I am too late to this thread to jump right in, but I will say, great discussion. I was exposed to positions I agreed with and those I disagreed with, but the arguments were strong all-round.

I was surprised to see very little use of the term 'neoliberal'. It seems to me that many of the issues raised in this discussion are best exemplified as criticisms of neoliberalism?

I don't buy that the term 'neoliberal' is meaningless. It strikes me as a pretty clear switch towards the market and other technocratic innovations, pure rationality, per the technocrats, as the only legitimate guiding principals?

Morality as a personal brand?

Regardless, I think the OP is correct. Liberalism is myopic. Perhaps, per Chris Hedges, 'turning a blind eye' is an inevitable byproduct?

This means we ultimately decide everything, through, in Satan's words, the "unconquerable will." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Okay, good.

You can also see this tend in the idea that ontology might be oppressive if it is not creative. On the classical view, this makes no sense. Ignorance is a limit on freedom, and being creative in error just binds you in ignorance. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Agreed.

Next, Marxism had been fairly popular in the West, particularly in academia, for a long time. But by the late Cold War, the many infamies of Marxist regimes had come to light and they seemed more like the norm rather than the exception for that ideology. People had already argued that capitalism was bankrupt and couldn't turn back now. Yet their great alternative was revealed to be more akin to Hitlerism than utopia, and no new alternative was forthcoming. So there is a sort of reflexive shell shock militating against strong belief. — Count Timothy von Icarus

True.

So that's the broad context, but then this is paired with a number of influential skeptical arguments of "skeptical solutions" to questions of knowledge. Wittgenstein, who has been interpreted in extremely diverse ways, is especially influential here. The linguistic turn and a tendency towards deflationism (or just bracketing out questions of truth) in logic also helps. I mentioned this in the thread on pragmatism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Good points all around. :up:

On the one hand, you have Analytics who, burnt by incompleteness and undefinablity, decided that, since truth couldn't be defined to their satisfaction, it simply could not exist. The rules of their "games" were thus the ultimate measure of truth, and since they had very many games there must be very many truths, with no game to help them choose between them.

Elsewhere in the Analytic camp were those who became so committed to the idea of science as the "one true paradigm of knowledge," that they began to imagine that, if science couldn't explain consciousness, then consciousness (and thus conscience) must simply be done away with (i.e. eliminative materialism, which gets rid of the Good and the agent who might know it).

From the other side came Continentals who came to define freedom as pure potency and power, and so saw any definiteness as a threat to unlimited human liberty. On such a view, anything that stands outside man must always be a constriction on his freedom. Everything must be generated by the individual. Perhaps we can allow the world to "co-constitute" with us, but only if a sort of freedom and agency, which in the end is really "ours" anyhow, is given to the world.

The result is a sort of pincer move on the notions of Truth and Goodness (and we might add Beauty here too.) We might envisage the two armies of Isengaurd and Mordor. The first is motivated by belief that it cannot win. The second, by pure considerations of power, and so it assumes that everyone else must have the same motivations.

Good stuff. Also, it would be great if you learned how to add links to your quotes. :razz: You can actually highlight text, click "quote," and the website will do it for you.

A. This misses how heroic and good historical events (e.g. ending slavery) also involve strong conviction; and

B. That plenty of disastrous events, e.g. the fall of the Roman Republic and the later collapse of the Western Empire, stem more from a lack of conviction, not a surfeit of it. As Yeats put it:

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Sounds familiar. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, that's also a good point.

Republic, 442 b-c is one place (using the analogy of the city). I think Plato refers to the spirited part of the soul as the "natural ally" of the rational part when he first introduces the typology .. too, and maybe in a few other places. This comes out in the chariot image of the Phaedrus too. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sure. I am familiar with those but I will revisit them.

I think you can find the same sentiment expressed at many points in the Philokalia though, for example by Saint Diadochos of Photiki, who, unlike many Pagans, does not see the irascible appetites, or anger in particular, as bad, but rather sees them as tools for rebuking the appetites, passions, and demons. He memorably advised that one fashion a whip from the name of Christ and drive out the demons from the soul as Christ drives out the merchants from the temple (the body itself being a temple to the Holy Spirit). — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's fair, although that tradition is also wary of anger, if not spiritedness per se.

St. Thomas lays out a similar role for the irascible appetites in the first part of the second part of the Summa (roughly questions 20-30 IIRC), where he covers all the appetites (concupiscible then irascible) and discusses how none are evil of themselves, but are evil in their use (object, ordering to reason, or effect on habit). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, and you have Thomas following Aristotle in contending that a lack of anger can at times be a vice.

A deficiency that might be compounded if you did things like cut the cultural canon (Homer, Virgil, Milton, etc.) out of education due to concerns of "bias." Having removed all "bias," nothing supports one view over any other. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Right!

Once tradition is considered evil and reason is considered impotent, a sort of anti-tradition revolutionary mindset is largely all that's left (along with the ascendancy of the victim).

Once tradition is considered evil and reason is considered impotent, a sort of anti-tradition revolutionary mindset is largely all that's left (along with the ascendancy of the victim). — Leontiskos

But there is a third possibility, to recognize that tradition has good and bad elements and that reason has its power, but also its limitations. Less dramatic, but much more reasonable. Sure, those who are addicted to excitement will worry about lack of "conviction", but excitement, in itself, is neither a good nor bad thing - it depends on what one gets excited about.

Less dramatic, but much more reasonable

"Reasonable" as in "known as true/good by reason," or "reasonable" as in the procedural, safety-centered sense of Rawls and co.?

"Reasonable" as in "known as true/good by reason," or "reasonable" as in the procedural, safety-centered sense of Rawls and co.? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I've developed a habit of using "reason" when I'm talking about a limited sense of reason, which has to do with truth/falsity and logic. When I'm thinking of a more expansive sense of reason - especially a sense that enables one to think carefully and coherently about values of one sort or another especially in the context of action - I use "reasonable". I started doing that so that I at least could keep straight in my mind which sense I was in at any given time.
Without prejudice to any different usage that Rawls may make of the word. Though reading some of your comments, I've wondered whether you shouldn't be developing a Greek sense of balance - it would help when considering issues of safety and such.

Having removed all "bias," nothing supports one view over any other. — Count Timothy von Icarus

A good example of this is the incoherence of saying gender and sexuality are malleable objects of choice. If we suspend the “bias” of “assigning” gender both an essence (male is one way, female another) and an application (this baby is a boy, that baby is a girl), there will be nothing on the landscape for someone to choose from when they might later decide to reassign themselves a new gender.

During adolescence, we must break from the authority of our parents in order to become fully formed individuals. Liberalism is the reification of adolescence as if it was full maturity, seeking always to break and tear down. The liberal forgets that as they destroy one institution, it gets replaced by another, or the destruction simply leads to a diminishment of life, just like the adolescent has not yet learned that there are reasons the adults constrain them, and that they will find they impose the same restraints on themselves and their children one day.

Gotcha.

Though reading some of your comments, I've wondered whether you shouldn't be developing a Greek sense of balance - it would help when considering issues of safety and such.

Well, that you think:

One might be tempted to conclude that the best option is to return to the belief that tradition is good and reason omnipotent. But there is a third possibility, to recognize that tradition has good and bad elements and that reason has its power, but also its limitations.

Needs to be said to me suggests a rather dramatic misreading on your part. What part of "liberalism has difficulties with thymos-phobia and logos-skepticism/phobia" suggested to you: "traditional is always good and reason is omnipotent?" was remotely on the table?

Where has anyone suggested anything like that? This has sadly been the norm throughout this thread. That all critiques of liberalism tend to get reduced to Stalinism or theocracy is actually something Fisher spends a lot of covering. "There can be no alternative, the solution to the problems of liberalism is always more liberalism."


Second, a concern for safety would motivate a proper acknowledgement and orientation of thymos to logos. Without this, liberal societies are subject to the decay of the state and norms we currently observe. This does not promote safety. Instead, it tends towards radical destabilization, e.g. active duty military forces being sent into major cities, a general support of lawlessness whenever it is "right," etc.

This is exactly what Tacitus and Juvenal say about their own epoch of republican decline. The citizens, desiring safety over justice and the arduous work of self-governance (agony in the Greek sense), ended up going down a path where they got (and deserved) neither.

One might be tempted to conclude that the best option is to return to the belief that tradition is good and reason omnipotent. — Ludwig V

What epoch do you believe we would be "returning" to in that case?

Needs to be said to me suggests a rather dramatic misreading on your part. What part of "liberalism has difficulties with thymos-phobia and logos-skepticism/phobia" suggested to you: "traditional is always good and reason is omnipotent?" was remotely on the table? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I apologize. This was carelessly and badly written. I don't see what I can do to make things right but to apologize and delete this paragraph. I hope that does something to make amends.

What epoch do you believe we would be "returning" to in that case? — Leontiskos

See above.