Letter to "Philosophy Now"

Open letter to "Philosophy Now":

NO SUCH THING AS "MADNESS".

Dear Editor,

Peter Benson writes the following in the current issue of "Philosophy Now" (August/September 2017 - issue 121):

[Foucault] "... is not claiming that there is no reality to madness outside of our discourses about it. 

No-one, to the best of my knowledge, has ever seriously made such a claim."

Peter Benson therefore needs to improve his knowledge. As do many others it seems.

Many have very seriously questioned the concept of madness and asserted that it does not exist and that it is a bankrupt concept, even if the unjustly idolized Foucault is not included among them. The belief in "madness" has undoubtedly done more harm than "madness" itself, which is a concept devoid of scientific meaning anyway.

Perhaps most salient and definitely with most impact among those who have asserted the non-existence of insanity is of course Thomas Szasz (1920-2012).

In "The Myth of Mental Illness" (1961) and elsewhere he asserted that the whole concept of "mental illness" is an impossibility and effectively a "category error" to borrow a phrase from Gilbert Ryle. 

In his 1987 book "Insanity: the Idea and its Consequences" he argues with great rigour that the concept of "insanity" is "an empty vessel".

Szasz's ideas are of course relevant to wider philosophy. For example, he wrote an excellent set of essays "The Medicalisation of Everyday Life" (2007) that deal with broader issues, and not just those relevant to the important tasks of opposing coercive psychiatry and opposing what he called the Therapeutic State -  the alliance between psychiatry and the state.

Szasz should be a hero to homosexual rights proponents like Peter Benson as Szasz was one of the few to contend that homosexuality was in no way a "mental illness". But whilst  this campaign was successful, the yet more important task of convincing society that this was because nothing at all is a "mental illness" remains unfulfilled. The avoidance of a great deal of suffering is one motivation to keep trying to fulfill this task.

Yours faithfully,

"Citizen Sofa". London.

I now suppose I should have written that at least one person has seriously questioned the concept of madness. And then have included the observation of the great thinker John Stuart Mill:

“If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”

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Note added 8th October 2017:

The above letter was actually published to my great surprise and great delight in the OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2017 Issue (No.122) of "Philosophy Now", in the Letters section under the title "No Madness in Philosophy Now".

I was impressed with their obvious commitment to freedom of speech.
I personally think it is a very important issue.
A lot of current cultural and media discourse across the entire world is related to the question of so-called "mental illness" and "mental health", and I feel it is important to present this alternative view of it.

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"Foucault never rejected the concept of mental illness." Thomas Szasz.
"Nor did Foucault support the abolition of psychiatric slavery" Thomas Szasz.

Am I "Analytic" or "Continental"?

If I have to chose one, I would now say "Analytic", but I am not a partisan member of either tendency. I am interested in existentialism, but not as much as I used to be.
I would say I am a rationalist in a very general sense, and not necessarily in opposition to empiricism.
I am very sceptical of what is called "Post-Modernism".

"Masters of Modern Thought" on BBC4

3 Masters of Modern Thought

MARX               gave rise to                 Authoritarian Communism; Soviet Empire and Soviet Tyranny

NIETZSCHE    gave rise to                 Fascism and Nazism

FREUD              gave rise to                 Psychiatry

(The thinkers weren't the only cause of the phenomena referred to above; nor were the phenomena given rise to necessarily the intentions of the thinkers; nor were the phenomena referred to above the only things that the thinkers gave rise to).

3 Masters of Ancient Thought

BUDDHA                     

SOCRATES                 

CONFUCIUS

I think I prefer ancient thought if this is anything to go by.

Inspired by the BBC4 "Masters of Modern Thought" series with Bettany Hughes.

The Lessons of Sephardic Heritage

I do have some measure of Portuguese Marrano Sephardic Jewish ancestry. I must confess that I used to be inordinately proud of this. It became something I was obsessed with. I must confess that it even used to mean so much to me that it lead to nationalist and essentialist views about this identity.
I believed in preserving and defending this ethnic identity and defending and propagating its rights as an ethnicity and even as a nation. I no longer believe this.
I used to think that this Sephardic Jewish ancestry was of some kind of essential importance to me.
I thought it was my sole identity. It was a label that I accepted and was important, vital and essential to me. I declared to myself that I would never renounce my Sephardic Jewish identity.
I was very interested in the history of the marranos - who are also referred to in Hebrew as anusim.
I was even something of a Jewish supremacist, but a reading of Szasz writing about Freud cured me of this nonsensical tendency.

This tendency towards Jewish nationalism in my past was perhaps understandable due to the fact that the identity was very much concerned with struggling against its denial and suppression. But this was no reason to believe that assertion of the identity was important. I suppose I was always aware of this but regretfully I did not always fully apply this realization to my thinking.

I am now a humanist and nothing more and do not accept or aspire to the label "Jewish" or "Sephardic".

I do value the intellectual traditions exemplified by the Sephardic and Jewish stories and the individuals that comprise it. But I no longer adhere to it as an identity in any way.

I like to feel that I have learnt from this mistake.
What caused the change was that I became convinced of the bad results and implications of any kind of nationalism - which included a tendency towards racism - and of the unreality of a belief in any kind of nationalism. But most importantly I believed in humanity and human unity to such an extent that it overrode this allegiance to any particular identity.

I realized that this identity did not correspond to anything in reality. And that the beliefs of the religion of Judaism were as irrational and mistaken as those of any religion and that my links to that religion did not mean that it was any more true than any religion. I now believe that all religion is basically bullshit. Judaism - rarely among religions - combines adherence to a people to adherence to religious beliefs - it makes a religion out of a nation. This is perhaps combining two evils.

I realized that there is no reason, no need and no obligation to adhere to any kind of particular culture or identity and this was limiting my human freedom. To parafrase Kenan Malik, humans are cultural but they do not have to live in any particular culture.

I see the struggle against anti-Semitism as a struggle for individual human rights, not necessarily as a struggle for the right to be Jewish in any way.

The story of the marranos I think eventually teaches that identity and alllegiance are things that are not really relevant and humanity and freedom are the inevitable conclusions.


In my opinion, some of the most laudable figures in Sephardic history include:

Spinoza - famous rationalist philosopher. One of the first to historically analyze religious scripture and express pantheist and determinist views. Perhaps an imitator of Descartes to some extent.
Questioned religious beliefs.
Columbus - famous explorer. Probably a Sephardic marrano.
Montaigne - famous humanist writer, inventor of the essay.
Uriel Da Costa - important religious thinker who explored the marrano identity and its problems.
Francisco Sanches - important sceptical philosopher.
Emma Lazarus - USAmerican poetess.

Ironically, most of these figures were HUMANISTS and not really nationalists of any kind.
Many such figures also struggled to assert humanity before identity, and sort to question religions including Judaism.
I did always realize this.

I identify with this quote of Einstein - who was not a religious Jew:
“The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, an almost fanatical love of justice and the desire for personal independence -- these are the features of the Jewish tradition which make me thank my stars that I belong to it.”
Albert Einstein.

Not really on the syllabus at my one-man university.

"The true university of these days is a collection of books." - Thomas Carlyle


And generally I don't really have the following authors in my library, or on my reading lists.

They are not really on the syllabus at my one-man university:

Sigmund FREUD.

No facts. Only theory posing as fact. No science. No discovery. Irrationalist posing as rational.

Friedrich NIETZSCHE.

All gesture and no content. Precursor of fascism. Irrationalist.

Oscar WILDE.

Unconvincing intellectual justification for homosexual behaviour. No content to his literature. Disagree profoundly with his beliefs about "art for art's sake" and other matters. Irrationalist.

James JOYCE.

Simply incomprehensible. And truly and utterly tedious. Even the more readable and accessible works are utterly tedious. It is said of "Ulysses" that if it is not worth reading, then life is not worth living. I maintain that it cannot really be read, whereas life can be lived.

Michel FOUCAULT.

Random and fake. Incomprehensible in places. No evidence for his theories. Irrationalist.

J. R. R. TOLKIEN

Too divorced from the real world.

C. S. LEWIS

Overall, a very over-rated Christian apologist.

G.W.F. HEGEL

Irrational, incomprehensible.

Jacques LACAN

Slavoj ZIZEK

 Peter SINGER

Animals are not our equals - for that is why they are animals.

Henry JAMES.


G.K. CHESTERTON.

George BERKELEY.

Mischievous, deceitful and irrational.


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Generally speaking, I believe that the overall content and messages of the above writers are not worthy of serious intellectual consideration and that their reputations are wholly undeserved. Some parts of their writings may be beneficial and enlightening, but overall I think all of these writers are intellectually overrated.

On being thoroughly disillusioned with learning other languages.

On being thoroughly disillusioned with learning other languages.

"No man fully capable of his own language ever masters another." George Bernard Shaw.

I am thoroughly disillusioned and disenchanted with learning other languages and I no longer believe that it is possible, desirable or beneficial to fully learn more than one language - one's own mother tongue.

The G.B.S. quote shown above that I have long been aware of I now concede to be entirely true.
My own experience and observation of others leads me to believe that it is very much the truth.

I confess that I have a Modern Languages degree, which I received about 18 years ago. I now regard this as having been essentially a mistake and - in terms of studying the actual languages - a wasted degree. I would much rather have studied philosophy.

Mastering a language other than one's principle language is not even possible. But maintaining such a second language at merely a high level of proficiency requires exceptional circumstances. These are either to live in the country where it is spoken, or to have been a native speaker in the first place or have been brought up bilingually.

Even this is very difficult and rare. But another point is that it is not really necessary or desirable.
And this is nothing to do with my own language being English - which is effectively the most dominant language in the world today.

Now that I have fully conceded this point to myself, I feel set free to actually study proper subjects and to properly learn philosophy and to philosophize, without wasting my time and effort with the fantasy that I can effectively learn other languages or that I need to.

This is the source of a great feeling of self-liberation from a tyrannical belief of my own that I had imposed upon myself - the belief being that I had to thoroughly learn other languages.

I am also thoroughly liberated from the irrational belief that a language is something other than a method of communication, that learning another language gives the learner something more than just another means of saying the same thing!

A bi-product of learning a language can be cultural insights but all of these can be gained entirely by means other than learning of the language. Language itself is indeed nothing more than a means of communication.

On "Sapiens" by Yuval Noah Hariri

On "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Hariri (2016).

I find myself in disagreement with a few things in this unconventional book on the history of humanity:

- promotion of animal rights.
- promotion of homosexual behaviour and his advocacy of homosexual rights - and his presentation of such behaviour as in some way natural and wholly acceptable.
- apparent belief that mankind is possibly heading for some kind of eternal life.
- belief in the inevitability of a coming era of massive scientific discovery and progress.
- promotion of neuroscience and psychiatry.
- excessive promotion of Buddhism.
- portrayal of communism and other ideologies as being "just other religions".
- belief in conventional economics and in "economic growth" as unlimited.

Apart from the disagreements, I think that this is an excellent and thought-provoking book and I am now greatly enjoying the sequel "Homo Deus".

Typical John Gray bullshit

"There is no basis – whether in logic or history – for the prevailing notion that atheism and liberalism go together." 

John Gray, philosopher.

If you ask me, this is typical John Gray bullshit!

He is trying to suit reality to his own pre-conceived agenda and pro-religion views.

In discussion here is this article by the philosopher John Gray : John Gray "The Ghost at the Atheist Feast."

I am an atheist. And I believe that there are many deep links - both in logic and in history - between liberalism and atheism. Furthermore, I believe it is obvious that this is the case.

Why should being an atheist mean that I have to be a fan of Nietzsche?
There is no logical or historical basis for any notion that atheism and devotion to Nietzsche go together!
I think that Nietzsche's work is mainly execrable, pompous rubbish.

I deny that Nietzsche is "the pivotal modern critic of religion", as Gray affirms in this article.
The decline of religion that he echoed was not necessarily anything to do with him and it is something that was happening anyway, as Weber has described.

John Gray is something of a pessimist who seems to believe that humans are incorrigibly religious.
Being a pessimist is pointless. Furthermore, it is simply not true that humans cannot live without a religion, depending on how one defines religion.

Germaine Greer is totally right about so-called "trans-sexuality"

Germaine Greer is absolutely right about so-called "trans-sexuality".

I think Germaine Greer was totally right and absolutely within her rights to say that a man who detaches his penis does not become a woman by doing so. An 100% physical sex change is medically impossible and more people should say so. "Feeling like" a member of the opposite sex does not give anyone the automatic right to try to become one - not that this would even be possible. This is obvious. Furthermore, it is in no way a medical condition to "feel like" a member of the opposite sex.
Feelings cannot be illnesses. It is a logical and semantic error to call a feeling an illness.

There is no intrinsic tendency in humans for them to be "born into" the wrong sex.
This is a biological impossibility.
"Trans-sexuality" does not exist as an intrinsic human tendency or a medical condition.
People are free to label themselves as they like and have whatever medical procedures performed on them that they like. But they don't have the right to prevent me from pointing out that sex changes are not really biologically possible.
Also, I do think that so-called full "sex change" operations should not be officially recognized by medicine nor provided by state-funded health systems, nor that "transsexualism" should be recognized as a medical or social condition.

Why does merely pointing out the above truths and expressing such opinions somehow turn me into some kind of nazi - according to a very dominant strand in contemporary Western political culture?

I am an ardent anti-nazi, anti-fascist and anti-racist and I resent that just because I express scepticism with regard to so-called "trans-sexualism" I am somehow associated with nazism, fascism and racism. I am very much in favour of freedom and tolerance.


Germaine Greer's remarks about "trans-sexual" rights

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/germaine-greer-stirs-controversy-for-her-latest-transgender-remarks-and-defends-real-women-comments-a6980166.html

Human nature

Sexual orientation or sexuality is not intrinsic, immutable or fixed. People are just SEXUAL.

Cultural identity is not intrinsic, immutable or fixed. People are just HUMAN.

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