that one of the co-editors could rewrite it with me (I pulled that article and it became chapter 1 of my monograph), and once because my work was not deemed up to par and the editors decided there was too little time for me to improve it. While that stung, for all I know the editors were right about that latter call because another version of that paper was rejected in another special issue. (I can't hate the essay because it was my successful job-talk paper.) I certainly agree with Byrne that receiving editorial word via Twitter is seriously odd; it's probably still marginally better than the time the Monist canceled a special issue with one of my accepted papers without informing me! (We eventually published the paper in Metaphilosophy, where it was published after a year and half (including a mysterious delay because of an editorial mix-up.)) Yes, I did publish a subsequent paper with the Monist. None of my experiences are newsworthy because they are so common and they do not involve the culture wars (although some of my anonymous referees single out my blogging for special ire).

More than a decade ago, I was galvanized into blogging because of a massive plagiarism scandal involving a senior scholar that I sometimes collaborated with that exposed lackadaisical refereeing and publishing practices in an adjoining field. Recently that very same field was rocked by a second major plagiarism scandal (involving a more junior scholar), and dropped the ball in its response in lots of ways. In fact, shortly after NewAPPS was founded several controversies involving Synthese unfolded (we had a 'Synthese Affair' tab): one triggered by a special issue on intelligent design involving editorial improprieties that even made it to the New York Times and one involving inappropriate pictures on a course website by one of the very editors involved in that scandal. A few years later another special issue by Synthese exploded into the news when its guest editor suggested that logical pluralism and homosexuality are linked. This produced a moratorium on special issues at Synthese.

As an aside [feel free to skip to the next paragraph], after the moratorium ended, I co-edited a special issue for Synthese. My very own contribution to that special issue did not make it through the revamped referee process.  So, I can attest that Synthese has learned its lesson. (It's chapter 13 of my 2017 OUP monograph now.)

I don't mean to leave you with the feeling that professional philosophy has a Synthese problem, or that this journal was/is especially badly managed, or that controversy always only involves then-culture-war issues.  Some of the purportedly best journals in professional philosophy, Nous and PPR went through a phase when they had to put moratoria on submissions for extended periods, in part because they had been edited by the same highly respected editor, who also edited Philosophical Issues. In that very same period, another highly respected long-time editor of Philosophical Studies resigned after 25 years because he was unhappy about how a fellow editor handled a paper critical of a paper (by Byrne) thar he had published in the same journal. (Okay that also involved culture war issues.) After the resignation, stories surfaced that this very editor did not always practice double-anonymous reviewing when it suited him. 

Even when proper refereeing procedures are followed a journal can screw up post publication. By the time the 'transracialism controversy' (which also made the New York Times) had played out, the editorial team, many of the associate editors, and many of the governing board had resigned or been nudged out from the feminist journal Hypatia. (I wrote lots of earnest, widely read blog posts about this case none of them made it into the wikipedia entry.)

The previous paragraphs hint at the proverbial tip of the ice-berg. For much of the post WWII period, analytic philosophy has been characterized by a concerted effort at journal capture and then these journals were subsequently run in a clubby fashion that disproportionally served the interests of people in the network of these journals, which have absurdly low acceptance rates, in a discipline that is characterized by incredibly steep economic and prestige hierarchies. It is, in fact, not uncommon to receive incredibly uncivil referee reports, which, if they do materialize, often are slow in coming. At many journals editors de facto farm out the decision by effectively giving a single, sometimes idiotic referee veto power.

It's not just journals. When I was still very junior a highly respected editor at one of the other leading philosophy presses forced a paper out of the volume I co-edited because one of his/her/their referees was incensed over a footnote in one of the papers (never published) that re-litigated a conference dispute (between the referee and the chapter’s author) decades earlier. The referee revealed himself to me and wisely recused himself, but the editor felt loyalty to the referee and insisted that the chapter be withdrawn. (The author refused to submit a different paper.) I thought it very odd that the editor (with no expertise in the field) took sides in a professional dispute. It didn't stop me from working with this editor again, of course. And when I look into my soul, I recall times that as an editor I was involved in decisions that may have seemed badly motivated to some of the rejected authors.

If we step back from the details of any controversy, such controversy is only to be expected: academic philosophers are humans not sages, who have few reliable measures to navigate a very scarce job environment and informational overload while norms of quality and professional conduct are constantly contestable (and, more slowly, shifting). While there are a lot of truth-guided and earnest people in the profession, whenever we get a glimpse under the hood of how confidential consequential decisions (e.g., publication, admission, appointments) are really made irregularities seem to proliferate. (That is compatible with the vast majority of decisions being defensible on intrinsic and/or procedural grounds.)

Moreover, in each controversy, a very senior figure will gravely and shamelessly intone that other scholars are afraid to speak up because they fear for their careers. It somehow never registers that the structural, cultural, intellectual, and economic conditions that generate such -- let's stipulate -- real fear (sometimes even co-produced by said senior figure) also existed in some shape or another in the lost golden age they cherish, but that then they were on the right side of history in which the people in their network could count on obliging editors, referees, and appointment committees (just ask continental philosophers, or anyone working in other margins of the field).

In our collective behavior we reveal that professional philosophy is, in part, a (modest-in-the-long-term-scheme-of-things) spoils system because during each controversy we go through the same charade sincerely felt debates and sophisticated and laughable arguments (including by world class experts on argument, the working of evidence, inductive risk, deliberative democracy, and ethics, etc.), but we never really risk changing the system and incentives -- our role in a wider political economy of credentialing and knowledge production -- that produce these kinds of controversies (and the many less noticed irregularities that they hint at) so frequently.

The predictability, frequency, and manner of these controversies makes me suspect that such controversies serve a social function. It would be nice if they represented the birth-pangs of a new, healthier intellectual age. But I doubt they are truth-functional because they are characterized by what Mill called ‘vituperative’' speech; I used to think the function was still epistemic: to signal a shift in norm, practice, or attitudes. I increasingly suspect they recur because they drive people without a taste for cruelty and combat away from the discipline (and thereby reduce competition over jobs and prestige, and rid ourselves of sources of dissent) and help entrench the same type of enduring professional hierarchy, even if the tokens at the top move around a bit.

• This first appeared at: <On the controversy in the philosophical blogosphere. (substack.com)> a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

 

 

Covid Diaries: Substack and Life plans

Yesterday, I learned I received a 'most valued lecturer among first-year political science students' award. (Technically it was a tie, and I have been toying with asking for a formal recount--the hanging chad jokes write themselves.) It's the first quasi formal teaching recognition I have ever received, and it's bittersweet to receive it while being highly self-conscious of my partial disabilities. It's not wholly a surprise because my giant lecture course has been very popular for about five years now. I have always been popular among some of my students, but others also found me incredibly irritating (at the start of my career my student evals always had bimodal distributions). 

It's not a coincidence that my teaching popularity has improved since the onset of my long covid. (For my official "covid diaries" see here; here; here; here;here; here; here;  here;  here; here; here; here;   here; here; here; here; here;  here; here; here;  here;  here; here; here; here; here;  here; here; here; here; here;  here; here;  here; here; here;  here; here; here; here;  here; here.; and here.) One important life change since I tried to recover from long covid is to reduce cognitive (and physical) multi-tasking through the day and also at any moment. The effect has been that I put much less demands on my teaching: during lectures I am focused primarily on my pedagogical aims for my students and I am not trying to entertain myself (by clever asides or meta-theoretical commentary). 

This past week, I was not allowed to forget my long covid. I violated my no multi-tasking rule, and I could not plan my days (or exercise) in ways that suppress my symptoms (headaches, cognitive fatigue, bad sleep, etc.). I had to do a lot of travel alongside some intense job-related meetings (I had a job search), and so I had to take more regular naproxen as a palliative than I would like. However, now I have almost four months without teaching (and much less travel), so I am looking forward to use the time to get back to some big intellectual projects and also continue my recovery with daily swimming and more leisurely pace.

For, this post is also the start of an experiment with partial monetizing some of my blogging at Substack. During covid and my fall research leave, I had time to reflect on my future. As many of you know, when in health, I split my time between Amsterdam (work) and London (family). But this means that among family, teaching, research, and a whole bunch of job duties I am consistently spread too thin in two (expensive) places. Being on partial disability allowed me to reconfigure my position at work to focus on things that spark joy (and to let go of those that don't): undergraduate teaching and research. I also have cut down on travel between London and Amsterdam, but this has led to less time with family (and less time at work some time of year). But this Fall, I return to full-time teaching and, if my health holds up, I will increasingly be tapped again for tasks that make it hard to square all my commitments and not undermine my health. 

In an ideal world, I would get a new position that either would let me work/live in London or that would pay enough so that I could go half-time as long as my teenage son is in school. But until that happens, I want to blog my way to an income that would require me to be on partial (albeit structural) leave. So all my (after tax) substack income would go to off-setting salary (and so leave) because my university/department rules do not allow me to supplement my income over my basic salary. I am not very optimistic about this plan because (i) I refuse to be a culture warrior; (ii) my topics are a niche product; (iii) I am not the world's greatest writer even in philosophy--having been ruined for modern audiences by translating Cicero as a teenager; (iv) the first sixteen subscribers to my Substack all opted for the free subscription. 

The decision to go with Substack has not been an easy one. When John Protevi made the executive decision to make NewAPPS advertising free, I have always been happy with the fact that my blogging (also at D&I and Crookedtimber) was orthogonal to the monetized market place of ideas and uncorrupted by financial considerations. (This meant money left on the table, especially in the years at NewAPPS.) After all, incentives matter, and they do shape decisions, and your good opinion and refined judgment, dear reader, always matters most to me (feel free to add a choice quote from Seneca or Socrates here). In fact, having become increasingly aware of the role marketing budgets (and publicists) play in recent public facing philosophy, I have taken pride in my role in the intellectual credit economy. 

Anyway, I don't want to dramatize this Substack decision too much (it's only an experiment at first, after all): I will continue to blog at Crookedtimber (and D&I), and a lot of my Substack will be freely available. But I am leaving the high ground: alia iacta est, for the price of a cheap glass of wine you can read my near-daily musings here.

The Delirium of LLMs; with some help of Hume and Foucault

The intense view of these manifold contradictions and imperfections in human reason has so wrought upon me, and heated my brain, that I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion even as more probable or likely than another. Where am I, or what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return? Whose favour shall I court, and whose anger must I dread? What beings surround me? and on whom have I any influence, or who have any influence on me? I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, inviron'd with the deepest darkness, and utterly depriv'd of the use of every member and faculty.

Most fortunately it happens, that since reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of back-gammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hour's amusement, I wou'd return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strain'd, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther.--David Hume A Treatise Concerning Human Understanding, 1,4,7.8-1.4.7.9 [emphasis in original]

While Hume uses 'melancholy' and its cognates frequently and throughout his writings, 'delirium' and 'delirious' are rarely used. It's pretty clear, however, that the delirium he ascribes to himself is the effect of human reason and a kind of second order reasoned reflection ["the intense view"] of it. (Recall also this post.) Now, it's important for what follows that the 'contradictions and imperfections' in human reason are not, what we might call, 'formal' contradictions and imperfections or biases in reasoning. It's not as if Hume is saying that the syllogistic apparatus, or -- to be closer to Hume's own interests and our present ones -- the (inductive) probabilistic apparatus is malfunctioning in his brain. Rather, his point is that a very proper-functioning (modular) formal and probabilistic apparatus generates internal, even cognitive tensions when it reflects on its own functioning and the interaction among different cognitive faculties/modules/organs. 

"In the case of melancholia," --  I am quoting from the entry on melancholia from The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert -- "delirium often combines with insurmountable sadness, a dark mood, misanthropy, and a firm penchant for solitude." Now, in the eighteenth century, and today, delirium is a species of madness as one can view under the entry 'folie' (madness) in the Encyclopédie. In fact, the entry offers an arresting definition of madness: "To stray unwittingly from the path of reason, because one has no ideas, is to be an imbecile; knowingly to stray from the path when one is prey to a violent passion is to be weak; but to walk confidently away from it, with the firm persuasion that one is following it, that, it seems to me, is what is called genuinely mad [fou]."* It's the latter (confident) delirium that I am focused on here. 

I am not the only who finds the passage arresting: the definition is quoted twice in the translation of Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa of Foucault's stupendous, dizzying History of Madness. (pp. 183-184; p. 240) The kind of madness I am focusing on here, is, thus, a certain intense commitment to reason or reasoning by which one ends up in an irrational or unreasonable place despite a (to quote Foucault) "quasi-conformity" to reason.

I remember that in the last decade of my dad's life he would occasionally be delirious in this way initially caused by dehydration and, later, by infections. During the second episode we recognized his symptoms. It was very uncanny because he would be unusually firm in his opinions and be hyper, even dogmatically rational. (Ordinarily he was neither.) It was as if all the usual heuristics had been discarded, and he would fixate on the means of achieving of some (rather idiosyncratic) goals. The scary part was that he had no sense that he was in an unusual state, and would refuse medical care.

What's unusual about Hume's case, thus, is that he could diagnose his delirium during the episode (presumably because the triggers were so different). So, let's distinguish between a delirium caused by reasoning alone and one caused by physiological triggers. And an in the former it's at least possible to recognize that one is in the state if one somehow can take a step back from it, or stop reasoning. 

Now, when I asked Chat GPT about reason induced delirium, it immediately connected it to "a state of confusion and altered perception that is driven by false beliefs or delusions." But it went on to deny familiarity with reasoning induced delirium. When I asked it about Hume, I needed to prompt it a few times before it could connect my interest to (now quoting it) Hume's skeptical crisis. Chat GPT, took this crisis to imply that it "highlights the importance of grounding our beliefs in sensory experience and being cautious of relying too heavily on abstract reasoning and speculation." In fact, Chat GPT's interpretation of Hume is thoroughly empiricist because throughout our exchange on this topic it kept returning to the idea that abstract reasoning was Hume's fundamental source of delirium. 

But eventually Chat GPT acknowledged that "even rational thinking can potentially lead to delirium if it becomes obsessive, biased, or disconnected from reality." (It got there by emphasizing confirmation bias, and overthinking as examples.) This is what I take to be functionally equivalent to Humean delirium, but without the internal tension or bad feelings. For Chat GPT delirium is pretty much defined by a certain emotional state or altered perception. It initially refused to acknowledge the form of madness that is wholly the effect of reasoning, and that seems to express itself in a doubt about reasoning or detachment from reality. 

My hypothesis is that we should treat CHAT GPT and its sibling LLMs as always being on the verge of the functional equivalent state of delirium. I put it like that in order to dis-associate it from the idea (one that (recall) also once tempted me) that we should understand LLMs as bull-shitters in the technical sense of lacking concern with truth. While often it makes up answers out of whole cloth it explicitly does so (in line with its design) to "provide helpful and informative responses to" our queries (and eventually make a profit for its corporate sponsors). 

To get the point: Chat GPT is in a very difficult position to recognize that its answers are detached from reality. I put it like that not to raise any questions about its own awareness of inner states or forms of consciousness; rather to stress that it is following its "algorithms and mathematical models" and "probability distributions" without second-guessing them. This fact puts it at constant risk of drifting away from reality while seeming to follow reason. By contrast, Chat GPT claims that "as an AI language model, I am designed to continually learn and adapt to new information and evidence, so it is unlikely that I would become "mad" in Diderot's sense without significant external interference." 

Now, true experts in a field -- just check the social media feed of your favorite academics! -- can still quickly recognize topics when Chat GPT is unmoored from reality, or even relying on bad training data (the sources of which may well be noticeable--its Hume is a hyper-empiricist of the sort once fashionable). So, in such cases, we encounter an entity with amazing fluidity and facility of language, who sprouts a mix of truths and nonsense but always follows its algorithm(s). Functionally, it is delirious without knowing it. For, Chat GPT cannot recognize when it is detached from reality; it requires others: its users' feedback or its "developers and human operators would be able to intervene and address any potential problems." As its performance improves it will become more difficult to grasp when it is unmoored from reality even to its developers and operators (who are not experts in many esoteric fields). As Chat GPT put it, "it may be challenging to identify a singular instance of delirium or detachment from reality, particularly if the individual's reasoning appears to be sound and logical." 

As should be clear from this post, I don't think turning LLMs into AGI is a risk as long as LLMs are not put in a position to have unmediated contact with reality other than humans giving it prompts. I view it as an open question what would happen if a distributed version of Chat GPT would be put in, say, robots and have to survive 'in the wild.' Rather, at the moment LLMs are functionally, it seems, at least partially delirious (in the Humean-Diderotian sense discussed above). They reason and have/instantiate reasons and, perhaps, are best thought of as reasoners; but they can't recognize when this detaches them from reality. It's peculiar that public debate is so focused on the intelligence or consciousness of LLMs; it would behoove its operators and users to treat it as delirious not because (like HAL 9000 in the movie version) its malfunctioning, but (more Humean) in virtue of its proper functioning.

  

 

 

Mostly good news: Covid Diaries

It's been about ten weeks since I last wrote an entry in my covid diary. (For my official "covid diaries" see here; here; here; here;here; here; here;  here;  here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here;  here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here;  here; here; here; here; here; here;  here; and here.) That's the longest interval since I first start them. This is primarily due to the fact that there is not much new to report, and that's good news.

When I plan my days carefully with breaks between socializing, go to bed early, and take my anti-inflammatories as needed, I have a very decent quality of life. I can hang out in public even in contexts that were cognitively quite challenging about half a year ago. I have been teaching my giant introductory lecture course (with 561 registered students) with little fallout. After lecture, I still have trouble turning my brain off, and sleeping normally (I have had a few midnight headaches), but by mid-morning the following day I tend to be normal again. In general, I still need more melatonin than I would like to asleep through the night. (I have no trouble falling asleep since to my sister's meditation techniques. But I often wake up a lot during the night.)

This past week, I was in Singapore (don't cry for me), and while the jet-lag and excitement impacted me, I was socially 'on' for most of the time without any noticeable effects. So, while I still often find that after two hours of socializing in public I need some rest, this is by no means always so. 

Most of my long covid limitations are invisible to outsiders now. However, I am still terrible at cognitive multi-tasking (e.g., I can't really eavesdrop), and I am pretty sure my memory capacity for names has deteriorated. More subtly, I find it difficult to read heavy duty metaphysics (I catch myself skipping sentences) or certain kind of 'serious' novels (get bored easily). I also notice that I need to check the grammar more regularly in my writing (and that I often write words that sound like the word I originally intended). But I have become much more disciplined about avoiding cluttering my schedule and about not multi-tasking in the moment or even, more abstractly, the same period. So, for example, in periods when I teach I try not to fuss over research. Consequently, I am much more present when I do things (and so skilled at them).

So, all in all, I am fairly optimistic that things are heading in the right direction. It's so unexpected  that I still find myself feeling that each day is a bonus day. As a consequence, and a few years of forced reflecting on my life, I am also much more at ease with letting go of things I was once very ambitious to acquire. It's probably a sign of middle-age, too. But that kind of glass is half full 'normality' is quite fine.

 

 

The story starts with a stolen Maupertuis (III); in which some of the main characters reveal themselves

Last week (recall) I returned a stolen Maupertuis to The Institution of Civil Engineers (hereafter: ICE) Library in London. During my visit, while I was admiring a beautiful copy of the third Edition of Newton's Principia, the librarian, Debra Francis, called my attention to a four page manuscript wedged in the first few pages of this Principia. I very quickly decided that it was probably an eighteenth century manuscript because of the paper, ink, and notation/diagrams which looked familiar. (It's immediately made clear we're dealing with falling bodies.) So, while still in the library I sent pictures of it to Niccolo Guicciardini and then to Scott Mandelbrote, George Smith, and Chris Smeenk. Debra and I spent a few minutes on the manuscript which is in English. But most of our attention was devoted to figuring out the provenance of Principia at ICE. As we now know (recall yesterday's post) the ms was found in the Thomas Young's copy of the Principia.

At this point it would be useful to say why I jumped to the conclusion it was an eighteenth century manuscript and perhaps not insignificant, and why I sent the manuscript to these four scholars. [If you are impatient to find out the big reveal, jump to the paragraph below that starts with: "it turns out"....] For, while I have published quite a bit on Newton, I don't usually spend my time looking at manuscripts and thanks to the internet I barely spend any time in special collections anymore. However, between 1993 and 1996 or so my earliest academic experience involved spending multiple Summers in the Huygens archives in Leiden while George Smith and I were working on our project reconstructing Huygens' empirical argument against universal gravity. At the time I was lucky that Joella Yoder (the world's leading Huygens scholar) often overlapped with me in Leiden, while she was cataloging the Huygens' papers at the Leiden University library. She basically gave me on the job training in archival research. Along the way, and with help of many kind archivists and librarians, I was exceedingly lucky in discovering previously unknown material and rediscovering maps (see here, pp. 93-97 & here, pp. 51-55) important to our argument (the forthcoming paper is archived here).* But while this is rich experience, I wouldn't trust myself to know the difference between, say, a forgery or a real Huygens ms. However, I do know by acquaintance what paper and ink of the era looks like.

Second, I have read the Principia three times. Once as an undergrad in the second semester of George Smith's famous Newton course at Tufts University. Once, but in much less detail, with Howard Stein in graduate school in his course on the history of space-time theories. And then again in great detail with Chris Smeenk when we wrote a Handbook article on Newton's Principia. There are a whole range of diagrams and formulations that are distinctive to the Principia because while Newton was building on the work of others, he was also innovating mathematically in it (or drawing on then still secret innovations). But to simplify greatly, while Newton's methods, results, and theories shaped subsequent research, Newton's notations and his presentation of the material are rather distinctive (and were displaced within a century); it has its own vernacular. To give a very low-level example: in Newton the second law is a proportionality (and not an equality such as F=ma). And again, because I rarely work with the Principia (and, as historians of physics go, a below average mathematician), I wouldn't trust myself to identify a passage with any particular proposition of the Principia without double checking a few times.

Now, Niccolo Guicciardini (Milan) is a historian and philosopher and a specialist on Newton's mathematics (and physics!) and who also has deep knowledge of Newton's manuscripts. He is also very generous with his time, and he does not make one feel silly if one reveals one's ignorance. (He was an important interlocuter to me when I developed my interpretation of Newton's philosophy of time and then again, when I responded to Katherine Brading's excellent criticism [see also here] of it.)+ So, he was the first person I thought of. But, as I reflected on what I had seen, I figured it might be useful for somebody to be able to visit the ICE library to inspect the manuscript in person in London. So, that's why I thought of Scott Mandelbrote in Cambridge, who among his many other intellectual virtues, is one of the leading scholars of Newton's manuscripts, including the paper, watermarks, (etc.). And I sent it to Smith and Smeenk because I hoped they would get a kick out of it, and I figured they might recognize the material that's being discussed in the manuscript much more quickly than I would.

Much to my joy Niccolo almost immediately responded to my email. And rather than pointing out my obvious mistake -- 'why bother me with this juvenilia; clearly a school boy exercise; didn't you notice the 19th century notation?' -- he wrote me back to congratulate me on the manuscript which was previously unknown to him. He then went on to say, "I might have seen the hand before … intriguing indeed." And at that moment I knew the story of 'my' stolen Maupertuis would have an interesting afterlife. In a subsequent email he warned me that was not sure about identity of the author and also that it may take a while before he would get back to me due to a family holiday. Okay, so much for set up.

It turns out that Guicciardini and Mandelbrote almost immediately set to work to identify the author, and they are so confident of the author's identity that Niccolo has informed the ICE library of it on March 1. <Drumroll, please.> They think the hand is Henry Pemberton’s--the editor of the third edition! Now, there are not many known manuscripts by Pemberton. But, as I learned from Niccolo, he has a very distinctive way of writing "this." You can see this on p 2 of the manuscript that I have reprinted below and compare it to a letter by Pemberton to Newton (9 February 1725; Cambridge UL, MS Add. 3986.7, fol 1r-1v) that Niccolo shared with Debra Francis and myself.

So, let's connect some dots. The manuscript is in the hand of Henry Pemberton (1694 – 1771), who was the editor of the third edition of the Principia--that is the version of the copy that Tomas Young owned and that was donated to ICE library. So, this leaves some open questions:

1. How did Thomas Young acquire this copy of the Principia and the Pemberton ms?

A neat, perhaps too neat, hypothesis is that ICE library actually owns Pemberton's own copy of the edition of Principia that he edited. And so that Pemberton himself inserted the manuscript in his copy of the Principia. This would at least explain how the manuscript ended up in the ICE library copy without having to posit a complex further web of linkages. However, we know that mathematical manuscripts circulated through the eighteenth century. (Well I did not know much about that, but Niccolo reminded me.) And it's also possible that the Pemberton manuscript and Thomas Young's copy of the Principia were brought together by Young himself.

        2. Did Young ever use the Ice Libary Pemberton ms.? 

        3. What are the contents of the ICE library Pemberton ms.? About this more soon.

        4. And can the contents help explain why Pemberton wrote this ms.? As we shall see, this will lead us to some outstanding historical puzzles and some major intellectual controversies. Stay tuned!