John Holbo: Vavilovian Philosophical Mimicry http://crook...

John Holbo: Vavilovian Philosophical Mimicry http://crookedtimber.org/2019/12/03/vavilovian-philosophical-mimicry/: 'Today I propose a new term in political theory. Vavilovian philosophical mimicry! It denotes a type of relation between ideal and non-ideal theories. It posits that the former evolves as protective concealment for the latter.... Weeds evolve, under selective pressure, to resemble crops.... Let���s take the white supremacy-libertarianism case.... You are proposing doing something that would keep African-Americans down. Why are you doing that? Because that���s what you want. But you can���t say that. But: you can plausibly pretend it���s a (merely temporarily uncomfortable) stage on the way to some sort of ideal libertarian night watchman end-state. The advantage of ideal theory is that it���s���well, not real. Yet. So it���s low commitment, in practical terms. Nominal commitment to some distant, ideally liberal end-state covers a variety of present, anti-liberal sins. So philosophical conservatism should be theorized in terms of the following four factors: 1) an element of aristocratic anti-liberalism (animus against the agency of the subordinate classes.) Cf. Robin. 2) an element of Vavilovian, pseudo-liberal mimicry. Anti-liberalisms that survive in a liberal environment will tend to look like each other because they are all, as it were, trying to look enough like liberalism to not get weeded out as too anti-liberal. But these resemblances, because they are protective mimicry, are actually misleading. At least superficial. 3) considerable liberal democratic DNA. It���s rare to run into a real, dyed-in-the-wool Joseph de Maistre-type. 4) 2 may result in 3, over time, via ���fake it until you make it���, if you see what I mean...

#noted #2019-12-06