Political Philosophy and Ethics discussion
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Classical Liberalism; Libertarianism and Anarchocapitalism; Objectivism
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Alan, Founding Moderator and Author
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Oct 08, 2017 08:19AM
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re: #19what I propose is a new social pact where nutrition (agriculture) health and education as a voluntary adhesion - be part of social contract and will be assured by private enterprise with correspondent reduction on government tax.
Whew, what a thread.
So this is basically some kind of tax abatement program? The way as its currently done at the municipal level, with property development? Corporations would agree to a privatization scheme for welfare...? They would be stepping into the governmental role of maintaining social programs like health, housing, nutrition? In return for tax abatement?
Well. Traditionally, Big Business has quite the opposite interest. They don't want to spend money on worker welfare. Far from it. And if the only incentives govt might offer Business to change that way-of-thinking (and take over welfare programs) is a decrease in business taxation...corporate America already gets that by cheating on their taxes, lobbying, graft, deregulation, and colluding with legislators.
I admire your enthusiasm but this idea needs work..
Mod
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_C...."
For some reason, your link doesn't take me anywhere. I found the article, however, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_C.... Oops--that link doesn't work either. Look on Wikipedia for Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co.
The notion that corporations are persons for purposes of the Due Process Clause and possibly the Equal Protection Clause does indeed go back to the nineteenth century. To explain all the relevant aspects of this development would require many hours of research and analysis, which, unfortunately, I do not have time to undertake right now.
Yep. That's the topic I was alluding to. Santa Clara County vs Southern Pacific. Strange the link failed. But yes as I understand it this was a crucial --and misapplied--ruling that altered American property rights ever since; and which still saddles us with grief and nightmare. It is precedent for the myriad of ways in which modern corporations rape the American public. And all over a humble fence at a railroad right-of-way.
Activists would love to see it overturned someday. But, what they yearn for here is "pie-in-the-sky"...
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Strange the link failed. But yes as I understand it this was a crucial --and misapplied--ruling that altered Ameri..."
Although I have been generally aware of this case law since I attended law school in the 1970s, I have never had occasion to research it in depth. This article by two professors provides some background, though it's been a few years since I read it. This post by the Brennan Center for Justice may also be helpful, though I haven't read it. Googling "Corporations and the Fourteenth Amendment" brings these results. As a former constitutional lawyer, now retired, I would love to research and write about this topic in depth, but, alas, I have too many other projects taking priority at this time.
Question: is there any correlation between Republican-controlled Congresses vs Democratic party-controlled-Congresses and the quality of life (or more importantly, the income per capita) of the average man in the city street?https://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/26/bu...
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/24/op...
Mod
Unfortunately, DNA wasn't discovered until 1869 and its structure was not understood until 1953. If only the Founders had known about it!
Gang, here's an interesting article from --now, note this in particular please-- the Mises Institute of Austriahttps://www.mises.org/
(h'mmm!)
...its about how anti-trust legislation ruined Hollywood.
https://www.mises.org/library/how-ant...
And its a pitch which surprisingly, I agree with heartily! As much as I am disinclined towards industry monopolies I think FDR was off his rocker (so to speak) when he decided that the big Hollywood studios deserved to be broken-up. He goofed. This article makes a sound argument in this specific case.
Applying the same argument to other industries? No, I won't go that far...but this lone essay does make cogent reading insofar as the author keeps his flag furled tight to the mast.
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a new spokesperson / figurehead / front-man for libertarianismhttps://tinyurl.com/y9blweft
I apologize though, because this doesn't seem all that scholarly, or thoughtful, measured, or sober a posting. Its more of a "gee, look what's happening right now" (current events) type of report, which I myself usually only respond to with lukewarm interest. I wouldn't blame any of ye, for sniffing at this item.
I found a new bunch of websites discussing libertarianism...a libertarian FAQ (with critiques)
http://world.std.com/%7Emhuben/faq.html
Good libertarians and Bad Libertarians (this site has a lot of 'attitude', be warned)
http://www.zompist.com/libertos.html
a new face for the libertarian movement
https://reason.com/archives/2018/01/1...
fun articlehttps://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/0...
It poses three 'hypothetical head-scratchers' for libertarian thinkers
#1) Deep in the forest, thousands of miles from civilization, there is an isolated village. It has not seen contact with any other humans for a long time. It is, however, a pleasant and flourishing community, which strongly values freedom and entrepreneurship.
There is, however, one tiny quirk. In this village, there is a ritual. Every year, a boy who reaches 18 is cannibalized. It brings the rains, or something. But despite its taste for cannibalism, this village wishes to live in accordance with libertarian principles.
Thus, they will only cannibalize the boy if he consents. In order to encourage this to happen, they will put tremendous social pressure on the boy. All through his youth, they will tell him they believe the future of the village depends on his consenting. His parents tell him that he would bring great shame on the household if he refused, which is true.
The choice nevertheless rests with the boy, and whatever he chooses will be respected. The parents and villagers attempt to persuade him, but never lie to him, and make clear that they would never force his choice.
However: if the boy refuses to be cannibalized, the village has a backup plan. The boy will be blacklisted. No shopkeeper will sell him food, no hotel will give him a room, no hospital will treat him, no employer will hire him. After all, under libertarian principles, nobody can be told how to use their property.
The boy’s parents, ashamed of him, will turn him out of the house with no money. He may leave the village, but it is certain death, for thousands of miles of desolate wolf-infested wilderness stand between him and other humans and he has no food. (The wilderness is also privately-owned, and he cannot pay the admission fee.)
He is shunned and despised, left to wander the streets in a futile search for shelter and sustenance. However, no force is exercised against him. He is never touched or arrested. He is treated as nonexistent, as the villagers await his demise.
So the boy starves to death. The villagers then cannibalize his emaciated corpse, reasoning that they cannot be compelled to give him a dignified burial (plus he died on private property, collapsing in a flowerbed).
Is eating the boy’s corpse after he dies the only potential violation of libertarian principles in the village? Is every single other aspect of this completely permissible?
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and here is what someone wrote as a follow-up! mighty creative!------------------
The setting sun shone its last few rays on Independence Hall. The delegates were tired, but a thrill of excitement filled the air. The wrangling and deal-making was almost done; nothing remained but a few technicalities.
As the last sunbeam went below the horizon, something stirred in the middle of the chamber. It grew into a wind, then a whirlwind, and then standing among the assembled Founding Fathers was a strange man dressed all in silver, wearing a pair of gold goggles.
“You’ve got to stop!” he shouted. “It’s all lies!”
George Washington had stayed calm through cavalry charges, artillery fire, and the assembled might of the United Kingdom. He flinched only a little here. “Who are you, sir? Where have you come from?
The traveler barely heard. “Listen! You think ‘democracy’ can solve all your problems. But – imagine there’s a village full of cannibals. They have a tradition of picking a child, and killing and eating him when he’s eighteen years old. Well, even if that village is a democracy, then 51% of the population can just vote to kill and eat him! Do you want a child to be killed and eaten? Because that’s what your ‘democracy’ inevitably leads to! Checkmate, liberals!”
The delegates were only less dazed by the man’s speech than by his sudden appearance. Finally, General Washington asked whether anyone wanted the floor. After a scramble of shouts and raised hands, the chair recognized James Madison, delegate from Virginia.
“Thank you,” said James Madison. “Our Traveler may not know this, but I am preparing a Bill of Rights to be added on to the end of this Constitution, severely limiting the powers which the government may exercise. I’m planning one on cruel and unusual punishment, which sounds like it ought to cover killing and eating someone, and there will also be various restrictions on seizure of persons. The Traveler is already wrong that we operate entirely on the basis of 51% of the populace – rather, there will be representatives, senators, and Supreme Court Justices. But even if all these people should agree to kill and eat someone, I am confident that the natural rights included in my bill will restrict such practices.”
“AHA!” said the Traveler. “You’ve fallen for my trap! Because even if the government is banned from assisting in killing and eating someone, it could still happen. Imagine a system where, if the victim refused to be killed and eaten, then everyone in the village refused to house him, or feed him, so that he starved to death. Then he’d be dead anyway, and your precious Bill of Rights wouldn’t be able to do anything about it!”
“Couldn’t the victim just move to a different village?” interjected John Jay.
“The village is in the middle of a giant forest stretching five thousands miles, teeming with dire wolves,” snarled the Traveler, annoyed at such a stupid objection.
“Couldn’t the victim just build his own house, and farm his own food?” asked John Adams.
“The dire wolves would tear up the house, and trample all over the farm!” said the traveler. “You’re splitting hairs here! Why won’t anyone answer my question in the spirit it was intended?!”
There were more shouts and another frenzy for attention. General Washington banged his gavel. “The chair recognizes Alexander Hamilton.”
“Yo,” said Hamilton. “The institutions of our Constitution, give a clear solution to this persecution. The Revolution…”
“The chair unrecognizes Representative Hamilton, and offers the floor to anyone who does not speak in rap.”
“Thank you,” said Benjamin Franklin. “My good Mysterious Traveler, perhaps you labor under the misapprehension that political philosophies are also moral philosophies, and so fail irredeemably if they ever recommend an immoral course of action. I do not believe democracy is always right. But I believe it is a wise way to govern. All that systems of government can do is take nations – with all of their conflicts, ideas, prejudices, and values – as input, and then magnify some impulses and suppress others. Start with a country where every single person is entirely set on doing as much evil as possible, and democracy alone cannot save it; they will simply vote to do as much evil as possible. But start with a country in which there are many different classes, agendas, and visions, and I believe that a democratic system is more likely to magnify those impulses that help the common people, and suppress those impulses that lead to tyranny, than any other system yet devised.”
“So you’re saying,” said the traveler, “that you don’t care that your precious democracy and even your so-called Bill of Rights aren’t good enough to save the life of a child in – ”
“You listen here,” said Benjamin Franklin. “I care plenty. In a village that didn’t have any form of government, as soon as anybody big and strong enough wants to eat you, they can form a mob and drag you away. In a village that operates as a direct democracy, it’s harder. You need 51% of the population to want to eat you before you end up as dinner. And in a village that subscribes to Mr. Madison’s notion of natural rights, it’s harder still. You have to have every single person in the village agree not to feed the victim, without a single kindly old lady leaving food out on her porch at night when it’s too dark out for anyone to see. We have gone from tyranny – a system where, as long as even one person wishes you ill, you perish – all the way to a system where as long as there is a single person who does not wish you ill, you endure. That seems to me to be the best we can do in this world.”
Suddenly the Traveler seemed to warp, or crackle, like a signal from far away was being disrupted. “I must go!” he said. “I’m being recalled to my home time!” he shouted. “Where I will tell people that they should form a government based on socialism, and that it will be great, and nothing can possibly go wrong!”
“Stop!” said Jay. “You must tell us about this ‘socialism’ of yours!”
“Say, before you’re lost to me, at very high velocity, what is this new philosophy, that can prevent atrocity?” begged Hamilton.
But it was Washington, ever the man of action, who jumped up from the chair and grabbed the Traveler by his silver arm, holding him against the winds of Time. “This ‘socialism’ of yours – ” asked Washington. “It can ensure that – even in a barbaric society where literally one hundred percent of the people are wholeheartedly dedicated to do so – nobody ever eats their fellow citizens?”
“Yes!” said the traveler. “Why, in true socialist countries, nobody ever eats anything at all!”
Then he broke free of Washington’s grasp and disappeared forever, just as the first rays of the moon cast their white light on Philadelphia.
--------------
Mod
Mod
Rothbard's right would appear to regulate the conduct of others, so if the aim of the right is to free the world of any regulation you don't accept, it would appear not to succeed."
I am not all that well read in Rothbard. I read about two-thirds of Rothbard's For a New Liberty in 1976. That is more of a polemical presentation that does not address this theoretical issue. Rothbard was an Austrian School economist much influenced by Ludwig von Mises. Rothbard's magnum opus is, I understand, his Man, Economy and State (Los Angeles: Nash, 1970), the 890 pages of which (plus endnotes, front matter, and index) have lain dormant on my shelf, unread (except for a few pages), since the 1970s. Looking at the index references now, I see that he appears to take a Lockean position (p. 147):
In a free society, any piece of nature that has never been used is unowned and is subject to a man's ownership through his first use or mixing of his labor with this resource. . . . . If the natural resource is land, he may clear it for a house or a pasture, or care for some plots of timber, etc. If there is more land than can be used by a limited labor supply, then the unused land must simply remain unowned until a first user arrives on the scene. . . . . There is no requirement, however, that land continue to be used in order for it to continue to be a man's property.
(Italics in the original)
Rothbard does not, as far as I have read in his work, address the situation of the Native Americans vis-à-vis the English colonists in the seventeenth century and later, whereby the Native Americans owned land collectively, not individually, and where the British government and Puritan colonists claimed that the land was unused because it was the subject of hunting, not agriculture. I address this issue at some length in my Roger Williams book and show how Williams supported the view of the Native Americans and opposed the conventional view of the English authorities (up to and including the king) on this issue. This is one of the reasons for Williams's banishment from the colony of Massachusetts Bay in 1635-36.
I'm not sure what mean when you say "Rothbard's right would appear to regulate the conduct of others, so if the aim of the right is to free the world of any regulation you don't accept, it would appear not to succeed." Perhaps you could explain this statement (especially "would appear to regulate the conduct of others"), and I can then address it to the extent of my knowledge.
Mod
They proceed with a deductive syllogism:
1. It is evil for a human being to initiate force against another human being.
2. The state initiates force against human beings and their corporations by regulation, taxation, conscription, etc.
3. Therefore, the state is evil.
The underlying premise, of course, is their refusal to consider elected representation of people in a democratic political society as the equivalent of consent. They believe that every affected individual must consent in person before government may take such action regarding them.
Additionally, of course, many anarchocapitalists and limited-government libertarians have an emotional hatred of government, induced, perhaps, by propaganda or their own experiences.
Mod
Addendum to my preceding post:
There are many additional issues regarding anarchocapitalist theory, but, as previously indicated, I am not all that well read in Rothbard and other anarchocapitalists. Most of what I "know" is from what an ardent anarchocapitalist coworker told me during the 1970s. That, of course, is mere hearsay, so I won't repeat that "information" here. At some point (after I complete and publish my forthcoming book on ethics) I may read further in Rothbard et al. and have more knowledgeable comments to make on this subject. Suffice it to say that I have never been an anarchocapitalist. I flirted with limited-government libertarianism (never fully accepting economic libertarianism) in an earlier life, but I always thought that anarchocapitalism, to the extent I understood it, was impossible and would lead to disastrous consequences.
In #66, Alan asked me, "I'm not sure what mean when you say `Rothbard's right would appear to regulate the conduct of others, so if the aim of the right is to free the world of any regulation you don't accept, it would appear not to succeed.' Perhaps you could explain this statement (especially `would appear to regulate the conduct of others'), and I can then address it to the extent of my knowledge. "Since my knowledge of Rothbard is based on a few things you said, I may simply be confused but here is what I was trying to formulate:
First, Rothbard's foundational principle is that you cannot force anyone to do anything, that is, you cannot regulate what anyone does. You have to leave everyone free to do what they want.
Second, in anarchocapitalism, everything is privately owned, and the owner makes the rules. Whether there is free speech on a piece of land, for example, depends on the landowner's wishes.
Third, if you want to go onto to this piece of land, you have to abide by the landowner's rules. Granted, you are not forced to go onto this land but you either abide by the landowner's rules or stay away. In this respect, your behavior is thus "forced," "regulated" by the landowner, This, it seems to me, is no different in principle from the fact that I'm not "forced" to live in Oregon but that if I do live there I have to pay Oregon taxes.
Rothbard's "force" may be equivalent to Foucault's "power"--in each case, a word with negative connotations is used to cover the socialization process, what Aristotle called "habits." The real issue is to distinguish good habits from bad habits, not to eliminate habits, that is, to eliminate the force/power by which habits are formed. Should you really raise a child without the use of "force/power" to form in the child good habits rather than bad habits?
Rothbard and Foucault both obscure this core problem by pitching their analyses on the level the relation of the individual to society/government. But this level and the level of socialization are interdependent, as Aristotle indicates in the last chapter of Nicomachean Ethics: it is difficult to have "a right training for virtue if one has not been brought up under right laws" (1179b32, Ross trans.)
For more details on my view of Foucault, see pp. 28-37 of my book on Kenneth Burke.
Mod
With regard to your paragraphs regarding Foucault and Rothbard, I must say that I know absolutely nothing about Foucault (I never read a word he wrote and have never read more than a couple of sentences about him), and, as I say, I am not an expert on Rothbard. However, as I understand Rothbard, the anarchocapitalists, and the libertarians generally, I think they define force to mean physical violence and not a looser meaning of "force" as it is often used in contemporary parlance. (Government taxation, for example, is the "initiation of force" in their view, because ultimately the revenue agents show up at your door with guns in the event you refuse to pay. Ditto regulation.) I think they would not apply this to parental socialization of a child. In fact, I would guess that the anarchocapitalists oppose all governmental efforts to interfere with parental control over a child (obviously a big problem), since they support the abolition of all government in the initial instance. As I indicated, the whole theory of anarchocapitalism, if I understand it correctly, breaks down on many levels. Perhaps someday I will study it in depth and write a detailed critique of it. The dialogue in this thread has piqued my interest in doing that, but I have to complete my ethics book first—a project that will likely take several years.
I've just ordered your book on Kenneth Burke, with whom I am not familiar, and accordingly I should learn something about Foucault as well as Burke and other interesting topics addressed therein.
So many books to read and so little time to read them (at least at my age)! It's unfortunate that I couldn't have retired ten or twenty years earlier than I did. As lawyers say regarding the time demands of a legal career, "The law is a jealous mistress." That certainly was my experience, and the day I retired from law practice was one of the happiest day of my life, even though civil litigation on the trial and appellate levels was itself intellectually challenging and often (not always) a lot of fun.
Mod
I should have added that the anarchocapitalists and hardcore libertarians oppose governmental compulsory schooling. "Socialization" in their view is strictly the responsibility of the parents, and they have no interest in protecting the child against the neglect of their parents in this regard. A contemporary political reflection of this view is evidenced in the comment of Newt Gingrich (I think he was the author of the statement) that it would be a good thing to put children to work. No child labor laws in the anarchocapitalist utopia!
And, of course, socialization by way of laws is an oxymoron in anarchocapitalist thinking. There are no laws in their utopian universe. I suspect that Plato and Aristotle meant more than compulsory education when they suggested this idea. As I have previously mentioned, the Greek polis was somewhat totalitarian in its imposition of politically acceptable moral norms on children and even adults. This included governmentally imposed religious requirements. See, for example, the regime described in Plato's Laws. As I have also previously indicated, this is where I part company with the ancients, however admirable they may have been in many other respects.
Mod
Foucault does not limit power to the exercise of physical force. That would be an important difference.There are many Burke's, virtually a new one in each book. The Burke my book favors adapts the Constitution as a model for changing the rules of the social game in the play of the game, an idea introduced on p. 26 and developed in the chapter on his Grammar, where he discusses the Constitution at length as a model for the nature of action and the purification of war.
What I'm doing now, twenty later, goes in a metaphysical direction. I call Burke a "rhetorical realist," which is better than the rhetorical idealism of the postmodernists, but I'm now more interested in "realism" than "rhetoric."
Burke and McKeon were friends from the time they met as teenagers at Columbia University. McKeon is the one who got me interested in Burke. He also got me interested in Aristotle, who matters more to me right now, along with McKeon himself.
Mod
There are many Burke's, virtually a new one in each book. The Burke my book favors adapts th..."
Thanks, Bob, for the additional information. I look forward to reading your book.
Alan, thanks for your interest, but I wouldn't recommend trying to read it from cover to cover. You would get bogged down because you would keep running into unfamiliar things, and it presupposes familiarity with debates unfamiliar to you. The material on the Constitution would probably be the best thing to look at; I'd be interested in what you make of it. Burke is far from a scholar of the Constitution; he talks about it in ways you would no doubt find odd. But I once read a paper at a conference of the Burke Society based on a paper Souter gave on what the Court does, arguing that what Souter says is consistent with Burke's theorizing. I'd still subscribe to that view. Burke is hard to categorize partly because he is an autodidact. He dropped out of college to go to Greenwich village to be a writer, then eventually became something of a philosopher, all the while hanging out in circles with smart people like McKeon.
More in a moment on another topic--
Alan, I wouldn't limit the relationship Aristotle sees between ethics and politics to Greek society. That makes it philosophically uninteresting. From a philosophical standpoint, the relationship depends on nature insofar as humans are natural but it is independent of nature because variants of this relationship do not occur naturally. Gingrich suggests a relationship between the two in the comment you think he authored: it would be a good thing to put children to work. That presupposes a set of "laws" that would produce a set of "virtues."
I see this relationship operating universally but in different ways, producing different individuals at one end and different societies at the other end. My main point is that this relationship should be the focus, since it may produce good results or bad results. What is the best possible variant of this relationship?
Rothbard suggests how right and left meet in anarchy. Marx too wanted the state to wither away. In anarchy, it seems to me, the relation of ethics and politics would play itself out in small groups that would probably end up fighting one another. Seems to me humans have "been there, done that."
Mod
Thanks, Bob. I'll read the material on the Constitution and let you know what I think. I'll also take a look at the other sections and see whether there is anything in there that I can "relate to" as they say.
They had the 50th-year reunion of my undergraduate class (1968 graduation) at the University of Chicago a few weeks ago. I didn't go, but they posted a book of over 300 pages of pictures and commentary about my class and those times on a Google platform. I had forgotten how depressing those years were--worse than today, believe it or not. I recall your saying that you were also on campus as a graduate student during some of those years, and you will remember those times.
Mod
You raise some very open-ended questions that I will not attempt to address at this late hour (Eastern Time) of the day. Yes, of course, Aristotle was posing eternal, not historically relative, questions. I merely object to government dictating personal ethics and religion. Do we really want somebody like Trump in charge of this? I would have had the same objection if I had lived in Aristotle's time and place, though perhaps I could not have raised it publicly without suffering the fate of Socrates.
Alan asks (in #79), "I merely object to government dictating personal ethics and religion. Do we really want somebody like Trump in charge of this?" To repeat my point in #77: "I see this relationship operating universally but in different ways, producing different individuals at one end and different societies at the other end. My main point is that this relationship should be the focus, since it may produce good results or bad results. What is the best possible variant of this relationship?" Obviously Trump is a recipe for bad results. My point is that the ethics/politics relationship is always working, not that it is always working well.
And by laws, I think Aristotle is thinking of the governing structure in a broad sense (1180a34-35: "good control by good laws; whether written or unwritten," Ross trans.). This structure may leave areas where people are free to do as they please, but it is still a political decision to identify such areas. In the US, there is freedom of religion because the Constitution says people should be free in this area. I support this even though I think it fosters crackpot religions. I've long wondered if there are more of these in the US than elsewhere. Evidently more people believe in god in the US than in Europe.
An area of concern: Enrollment in the humanities at universities is declining sharply partly because crushing student-debt is forcing students to do whatever they can in school to get good-paying jobs immediately upon graduation. In effect, the governing structure is limiting the freedom of students to find their talents and pursue their interests. I think that maximizing this freedom benefits both individuals and society in the long run. But today, this freedom is being minimized. This is a problem in the ethics/politics relationship. It is the kind of thing that Aristotle's model encourages one to consider.
Yes, 1968 was one of a kind. I wouldn't want to relive that year. I was in graduate school and often wondered if what I was doing was pointless.
That being said, today may be a more dangerous time because of the threat to the rule of law. Nixon surrendered his tapes when the Court ordered him to do so. If Trump were in that situation, he would burn the tapes, send out a tweet explaining why that was the greatest thing to do in the history of the world, and 40% of the country would applaud. Maybe Trump wanted to talk to Putin privately to talk about where Russia should focus its energies in the upcoming elections. Evidently this past week the House voted down an effort to send more money to the states to safeguard the elections. I've always been confident that US elections were legitimate, despite a shady area here and there (e.g., Daley's Chicago). About 2018 I'm not so sure.
So it goes. The ethics/politics relationship is a perennial struggle.
Mod
To repeat my point in #77: "I see this relatio..."
Bob, I'm not understanding what you are trying to say about the relationship between politics and ethics. I agree that ethical considerations should inform politics. That is not controversial. But should politics dictate ethics/religion? That's the part I don't understand. My book on Roger Williams details the abominations that occur when political authorities dictate religion and ethics. That is the point I was making in my earlier posts in this thread. Somehow I think I am misunderstanding what you are saying. Perhaps this is because I approach this topic with the heavy burden of brutal historical experience in the back of my mind. In such circumstances, I find it difficult to think theoretically about such matters. In this kind of question I am more of a Madisonian realist. I have a hard time wrapping my mind around what I think you are saying, which makes me realize that I am probably misunderstanding it.
Alan, to repeat from #80, "This structure may leave areas where people are free to do as they please, but it is still a political decision to identify such areas. In the US, there is freedom of religion because the Constitution says people should be free in this area." In other words, sometimes politics "dictates" by leaving people free to do as they please. The First Amendment is a political act that "dictates" by telling Congress things it cannot not do; with respect to these things, people should be free to do as they wish. The political capacity to act entails the capacity to refrain from acting. The "abominations" to which you refer are good reasons for exercising the capacity to refrain from acting in this particular area.The ethical/political relationship is an ongoing two-way street. The First Amendment "dictates" the freedom of speech, which in turns fosters the "ethical virtue" of expressing your views in the public square, which in turn can foster an informed citizenry capable of speaking out "politically" should another Socrates appear in the public square. Going in the other direction, historical experience of the "abominations" to which you refer can form "ethical virtues" leading to "political acts" such as the First Amendment.
On this two-way street, we are always in medias res. Habits are always forming, good or bad, promoting political acts, good or bad, that foster habits, good or bad, and so on. The aim should always be to build a two-way street that works well, producing good individuals and a good society.
From a philosophizing standpoint, it is interesting that Aristotle goes from the ethics to the politics, although he does, of course, also introduce politics early in the ethics. Leaving that aside to simplify things, why go from ethics to politics? That is the kind of question that McKeon would ask.
I don't have a ready answer. I haven't read either the ethics or the politics all the way through since the graduate course in Aristotle that I took from McKeon. I do, however, regularly checkout references to specific passages, keeping in touch with the texts that way. My copy of the Basic Works would fall apart if it were not for a lot of tape keeping it together.
Right now, the Metaphysics and the Posterior Analytics are more important for me.
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OK, I think I get it now. We agree on the outcome (in the US) but disagree on the basis of the outcome. I hold with Locke, the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson, Madison, et al. that freedom of conscience, for example, is not granted by government but, rather, is an "unalienable" right that is not given up by the people to the government in the social contract. You—like Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, the historical Greek polis, and most of world history before the US Founding—believe that individual rights are granted or withheld by government rather than being inherent in the individual: government has the say in the first and last analysis. This is why I am still mostly a libertarian in the sphere of personal ethics and religion, though not in economic matters. I remain undecided, however, whether government should have any involvement in such matters as recreational drugs. I certainly agree with the repeal of Prohibition, but I am uncertain (as the libertarians are certain) whether heroin, LSD, etc. are analogous to liquor in this regard. That said, I, somewhat hesitantly, support the legalization of marijuana.
It is my understanding that the Nicomachean Ethics ends with the transition to politics because Aristotle, as he stated from the get-go in that work, taught that government rightly has the first and last say regarding ethics and religion. Parental training is not, in his view, sufficient. See NE Book 10, Chapter 9. Whether Aristotle was being exoteric here is an interesting question, especially in light of the fact that his Eudemian Ethics is silent regarding such political control over ethics.
The social contract is, in my view, a fiction, but it is a useful fiction with regard to matters of freedom of conscience. It may or may not embody a historical truth; it certainly encompasses a philosophical truth. Although I do not believe that individual rights are dictated by God, I do think that freedom of conscience is a "natural right" in the sense that it is consistent with the nature of human beings. Unlike the libertarians, I do not think that property rights are natural rights. Laws defining, protecting, and regulating property are necessary and appropriate, especially in complex societies.
I have a social engagement for which I must now leave, and I probably will be unable to return to my computer until tomorrow.
Alan, McKeon captures the core issue in the first sentence of one of this essays: "Human rights are natural, inborn, inalienable; yet they have a history, they are acquired, and they are increased and developed" ("Philosophy and History in the Development of Human Rights," Selected Writings, vol. 1, U of Chicago P, 1998, pp. 447-67).McKeon served on the "committee of experts" that did preparatory work for the UN's "Universal Declaration of Human Rights." The main part of this work is collected in Human Rights: Comments and Interpretations, A Symposium Edited by UNESCO, NY: Columbia UP, 1949. This volume contains (1) the questionnaire that the was sent to scholars around the world, (2) a selection of replies to the questionnaire, including McKeon's, that the committee reviewed, (3) the committee's report to the Commission on Human Rights, and (4) the "Universal Declarations of Human Rights" adopted in 1948.
McKeon edited a second UNESCO volume: Democracy in a World of Tensions, A Symposium Prepared by UNESCO, Chicago: U Chicago P, 1951. Like the preceding volume, this one contains questionnaire, replies, and committee reports. McKeon is one of only two who served on both committees.
In his essay in the Human Rights volume, McKeon states in his second sentence "the paradox that the resolution of practical problems involves philosophic commitments but agreement concerning actions to be taken need not presuppose philosophical agreement" (p. 35). This parallels what the "committee of experts" found: securing agreement on a list of rights was relatively easy, while securing agreement on the philosophical grounds of these rights was impossible. McKeon's pluralistic approach in a nutshell: find ways to agree on actions for different reasons.
Regarding Locke, I always thought he weakened his case with his religious argument against suicide (Second Treatise, #6), since it opens the door to the view that he bases the rights of self-autonomy on God because autonomy does not extend to suicide. Rights come not from society but from God. Dostoevsky creates a character, Kirilov, who insists he will commit suicide to demonstrate his autonomy as a human being: he will decide when he dies, not God. I doubt that Dostoevsky had Locke in mind, but his character is a good novelistic exploration of the idea of absolute autonomy. In the end, Kirilov does kill himself, so he is consistent, but I don't think Dostoevsky was a Kirilov fan. I don't think Locke should have gone to the Kirilov extreme, but I think his argument would be stronger if he didn't introduce God to take suicide off the table. This is not an academic issue, as evidenced by debates today over assisted suicide. The title of the novel in which Kirilov appears is translated variously at The Possessed, The Devils, or Demons.
Regarding Madison at al., one can look at what they did from the standpoint of the two parts of the McKeon sentence with which I started. On the one hand, they enshrined rights in amendments, but any amendment can be repealed with another amendment--in other words, they put the rights in the second part of McKeon's sentence. On the other hand, they might have left them out of the constitution, as they did initially, leaving them with all the other unnamed rights in the 9th Amendment. That would arguably come closer to putting rights in the first part of McKeon's sentence. But if they had done that, would the rights have become as much a part of the fabric of American life as they have as specific amendments under the watchful eye of the Supreme Court?
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Thank you, Bob, for this additional information and your thoughts about same. I have written somewhat extensively about such matters, especially in my book about Roger Williams (in which I discussed Locke, and his limitations, in Appendix D ["Roger Williams and John Locke"]) and in a lengthy unpublished essay I wrote in law school entitled "The Ninth Amendment as a Constitutional Reference of Individual Rights" as well as in various posts in the present Goodreads group.
Following up on your posts 74 and 76, above, I have now read page 26 and scanned Chapter 6 of your book, Kenneth Burke: Rhetoric, Subjectivity, Postmodernism, which arrived this morning. My extensive reading about the US Constitution has been in the fields of American history and political philosophy. As you anticipated, I find much of Kenneth Burke's analysis and your discussion of contemporary authors perplexing. I am totally unfamiliar with most of the recent authors (and their terminology, concepts, etc.) that you discuss. I see that Burke makes an analogy to the U.S. Constitution with regard to his own argument. These matters, however, are considerably beyond my area of expertise, and I accordingly cannot comment on them.
Hollywood's long relationship with the Statehttps://mises.org/library/hollywood-a...
(another article by the Mises Institute of Vienna)
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https://mises.org/library/hollywood-a...
(another article by the Mises Institute of Vienna)"
The Mises Institute is a libertarian organization, and this article is an example of libertarian analysis. Although I tend to agree with them on this kind of issue, I disagree with them on many others, including but not limited to their sometime advocacy of theocracy (see posts 55 and 57-72 in the Separation of Church and State topic.).
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Ayn Rand appears prominently in Bill McKibben's Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? (2019). McKibben identifies a number of public figures as readers of Rand. I knew about some of these but far from all, and even in the case of those I'd heard about before (e.g., Greenspan), McKibben includes details new to me. The examples below appear on pp. 91-93. -Alan Greenspan met Rand when he was 25, attending weekly meetings in her New York apartment to listen to her read drafts of Atlas Shrugged. Rand attended ceremony when he was sworn in to chair Gerald Ford's Council of Economic Advisers. He defended Atlas Shrugged as "celebration of life and happiness. Justice is unrelenting. Creative individuals and undeviating purpose and rationality achieve joy and fulfillment. Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should."
-William Verity, Reagan's Secretary of Commerce, kept card on his desk quoting Rand: "There's nothing of any importance in life--except how well you do your work. Nothing. Only that. Whatever else you do will come from that. It's the only measure of human value. All the codes of ethics they'll try to ram down your throat are just so much paper money put out by swindlers to fleece people."
-Unnamed bank CEO reported saying, "I know from talking to a lot of Fortune 500 CEO's that Atlas Shrugged has had a significant effect on their business decisions. It offers something other books don't: the principles that apply to business and life in general. I would call it complete."
-"[I]ntellectual architect of Brexist" keeps a photo of Rand on her desk. This "architect" isn't named.
-Paul Ryan required his interns to read Rand's novels.
-Clarence Thomas required his staff at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to "watch the film adaptation of The Fountainhead over lunch." Thomas was recommended for the federal bench by "the right-wing Institute for Justice precisely because of `his devotion to the philosophy of Ayn Rand."
-Rex Tillerson called Atlas Shrugged his "favorite book." "Ditto his successor, Mike Pompeo."
-"Ray Dalio, one of those confidants Donald Trump calls late at night when he can't sleep, said, `Her books pretty well capture the mind set' of the president and his men."
-"Andrew Puzder, Trump's first nominee for secretary of labor, named his private equity fund after Howard Roark, one of Rand's fictional heroes."
-"Donald Trump has called The Fountainhead his favorite book. `It relates to business and beauty and life and inner emotions,' he told USA Today. `That book relates to . . . everything.'" The ellipsis is Trump's.
-When Modern Library asked readers in 1998 to rank twentieth-century books, Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead were ranked one and two.
-Barack Obama described Rand's work as "one of those things that a lot of us, when we were 17 or 18 and feeling misunderstood, we'd pick up."
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Greenspan was one of the last of Rand's inner circle (which she ironically called “The Collective”) to survive her successive purges. Greenspan probably accepted all or most of Rand's philosophy or ideology. Otherwise, he would have been purged—like Rothbard and the rest. At her death, Rothbard (the anarchocapitalist and later paleolibertarian) remarked that it was fitting that Rand died of emphysema, since her books extolled the cigarette and the smokestack.
Most of Rand's epigones focus only on her laissez faire doctrines. But Rand said that her system was all of one piece—you couldn't take one part of it and leave the rest. In this regard, most of her conservative followers don’t like to mention (or are unaware of) her militant atheism. William F. Buckley, Jr. was one of the few conservatives who declined to follow Rand, because religion was part of his whole program. Religion and creeping theocracy are, of course, part of the whole conservative movement—including many of those identified in Bob's post. Rand eschewed conservatism and, indeed, blamed the rise of Communism before the Bolshevik Revolution on the mysticism of the old conservative order. She famously said of Reagan’s anti-abortion stance that anyone who does not believe in the right to abortion does not believe in any individual rights at all.
And does anyone really believe that Trump actually read The Fountainhead—a book of about 700 pages? Gimme a break. It’s more likely that one of his minions read it and gave him a soundbite for the press.
Alan, thanks for the comments on Rand. My knowledge of her has always been pretty superficial. That she supposedly liked Aristotle is the one thing that has always made me wonder if I should examine her work more closely. I couldn't imagine how she could square her ethics of extreme individualism with Aristotle's ethics. But to the best of my knowledge she never wrote an essay on Aristotle, let alone a book, so I've never pursued this matter.I agree with you about Trump. I suspect that he dislikes reading because to read is to assume you can learn something. He appears to prefer the pleasure of thinking he knows more than anyone about everything. During the campaign he explicitly claimed that he knew more than all the generals and he told us repeatedly how smart he is. This preference is consistent with a narcissistic personality disorder, which it seems to me explains more about him than anything else. As I understand this disorder it has three prongs: (1) you have to always be the center of attention, (2) you can't take any criticism whatsoever, and (3) you're so self-absorbed, you have absolutely no capacity for empathy.
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Rand did not like Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. In her essay “The Objectivist Ethics,” she stated:
The greatest of all philosophers, Aristotle, did not regard ethics as an exact science; he based his ethical system on observations of what the noble and wise men of his time chose to do, leaving unanswered the questions of: why they chose to do it; and why he evaluated them as noble and wise. (In Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism [New York: Signet, 1964], 14 [italics in the original])Rand’s reading of the Nicomachean Ethics was superficial. She probably did not like Aristotle's teaching of moderation.
In her essay “For the New Intellectual” and elsewhere, Rand praised Aristotle's logic:
Aristotle, the father of logic, should be given the title of the world’s first intellectual, in the purest and noblest sense of that word. No matter what remnants of Platonism did exist in Aristotle's system, his incomparable achievement lay in the fact that he defined the basic principles of a rational view of existence and of man’s consciousness: that there is only one reality, the one which man perceives—that it exists as an objective absolute (which means: independently of the consciousness, the wishes or the feelings of the perceiver)—that the task of man’s consciousness is to perceive, not to create, reality—that abstractions are man’s method of integrating his sensory material—that man’s mind is his only tool of knowledge—that A is A. (Ayn Rand, For the New Intellectual [New York: Signet, 1961], 22 [italics in the original])Somewhere (I cannot find it right now), Rand stated that she named as a tribute to Aristotle’s logic the titles of the three parts of Atlas Shrugged: Part I was titled “Non-Contradiction”; Part II was “Either-Or”; and Part III was “A is A” (the law of identity).
She also stated: “The only philosophical debt I can acknowledge is to Aristotle. I most emphatically disagree with a great many parts of his philosophy—but his definition of the laws of logic and of the means of human knowledge is so great an achievement that his errors are irrelevant by comparison.” I recall reading this statement several decades ago but could not find it in any of her books in my library. An internet search reveals that she wrote it in an essay titled “Brief Summary” in The Objectivist, September 1971, 1 (see http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/obj...). I may have originally read it in The Objectivist, though I did not begin reading Rand until 1973 or 1974.
As for Trump, you are correct that he is a textbook case of narcissistic personality disorder. Some day he will probably actually be a case study in a textbook for psychiatry students. Rarely has there been such a classic example of a mental disorder.
11/28/2019 CORRECTION re source of Rand statement/quote: see the third paragraph of my post #94 below.
Alan, thanks for the information about Rand's view of Aristotle. It prompted me to dust off my $.95 Signet edition of Atlas Shrugged; that price suggests it must be 50-60 years old. I'll flip through pages to see if anything Aristotelian jumps out.
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I have the same Signet edition, though it was $1.75 when I bought it in late 1973 or 1974. I read it 2-3 times during the 1970s, and my copy is pretty ragged with underlining and use (the back cover is missing, pages are falling out, and only tape is keeping the front cover attached to the book). I later bought another copy of the same Signet edition for $4.95 with the expectation of reading it, but I don’t think I ever read either that copy or the hardcover edition I purchased in 1998. The print in the Signet edition is very small, and there is no way I could read it now. If I were to read the novel again (which is unlikely), I would read the hardcover (which has different pagination) or just purchase the Kindle edition for $9.99 (where I could adjust the font).
Looking at Rand’s work after all these decades (I don’t think I’ve read her since the late 1970s or early 1980s), I have a somewhat different perspective than I had earlier. I never really agreed with the entirety of her approach, and I agree with much less of it today. Additionally, I now find her polemical and rhetorical style (especially in her nonfiction books) more offensive than I even noticed when I was young. If I were to read her at any length today, I think I would focus on her precise ideas and the extent to which I agree or disagree with them after some decades of additional knowledge and experience. If I had a few hundred hours, I would go through her work with a fine-toothed comb and identify the exact points at which she departed from the strict Aristotelean logic that she claimed to follow. Looking at some passages of her books during the last week, I see examples of fallacious thinking. But I would also like to do the same exercise with many other writers. Alas, one only has one lifetime to live, and most of that (at least in my case) is spent working for a living. It is only since my 2012 retirement that I have had the luxury of time, and, needless to say, that is going to run out at some time in the not-too-distant future.
In looking at my tattered copy of Atlas Shrugged, I now see where I read the quotation set forth in the penultimate paragraph of my post #92. It was in a section “ABOUT THE AUTHOR” in the Signet edition that I purchased in 1973 or 1974. That section is not, however, contained in the Signet edition I bought later nor is it contained in the hardcover edition I bought in 1998 (35th anniversary edition published by Dutton in 1992). Perhaps it is in your Signet edition, which (based on the price) was obviously printed earlier than mine. In the “ABOUT THE AUTHOR” section of my tattered copy, the quoted paragraph (beginning with “The only philosophical debt I can acknowledge is to Aristotle”) ends with a sentence not quoted (but referred to) in my post #92: “You will find my tribute to him [Aristotle] in the titles of the three parts of ATLAS SHRUGGED.” That solves the two mysteries I could not resolve in my #92 above.
The most philosophical portion of Atlas Shrugged is John Galt’s speech, which is on pages 936-93 (part 3, section VII) of the Signet edition. It is here that Rand made her philosophy (otherwise implicit in the novel’s plot, subplots, and character statements) explicit. Atlas Shrugged was first published in 1957. She elaborated on these philosophical themes in her later, nonfiction work.
In all probability, Aristotle would not have approved of Rand’s (arguably twisted) application of his metaphysical and logical principles, and he certainly would not have approved of her ethics and politics (at least if his Nicomachean Ethics, Eudemian Ethics, and Politics are to be consulted). But Rand exerts a fascination, even when one doesn’t agree with her. It is kind of like reading Nietzsche, whom I have always said was absolutely right half of the time and absolutely wrong the other half (I do not include Zarathustra, which I have never liked, in this estimation). I would say something similar of Rand: she is wrong, much of the time, but she is wrong in a very interesting way—a way that neither her epigones nor most of her critics detect. The Rand they see is a caricature. The real Rand was mostly wrong, in the last analysis, but she was wrong in a way that makes the careful thinker ponder ultimate questions of metaphysics (ontology), logic, ethics, politics, and economics. Moreover, such reader can catch glimpses of truth, here and there, in her writing, even if such gems are clouded by other, nonsensical statements.
Alan, the "ABOUT THE AUTHOR" section is in my copy; I found the sentence you reference. In my copy, there is also on the other side of the "ABOUT THE AUTHOR" page "A Message from the Author" with her signature at the bottom. This message advises anyone interested in learning more about her philosophy that "a course of lectures is being offered twice yearly in New York City by Nathaniel Branden." She includes an address for anyone interested in getting more information about these lectures on her philosophy.I have no memory of reading her books (I also have a copy of The Fountainhead). No doubt I was prejudiced because I was an English major. My professors were telling me who the important authors were and Rand was not among them. My favorite authors as an undergraduate were Conrad and Dostoyevsky. I must have picked up her books because of her popularity and looked at them without reading them deeply. My copies are in good shape and appear not to have any markings in them.
I agree that debating her ideas could be interesting. Individualism is a great value but one thing that tends not to get factored into considerations of it is that historically it really only becomes possible when economies become developed and interconnected enough to make it possible for large numbers of people to make their way ECONOMICALLY in the world independently of family and tribe. This even appears in the modern epic of individualism, Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. Crusoe is as enterprising as he is alone on his island only because of all the tools and other things (products of a developed economy) that he salvages from the ship before it sinks. He would not have done as well if he had had to rely solely on the inalienable rights he brought with him from the womb. Apostles of individualism tend to focus on negative liberties to the exclusion of the positive liberties that make it realistically possible.
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As my annotated, selected bibliography indicates, Rand had a love affair with Brandon (who was much her junior) while both she and he were married to others. They both announced their decision to the others before the commencement of the affair, and they stated that they intended to continue their marriages. It didn't work out too well. Rand's husband became an alcoholic (which perhaps would have happened anyway considering her domineering personality), and Brandon's wife, Barbara, became estranged. The two books by Barbara and Nathaniel, respectively, tell the tale. Barbara remained loyal to Ayn to the end, but Ayn excommunicated Nathaniel from "The Collective" and severed her professional connection with him when he broke up with her to be with another, younger woman (not his wife). Kind of reminds one of the doings on Mount Olympus among the Homeric gods, with whom Rand explicitly compared them before the breakup.
Rand has always been anathema in academia.
Capitalism is the only economic system that works (ask anyone who ever lived in the Soviet Union or the People's Republic of China during Mao's rule), but capitalism unregulated by government (or governmental regulation fomented by self-interested capitalistic entities) becomes its own nightmare due to the problem of externalities as well as other issues. Case in point: the current environmental crisis.
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I am also posting this comment in some other topics in this group.
Hi Alan...I really don't know what to make of this Christian Reconstruction thing. I find their position that the milder tenets of the New Testament don't supercede the harsher ones of the Old Testament problematic to say the least. Take their position on stoning adulterers amongst other kinds of sinners. It seems inconsistent and in fact diametrically opposite to the precedent set by Christ himself by saving the adulteress from the Pharisees who wanted to stone her. In my view, their position might be religious but it is not Christian if the definition of Christian remains to be "Christ-like". More generally, I wonder whether if the question of superceding or not should enter the discussion. The Old Testament is essentially a record of the religious practices of Judaism, which is a different religion from Christianity, though Christianity is somewhat an offshoot of it but that doesn't make them the same, otherwise one could argue with some justification that Islam = Christianity = Judaism since they are all Abrahamic faiths. Who would have thought that any members of the Christian far right would have anything in common with extremists in the Taliban but then again on deeper reflection it is probably in the nature of religious extremism to cause people despite different faiths and nationalities to end up at the same spot. It kind of mirrors the point Hayek was trying to make about Fascism and Communism in Road to Serfdom. Though both decidedly different, one being left wing and one right, and antagonistic to one another, they both end up in the same place..Totalitarianism. Anyway good thing it is a fringe group... It is a fringe group right?? Those guys seem hell bent on taking you guys back to the European dark ages, the Salem witch trials and that kind of stuff.
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Yes, it is a fringe group, but some of their ideas are becoming more and more mainstream in the U.S., especially in the Republican Party. Their views are modeled after Calvin, who emphasized Old Testament teachings and had his own theocracy in sixteenth-century Geneva. I discuss this at some length in Appendix B (“Theocracy in Seventeenth-Century New England and Sixteenth-Century Geneva”) to my book The First American Founder: Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience.
By the way, it is my understanding that most Jews, at least in the United States, don’t like the Christian appropriation and application of their scriptures. (The subject of the state of Israel is another question, which may be too controversial for discussion in this forum.) Most Jews I have known in the United States (from the 1960s to the present) don’t support theocracy or theocratic ideas in this country and dislike and fear the Calvinistic religious right. The Christian far right has both pro-Jewish and anti-Jewish strains. It’s a complicated situation. The United States is far more religious than, for example, Western Europe. I advocate a more secular approach in my book Reason and Human Ethics. Needless to say, I am—and have always been—adamantly opposed to theocracy and theocratic influences of any kind. It is ironic that, as younger people and the majority of the American populace at large have become more secular, the U.S. Supreme Court and many politicians in the United States have become more religious and more theocratic.
