Esse est Percipi, or, What Good is an Unread Blog?

"Descartes shut the self in its inner prison," he writes, "and Fichte made the place so comfortable that the self decided to stay there." -- Roger Scruton

The Conservative Philosopher is off and running, temporarily unencumbered by permalinks. The posts so far are interesting, though Keith Burgess-Jackson is visibly disappointed at the bad manners and irrelevant tangents indulged by too many who comment, and their over-personal rhetoric.

Think arguments and analyses, not people. If an argument is bad, it cannot be made good by being made by a good person. If an argument is good, it cannot be made bad by being made by a bad person.

More Scruton thoughts for bloggers (though S. probably abhors so inelegant a term):

Self-expression is fine if you've got an interesting self to express. But what makes a self interesting is precisely that it's gone through a rigorous process of discipline and order and self-understanding of a kind that, for instance, Milton went through. Self-expression that hasn't done that is just embarrassing.

He endorses our Good&Happy mini-hippocratic oath.  First, sow no misery...

But I do believe that when other people are concerned, one is under an obligation not to impose one's anxieties and glooms upon them, but to fortify them in the difficult business of living.

Things good to think about.

The long post by Daniel Bonevac, Conservatives on Innovation (2.1.05), interprets the pesky standards of those cold-hearted mossback hypocritical obstructionist 'compassionate conservative' thing-ys.

For those of more technical philosophical bent, the blog resurrects the centuries-old controversies raised by Berkeley. George  Berkeley (1685-1753), Irish post-Platonic Anglican bishop (and benefactor of Harvard and Yale), concluded that ordinary physical objects are composed solely of ideas, which are inherently mental, and that thus objects derive their existence from being observed. The tree falling, unheard, in the forest paradox.

This witty parody is attributed to Msr. Ronald Knox:

There once was a man who said, ‘God
Must think it exceedingly odd
If he finds that this tree
Continues to be
When there’s no one about in the Quad.’

A response purportedly from Bishop Berkeley's POV:

‘Dear Sir
Your astonishment’s odd:
I am always about in the Quad
And that’s why the tree
Will continue to be,
Since observed by,
Yours faithfully,
God.

Go along now, mingle, work the room, express yourselves, see and be seen.

Comments

[Richard Lawrence Cohen]

Pretty narrow gate for self-expression, eh? Whose self–expression is allowed by these criteria? Perhaps only Scruton and those who have read all the books he has, and preferably at the same schools. Would Blake pass the test? I doubt it. Would either of the Dylans? Certainly not -- how embarrasssing! Shelley? Whitman? Dickinson? I don't see anything rigorous about any of their investigations. (Wordy, yes, rigorous, no.) Lawrence? Kafka? Totally beyond the pale. Not to mention all us ignorant slobs out here.