Antwerp, Belgium

Something I wrote long ago seems to have found a reader in Antwerp.

I don't see any date on this document, but I'm delighted by it.

The writer is obviously an admirer of the anarcho-capitalist intellectual Murray Rothbard, writing on behalf of something called the "Rothbard Instituut," which was apparently founded (according to their "about us" or "over ons" page) in November 2007. So sometime in the last two years, someone in Antwerp discovered and sought to reply at length to an unsigned editorial I wrote in the 1990s when I was managing editor of a very niche-publishing mag called The Pragmatist. That editorial was headlines "The Necessity of Pragmatism."

My critic appears to admire the "delightful story" I passed along from James' writings about the metaphysical debate over a squirrel in the course of a camping trip. The immediate point of that story is about the pragmatic theory of meaning, not of truth: although later in the book, aptly itself called "Pragmatism," James generalizes the method to the meaning of truth. That is where my critic's views and that of my 1990s self part company.

I won't contend with his argument today. I'm too delighted that my own literary/philosophical effort was thought worth of this painstaking a response. It is one of only four English-language articles so far listed on the site which makes my inclusion that much more intriguing.

If my critic, Frank van Dun, reads this: Hi. And thanks for making my day. I'll compose something more substantively responsive in due course.