Ciceronian Review

Speak Up

I have been listening to the American Academy of Poets' cds.  There are four or five in the set so far, I've listened to two.  Each is a selection of poems by various poets, each reading their own poem (or reciting; hard to tell from the cd).  I have not noticed a particular theme or organizing principle, at least for the first two.  The style of recitation varies widely, which is no surprise.  It is what I find myself thinking most about as I listen.  (The disks are left in for a longish period, so I listen to them over and over, which is not so bad as my commute is all of 12 minutes.  That is time for about 3 or 4 cuts.)  Nor is it a surprise that many of the poets are poor readers (or is it reciters?) of their own work.  Attend more than a couple of readings and both of those points become obvious.  I have strong preferences about presentation.  One style is to read each line, rising tone at the end, as portentously as possible.  Do not like that at all, no matter the poem.  All of the syntax is lost, and most of the meaning.  There are also those who read the rhyme and the line break, but in monotone.  Does reflect the written word, but it is nevertheless a bad idea normally.  There is no thought there for the fat that it is an oral presentation, not visual.  Some poems are all on the page (Un coup de des) - but then do not read it aloud.  I prefer the poet to speak, to read the words as spoken language.  It is harder to hear the artifice, t'is true.  But the artifice is also then less for its own sake, and the words do what they should.

Emily Dickenson Was a Jackson Democrat Avant La Lettre

In Bernstein and Leiter's debate, once again the them of ideological diversity in the academy comes up.  The libertarians and right again complain that the academy is too liberal, that the political identifications of the faculty at universities evidences a bias in education and a bias against conservative and libertarian academics.  The theme is mendacious.
Begin with the question of why or how the party affiliation might matter.  What is the libertarian interpretation of Baudelaire, or the peculiarly Republican take on Mallarme?  The conservative version of Catullus differs how exactly from the liberal?  Maybe the idea is than adherent of the right wing of the Republican Party has a different view of the nature of reference, or on verb formation than does a centrist Democrat.  Do not think so.  What is the bias that is of concern?  Liberal chemistry?  As the party affiliations don't appreciable alter across disciplines (at least for these purposes), the effect should be the same everywhere.

Count to Two

Volokh Conspiracy devoted a week to posts from the authors of the book on the Duke Lacrosse case, Until Proven Innocent.  The authors had plenty of superlatives for themselves, and quite a few for the prosecutor and assorted others.  Mostly deserved, I should say.  But on one point, I think the authors and their crew are a bit misleading

I would also wager that the commenter cannot site many (if any) examples of prosecutorial misconduct directed against poor people in recent years that is as egregious as the misconduct of Nifong here.

Two come to mind:  Tulia, Texas and Central Park Jogger.  Both involved conviction of innocents.   They both also involved the usual news media's prosecutorial bias.  I assume somewhere in the book that authors explain how the Duke case was different in that regard.  Maybe it was just that it was national news (something that mystified me then). 

See this as well.

Double Standard

The reviews of Dawkins' The God Delusion led me to expect a bit of a tirade, intemperate polemics.  The book is none of that.  There was little or nothing in the way of cheap shots or intemperate rhetoric.  The book is as respectful as is appropriate.  It is true that Dawkins is not as careful as one might wish in setting out some of the argument for God, but this is not a work in philosophy. It is a popular book, aimed at an educated but not specilist audience.  There is no reason to spend fifty pages on the ontological argument or on the variations on answers to the problem of evil.  On that standard, it is hard to complain. 

Dawkins treats the question of the existence of God as an empirical question, which is surely right.  The question is about what exists, and the object is one taken as having causal presence.  So one should turn to the evidence, see what it offers.  Nothing much is what is offered.  Sagan's book takes a similar approach, through composed some years earlier.  It is a bit more fun, and a faster read.  Sagan looks about for reasons to believe in God, and finds none.  I suppose a believer might take offense at Dawkins' account of why people believe, but even that seems to be a bit thin-skinned.  Persistent belief in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence and a complete absence of supporting evidence does require an explanation.  That explanation is not going to include, and should not include, anything like praise of the reasoning abilities of the believers.  Reasoning is not what is moving the belief, or sustaining it.

Temptation

The September 5 issue of the TLS has a review of Hitchens' God is Not Great by Richard Dawkins.  The interesting thing about the review is not that it is positive, but that Dawkins holds to the end the most interesting question for the review.  It is not whether Hitchens is too hard on the cultists, or whether he has addressed all of the right arguments about theism.  That all seems hunky-dory with Dawkins - Hitchens writes well and has entertaining things to say.  There are amusing bits on various religions, including the local cult here in Zion -- golden plates translated by the virtually illiterate. 

The interesting bit is the question at the end: 

Finally, there are those critics who can’t resist the ad hominem blow: “Don’t you know Christopher Hitchens supported the invasion of Iraq?” But so what? I’m not reviewing his politics, I’m reviewing his book. And what a splendid, boisterously virile broadside of a book it is.

Good question and good answer.  Even in my elderly state, I have a desire that the good and bad line up neatly.  Admittedly, pretty weak and easy to correct.  But I would like it, e.g., Yoo was a vile dinner guest as well as a political cretin.  T'ain't so though, not often.  Hitchens is fun to watch in a debate.  His politics are a mixed bag -- on Iraq he was wrong, and apparently irremediable or, maybe, incorrigible.  He was and is wrong on Iraq from start to end.  But that is not the book being reviewed.  Hitchens' politics on Iraq do not entail we ignore the rest of his work, or fail to judge the book on its own.  Still, there is the temptation -- I wonder why.  Except at the extremes, we tend not to associate the quality of work of a painter with his or her politics.  Perhaps a bit of: a public intellectual ought to get more of it right?  Not enough I think.