Category: Social and Political Philosophy

Notes on Anarchism II: Wolff on Autonomy

This post has a prerequisite.  We now explore the concept of autonomy as discussed by Robert Paul Wolff on pp. 12-18 of In Defense of Anarchism.

1. "The fundamental assumption of moral philosophy is that men are responsible for their actions." (12) Wolff intends moral as opposed to mere causal responsibility. But if we are morally responsible, then we are "metaphysically free." W. doesn't explain what he means by "metaphysically free," but since he mentions Kant, we may impute to W the view that we are libertarianly free, that is, free in the 'could have done otherwise' sense. Thus we enjoy more than the compatibilist "freedom of the turnspit" (Kant).

Continue reading “Notes on Anarchism II: Wolff on Autonomy”

Notes on Anarchism I: Wolff on Authority

Robert Paul Wolff's In Defense of Anarchism (Harper 1970, 1976) is a good book by a clear thinker and master expositor. Here is a first batch of interpretive and critical notes. I use double quotation marks when I am quoting an actual person such as Wolff. Single quotation marks are employed for scaring, sneering, and mentioning. The MP is punctilious to the point of pedantry about the use/mention distinction. Numerals in parentheses denote pages in Wollf's text. 'W' abbreviates 'Wolff.'

Continue reading “Notes on Anarchism I: Wolff on Authority”

‘One Man’s Terrorist is Another Man’s Freedom Fighter’

Often and thoughtlessly repeated, 'One man's terrorist in another man's freedom fighter' is one of those sayings that cry out for logical and philosophical analysis. Competent analysis will show that clear-thinking persons ought to avoid the saying.

Note first that while freedom is an end, terror is a means. So to call a combatant a terrorist is to say something about his tactics, his means for achieving his ends, while to call a combatant a freedom fighter is to say nothing about his tactics or means for achieving his ends. It follows that one and the same combatant can be both a terrorist and a freedom fighter. For one and the same person can employ terror as his means while having freedom as his end.

Continue reading “‘One Man’s Terrorist is Another Man’s Freedom Fighter’”

Peter Lupu on My Gun Rights Argument

A guest post by Peter Lupu.  Editing by BV.   BV will respond to PL in the ComBox.  Here in his own words is the argument that BV presented:

In “Deriving Gun Rights from the Right to Life” Bill presented a powerful argument on behalf of gun rights that is grounded on the right to life. The argument is based on the assumption that the right to life is a natural right and, hence, is logically prior to positive law, where by positive law we mean a law that is enacted by society. In addition to the principle that natural rights are logically prior to positive law, Bill’s argument features two additional very important principles.

Continue reading “Peter Lupu on My Gun Rights Argument”

Why Must the Left be Totalitarian?

A reader inquires,

I was wondering if you could expand on a statement you made in Political Correctness and Gender Neutral Language . . . .  The statement is as follows: "The Left is totalitarian by its very nature and so it cannot leave any sphere of human concern unpoliticized."  I wholeheartedly agree with your statement, but I was wondering if you would explain why the Left must be totalitarian.  All I know right now is that it is, and has been from at least the days of Woodrow Wilson and especially FDR.  

A huge and daunting topic, but I'll hazard a little sketch.

My statement telescopes two subclaims and an inference.  The first subclaim is that the Left is totalitarian, while the second is that it totalitarian by its very nature (as opposed to accidentally).  From these two subclaims the conclusion is drawn that the Left cannot (as opposed to does not) leave any sphere of human concern unpoliticized.

Continue reading “Why Must the Left be Totalitarian?”

The Bigger the Government, the More to Fight Over

Taking a page from Prager, I've already noted that big government makes for small citizens.  Let us also note that government expansion exacerbates political divisions and sets citizen against citizen. 

Suppose we get to the point where Washington bureaucrats  dictate what types of cars and trucks will be manufactured.  Then you can be sure that there will be more lobbying, more corruption and the buying of votes, more fighting.    Or suppose the czars of Obamacare begin dictating how many cardiologists we need, how many gastroenterologists, etc.  Do you think medical students, physicians, and their patients will take that lying down?  Hell no, they will organize and fight and protest and lobby.  They will be justified in doing so because of the constitutionally protected right to a redress of grievances.

Do you like contention and division?  Then support bigger government.  We are coming apart as a nation as Patrick J. Buchanan documents here.   The rifts are deep and nasty.  Polarization and demonization of the opponent are the order of the day.  Do you want more of this?  Then give government more say in your life.  Do you want less?  Then support limited government and federalism.

Federalism, roughly, is (i) a form of political organization in which governmental power is divided among a central government and various constituent governing entities such as states, counties, and cities; (ii) subject to the proviso that the central and constituent governments retain their separate identities and assigned duties. A government that is not a federation would allow for the central government to create and reorganize constituent governments at will and meddle in their affairs.  Federalism is implied by the Tenth Amendment tothe U.S. Constitution: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited to it by the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." 

Federalism would make for less contention, because people who love high taxes and liberal schemes could head for the People's Republic of Taxachusetts or the Left coast state of Californication,  while the  conservatively inclined who support gun rights and capital punishment could gravitate toward states like Texas.

The fact of the matter is that we do not agree on a large number of divisive, passion-inspiring issues (abortion, gun rights, capital punishment, wealth redistribution . . .) and we will never agree on them.  These are not merely 'academic' issues since they directly affect the lives and livelihoods and liberties of people.  And they are not easily resolved because they are rooted deep in fundamental worldview differences.  When you violate a man's liberty, or mock his moral sense, or threaten to destroy his way of life, you are spoiling for a fight and you will get it. 

Recognizing these facts, we must ask ourselves: How can we keep from tearing each other apart literally or figuratively?  I am floating the suggestion that federalism and severe limitations on the reach of the central government are what we need.  Example:  Suppose Roe v. Wade is overturned and the question of the legality of abortion is returned to the states.  Some states will make it legal, others illegal.  This would be a modest step in the direction of mitigating the tensions between the warring camps.  If abortion is a question for the states, then no federal monies could be allocated to the support of abortion.  People who want to live in abortion states can move there; people who don't can move to states in which abortion is illegal.

Standing on the Terra Firma of Antecedent Reality

That beautiful line is contained in the following passage from the pen of Richard M. Weaver (1910-1963):

It is my contention that a conservative is a realist, who believes that there is a structure of reality independent of his own will and desire. He believes that there is a creation which was here before him, which exists now not just by his sufferance, and which will be here after he is gone. This structure consists not merely of the great physical world but also of many laws, principles, and regulations which control human behavior. Though this reality is independent of the individual, it is not hostile to him. It is in fact amenable by him in many ways, but it cannot be changed radically and arbitrarily. This is the cardinal point. The conservative holds that man in this world cannot make his will his law without any regard to limits and to the fixed nature of things . . . . The conservative I therefore see as standing on the terra firma of antecedent reality; having accepted some things as given, lasting and good, he is in a position to use his effort where effort will produce solid results. (Quoted from Fred Douglas Young, Richard M. Weaver 1910-1963, University of Missouri Press, 1995, pp. 144-145.)

An aphorism of mine supplies the contrast:

With one foot in a past from which he will not learn, and the other in a future that will never be, the leftist stands astride the present — to piss on it.

Notes on Mark Anderson, Pure: Modernity, Philosophy, and the One

Professor Mark Anderson kindly sent me a copy of the above-captioned book the other day.  I am about a third of the way through its 108 pages.  To write a proper review is hard work, something I will not attempt in the humid heat of the Arizona monsoon.  But I will offer a few somewhat random comments over one or more posts.

PURE is a stimulating collection of aphorisms, observations, and obiter dicta which document "one man's struggle against the intellectual and existential disorder called Modernity." (1)  It is written in a partially aphoristic Nietzschean style against Nietzsche who for Anderson is the anti-Plato.  So while the packaging is Nietzschean, the content is Platonic. Indeed, the author sees "the intellectual history of the West as a prolonged struggle between Platonism and Nietzscheanism." (3)

Continue reading “Notes on Mark Anderson, Pure: Modernity, Philosophy, and the One“

Money, Power, and Equality

J. R. Lucas, "Against Equality," in Justice and Equality, ed. Hugo Bedau (Prentice-Hall, 1971), pp. 148-149:

Since men value power and prestige as much as the possession of wealth—indeed, these three 'goods' cannot be completely separated—it is foolish to seek to establish an equality of wealth on egalitarian grounds. It is foolish first because it will not result in what egalitarians really want. It is foolish also because if we do not let men compete for money, they will compete all the more for power; and whereas the possession of wealth by another man does not hurt me, unless I am made vulnerable by envy, the possession of power by another is inherently dangerous; and furthermore if we are to maintain a strict equality of wealth we need a much greater apparatus of state to secure it and therefore a much greater inequality of power. Better have bloated plutocrats than omnipotent bureaucrats.

Continue reading “Money, Power, and Equality”

Is Socialism Rooted in Envy?

Having toyed with this idea, I have concluded that it is a cheap shot. Socialism is no more rooted in envy than capitalism is rooted in greed. What one can say is that envy is the characteristic vice of socialists, just as greed is the characteristic vice of capitalists. But there is no need that a socialist or capitalist, as such, be vicious.

Suppose Sam’s motive for becoming a socialist is envy: he cannot stand it that some have much more than him. It does not follow that there are no good reasons for socialism. What follows is merely that none of those good reasons — assuming dubiously that there are some — played a motivating role within Sam’s psychic economy. Now suppose that Carl’s motive for advocating capitalism is greed: he has an inordinate desire to pile up loot for his own enjoyment. It does not follow that there are no good reasons for capitalism. What follows is merely that none of these good reasons — assuming correctly that there are some — played a motivating role within Carl’s psychic economy.

Anarchism is to Political Philosophy as Skepticism is to Epistemology

In Nicole Hassoun's NDPR review of Roderick T. Long and Tibor R. Machan (eds.), Anarchism/Minarchism: Is a Government Part of a Free Country?, Ashgate, 2008, we read:

Anarchism should be of interest [to social liberals] because it plays the role in political philosophy that skepticism plays in epistemology — raising the question of what, if anything, could justify a state in the way that brains in vats, etc. raise the question of what, if anything, could justify beliefs. The debate between anarchists and libertarians should be of interest because if the anarchists are right then libertarianism commits one to anarchism. So, social liberals who take libertarianism seriously may have to take anarchism seriously too.

I was struck by the notion that anarchism is as it were political philosophy's skepticism.  A fruitful analogy.  The anarchist is skeptical about the moral justifiability of the state in the way in which the epistemological skeptic is skeptical about whether what we take to be knowledge really is knowledge.  There is a strong temptation, one I feel, to revert to a double insistence: first, that we have knowledge of the external world whether or not we can answer every conceivable objection to the possibility of such knowledge; and second, that some states are morally justified whether or not we we can explain to everyone's statisfaction what it is that confers moral justifiability on them.

Perhaps the right atitude is as follows.  Provisionally, we should just accept that some beliefs about the external world amount to knowledge and that some states are morally justified.  Ultimately, however, this is not a philosophically satisfactory attitude.  One wants rational insight in both cases.  And so we should keep working on the problems.  But lacking as we do proof of the impossibility of knowledge and of the moral unjustifiability of the state, we have no good reason to abandon our commonsense views about the existence of knowledge and the moral justifiability of some states.  You cannot be a philosopher without being a procedural skeptic; but if your skepticism hardens into dogmatic denial of the commonsensical, then the burden of proof is on you.

 

Nietzsche on Revolution

Since I tend to beat up on Nietzsche quite a bit, and in consideration of my being one fair and balanced hombre, I thought I would quote a passage in which old Fritz is 'spot on':

A delusion in the theory of revolution. — There are political and social fantasists who with fiery eloquence invite a revolutionary overturning of all social orders in the belief that the proudest temple of fair humanity will then rise up at once as though of its own accord. In these perilous dreams there is still an echo of Rousseau's superstition, which believes in a miraculous primeval but as it were buried goodness of human nature and ascribes all the blame for this burying to the institutions of culture in the form of society, state and education. The experiences of history have taught us, unfortunately, that every such revolution brings about the resurrection of the most savage energies in the shape of the long-buried dreadfulness and excesses of the most distant ages: that a revolution can thus be a source of energy in a mankind grown feeble but never a regulator, architect, artist, perfector of human nature….(Human, All Too Human, vol. I, sec. 463, tr. Hollingdale)

This unambiguous take-down of Rousseau's conceit according to which man is by nature good but corrupted by society and the state is something the Nietzsche-lovers on the Left should carefully consider.