Canadiana

The dandelions have returned. Fewer lawns are infested this year. Ours is one.

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More reading:

• Agatha Christie, Death Comes as the End (her novel set in *ancient* Egypt)
• Philippa Foot, Natural Goodness (supplement to MacIntyre’s book)
• George Grant, Lament for a Nation (see discussion, below)
• Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals (for the group)
• Stefan Zweig, novellas: Burning Secret, A Chess Story, Fear, Confusion, and Journey into the Past (they’re great)

Grant’s 1965 book, summarized here, deserves some comment. What is Canadianness? North American Britishness, is the core of Grant’s answer. That is, Britishness nurtured as a tradition of political distinctiveness from the USA, featuring, e.g., a more serious commitment to federalism, as involving better treatment of and greater autonomy for minorities. Alas, when Britain itself was pulled into the U.S.’s military-economic orbit, Canada was pulled in, too. Canadian businessmen sold out first. Politicians followed. Nuclear weapons were brought to Canadian soil. Canada effectively gave up its nationhood and became a satellite.

(Lately, of course, the pendulum has swung the other way.)

A Canadian’s capsule summary, written two decades ago (scroll down the list to book no. 41):

Well, Canada is still here, but what, pray, is it? Grant wrote this brilliant, deep essay on the question in the early 1960s, in the aftermath of Diefenbaker’s political downfall. He wrote of a small “c” conservative society, respectful of tradition, that was disappearing under the pressure of continentalism. Forty years have passed, but Lament still speaks to us directly of important issues. It is a must-read for anyone interested in what might define a nation called Canada – especially given that the formula of “medicare with peacekeeping” is more glib than inspiring, and factually shaky as well.

Who in the U.S. knows about Prime Minister Diefenbaker? I’d guess less than one tenth of one percent (Canadian expats excepted). So, next month, I’ll read Desmond Morton’s Short History of Canada, which purports to make “acute observations on the Diefenbaker era.”

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Another item of Canadiana: The Peanut Butter Solution (1985). It includes music by teenaged Céline Dion. We watched this bizarre movie as a family. I won’t say I didn’t like it – I did! – but it fed my suspicion that our admirable northern neighbors are, in fact, deranged.

Freddie Freeman, pt. 2

John-Paul: “Children, what should I blog about?”

Samuel: “Blog that we’re getting a new brother – ‘Pip’.”

A heartwarming answer.

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Let us again salute Freddie Freeman, who has homered in every game of this World Series. (As I type, it’s the third inning of Game 3.)

Freeman looks just like Mike, my next-door neighbor. Talks like him, too.

I mentioned it.

“It’s been pointed out before,” Mike said. “It’d be nice to be him.”

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Is it strange that I want to read a 900+ pp. textbook of British criminal law?

Is my anglophilia/​crime lit appetite out of control?

Today I learned of Lon Fuller’s “speluncean explorers” (1949), which I am a little ashamed not to have come across before. I had read about R v Dudley and Stephens (1884) and Philippa Foot’s “fat man stuck in the cave mouth” (1967), a sort of Lon-Fuller-Meets-Winnie-the-Pooh scenario (see p. 7; Foot says the case is “well known to philosophers,” although I confess I don’t know who previously discussed it).

Similar cases involve the shipwrecked guys who fight over a plank; and, in Candide, James the Anabaptist, whose plight, perhaps not interesting to the theorist, is (I hope) especially poignant to the person on the street.

The women are up to something

This biography of the Oxonians Anscombe, Foot, Midgley, and Murdoch has been receiving buzz and now is endorsed by Thomas Nagel, the best reviewer of philosophical books of general interest. I expect that not a few upper-level seminars will be taught at Christian colleges on this episode in the history of philosophy – Anscombe is our (very judgmental) co-religionist – as well as upon one or two of Murdoch’s novels, because novels are fun. (The biography also touches upon Ayer, Austin, Hare, the French existentialists, and of course Wittgenstein.) I certainly am itching to design such a class, whether or not I’d teach it. Would Samuel allow me time for this pointless project? Would he even let me read through the book (not to mention, texts discussed in it that I haven’t read)? Would Samuel’s little brother allow it? It’s doubtful. Anscombe, famously, used to change her seven twerps’ diapers while conducting tutorials, and Midgley left the professoriate for many years to raise her children. So the endeavor would be personally as well as intellectually meaningful to me. And futile. And impossible.

Ben Lipscomb, the biographer, is interviewed here.

R.I.P. Nick

My teacher, the philosopher Nicholas Sturgeon, has died. Ours was a rather lopsided relationship: he was generous, encouraging, and constructively critical; I benefited. (I assisted him one semester, so I suppose he also benefited – although, since he seemed to review everything I graded, I may not have saved him all that much work.) I’ve already written how, last year, made frail by illness, he went out of his way to serve as one of my dissertation examiners. Now I’d like to say a little more about his work, character, and influence.

Nick was best known as a defender of “Cornell Realism,” a cluster of views about the function of moral discourse (it purports to describe objective facts) and the nature of morality (it’s a mind-independent part of the natural world, and, for all we know, it isn’t reducible to anything we can describe in purely non-moral terms). Although, as a supernaturalist, I didn’t quite adopt Nick’s position – I continue to think about how much of Nick’s picture of morality a Christian could agree with – his influence led me to break decisively with moral subjectivism and all deep forms of moral relativism.

Nick was the best classroom teacher I ever had. His colleagues and graduate students were in awe of his lecturing, which he famously did without notes. The lectures were thorough, rigorous, clear – and often pleasurably dramatic, even suspenseful. I remember perching on the edge of my seat as he explained to beginning ethics students the intricacies of Joseph Butler’s refutation of psychological egoism. Though the topic is a staple of ethics surveys, I haven’t seen anyone else explain Butler’s argument better (Butler himself comes close).

It was typical of Nick to pay close attention to a historical figure. I regret that I never found time to read through the British Moralists under his guidance (which he agreed to provide). I also envied the undergraduates and graduate assistants assigned to him when his turn came to teach Introduction to Philosophy: I would’ve loved to hear him lecture on Russell’s Problems of Philosophy and Berkeley’s Three Dialogues, two of his chosen texts. I did profit from his lectures on Butler, Thomas Hobbes, J.S. Mill, G.E. Moore, Philippa Foot, J.L. Mackie, and Bernard Williams. He knew all these distinguished moralists inside and out.

Many who passed through Cornell will recall his goodwill. With me he was rather withdrawn, though always kind (and I was quite shy in his presence). He was very helpful when I had to clear hurdles for my M.A. and Ph.D.

David has a good story about meeting Nick at a conference. He told him, “My brother John-Paul really likes you!” and Nick said, “Ho, ho! Well, I really like John-Paul!”

Here’s one memorial notice. It has another philosopher’s recollections of Nick.

And here’s a notice with more recollections in the comments, and a photo.