Thursday, January 14, 2010

A brief Epistle to Totustuos

Totustuos (nice Latin pun of a name/handle! Is he or she really "totally mine?" "All yours," literally - though perhaps short for JPII's motto) commented on my Blog essay: “Responding to the Manhattan Declaration” with the following:


“Robert George is truly a brilliant Philosophical icon of the 21st century. No liberals have ever challenge and won against his natural law argument. To all liberal gays, transgender, and other morphed humans, go straight and be save.”

I can certainly agree with Totustuos that Robby George is “brilliant” and is seen as a “philosophical icon” to his many followers, including many members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

However, with regard to any successes to a challenge to Robby’s “Natural Law Argument,” I would disagree. Robby usually sets up a straw man “liberal” who may be arguing philosophically in accord with utilitarianism or hedonism as a basis, rather than a “natural law” or “social contract” theory. In so setting up a liberal “straw man” as a hedonist or utilitarian, Robby proceeds to beat the imaginary "liberal" opponent thoroughly (but figuratively) senseless.

Robby doesn’t normally face challenges on his own natural law turf, against his concepts of “practical reason.” But that is exactly what he gets from me - and I don't think our correspondent Totustuos quite gets that.

Robby’s “practical reason” (his version of “natural law”) arguments fail, first because his idea of natural law is not derived from nature (but from nature, at best, viewed through a set of unwarrantedly-constraining blinders to eliminate natural diversity).

Second, his arguments fail because his reasoning, or rather, rationalization on the basis of false premises, goes further astray. This may be done blindly, because his rationalization process is flawed by virtue of prejudice that is sufficiently internalized and institutionalized so he truly believes that he is arguing from Reason, or malevolently, where he knows he is arguing from a grounding ind eep-seated prejudice, but either does not care or is working knowingly for an evil cause. I will presume the former ignorant blindness rather than the latter indifference or malevolence, since such a presumption is more charitable and collegial, but I will not rule out the latter motivations.

Augustine of Hippo brought both Platonic philosophy and a corrupt Manichean view of nature into Christian thinking. Sadly, Christianity was diminished by the concepts of Original Sin and the view that the natural world is somehow less than the spiritual one.

Aquinas made Aristotle safe for Christianity, and almost single-handedly ushered in a Christian respect for science (notwithstanding those "Galileo moments"), and the budding of the Renaissance and Industrial eras.

Robby George and his views represent a dead end, a turning away from right reason and a descent into barbarism – and he even knows it. When confronted by a reporter for the New York Times Magazine with possible criticism based on Martin Luther’s insistence that “reason was so corrupted that faith in the divine was humanity’s only hope of salvation,” Robby is quoted as acknowledging “This is a serious issue, and if I am wrong, this is where I am wrong.”

This is indeed exactly where Robby’s rationalizations are wrong. Beginning with a warped and unscientific understanding of the nature of nature, he builds his rationalized castles in the sand without foundation, convinced that his “practical reason” rationalizations are correct despite being blinded by and presumably not cosnsciously aware of his deeply-rooted prejudices.

To Totustuos, who refers to “. . . transgender, and other morphed humans,” it is likely that I may not get through with this message, because of the presence of the same sort of deeply ingrained, institutionalized, institutionally approved and authorized prejudice that warps the perception of reality to conform it to the already-warped principles on which the prejudice is built. Castles built in the same sand into which heads are hidden, waiting to be washed away by the waters of right reason.

Perhaps it is true that Robby George is brilliant, but brilliance alone is insufficient – one must also be correct. Brilliance was traditionally known to be the mark of the Archangel Lucifer – and tradition tells us what he did, and who he is – one reason I referred to Robby as Father of Lies in my earlier essay. Brilliant, but corrupted by his hubris as was his “brilliant” predecessor luminary, he and his flawed rationalizations continue unjustly persecuting me and my people.

Totustuos, to be saved, you may yet have to hug me, at least spiritually.

In pacem et iustitiam,

Joann Prinzivalli
Serva Servarum Deae

4 comments:

  1. I agree.. but disagree.. I know weird... I am more liberal than most in my "belief system," and I have seen "Robby" take on rather liberal opponents, and win, with a natural law type argument... which I believe is bullshit anyways... natural law would differ from God's law... if we believe His Word... so.. anyways..

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  2. hi,
    sorry to thread-jack,
    but i was wondering about your comments on pam's h b.
    i left this on batty's blog
    (he is cd and trans):

    "hi batty, do you think that all cd's are trans?
    some sights that i have read trying to determine that seem to say that they themselves mostly don't feel trans, i would have thought that they were trans, too....
    so it's confusing.
    gaelige
    (-ftm trans and not a cd...)

    February 12, 2010 6:05 PM"

    ...i used to think all gender people were trans, but now i'm wondering if that is
    "appropriation"?,
    you know?
    on our part?
    not sure what the truth is, one guy said when he "puts on female clothes they become male as they are on his male hetrosexual body."

    so i am not sure what is true any
    more.i figured i'd ask to educate myself.
    thanks,
    hope i'm not bugging you.
    -gaelige.

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  3. jzholloway, thanks for your comment. I think I might fare better than most in a debate with Robby, only because I'd be arguing from a natural law perspective based on the reality of nature rather than Aristotle warmed over by Aquinas. I don't have the academic credentials, even if I did spend three years in a Catholic Seminary, and a J.D.

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  4. gaelige,

    Threadjacking isn't nice. However, my answer is that most cd folks I know would identify as "bi-gender" because their cding is to express an "inner femme self" rather than a matter of getting a sexual thrill from cding. Yes, there are some who might not have an "inner femme self" and thus would not be trans, but those are more likely to have a fixation on the object itself even more than the wearing of it. Ray Blanchard makes a big thing about autogynephilia, but all it really is is feeling the same way about being a woman that any other woman feels.

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