More on this book
Kindle Notes & Highlights
The traditional family was, after all, part of the old despotism:
mainly by appropriate legislation that will give children more power: for example, allowing increasingly younger girls to have abortions without parental consent, or providing children with legal instruments to combat their claims against their parents, or depriving parents of their rights and transferring those rights to the government and the courts.
that schools have to become more and more liberal and democratic
Similar reasoning can be applied to churches, communities, associations.
liberal democracy has become an all-permeating system.
Whatever happens in school must follow the same pattern as in politics, in politics the same pattern as in art, and in art the same pattern as in the economy: the same problems, the same mechanisms, the same type of thinking, the same language, the same habits.
Daniel Bell, one
the disjunction of three realms: social, economic, and political.
This image of structural diversity that Bell saw coming was attractive, or rather would have been attractive if true. But the opposite happened. No disjunction occurred. Rather, everything came to be joined under the liberal-democratic formula: the economy, politics and society, and—as it turns out—culture.
The so-called Hegelian sting
Czesław Miłosz in The Captive Mind, which
analyzes mechanisms of the communist servility of Pol...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
the idolatry of liberal democracy,
their silencing of dissenters,
are part of the same disease to which, apparently, intellectuals and artists are particularly susceptible.
To the youngster, communism once presented itself as the greatest, most comprehensive and most sublime idea for such a transformation.
The multiparty system was gradually losing its pluralistic character, parliamentarianism was becoming a vehicle of tyranny in the hands of ideologically constituted majority, and the rule of law was changing into judicial arbitrariness.
mankind’s reaching and developing its full creative potential.
The young Marx still used the language of Hegel to describe mankind’s road to full flourishing,
the mature Marx chose to write about “surplus value,”
other words, an important part of the message of modernity was to legitimize a lowering of human aspirations. Aspiring to great goals was not ruled out in particular cases, but greatness was no longer inscribed in the essence of humanity.
Mill remained under the partial, albeit indirect influence of German Romanticism,
thus attributed a particular role to great, creative individuals whose exceptionality or even eccentricity could—in a free environment—pull men out of a democratic slumber.
liberal-democratic thought and practice increasingly fell into the logic of minimalism. Lowering the requirements is a process that has no end. Once people become used to disqualifying certain standards as too high, impractical, or unnecessary, it is only a matter of time before natural inertia takes its course and even the new lowered
standards are deemed unacceptable. One can look at the history of liberal democracy as a gradual sliding down from the high to the low, from the refined to the coarse.
But whatever the merits of this process of simplification, it too often brought vulgarity to language, behavior, education, and moral rules.
These changes were often attributed to the deplorable influence of the bourgeoisie, the class that was said to embody the disappearance of forms and the vulgarity of the modern era.
shallowness of the mercantile civilization.
art as a pure, disinterested expression of imagination in pursuit of the beautiful
very success of technology, productivity, and industry,
José Ortega y Gasset
the sterility of im...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
giving mediocrity a touch of respectability.
Man, feeling secure and enjoying the increasingly abundant benefits of a modern civilization,
slowly releasing himself from the compelling pressure of strict and demanding rules derived from r...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
no longer in the mood to embark on a painful and uncertain journey to higher goals, on which John Stuart ...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Socratic and the swinish—
In liberal democracy, especially in recent decades, a generally acknowledged moral directive forbids looking down on people’s moral priorities, because in the present society equality is the norm, not the hierarchy.
From a new perspective, the pig would seem, on reflection, a stronger competitor.
“Common,” indeed, has ceased to be a word of disapproval in a liberal-democratic rhetoric,
Especially striking is a change in the meaning of the word “dignity,” which since antiquity has been used as a term of obligation. If one was presumed to have dignity, one was expected to behave in a proper way as required by his elevated status.
Dignity was an attribute that ennobled those who acquired it.
closer to the Socratic way
The attribute was not bestowed forever: one could always lose it when acting in an undignified way.
intercession of the language of human rights,
1948 Universal Declaration.
inalienable...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
sanctioned as a mere product of legislation through a Parliamentary
more than arbitrary decisions
It would indeed be silly to call such claims “inalienable,” because inalienability by definition cannot be legislated.
