thoughts in and out of season
What is knowledge? The question has been supremely important in modern times. Before we could know about the world, it seemed to Bacon, Descartes and others, we should criticize our ways of knowing. Our investigations should free themselves of the things that lead to error. They should be exact and impersonal, based on logic and … More ...
Some thoughts suggested by current discussions of racism and antisemitism:
The natural outlook is that there are a variety of peoples—East Asians, Fukienese peasants, Westerners, Jews, Irishmen—that are distinct enough to possess qualities that might be good or bad. Since qualities differ, it is natural to feel more or less attracted or tied to one … More ...
Other ways to make the point I made in my most recent entry:
It should be obvious that in the modern world there’s no such thing as a pluralistic society. After all, life today is marked by pervasiveness, complexity and comprehensiveness of social cooperation, and those things require common habits, understandings and beliefs. Further, modern modes of production, exchange and regulation depend on standardization. The present day is … More ...
The managerial welfare state rolls on, extending its responsibilities into more and more of social life. Tony Blair wants to add attitudes and informal personal connections to what’s administered, and to treat criminal law as simply an aspect of social management: TB’s vision for Britain.
Blair’s program follows coherently from the widely accepted basic … More ...
Conservatives complain very forcefully, but aren’t as good at saying what they want. Unless we can say what we want, however, it will be hard to make clear to others or even ourselves what we’re doing or why anyone should go along with it. So here, for comment, is an initial sketch of an answer … More ...
I ran into a discussion of “why leftism” over at 2blowhards.com that was interesting because it dealt with the problem of the attractiveness of the Left. The discussion ended by proposing that the Right
“Claim art, claim food, claim pleasure, claim generosity.”
My response:
… More ...Good idea, but one that’s hard to carry out.
Art: The
There are some interesting things in Unity is Health: An Evolutionary Left, an article by a neo-lefty British journalist who takes the notion of innate human nature seriously. What’s interesting in it is that there is apparently good reason to think that social inequality as such leads to bad health for those at the … More ...
What is America and what is it to us? It’s an odd and difficult question, even more so perhaps than what it is to be British. It’s nonetheless a pressing one in time of cultural transformation and war.
America has defined herself through a shifting combination of things: people, place, ideas, and institutions. People … More ...
Autonomy means “self-rule,” and liberalism makes it the supreme political goal. The coherence of classical liberalism depends on its ability to find a meaning of autonomy that promotes discipline and small government. On the face of it, that should be easy. After all, ruling yourself is a discipline, and external government is its negation. The … More ...