General Remarks about Political Philosophy > Likes and Comments
Alan, in multiple readings I have found parallels between Rome and the U.S. political structure. Would it be accurate to say the basis of United States civilization is based on Roman Culture? If this is true, why is the U.S. also making some of the same mistakes that caused the demise of Rome. Ex, Open borders, Gladiator style games (football, reality shows), and even the final move I believe to an oligarchy ruled society? Would it seem that we should avoid the mistakes and do something different?
Temeika wrote: "Alan, in multiple readings I have found parallels between Rome and the U.S. political structure. Would it be accurate to say the basis of United States civilization is based on Roman Culture? If th..."Many of the eighteenth-century American Founders were well read in the ancient Greek and Latin philosophers, historians, and political writers, and they often read these authors in their original languages. The Founders applied the best of what they had learned from those who had written about Roman history and government (especially Cicero, Livy, and Tacitus but also including several others) to the American situation, modified, of course, by the circumstances of eighteenth-century America and also in light of what they had read from such Enlightenment philosophers as Locke and Montesquieu (who were, in their own ways, also influenced by the ancient Greeks and Romans). You might be aware of Carl J. Richard's The Founders and the Classics: Greece, Rome, and the American Enlightenment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994). Although I purchased this book in 2002, I have not yet read more than a few pages of it. I hope to find time to read it in its entirety sometime in the near future. Other books that look interesting (which I have also not yet fully read) are Robert A. Ferguson's The American Enlightenment, 1750-1820 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994) and Caroline Winterer's The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780-1910 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012).
The classical Roman Republic gave way, of course, to the Roman Empire with all the vices you mention, though the open borders issue would have been different in many respects and is, in any event, difficult to understand in all its ramifications today. For example, I don't think there is a current intention to have open borders, nor do I agree with the anti-immigrant strain that occurs repeatedly in American history and that has once again become an obsession in certain political circles. But your references to "Gladiator style games (football, reality shows), and even the final move I believe to an oligarchy ruled society" are certainly on point. We are, indeed, becoming more and more like the Roman Empire in its declining days. As I am past retirement age, I won't be around in thirty years, but I shudder to think what American society will be like at that time if present trends continue. Yet, American society seems to have a way of looking into the abyss and somehow recovering some of its best traditions just when all seems lost. What the world is doing to the environment today may, however, be irremediable, and this, of course, has something to do with the "oligarchy ruled society" you mention.
Please feel free to comment further, including remarks on any books you have read on this subject.
Addendum to my preceding email:As George Santayana wrote, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Although this quotation is often misapplied, there is truth in it. Americans have become woefully ignorant of history. Accordingly, we stumble blindly into the future, repeating the same mistakes we made earlier, though in somewhat different contexts. To quote F. Scott Fitzgerald in the last sentence of The Great Gatsby, "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
As Moderator of this group, I have deleted a post and a topic on the "Luciferian Doctrine" as being inappropriate for this group. I have not previously found it necessary to delete a post/topic, but this one was totally beyond the scope of the subject matter of this group.Alan E. Johnson
Congrats Alan. Count on me. Ron Carneiro
I recently finished reading Mau VanDuren's "Many Heads and Many Hands: James Madison's Search for a More Perfect Union." The book explores Madison's international influences to write the Constitution, and sheds light on the origins of the virtues and rights Americans value so much. I'd love to know what fellow history buffs think.
Alan - about equal opportunities x inequalities - let me focus on Ayn Rand Institute statement:"If you leave people free, you’re going to get enormous economic inequality because different people produce different amounts of wealth. So how can the government make people equal? Only one way: use physical force to prop some people up and to pull other people down. But how is that fair?"
Unfair is not wealth inequalities at the end but lack of equal opportunities at the beggining. Problem is not put rich down and poor up. Equal opportunities at the beggining - nutrition, health and education - allow everybody produce and consume exchanging in free market system. There is fair way to reduce inequalities - just providing equal opportunities!!! Think about it. Cordially. Ron Carneiro
Maxwell wrote: "I recently finished reading Mau VanDuren's "Many Heads and Many Hands: James Madison's Search for a More Perfect Union." The book explores Madison's international influences to write the Constituti..."Thanks, Maxwell. I haven't read this book but have now put it on my Goodreads "Want to Read" and Amazon Kindle Wish Lists. Since I haven't yet read the book, I can't comment on it. You might find the following topic threads of this folder of interest: Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) and James Madison (1751-1836) and Types of Government: United States Constitution and Government.
Addendum to my post 9, above: Also, the Roger Williams (ca. 1603-83) and Seventeenth-Century Rhode Island Government topic. My book The First American Founder: Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience addresses the colonial and international influences on the eighteenth-century American founders in Chapter 9 and Appendix D.
Ronaldo wrote (post 8): "Unfair is not wealth inequalities at the end but lack of equal opportunities at the beggining. Problem is not put rich down and poor up. Equal opportunities at the beggining - nutrition, health and education - allow everybody produce and consume exchanging in free market system. There is fair way to reduce inequalities - just providing equal opportunities!!!"Ron, here are some of my questions:
First, how can there be equal opportunities at the beginning when land distribution and inherited wealth are unequal at the beginning of every person's life? Do we tax all inherited wealth other than real estate at 100% so that everyone starts on an equal playing field? Even if we did that, however, how would the problem of land distribution be solved? The history of land distribution in Europe and in North and South America is a history of conquest. The European monarchs conquered territory and then divided it up among their chief military retainers, who became barons, dukes, and lesser nobles. In England, for example, William of Normandy, after he conquered England in 1066, took the land previously belonging to the inhabitants (who themselves acquired it originally through various conquests among the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Celts, etc.) and divided it among his retainers. To this day, in legal theory, the monarch owns all the land in England and everyone else has only "estates" in it. In North America, land was taken by force by the English and Spanish from the Native Americans, who themselves acquired it by way of wars among the various tribes. It is my understanding that similar events occurred in South America, with the result being that certain landowners ended up with vast amounts of land that then passed from generation to generation. So there is no equality of opportunity at the beginning. There has never been such a thing as a free market system, because land, in particular, was never acquired in a Lockean state of nature in the manner described by Locke. Whatever the case may have been in prehistoric times, land ownership in historic memory has originally been acquired by force.
Second, I still don't understand how corporations are going to be persuaded to finance nutrition, health, and education. This is kind of like our presidential aspirant Donald Trump saying that he's going to build a wall between the US and Mexico and make Mexico pay for it. We have a saying in this country that applies to such scenarios: "ain't gonna happen"!
Thanks Alan for your prompt replay. I don´t make me understand. My proposal is a new labour contract where nutrition, health and education to employees and dependents (children and seniors) become private companies responsibility acquiring it in free market and corresponding government tax reduction. Labour is a energy transformation process from human energy to physical or intelectual energy. Only that - simply and practical, respecting private property and not promoting land distribution (by the way, about your explanation of land distribution in Europe and in North America I´m watching excelent movies in netflix - Castle - and about Pope - The Borgias - and Papisa).Well, corporations will be persuade to finance nutrition, health and education just to reduce tax paid to government - profit my friend - the only language they understand!!! Cheerrss. Ron Carneiro
Ronaldo wrote: "Thanks Alan for your prompt replay. I don´t make me understand. My proposal is a new labour contract where nutrition, health and education to employees and dependents (children and seniors) become ..."What about those who are unemployed or self-employed? What about those who are mentally or physically disabled?
As I said earlier, this still doesn't start with equality at the beginning, because inherited wealth in land and personalty gives some people a great advantage over others. As for equality of result, none of the current politicians (including the self-avowed democratic socialist Bernie Sanders) in the US advocates that. Equality of result is, if it ever existed, one of the old left-wing ideas of yesteryear that has not survived the competition in the marketplace of ideas. Perhaps it is different in other countries, I don't know. But conservatives and libertarians, even here, set up this "straw man" and then knock it down. Trouble is, no reputable progressive or even socialist argues for it.
My wife and I watched one of the Borgia series on Amazon Prime (there are at least two different series). It was quite an eye-opener. I especially liked the cameo appearances by Machiavelli.
Alan - remember that economy is dynamic not static - when you reduce government intervention and set everything free, we´ll gonna have full productive employment, it means wages going up and will not necessary to set a minimum wage!! Can you imagine what does it mean? it´s a nirvana for economic thinkers!! Can you imagine profit depending on human health!!! it´s nirvana for humanist thinkers!! In other words, we´ll restaure all american founding fathers - limited government, free market, individual focus, reduction of poverty, etc
About Borgia - Machiavelli posture, for me too, make me awake up to open eyes and imagine what was necessary to keep proximity of power giving information about gold of Medici bankers. Best. Ron Carneiro
Ronaldo wrote: "Alan - remember that economy is dynamic not static - when you reduce government intervention and set everything free, we´ll gonna have full productive employment, it means wages going up and will n..."This is where I think economics becomes religion. Libertarian economic theory has to be accepted on faith. It is, in its nature, utopian. In the real world, greed takes over. The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. Deregulation and lower taxes were tried in the United States during the early 2000s. The result was incredible fraud on Wall Street leading to the 2008 stock market crash and a recession that was the worst economic downtown since the Great Depression of the 1930s. There are no John Galts in the business world as we know it. There are, however, a lot of people who are willing to commit fraud for short-term profit. During the early twentieth century, utopian wishful thinking was "owned" by the Marxist Left. Today, it belongs to the libertarian Right.
Alan - don´t forget that competition in a free market system is perfect medicine to persuade entrepreneurs to follow the new rules. Imagine in early 19th century with a strong social Pact!!! We´ll restaure all values of american founding fathers - just the ones that made prosperous and rich occident world. I´m not so pessimistic - humanist libertarian will give fresh air to humanity. Cheeerrss. Ron Carneiro
Ronaldo wrote: "Alan - don´t forget that competition in a free market system is perfect medicine to persuade entrepreneurs to follow the new rules. Imagine in early 19th century with a strong social Pact!!! We´ll ..."Thank you, Ron, for summarizing your political and economic theory. I remain unconvinced, but we will have to agree to disagree.
That´s true Alan - agreed to disagree! focusing your point:"In the real world, greed takes over. The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer" just because there isn´t equality of opportunities at beginning!!!
"Libertarian economic theory has to be accepted on faith". - history doesn´t show evidence about that - early 19th century show an explosion on free market up to 1930 - liberal Mises theory. Things became hard just after Keynes government intervention!!!
"inherited wealth in land and personalty gives some people a great advantage over others" - meritocracy will nivelate rich and poor in terms of opportunities at beginning - if rich people don´t compete in free market, they´ll lost family wealth in no time.
Now, I´m sure we´ll agreed in more than 30%. Best . Ron
Alan - let me give you important argue about New social Pact - we´ll gonna have reversion on field-city migration without any government interference nor bureaucrat plurianual planning - cause it´ll be more expensive produce in and near the cities - cost of nutrition, health and education will persuade corporations seeking for cheaper price - profit always drive corporation. Do you imagine what does it mean? it´s a nirvana to city planners - natural deconcentration of urban area.Alan, after that argue silver bullet I wish you´ll agreed in 80%. Will you? Cheerrss. Ron
Ronaldo wrote: "Alan - let me give you important argue about New social Pact - we´ll gonna have reversion on field-city migration without any government interference nor bureaucrat plurianual planning - cause it´l..."Ron, I have said everything I wish to say about these matters at this time.
Maxwell wrote: "I recently finished reading Mau VanDuren's "Many Heads and Many Hands: James Madison's Search for a More Perfect Union." The book explores Madison's international influences to write the Constituti..."Thanks Maxwell, have put it on my Abe list - I am a Hamiltonian, warts and all, and relish living in the nation that bears his significant imprint. Madison ignites a respect and admiration in me for all that he saw and did to create our roadmaps for liberty and justice. I am probably quite guilty of over venerating our Founders. I have believed them to be both men of genius and vision while limited by their humanity to the prides and prejudices of men everywhere for all time. They somehow found a way to surmount those to create and sustain a most unique nation.
Saying this, its clear that today's political culture takes Founder veneration to an extreme as we see in so many radio show hosts and activist pronouncements of the Constitution and originalist intent. Those arguments are, for me, the mark of an unclear mind and incomplete education. Wandering through some of my books I found a section of Bernard Bailyn's "To Begin the World Anew", discussing the almost religious veneration as he describes it of the Federalist. He says, "much of their thinking -certainly Madison's - was based on assumptions about physical distance and its calming and dissipating effect on political passions, but we live at a time when distance is obliterated and scattered forces can coalesce instantly ....beyond all that the Constitution that the Federalist papers defended and explained is simply a different instrument from the Constitution as we know it now".
A little perspective is always useful when discussing genius, especially of the 18th century kind. I share this because I am interested in The historical origins of Madison's thinking and believe that were he to join me for some claret in my dining room tonight that he would be both proud and horrified at the same time at what he had helped come to pass.
I am new here. I think I am posting in the right place, however if I am not please forgive me. I just had a question: Does anyone here knows of a book that analyzes the minutes for the Continental Congress of America leading up to the writting of the Constitution of the United States? Thanks in advance.
Joshua wrote: "Does anyone here knows of a book that analyzes the minutes for the Continental Congress of America leading up to the writting of the Constitution of the United States?"Welcome to this group, Joshua.
The Journals of the Continental Congress can be accessed online here. As I recall, there was not much discussion in the Continental Congress itself about the need for a new Constitution, though it did eventually authorize the calling of a constitutional convention. The primary sources regarding the debates in the 1787 Constitutional Convention, including but not limited to James Madison's notes, are collected in The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, rev. ed., 4 vols., ed. Max Farrand (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966); see also Supplement to Max Farrand's "The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787", ed. James H. Hutson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987). In her recent book, Madison's Hand: Revising the Constitutional Convention, Mary Sarah Bilder argued, based on a careful examination of Madison's handwritten notes, that he revised those notes during the decades after the convention. I have not yet read Bilder's book and thus cannot evaluate it. There are many other books on this topic, including, but not limited to, Max Farrand, The Framing of the Constitution of the United States (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1913); Clinton Rossiter, 1787: The Grand Convention (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987); Beyond Confederation: Origins of the Constitution and American National Identity, ed. Richard Beeman, Stephen Botein, and Edward C. Carter (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987); and several biographies of James Madison and Alexander Hamilton.
Temeika wrote: "Would it be accurate to say the basis of United States civilization is based on Roman Culture? If th..."Certainly, this is so. Without a shadow of a doubt. What can be done about it? Likely, nothing.
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Fateandtime wrote: "Hi everyone,My Kindle eBook:
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US residents cannot download the book from the UK Kindle site, but the Amazon.com (US) page for this book is here. I have skimmed through the book but not read it carefully. On the surface, it seems to be a combination of utopianism and totalitarianism. It seems to assume that the government will be perfectly rational, but we know, from bitter experience, that this is not, in the nature of things, possible. See, for example, the practical implementation of Marxism by the Soviet Union, Communist China, North Korea, and so forth. As one of my former bosses (a Brit who had been chair of a political science department in an American liberal arts college) used to say, "In capitalism, it's dog eat dog. In Communism, it's just the reverse."
August 7, 2016 Note: See also my post 28, below.
Alan wrote: "Joshua wrote: "Does anyone here knows of a book that analyzes the minutes for the Continental Congress of America leading up to the writting of the Constitution of the United States?"Welcome to t..."
Thank you for pointing me in the right direction. I can't wait to get my hands on these books.
Addendum to my Post 26, above): I have now read the first three parts (books) of The Purification Social Order. The fourth part is not available and evidently has not yet been published. After the fourth part is published, I will read it. I may then review the entire work. In the meantime, my impression remains that the utopian project contained therein is not workable, that its attempted implementation would (by its own admission) involve a very significant curtailment of personal and economic freedoms, and that it probably would devolve into the kind of totalitarian state that the world witnessed in the twentieth century and that still exists today in North Korea. I must acknowledge, however, that it is an interesting theoretical conception that may be worth consideration to illuminate issues of ethics, political philosophy, economics, and monetary policy, just as Plato's Republic is an interesting theoretical construct, helpful for philosophical study, that was, by its own admission, impossible to achieve in an actual society and, in my view, would be unworkable and undesirable even if it could be achieved. Moreover, studying the proposal for a Purification Social Order does not pose a danger to anyone: there is no possibility of this system being adopted in the United States—or, as far as I know, anywhere else—in the foreseeable future.
The following opinion piece was in today's (12/4/16) NYT. The comments section was, as can be expected very much tilted leftward and suggestive of the idea that the great books and ideas are thought as "conservative" tools to validate conservative ideology. That strikes me as crap.(sorry a new yorkism) my participation in This Goodreads group suggests the opposite, that the study of classical ideas and history is neither right or left, but just is. It is up to the student to make whatever connections or insights they can to the present. That is why I continue my own personal education. I wish my own formal education was as centered on these topics, ideas and people as many young people are, to my surprise and gratification, today. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/03/opi...
Thanks, Charles. I think that the following comment to the article is on point:"Johnny C.
" Washington Heights
"I am a graduate of St. John's College, a great books school.
"There is no attitude toward the great books that is more unfortunate or misleading than its identification with modern American conservatism.
"The categories 'liberal' and 'conservative' are fairly recent cultural products; the latest American version of conservatism is even more immature. Most of the books in the canon were written long before the advent of these categories; it should be no surprise that the incessant attempts by pretenders on the right to reduce the great books to fit contemporary ideological struggles and resentments only does the canon violence.
"The president-elect’s appeal to a lost American 'greatness' echoes the preoccupations of every conservative that sees herself as the guardian of 'an ancient intellectual tradition'—an irony that should not be lost on anyone who is truly invested in the enduring complexity and difficulty of the canon."
Leo Strauss was "Scholar-in-Residence" at St. John's College at the time of his death in 1973. As he wrote twenty-seven years earlier in the context of studying Plato,
"Plato composed his writings in such a way as to prevent for all time their use as authoritative texts. His dialogues supply us not so much with an answer to the riddle of being as with a most articulate 'imitation' of that riddle. His teaching can never become the subject of indoctrination. In the last analysis his writings cannot be used for any purpose other than for philosophizing. In particular, no social order and no party which ever existed or which ever will exist can rightfully claim Plato as its patron."
Leo Strauss, "On a New Interpretation of Plato's Political Philosophy," Social Research 13, no. 3 (September 1946): 351, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40982155.
Ayn Rand used to complain that a philosophy professor in the Soviet university she attended in her youth taught that Plato justified Soviet Communism. As a result, she hated Plato, unjustifiably. By the same token, the conservatives have no right to use Plato or any other great philosopher as a justification for their ideology du jour (whether traditionalist, libertarian, neoconservative, paleoconservative, nationalist, Trumpist, or whatever). "Philosophy supervenes over antiquity and modernity alike. It is not a walled property, or a tool, or a weapon, but an ennobling way of life. . . . It is an activity that gives those engaged in it much reason for modesty and for great satisfaction without self-satisfaction . . . ." Joseph Cropsey, preface to Ancients and Moderns: Essays on the Tradition of Political Philosophy in Honor of Leo Strauss, ed. Joseph Cropsey (New York: Basic Books, 1964), xi.
Exactly! My one concern is that the study of this material is so out of fashion that over time it becomes easier and easier for manipulators of the left and right to co opt for their own agenda, though I have not seen much on the left to warrant much concern. Then, the notion of Liberalism in its original form is so discredited by the left and criticized by the right as insufficiently conservative, that's a hoot isn't it, that I wonder where we all end up. I remain committed to the proposition, located on the masthead of the Economist since 1843, that we all must take part in" a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward and an unworthy timid ignorance obstructing our progress."
I value you and the rest of the Goodreads community for the assistance and resolute support of that objective.
Interesting. Well--to be forthright about it--if I had to take this to the mat, I would take a firm stance and say it this way: all the 'good' governments in world history have always followed a people-positive 'liberal' tradition; and all the 'bad' governments have always been conservative and reactionary, repressive, and stentorian. That's been established since the demise of the Roman Republic. It's the stamp of all western civilization. Authoritarian governments have always been extinguishing the human spirit. I didn't think it even needed to be stated aloud. Today's American bureaucratic nightmare is surely not informed by Plato...all our institutions are absolutely hollow and eviscerated of any such idealism. It's the loathsome attitude of "efficient economics" ...(aka) 'one-dimensional' thinking. Seeing 'people' merely as 'numbers'. The same lack-of-sentiment which clobbered decent, hard-working citizens in the dustbowl 1930s.
To address today's convoluted and heinous mindset on its own terms, I would stand by the above, despite any reference back to Greece. It may not be proper towards Plato's intentions... but its realistic.
Though supposedly a 'nation of ideals', we are always hovering on the margin of dictatorship; by dint of our rapacious culture itself. We are more 'Roman' than anything else; and as such, we always face the same fate as befell the Romans.
Re posts 31 (Charles) and 32 (Feliks):Good points, gentlemen.
Fellow PP&E Posters,During this electoral period of despair I have been in a relative state of catatonia here on the PP&E discussion group. Been reading, not writing. Been reading Douglass’s Autobiographies, Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction, Arendt’s Origins and other works, Sherman and Grant’s Memoirs, and the great recent biography of Grant by Ronald White. I may report on these readings here or elsewhere in future, but Feliks’s recent post 32 here inspires me to quote from another book I have been reading, Mary Beard’s recent SPQR. She spoke charmingly at Townhall here in Seattle a while back and discussed her reasons for writing another history of Rome. Her basic argument there and in the prologue to the book is that new archaeological and other techniques in historical scholarship give us more information than earlier historians. And yes, Livy, was closer to the facts, but he was also blinded to some of them by his time.
Her concluding words are, I think, worthy to ponder:
“I no longer think, as I once naively did, that we have much to learn directly from the Romans – or, for that matter, from the ancient Greeks, or from any other ancient civilization. We do not need to read of the difficulties of the Roman legions in Mesopotamia or against the Parthians to understand why modern military interventions in western Asia might be ill advised. I am not even certain that those generals who claim to follow the tactics of Julius Caesar really do so in more than their own imaginations. And attractive as some Roman approaches to citizenship may sound, as I have tried to explain them, it would be folly to imagine that they could be applied to our situation centuries later. Besides, ‘the Romans’ were as divided about how they thought the world worked, or should work, as we are. There is no simple Roman model to follow. If only things were that easy.
But I am more convinced that we have an enormous amount to learn – as much about ourselves as about the past – by engaging with the history of the Romans, their poetry and prose, their controversies and arguments. Western culture has a very varied inheritance. Happily, we are not the heirs of classical past alone. Nevertheless, since the Renaissance at least, many of our most fundamental assumptions about power, citizenship, responsibility, political violence, empire, luxury and beauty have been formed, and tested, in dialogue with the Romans and their writing.
We do not follow Cicero’s example, but his clash with the bankrupt aristocrat, or popular Revolutionary with which I started this book (Catiline – my parenthesis) still underlies our views of the citizen and still provides a language for political dissent: “Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra?” The idea of ‘desolation’ masquerading as ‘peace’ as Tacitus put into the mouths of Rome’s British enemies, still echoes in modern critiques of imperialism. And the lurid vices that are attributed to the most memorable Roman emperors (See Suetonius for this – my insert) have always raised the question of where autocratic excess ends and a reign of terror begins.
We do the Romans a disservice if we heroise them, as much as if we demonize them. But we do ourselves a disservice if we fail to take them seriously – and if we close our long conversation with them. This book, I hope, is not just A History of Ancient Rome but part of that conversation with its Senate and People: SPQR.”
Let’s see what we make of our new age of authoritarian government. Based on my own engagement with the past, I am not looking forward to it.
Randal
Randal wrote: "Fellow PP&E Posters,During this electoral period of despair I have been in a relative state of catatonia here on the PP&E discussion group. Been reading, not writing. Been reading Douglass’s Auto..."
Thanks, Randal, for sharing this. Your quoted words from Mary Beard are very wise, and I have just downloaded her book on Kindle. Don't know when I'll get to it, but it will be there as a reminder. And it looks like it will be a pleasure to read.
I agree entirely with your last paragraph. I guess this pretty much finishes off any notion of inevitable historical progress--unless, of course, one takes a very long historical view of it all. What is currently happening in Europe and in the United States kind of reminds me of the 1930s. Hopefully, it won't have the same result.
Following up further on Randal's post 34 and my post 35, see Paul Krugman's December 19, 2016 column, which develops, with some qualifications, the comparison with ancient Rome. I find this emerging way of thinking rather astonishing, considering that, throughout my long life, it has always been the conservatives who have harped on the Roman analogy.
I'm currently enjoying a famous essay on Greek culture/art written by poet WH Auden; found anthologized here: Forewords and Afterwords. Its the first piece in the collection. It is called, 'The Greeks and Us'. Originally printed here; (very much a 'beginners introduction to Greece)
The Portable Greek Reader.
...but his essay is masterful. Auden discusses the Greek mindset, how it differs from our own; and calls out many observations which I have not seen occur to very many other writers on the topic.
Alan wrote: "...which develops, with some qualifications, the comparison with ancient Rome. I find this emerging way of thinking rather astonishing, considering that, throughout my long life, it has always been the conservatives who have harped on the Roman analogy. ..."I listen to 'neither side'. No 'popular voices in the press' seem competent to me, when it comes to the re-telling of Roman history. After all, what is their scholarship? American congressmen --on either side of the aisle-- are the last sector from which I would accept a history lesson. Neither would I listen to their pundits clamoring in the media. Just my trait/preference.
Randal, #34. Nicely stated. Me, I seem to recall that whenever there's a sea-change in America there are always articles and op-ed pieces galore, replete throughout the media, and all expressing very ominous Cassandra-like warnings that 'our republic is over'. Well, I personally have yet to see that actually transpire. And if today's state--of-affairs is considered an example of an America with ideals-intact, free-from-domineering-or-tyranny? Is that what people truly believe we are currently enjoying? If so, then I'm almost ready to embrace the alternative. I could hardly be disgusted more by what I'm seeing in recent yrs. At least in my city (New York). The quality I object to most are these crowds of heads-down-gazing-at-cellphones sheep in the streets. Shake them up, and I don't care what else happens. The man in the street these days is practically Orwellian; so how much worse could a more 'Sparta'-like state be? I love that observation of Dwight D. Eisenhower, namely that 'people usually receive the type of government they deserve'. I kinda think we should stop fooling ourselves. If the heartland of this country is really so conservative, then let us be hoisted on that petard.
In sum: I'm not as worried.
Feliks wrote: "I'm almost ready to embrace the alternative. I could hardly be disgusted more by what I'm seeing in recent yrs. At least in my city (New York). The quality I object to most are these crowds of heads-down-gazing-at-cellphones sheep in the streets. Shake them up, and I don't care what else happens. . . . If the heartland of this country is really so conservative, then let us be hoisted on that petard."Feliks, there is only one cure for you. Perhaps der Pumpkinführer will reinstitute Mao's Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement. Wikipedia describes it as follows:
"The Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement was a policy instituted in the People's Republic of China in the late 1960s and early 1970s. As a result of what he perceived to be anti-bourgeois thinking prevalent during the Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong declared certain privileged urban youth would be sent to mountainous areas or farming villages to learn from the workers and farmers there. In total, approximately 17 million youth were sent to rural areas as a result of the movement."
(Note: The word "anti-bourgeois" in the preceding quotation may be a misnomer. As I recall, Mao was all about being "anti-bourgeois.")
So it's out of NYC and into the Red heartland for you! After a year or so there, please let us know how you like it.
Addendum to my preceding post:By the way, people in the heartland won't have any idea who Kant is. If you try to explain it to them, they'll think you're crazy. Ditto Plato, Aristotle, and all the rest. I know; I lived there for more than eighteen years. Been there, done that.
A surprising post and point of view Alan, not what I would have expected. I offer the following perspective from my most recent(today) completed read. "the Essential Herman Kahn; In defense of thinking". "Educated incapacity in the United States today (1979), seems to derive from the general educational and intellectual milieu rather than from a specific education. This milieu is found in its clearest form at leading universities in the US...I often use the phrase to describe the limitations of the expert-or even of the well educated. The more expert, or at least the most educated a person is , the less likely that person is to see a solution when it is not within the framework in which he or she was taught to think....I believe that if one read the influential American newspapers, consulted the most distinguished acamadecians, or watched the better TV programs, one would have been completely misinformed as to the nature of these issues and their likely impact and effect. In fact, the ignorance of upper-middle class progressive Americans was almost as complete as that of the European and Japanese press..."
You can imagine my astonishment at reading these statements, even coming from a intellect such as Kahn's given the social and political earthquake of 2016, since Kahn made these observations in the mid 1970's.
As a card carrying member of the eastern/ NY upper middle class tribe, I've made my own fair share of judgements (to my wife only I admit) about our relatives in Georgia and certain people from Arkansas. My point finally being that we can delude ourselves. From Honest Abe to Slick Willie, one might be well advised not to take lightly those geographically challenged among our citizenry.
Charles, I will not comment about Herman Kahn, except to say that his name has been associated in my mind with Dr. Strangelove ever since the 1960s. Per Wikipedia: "Along with John von Neumann, Edward Teller and Wernher von Braun, Kahn was, reportedly, an inspiration for the character 'Dr. Strangelove' in the eponymous film by Stanley Kubrick released in 1964. It was also said that Kubrick immersed himself in Kahn's book On Thermonuclear War." But since I have not (to my recollection) read anything that Kahn wrote, I will not express any opinion about him.My posts 40 and 41 were, of course, tongue-in-cheek. I don't know whether Feliks has lived in NYC all his life or whether he moved there recently. Having myself grown up in the rural Midwest and then lived in Chicago, suburban Cleveland (working downtown), Rochester (NY), and now suburban Pittsburgh (working downtown until my retirement), I believe I can say that New York is a unique place, even among cities. This at least is my tentative conclusion after a few visits there. Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Rochester, and even Chicago are noticeably different from NYC. As I remarked somewhere in these posts, I had an opportunity to go to graduate school at the New School for Social Research in NYC. Having visited Manhattan a few years earlier, I didn't think I would adjust very well to New York culture (and I do think there is a New York culture that pervades virtually all ethnic groups in that city). Perhaps about 20% of my classmates in the College of the University of Chicago were from New York or its environs (and from different ethnic groups within that city). And they all considered NYC to be very special. The standing joke was that their map of the United States had a large area marked "New York City" with the rest of the map marked "the Hinterland" or something like that (I seem to recall such a cartoon in the The New Yorker or some other magazine). I learned to appreciate the fact that NYC was unique, that New Yorkers were admirable in many ways (I always looked up to them), and that there was no way this small-town boy could ever live happily in or near Manhattan. You will then understand why I identified so much with the character Nick Carraway in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald and his character both grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota). Most of the New Yorkers I knew at the University of Chicago were unbearably homesick for what they affectionately called "the City." In listening to them talk about their homeland, I came to understand that New Yorkers, contrary to their reputation, actually have a heart.
But I had also repudiated small-town, rural culture as early as age fifteen (I grew up about 180 miles from the nearest substantial city). As I have written in other posts, the Rousseauean bucolic paradise does not exist, except in fiction. I have found contentment in something in between: in an urban-suburban environment that is a world away from the small town in which I was raised but is also more "Midwestern," as it were, than NYC.
Charles, you and other native New Yorkers I have known flourish in NYC, perhaps because you grew up there and so became immersed in its culture naturally. I have also known people who moved to NYC when they were young and love it. Feliks evidently does not like it. Although Pittsburgh, for example, also has people walking around downtown looking at their cell phones (actually, they probably do a lot more smoking on the sidewalks than looking at cell phones, since smoking is prohibited in all or most buildings), downtown Pittsburgh is not as crowded and hectic as Manhattan. It's much more relaxed. Even Chicago is different from New York, though one can't help but get a whiff of the ghost of the old Daley machine wherever one goes within the city limits. Feliks might be happier in a city other than New York. In the meantime, I empathize with his situation, though I don't share his deification of rural life.
Since we're discussing American subcultures, I was communicating with a woman who went to Yale and lives now in rural New Jersey. I explained my youthful and ongoing rebellion against religion, and she remarked that I was fighting the "last war". She said that decades ago, everyone at Yale, even theology students, knew better than to take religious texts literally. I replied that here in Pittsburgh, most of us are still fighting the "last war!" They are clinging to their guns and religion around here, just as Obama correctly but ill-advisedly remarked.
Mimi wrote: "Since we're discussing American subcultures, I was communicating with a woman who went to Yale and lives now in rural New Jersey. I explained my youthful and ongoing rebellion against religion, and..."Yes, this is definitely Trump country around here, especially in the exurbs. The difference from the small town in my youth is that here you can keep your religious views to yourself, whereas in the small town in which I grew up, if you didn't go to church, everyone knew. If you didn't go to church, you were labeled an "atheist" (going to hell, for sure) and a "Communist" (because everyone knows that all Communists are atheists and therefore all atheists are Communists). My father owned a retail store in the small town, and people stopped patronizing his business because his son (me) was an atheist and a Communist as proved by the fact that I had stopped going to church. This is Rousseau's bucolic paradise. But of course--Rousseau loved Geneva, where Calvin established a strict theocracy in which religious dissenters were burned at the stake--literally!
David Brooks's February 28, 2017 column, "The Enlightenment Project", attempts a vast sweep of history under the rubrics of "Enlightenment" and "Anti-Enlightenment." I think he is basically correct, though an awful lot of simplification has to undertaken in order to fit these difficult, complicated, and historically pregnant concepts into the limited size of one column.
Zaman wrote: "Alan what you think of Skepticism in modern political philosophy where different group of people are more concerns about themselves rather then ideologies and country because of skepticism?"I may be a skeptic in the Socratic sense that "what I don't know I don't think I know." But I'm not a skeptic in the Humean sense that he couldn't say for sure whether the sun was going to rise tomorrow. So I am enough of an Aristotelian to think that reality exists (whether we like it or not!) and that we can have some perception, augmented by reason and science, of it. I have not read and therefore am not familiar with modern and postmodern skepticism after Hume.
Randal Samstag, a member of this group, has recommended The Skeptic Way: Sextus Empiricus's Outlines of Pyhrronism, trans. Benson Mates. Although I now own a copy of that book, I have not read more than a few pages of it.
I am currently watching a DVD lecture series by Professor Indre Viskontas entitled "Brain Myths Exploded: Lessons from Neuroscience". She is especially good in explaining how modern neuroscience shows how we can have incorrect perceptions of reality. That does not mean, however, that reality doesn't exist. And, in fact, we can develop a better understanding of reality by fine-tuning, as it were, our cognitive abilities through scientific and other means. But the erstwhile view that all we can know is through immediate sense perception is obviously incorrect.
You are probably referring to views of people who are much younger than I (I am more than 70 years old) and with which I am not familiar. Generally, as I have explained elsewhere on this site, I reject relativism and historicism. And, as the title of this group indicates, I am mostly concerned with questions of political and ethical philosophy. My interest in these human questions may be the ultimate reason why I became a lawyer (now retired) rather than a professor.
Hello all, over the past few years I have benefited from membership in this group enormously-Allan, Randall and others provided me a wonderful introduction and education to the world of politics and philosophy. My interests and reading habits have been altered as a result. I just finished the online course created by Professor Steven B Smith of Yale - Introduction to Political Philosophy. It was a wonderful, intellectually inspiring and insightful introduction to the topic that is as wide and deep as any other. I appreciated the insights, education and perspectives of this group and its members as I listened and watched the 13 lectures given by Professor Smith circa 2006 to a freshman class at Yale. I have to admit that I understand Plato and Aristotle better than before, and enjoyed my reading of Machiavelli's Discourses more as a result. I recommend this online program of Yale to any member who would like to take a high level intro course on political philosophy- it's accessible via iTunes University. Happy listening>
Thanks so much for the tip, Charles. Cheers,
Randal
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