More about Whitman

I have mentioned before my disappointment at how infrequently intellectual sense and moral sense seem to be joined together. How many times have my favourite scientists and authors, brimming with logically sound, robust, exhilarating ideas, proven to have the moral sense of a (feckless, maladjusted) rodent? How many times have moralists I find inspiring, sustaining, utterly consistent with my inner sense of what absolute morality must be, proven to be complete idiots- holding to be true propositions that are not only logically ridiculous, but in their implications ethically monstrous?

Here, for example, is the paragraph that caused me to suddenly recoil from an essay- very enjoyable up until then- by a Professor of Philosophy at a Catholic university in the United States:

The second form of the denial of the minor premise is not ‘I would be perfectly content if only,’ but rather, ‘I am perfectly content right now.’ This, I suggest, verges on culpable dishonesty, the sin against the Holy Spirit, and requires something more like exorcism than refutation ... it is subhuman, vegetative, pop psychology. Even the hedonist utilitarian John Stuart Mill, one of the shallowest minds in the history of human thought, said that it was better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied.

‘Denial of the minor premise’ is defined in the previous paragraph as saying: ‘I do not observe any such desire for God, or heaven, or infinite joy, or some mysterious x which is more than any earthly happiness.’ Thus, happy people who don’t believe in God ought to be- exorcised? – to make them unhappy? And Whitman, apparently, was either a charlatan or a vegetable- perhaps a spring onion.

The logic in the final sentence is also breathtaking: if ‘one of the shallowest minds in the history of human thought’ agrees with what I am saying- gosh, then it must be true...