Ecstasies of the Spiritual Life:
Recollecting the Life and Words of W. B. "Bill" Macomber
Philosophy Professor
University of California at Santa Barbara

Part I: The Man and the Moment

Gregory Desilet

        In 1990, W. B. Macomber’s The Anatomy of Disillusion: Martin Heidegger’s Notion of Truth was included in the Harper Collins volume Masterpieces of World Philosophy. The selections were made by John Roth—Professor of Philosophy, Claremont McKenna College. Roth judged Macomber’s work to be one of the most artful and insightful commentaries on Heidegger’s Being and Time. As the oldest of Roth’s three selections on Being and Time, The Anatomy of Disillusion has stood the test of time and remains among the most readable and engaging, despite the enormous number of commentaries on Heidegger in the last several decades. And those who have attempted the study of Heidegger will appreciate that creating a “readable and engaging” commentary on his work is no small achievement. Evidence for the longevity and readability of Macomber’s text can now be found even on internet blogs. One philosophically inclined blogger, author and journalist Dudley Lynch, reported on his encounter with The Anatomy of Disillusion. Having browsed many a dull philosophical tome, Lynch thought Macomber’s book might be similarly mind-numbing and opened it with some hesitation:

This time, unwilling to again risk the onset of numbness so quickly, instead of starting at the front of the book, I went to the back. And found myself reading about Nietzsche, not Heidegger. Macomber, himself a philosopher, has a nice style. I suspect I could have a conversation with him about phenomenology and not come away thinking I’m mentally deficient. He explained, for example, that Nietzsche prescribed not partial nihilism but “complete nihilism” as needed to purge Western society of the damage done to it by its history. “There is no curing cancer with Noxema,” writes Macomber. Now, I strongly suspect that this is one of the few instances in the history of philosophical writing that the word “Noxema” has appeared in a scholarly work, and perhaps the only time. And I just find that phenomenological! (http://www.braintechnologies.com/blog/archives/archive-102006.htm  October 25, 2006).

Macomber had a way of translating arcane concepts with metaphors any guy on the street could grasp. Like a Tom Wolfe for philosophers, he ventured into the maze of discourse and came out with a report that made clear and luminous much of what transpired in these impenetrable nether-regions. He taught philosophy at the University of California at Santa Barbara from 1965 to 1973. For reasons touched upon below, he failed to get tenure in 1973 and thereafter disappeared from academic life. Having published only one book (but a great one), classroom instruction emerged as his most outstanding talent. He could mesmerize an audience like few in the field and made an unforgettable impression on many students—including me.

Historical Background--UCSB, Isla Vista, and Activism

Macomber’s interrupted career in academics may seem tragic. And in at least one sense it truly is. The fact that he never returned to teaching or writing (aside from, as he put it, “thousands of letters to which he received few replies”), turned out to be a great loss for the academic community in general. But his brief academic career remains remarkable in that it shines so brightly through his teaching years at UCSB. That a life is difficult to understand apart from the circumstances in which it is lived—while surely a cliché—is especially true in the case of Macomber. He stood out in the milieu of competing voices and distractions at UCSB where, as it turned out, circumstances shaped and drew out his unique talents and pressed others toward the answers and challenges he offered. While much of what Macomber had to say remains relevant precisely because it appreciably transcends place and time, his impact on the campus community and his students can be most fully understood and valued against the backdrop of the unusual place and time in which he taught—the UCSB campus and adjoining Isla Vista community of the late 1960s and early 1970s. A brief description of this place and time offers perspective on the backdrop of extremes within which Macomber shaped the quality, style, and tone of what he liked to call his philosophical “digressions.” 

UCSB and its stepchild, the unincorporated commercial and residential community of Isla Vista, sit alone together ten miles north of Santa Barbara on a rise of sandstone called Goleta Point that juts out into the Pacific like the corner of a football field. Hemmed in by the ocean, the Devereaux and Goleta Sloughs, and the University, Isla Vista filled a confined corner, a corner that by 1967 became home for over 11,000 residents—mostly students.  

            Owing to its confined geography, population density, substandard housing, and proximity to affluent Santa Barbara and suburbs, Isla Vista garnered the tag line: “one square mile of reality surrounded by paradise.” Its growth came rapidly along with the University expansion in the late ‘50s. As the University and its dorm housing project failed to keep up with increasing enrollment, enterprising and mostly unscrupulous developers built apartments in Isla Vista for students. Since the area was unincorporated, it fell outside city building codes. Consequently slapdash construction proliferated. Within a few years of use, along with little maintenance, most of the housing acquired the run-down aspect of a ghetto—but a ghetto on land that looked and felt like a resort playground.

            By the late ‘60s Isla Vista had become a demographically unique community with few adults over twenty-five. The students who lived there—most of them living away from home for the first time—experienced a sudden and exceptional degree of social freedom. But this social freedom did not translate into political power. Many students felt mostly powerless in the face of laws and political issues that directly affected them. On campus they had little or no voice in administration policies and decision-making. In Isla Vista they had no voice in community issues, because, being unincorporated, Isla Vista fell under county commissioner oversight. Male students under 21 years of age were subject to a military draft even though not yet old enough to vote (voting age didn’t lower to 18 until Amendment 26 was ratified in July of 1971). Last but not least, most students were still dependent on someone else—parents or banks—for financial support. 

Despite being liberated from the family in the sense of having their own place for the first time, students were disenfranchised in every way that mattered politically. While tasting freedom, they continued to feel the pinch of Mother Hubbard’s shoe. Constrained by a system that defined them as dependents, students were sensitive to every sign of repression on the local and national horizon. Consequently, the circumstances were ripe for political activism. And, of course, the Vietnam War and the institution of the draft served to magnify this activism in extraordinary ways. It could be said with little exaggeration that UCSB of the late ‘60s was among the better public liberal arts universities in the country. But it offered these assets to a student body that largely abandoned the traditional curriculum in favor of a more pressing interest in radical change on political landscapes ranging from the local to the national.

            Like many among the freshmen class, I was initiated into this stew of political and cultural contradictions in the fall of 1968. Adrift in the milieu, I was wandering down a corridor in South Hall one afternoon when I heard a voice coming from an open doorway. It was the voice of a man talking to a class, but it wasn’t really talk. It was more like oration—but not the pompous, overblown kind. The voice stopped me but the words pulled me in.

I had caught Bill Macomber in the middle of his class on the history of philosophy for which, as I found out later, the only text was Plato’s Symposium. I had never heard philosophy spoken with so little effort yet so much involvement. I stood outside the doorway listening for a few minutes, then, hooked by what he was saying as well as the way he was saying it, I slipped into the back of the room and took a seat for what was left of the hour. After class I asked to audit the course for the rest of the quarter. Persuaded by my interest, Macomber agreed.

        In the next class he took up where he had left off, dressed the same as before: brown tweed sport coat with elbow patches, beige cotton shirt with open collar, and forest green corduroy pants—all bearing the wrinkles of consecutive days use. His unkempt, curly, brown hair had the look of a man who had just gotten out of bed. Today he commented that he had not found time to shave—which, he digressed, brought to mind a story from a colleague about a friend who had sent Einstein an electric shaver as a gift. At a loss for what to make of it, Einstein finally had to phone his friend to ask him what he was supposed to do with it. Anecdotes like this, slipped into the stream of metaphysical narrative, contributed to Macomber’s infectious popularity despite the challenges of the subject matter and his other-worldly demeanor. Unlike Einstein, Macomber kept up enough of a connection with the mundane to know what an electric shaver was. He just didn’t concern himself sufficiently with cosmetic details to make regular use of one. But contradicting the professor stereotype of detached appearance were the eyes. Far from absent-minded, Macomber’s eyes were always unmistakably present and alert, probing the room from face to face as he spoke.

        He generally started off with a comment or two then fielded questions from students. But before long, a word would trigger a network of associations and he was off and running, swept away in the elaboration of a theme, speaking in spontaneous, stream-of-consciousness style without notes of any kind. He belonged to the soul brotherhood of jazz musicians—especially, I imagined, saxophone jazz musicians. Class was a jam session in which he rose to become the soloist. He would respond to suggestive notes tossed out by others and then just blow. Familiar riffs, a network of associations, would pop up again and again, but the way he would mix and weave these threads always produced subtle new variations. His voice resonated like a well-worn instrument—sonorous with instinctive inflection and emphasis. Combined with rhythm and timing, he exuded a hypnotic and infectious pathos. As the hour progressed the questions fell off and everyone laid back and took in the music.

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