Comments by "harvey young" (@harveyyoung3423) on "David Starkey Talks"
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Part 1: At 20:00 mins in David Starkey claims all great literature is a response to a moment an "occasion", but this ("occasionalism"?) for some is a mark of denigration. This follows Starkey's introduction of Burke's conservativism as occasioned by the French Revolution, but as drawing on a long historical tradition that can be traced back to early medieval England. This "project" of tracing back, Starkey frames in terms of method as "seeking an origin" of conservativism. In this since of origin Starkey also links liberalism and Revolutionary politics, in that both are projects that involve the transformation of traditional culture society institutions and even the heart (on Popper and Berlin's criticism that it wants to transform our souls or even de-soul us). Yes the liberals also want a revolutions from tradition and nature eg the transformation of human nature.
Problem is both the French Revolution is anchored to the notions of legal universal right and justice (the Rights of Man not just the Rights of French men) and Liberalism as the individual Right (property Right guaranteed by law). Both are claiming then, under my interpretation, that their groundings are respectively in two concepts of legal Right and freedom, not explicitly but in practice. What I mean is in the political legal context all arguments and justifications and legitimacies are to be traced back to one of these two groundings. This then is a manifestation of a certain kind of political legal judgement in a context an occasion. We can then trace these left and liberal right traditions back historically to an historical event or occasion(s), but really, I hold, we should follow Kant here, in that the idea of origin, as it functions in a real context, an occasion, is how the origin works or functions in political legal judgement. So now origin or origins are revealed or shown in how reasons for a political legal judgements in a context terminate in what are taken as mutually exclusive by the two ideas of right and absoluter commitments that ought to, and indeed can, determine any political judgement as to its legitimacy. That is this move can be viewed as a kind of Copernican Revolution (Kant's Critique of Pure Reason), in the sense that the turn here is to how origins function in judgement and so the logic of judgment in a occasion or as the Continental Philosophers would say event or the contemporary. In this the historical search for origins now can offer just one kind of reflection and Critique on the notions of judgment and content but what is important is the way origins are placed as absolutes in the logic of political legal judgement in an occasion.
Now the liberals before the 20 th century worked in terms of reasons origin as Private right in law etc the stopping point is the individual, while the new left have it in justice and equality. in the 20 th century though the liberals shifted to a equilibrium model of mutual exchange as a kind of regulative ide, they still talked of individuals and their freedom, but really the equilibrium reworking of this is a threat to the idea of individual right since real people are in relations, together like links in a chain a individualist groundlessness dynamic system (reflective equilibrium in Rawls but from Goodman's Philospohy of Sciecne and i find in Schelling too). in the 20 th century the left have also re thought universal rights primarily under the schema of various substantive or concrete injustices and so from data science have made on this occasion Gender and Race the difference before the difference between people viewed as a pure, colourless, and sexless (this has many sources but i trace it back to Hegel's Critique of Kant's "formalism" as Robert Pippin puts it, for concrete real people already in difference before difference of person or wealth etc). But they too in reason refer to actual people viewed though as already conceptualised as a kind of person.
This means in thinking about the origins in reason and political judgement, they talk and structure the reason as if they terminate, depending on left or liberal, in one of two single object origins in either of two notions of person and freedom.
The problem is in reasonings these two groups claim origins in opposed rights, they try to taken occasion to get an opponent to inadvertently make a judgement that draws the opponent into their reasoning and origin. But in reality there is then a deep incongruence between this kind of deductive and abductive sort of reasoning and actual function or putting into policy a origin reasoned conclusion. Even the ontology of communicative reasons addressing a single individual then is wrong compared to the equilibrium model and the concrete rights models though which any policy can actually be put in practice. This is just a metaphysical expression of the incongruence between the logic of individual reasoning and speech and the structure of actual policy projects in engagement wit the world.
if the question of the origin of conservatism is even valid with respect to conservativism, we have to be carful not to just retain one or both of the lefts or liberal structures of reasoning and policy practice and just insert some particular content of our own into that structure. in terms of judgement the structures and the ideas of origin, for both left and liberal, are bound together. Indeed to reason like either of them in judgment with the structure and just put in some conservative content in them. This would be ironic at best and self contradictory at worst, a incongruence between structure and content.
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Part 4: Great talk, reminded me of A.J. P. Taylor clear and conversational detailed and of a whole picture. Ok so i agree good riddance to the King Arthor myth and no one knows much of who Alfred was. i cannot agree with the attempt to be Janus faced and have the myth of Island England from Henry but also the Brittiana Rules the Waves of Empire. Its contradictory, in these two straggled narratives.
But if I can carry on pushing for Hobbes. With Hobbes we get at once: 1. The idea of the single person alone like Robinson Cruso later taken up in 19th century by American writers like Emerson and Thoreau, and in post-World War 2 movies selfishness is the only morality when alone but really the conditions of morality do not exist alone; 2. The idea of a limited Sovereign State of laws with power and consent for legitimacy; 3. The disenchanted "scientific" account of man as following and in accordance with a law of nature and his thin contractual legal limits, as a legal account of behaviour in pride and right constructs a quasi-natural law out of this. this mixture of science and right, contract and legitimacy at once is meant to refer, not the to limited person or state, but the unlimited totality of nature, all humans who have ever been and will be. so not only is it a scientific reduction, it legitimises its spread far beyond its origin and genesis in the 17th century England and Europe of the Civil War and the Thirty Years War due to the linking of laws of nature and natural law. 4.It can be read as legitimising absolute power of a sovereign or the absolute need for consent to the law for its legitimacy.
Consequence is though from thinking how they are related; the consent for legitimacy can only ever flow from the ground and reason of self interest in his picture. So speech can only ever be understood as an expression of self interest, a priori.
Now while Hobbes is living in the era and consequences of the reformation, his myth of science of man, was a myth that was able to set political consent and legitimacy as an abstractly separate issue from attachments to particular religions particular mere old time myths perhaps. Thus the abstraction and separation of Church and State and the separation of public and private matters. This helped to end the massive wars in Europe over religion and is universal until Rousseau the French Revolution the Terror and Napoleon. But in this return of Europe to massive wars they were really only playing out consequences and tweeking of Hobbes his science his law and his abstracting out all non-mediated aesthetics, moral content, from the issues such that in the end the private sphere will be consumed by it.
So Hobbes set the terms of the world we still live in today with his "realist" approach to power and ground in freedom and right but only in the vocabulary and form of practical reason the sovereign in science will allow.
It seems clear to me so long as self-interest is the bottom line it will be unable to really bring deeply felt religious views to the table as these are often anti theatrical to self interest but in many different ways. But they are not different in the sense of so much different content to the basic Hobbesian structure they are antithetical to the Hobbesian picture in total. Hobbes and religion are Incongruent. However no one wants a divine right of some king or religious leader to decree law to us.
Hobbes creation myth for England Britain and everywhere else in the world that is, was and will be. Father of the science of man and rights of man, to have no limits in its claims over people.
Alternative view from the legal case on International law and following the rescue of the survivors of the sinking of Mignonette: R. v Dudley and Stephens (1884). Risk is though making law constitutive of morality. The only thing of more of a threat to life than: just a state of punishment, is a state that pays people when they do good things or their duty. Since this will empty those terms of semantic value and turn them into self interest.
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Part A1: Up to 15:00 mins . David Starkey is trying to place "madness", or "mental illness" outside of both rationality: as how normal people behave and give reasons in context, and outside of the political that is as reason as action towards a political aim aim, but also importantly as a domain free form it political utility. That is by bracketing off any political motive to the action, he can also insulate it or put the event outside of any political use anyone might want to draw from it.
Usually the political appeal to madness is by political actors on one side of an friend/enemy debate, when face with event that would contradict their political conceptual framework, and even may help their opponents. Sometimes such politically unhelpful events can be ignored or re-described or blotted out by a greater quantity and quality event. Sometimes events can happen that neither side find helpful or un helpful and an agreement in nominating madness as the other not to any particular political reason but they say, all reason. So "madness" is a kind of wild card or a jacket sleeve to hide cards. Madness as "outside" of reason then offer an escape not by the "mad person's" reasons i.e. like "oh I'm mad" or "that was mad of me", but as a escape for political actors. "madness" could be used to end a conflict by saying well it was all started really by a mad guy or a crowd driven to madness. it offers a way out that would exculpate any blame and so perhaps halt tit for tat endless game: "no one is to blame we all went mad".
The problem is the term "madness" as outside of reason is a general term and so must refer to many people and events, but if it is a name for what is outside reason, then it is a name for an anomaly to reason and so could not be a general term, or if its a name for a black hole in reason, then how could there be more than just the name and referent that says really: "not madness but rather "unreason" or "not reason". Like you will never get two mad people agreeing on their reasons. But medical science thinks its has grip on "madness" in the sense it can understand reason as a mental function for purposes and so can present madness as action with no rational purpose, or actions that as means to an end contradict the stated purpose, or that there is amore diffuse and mixed dis-function". These days with psychologists rationality is understood not with respect to a norm as foundation but rather on the modal of individual self interest rationality. So in a way the purpose is a void and what is rational is just having a first person stated aim and a method of getting their that is consistent with the purpose. In this model norms come in as acceptable aims purposes and as acceptable methods for their achievement. In this legal limits and affordances are taken as "given", and so any unacceptable aims or methods are deemed irrational in terms of the risk of legal punishment. ie Irrational because the risk of institutionally mediated "self harm" from breaking legal norms and getting caught. Of course the criminal can say the punishment "Ain't necessarily so" and be willing to take the risk, and much of life they say is this way anyway. But we don't say risk is irrational, we say its a gamble a long shot, very low odds of success but very high reward. This is how professional criminals think and work. But his tend to be a collective affair, in which others are in the same game, and it is jsut a norm to not see laws a limits in themselves but as obstacles to avoid. Then there are those who realise rationally that the laws are not jsut limits to them but also additional affordances if worked in well. But political actors view laws in the same way, that is normal in politics and increasingly so in ordinary life.
So i have outlined how medical science can attempt to rationally "place" madness, what it is in terms of certain types of "disfunction" of the normal use of rationality as consistent self interest in seeking rational goals for themselves. While this forms the basis for Cognitive Behaviourism, it looks surprisingly like a importation or smuggling in of the liberal individual person model of human rationality. I think Derick Parfitt's "Reasons and Persons" (1984ish) has become the classic text fort this, working out of the liberal economic tradition from von Misses "Positivism", Pareto, R.M. Hare. This was and is heavily Critiqued by Kantians, Virtue Ethicists, Bernard Williams: on Rawls: "a person devoid of history a story a context friends and think and narrow norms, but other than that completely normal". Indeed for this event and perpetrator, the term "loaner" is used to describe his activity, but that is odd since the psychologists working schema for rational action and actors is of a "loner". Self interest rationality is an ontology of lone individuals.
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Part A4: (Part 3 was deleted and the edited re write was deleted) So on the question at 49 mins: Firstly you cannot understand what's happening here, juts here. its co varientley related to what's going on elsewhere in the world or parts of the world. i say covariently because it has a legal structure of relations: international law. Thus it is not mealy psychological or cultural (see criticisms of psychologism and socio logism in early analytic philosophy). But if we have real people with context as departures and arrivals, we see that the relata of origin and destination, we see the relata change as the people follow the relation across the international law world line. This means both ends of the relation change due to the relations. This can be said in many ways of course economic cultural and so on. But also to stick with the world line metaphor, the direction of the relation is not simply reversible. its like entropy and time, the world line structure of movement as economic differential difference between the relata, cannot be reversed simply by attemping economic difference reversal like paying people to leave. the metaphor of reversal ignores that the relata change, there is no direction home. it like you can heat up water and cool it down back to its original state but you cant do that with an egg. see Hawking on Entropy probability and time.
But that means the internal law on movement is non reversible. This violates its axiomatic economic version as differentials. the non reversal of immigration means the forward grounding foundation of movement is wrong . What's wrong is the very abstract person in the model of law as context less. I think that in common law we recognise non reversibility but not in pure Rights law. Its an axioms type problem. I told my friends sometime in 2008-9 that i would solve this in two weeks ha ha. maybe the drift towards retroactive law is related to this? You know what is legal now might be illegal in the future and you will be found guilty of a future la, that does not exist now but will in the future. My friends were an Irish Artist and a Polish Law Grad working with me on Logical paradox and Tarskey.s theory of truth.
In this case the artist delivered a great work of art, a sculpture, on time and on budget, i wander if they are still waiting for my promised essay. Hay he can un make the sculpture for my failure to honour the contract.
ref see the movie "Continuumn"
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Part A1: At 9:00 mins David Starkey talks about a fact "it is there". Then with this he turns to look at particular "Communities", but then moves to ask "Who are they?" and "Why do they exist?". One root in the conservative tradition is Critical of the attempt to place together: What is there by fact, and What is their by reason. Reason here in the rationalist "tradition" from Leibnitz seeks a rational foundation for what exists, and how it exists, in terms of reasons as causes. That is any fact must be placed under Leibnitzs "Principle of Sufficient Reason" but there is no humanly accessible way of determining a fact an existent, a priori, from its concept (like as if some community's existence and nature were like tautological or analytical propositions that its concept alone necessarily means it must exist by definition c.f The Ontological Argument)). so Leibnitz's Principle of sufficient Reason fills a gap for man between what is conceptually necessary by reason and what is an empirical fact, that is left vacant by the above a priori Principle of Necessary Reason by concepts alone.
The PSR then demands causal explanation, and this from the enlightenment means not purpose or end but antecedent causes back to a first or unique cause. Then this reason as cause is the content for what is not available for man to grasp as really a priori logical necessity from concepts alone. Now Leibnitz also held that we live in the best of all possible worlds, which then suggests we ought to leave things, facts, as they are, it is only because we have not the mind of God to see that everything all facts are necessary a priori.
Now the Leibnitz approach then for the empirical fact is to subsume it under a cause a scientific type cause, but this then implies some fact is contingent it could have been otherwise on the counterfactual that the cause did not happen so the fact would not exist or be the way it is. This addresses the cosmological argument, that seeking a cause for a fact cannot really present the fact as a contingent so the cause is necessary but only knowable for the mind of God.
There is a curious cosmology here for God all facts are knowable a priori but for man some m of these are only knowable though a science of antecedent causes, but then for us it appears these are entirely contingent and could have been otherwise, but that radical contingency is an illusion due to our finite minds ability to recognise a priori conceptual and existence necessary relations. So humans keep asking why in an attempt to reproduce or go proxy for God's mind though causes. Now clearly there is in Leibnitz a kind of passivity requirement for humans because God ahs made this world the best it can be. someone could say there is a kind of character of conservativism at play here, don't mess with Gods plan. But conservativism mainly claims that there is a "limit" to asking why to finding causes, that a community as a fact is constituted "with" its reasons, but those reasons cannot go beyond the space of reasons within the community, as this would involve a kind of self contradiction, an attempt to saw off the branch your are sitting on. That is there is a fact of a community existing, and with it a space of reasons that must terminate in states of affairs internal to the community, not terminate in some first cause that would be prior to the existence of the community and so would be logically and semantical prior to the community and so outside of the community and its space of reasons. Some regard this conservative approach as meaning a rational "foundation" within the context of a community, as if this state of affairs and its reason is going proxy for a kind of first cause, while others would class this as "anti foundationalism" and then a counter enlightenment movement as opposed to a new foundation for enlightenment rationalism. I came to this "counter enlightenment" view in the late 1980's mostly from reading the Later Wittgenstein using the old Open University 3rd and 4th level course books from the late 1970's.
So that is a counter enlightenment move against Leibnitz, the rationalist tradition from Kant did not think this was the best of all possible worlds but rather with the Categorical Imperative humans are discovered to have an intuition and duty that now projects the agent to act to change the world though maxims subsumable under the Categorical Imperative. On the one hand I am of the view Kant thinks he has discovered this sort of moral reasoning to be already their in mans reasons and maxims and Kant has just elucidated clearly what we do in a rough and ready way anyway. This is an outdated (conservative i would claim) view of Kant, for many view Kant as a constructivist offering an architecture for hope that Categorical imperative constructions will create "A kingdom of Ends" a rational community or commonwealth as a telos as if a "future cause" the shape of that community to come were an image a fact to be, but we are not acting to bring about an imaginative image of utopia, rather we act in accord with the CI and the utopia will follow as a implicit telos without it being a factual aim for action now.
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Part A2 From Leibnitz point of view i imagine that Kant would be thought of as putting man in the place of God constructing actively the best of all possible worlds. But this constructivist approach becomes dominant as a political force with Hegel. Here communities are ethical traditional but sub rational private worlds that need radical reconstruction by reason through public laws and science, to bring or sublate the limited and inefficient and unjust ethical world under and into a more efficient and equal society of public law as Universal law not contextual common law. Hegel and later Marx both saw ethical communities as both the rough ground (wrt to utopia and universal reason) from where to start the work, so political work does not begin with a "blank slate" or the individual or the King, but ethical communities will also be resistant to these changes and so a conflict is there between the community and its traditions and the utopia it ought to become. This is still there in Lenin who referenced the factory workers use of ball bearings to halt the cavalry during the revolution, and he grounded his politics in the already unionised "Soviets". Its not jsut tactics but also tactcis rooted in a new recognition of the factual realities of communities as both pregnant, with potential, fecundity, but also resisting giving birth. Even Stalin recognised this reality of context, he argued in Pravda against the Moscow University Linguistics department, that the project to change the way people talk to each other ie sublate their community traditional vocabulary with Marxist linguistic reconstructed grammar and vocabulary. The professors though it could be done in one generation Stalin said no. He went to the department and debated this with the professors and their students. That must have been some kind of a seminar session. “OK thank you everybody for that enlightening debate, those on the conservative right can get wine and snacks at the reception, those on the left must gather in the cellar downstairs.
Now with the advent of Post Modernism from 1968, the notion of community becomes central for the left in pretty much the same dialectical tension. Early on is Jean Luc Nancy “The Experience of Freedom” (1988/1993(trans)), “The Inoperative Community” (1991) these draw on and work within several other writers too like Philippe Lacoure-Labarthe and Georges Bataille. But now I would say for those in the know on the left it’s the three book trilogy by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri “Empire, “Multitude” and “Commonwealth”, and the 3 or 4 Volumes of collections of essays “The Idea of Communism (Vol,1,2,3,4(?)”.
Here in an apparent recognition of the conservative ethical tradition and its “Critique of foundations” Hardt and Neri in “Commonwealth” (2009) apparently offer a middle way between the rational legal scientific modernity projects of the left and traditional communities revered by conservatives and counter enlightenment traditions. Between then a primitive ethical life and rational “disenchantment” for justice there is proposed an “Altmodernity”.
Here “Praxis” drawing on Arendt and the public square but going back to Lenin “What is to be done” and Marx Thesis on Feuerbach “Philosophy has only interpreted the world, but the task is to change it”, becomes a tactical issue, and in this what is central to the project and what is merely a tactical tool to be thrown away later is unclear. What is essential and accidental are about making new transnational identities or assemblages and who is going for the wine and who is going to the cellar is a matter of context and affordance for the final common ownership of property. What I am saying then is that the left recognise these multiple communities and multiple political policies creates contradictions and inconsistencies, but these are just evidence of different tactical affordances in different contexts. Indeed Hegel said the whole thing will be fraught with ongoing tensions and contradictions, political even violent struggles. Its revolution not a pick nick. For Hegel Kant’s consistency universality Criteria of moral action and maxims is the problem. For Hegel its Kant’s abstraction from context that makes the simple view of non-contradiction in action seem like a real possible limit or prescription on action. The problem with Left Praxis and multiple contradictions for the left is a false problem due to Kant abstract moral theory, since this theory is wrong, so then the charge of contradiction or unfairness or bias is not really a limit on action and reason praxis is first. In the end with the arrival of the “commonwealth” the contradictions (eg property justice and Right) etc will dissolve away. In a way they are saying its only or finite and abstractive view of the ground that produces contradictions, if we had access to the “commonwealth” we would realise the contradictions are just temporal during the process of revolution. It’s odd how all this new stuff is so in line with early German enlightenment thinking and German Romanticism.
From Wikipedia “Commonwealth” (book)
In Part 1 of the book the authors introduce the concept of "the republic of property". As such they state that "What is central for our purposes here is that the concept of property and the defense of property remain the foundation of every modern political constitution. This is the sense in which the republic, from the great bourgeois revolutions to today, is a republic of property".[2]
In Part 2 the authors deal with the relationship between modernity and anti-modernity and end up proposing what they call "altermodernity". Altermodernity "involves not only insertion in the long history of antimodern struggles but also rupture with any fixed dialectic between modern sovereignty and antimodern resistance. In the passage from antimodernity to altermodernity, just as tradition and identity are transformed, so too resistance takes on a new meaning, dedicated now to the constitution of alternatives. The freedom that forms the base of resistance, as we explained earlier, comes to the fore and constitutes an event to announce a new political project."[
The best book on this is “Critique and Praxis” by Bernard Harcourt. And he has done many series of seminars called 13/13 on all aspects of this in the last few years. Before that are the seminars at the European Graduate School on YouTube.
There's a movie too "Der Ister"! but its awful.
Got to go round my folks now but hopefully I’ll return to this.
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Part A3: I ought to explain the motive for my deep dive into the metaphysis of representation of my comments referring up to about 9.00 mins in. It seemed to me that David Starkey's discussion of immigration and groups here having "tribal" and "family relations" with groups and countries overseas was to much of a naturalist account. And so i wanted to show or emphasise how the same phenomena can be explained structurally in terms of Rights and Efficiency and international Justice and Equality Principles and conventions. Thus in the structural as opposed to natural account the movement of people is explained in terms of public laws and Rights and utility measurements and policy not by any natural relations. But after 9.00 mins it seems Starkey's use of naturalistic explanation is not a bald naturalism of first nature ie as if these relations are analogous to relations between animals in groups or primitive tribes, rather Starkey talks here of house rules and so on. This reminds me of the Feminist philosopher of Politics Virginia Held who wanted to make explicit that the domestic and sphere what is regarded politically and legal as the private not public sphere is not analogous to how animals raise there young but is structured by rules and a logic and semantics of terms of use. So I concede that Starkey is not claiming animal like, or primitive naturalism here, rather with Held we can say the domestic and family realms and its connections would have to contain "internally" and necessarily various uses of character terms of vice and virtue such as strong and weak characters and within relations and feelings of respect and shame that are constitutive of the forms of life. Thus for Held the traditional political category distinction "public/private" cannot remain as traditionally a radical difference between private animal life, and public human life.
On my view this makes ethical life and its terms of virtue and vice constitutive of that life. That is we can apparently understand and use many propositions without any recourse or contribution or Operators or Qualifiers by terms of character and virtue. I means the position from David Hume of the radical separation of questions of fact and questions of value, which also became the is/ought distinction down to the 20th century. My view is that virtue terms must be binding over all propositions even if our grammar makes it appear as if they can be abstracted or subtracted from the proposition, but the proposition still retains its meaning and use without them. eg the use of a proposing in science for self interest in not some addition to a pure fact but the recognition that the "fact is in a space of virtue and vice of the users and speaker. The old problem of how to get an ought from an is, is the wrong question, for the original abstraction and subtraction of the two (ought and is) is the error the impossibility of knowing and using a proposition with no regard to virtue and vice of both users and listener. That is "is and ought" are really internally related and this ahs to be shown, as opposed to a wrong question that begins from a position as if is and ought are separate and then tries to connect them. Because this is a key argument of mine that underlies much of my work I have explicated this position in vast detail over the last 3 years or so at New Culture Forum and Novara media mostly. Its in my discussions around Galileo’s inclined plane experiment and Henry of Ghent, contrasts between explanation as subsumption under law and use as heuristics. It is key for me for an organic Conservative position with respect to animal nature naturalism and science and law as mechanical. I had this view of Galileo before I read McDowell but it was hard to express before I read McDowell.
So in Aristotelain terms we can make explicit ina form of life the constitutive role of vice and virtue as internal to propositions. Aristotle is not imposing this onto or adding it to the Greek form of life rather he is making explicit its role as it is already in Ancient Greek life of the 3rd century BC. This approach is in Oxford philosopher Peter Strawson’s account of Kant for example he called descriptive metaphysics. In a Monty Python sketch John Cleese plays an Oxford type philosopher of the 1970’s, who say “we are not making rules so as to play a game we are playing the game already and trying to find out what the rules are that make it possible. Strawson’s “conditions of possibility”. This Strawsonian Kant “Bounds of Sense” and limits was influential for McDowell but he later wanted to move away from it. Thus the distinction between a “constructivist” Kant (either from Rawls or Nozik or there many responders on the left) and “descriptivist” Kant is key to showing how conservatism is different in a deep way from other political positions. As Putnam put it “Is” is fraught with “ought”. From Sellars a “fact” is always within a whole cosmology of internal relations to evaluative terms.
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Part E1: So I'm thinking you spotted de facto my quote, but failed to recognise its de jure use. It brings to mind something someone once said about what not to do about the difficult messenger.
Thanks fine. The work needs to be done on the margins, and I'm more than familiar with that dis-position.
As some of the ground has so far being laid and its disposition within several political legal contexts, i can move to the issue now David Starkey raised at the being the question of the "Who". The above context then means this question is fraught with difficulties of entanglements of different logics and notions of reason. Now the on the Kant/Hegel context then the former focuses on the synthetic activity in the unity apperception the individual intentionality in knowledge and responsibility. The later, Hegel then focuses on Spirt which is really the creation or production of a legitimate recognised Sovereign source of ends and dissolving of limits boundaries and Categories like public private. In this dialectical opposition we don't have the individual as a thing in itself a transcendent absolutely unconditioned passivity or sue generic self causing agent and action, but neither do we have that for the sovereign, "it" "is not" transcendent and unconditioned sue generic action either. So this means the traditional social contract has to be revised at the deep level of rethinking de facto and de jure here. I say rethinking or de methodising in the seen that we do not just throw them out as some pre modern superstition. Some views on Kant might claim this to be Critical philosophy as science and law rejecting old traditions for the modern old is subsistence, modern is increasing freedom from subsistence freedom. There is still a role for these terms when de mythologised. Hegel takes the idea of freedom to be freedom from all traditional limits by speculative inflation of science and law and their institutions to a totality a community. This really goes beyond the social contract and consent and towards the international and transnational and so, really, beyond de jure as consent. This is done though the view of law and science as transcendent facts and justice, as such transcendent facts and positive law facing towards actual justice to come, have little role for consent. its about experts "justifying" their claims to each other rather than any recourse to consent, rather consent or legitimacy and recognition of such facts are sublated into things like enquiries and reports and committees of experts.
eg The scientist tell us the population contains: 99% of people who do not understand taxation theory, 97.3% cant name any cabinet or shadow cabinet ministers. 95% cannot tell us when the English Bill of Rights was signed, and 95% cannot tell us when the UN declaration of Human rights was made or ratified. So why would we need to ask, defer or consult or require consent from these populations in policy. Maybe only the clever can reflect on policy, ie the clever reflecting on the clever. The enquiry conducted by the same group of people as those they are enquiring on. Call the disagreeable population "Poplarists" and any other terms from modern mythologies and superstitions and so apt for a Witch hunt.
All this stuff on the "who" the agent the person responsible for acting in the modern world is not so much an inflation of the "Who" with Hegelian modernism, as its disappearance into a scientific legal institutional complex. Eg system of anonymity not super responsibility. when no one is there we can hardly talk about consent or legitimacy or any simple de jure state of affairs or progress. I mean de jure has become a technical if contested issue after Rawls about distribution of freedoms and so on the person without "expert knowledge of the sciences and economics and game theory in particular can't be allowed to play the consenting game because they don't understand it and don't know the rules. The expert scientist (armed with access to all information necessary for the action in equilibrium of Goodman's technical image of science) is Rawls's person in the original state of blindness, and this is what replaced Kant's unity of apperception in the Hegelian now pragmatics science.
The classic way in from the Continental Philosophical tradition on this is not Rawls or Hobbes, but Heidegger and his discussion of the "Who" of Dasein. I'm going back to lectures and seminars form the mid 1990's now. Bellow are the references for this:
Heidegger "History of the Concept of Time" (#26 The "who" of Being-in-the world Kisiel Trans. pg 236)
Heidegger "Being and Time" (#25 An approach to the existential of the Who of Dasein Macquarrie/Robinson pg 150)
I pick these early works because it is the context for Heidegger's later discussions of freedom, and because these books contain long discussion on Historical method, and HCT has some explicit critiques of the philosophy of science as it was then in the 1920's in Germany.
What happened after was Heidegger's plan to add two more volumes on Kant to Being and Time ran into difficulties in that his work on Kant made him think the first book was in too much error to be just added to with some Kantian additions. Heidegger did write books on Kant but the original project was abandoned. He deals with freedom from the 1930'sd onwards, but this requires understanding the views on freedom in BT even though they are later revised greatly. This again is an example of his hermeneutic method in play in his own work reflectively too.
These view will shape the approach to politics of Hannah Arendt particularly on totalitarianism responsibility anonymity and the "public sphere".
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Part E4: Ricoeur's "Oneself as Another" was his Gifford Lectures Edinburgh 1985-86. The Gifford Lectures Series concern relations between Theology and philosophy, particularly Natural Theology.
Here's a quote from their website:
"Natural theology is typically described as a revelation-free, reason-informed theology, and is most often associated with proofs for the existence of God.
For Lord Gifford, who established the Gifford Lectures to investigate natural theology in the widest sense of the term, natural theology includes the knowledge of God, the knowledge of God’s nature and attributes, and the relationship of humans and the world to God, as well as the nature and foundation of ethics or morals."
Back to me:
So it seems to me some modern political movements have become similar in look and feelings to what we might expect to find at an evangelical church: the Being or performance of ecstatic revelations. In a way this might be expected in a politics that has become so technocratic scientific legalistic and burocratic that no one can really understand much of it, and what hey do understand hey don't trust anyway. This knowledge gap, creates a "rational" motivational gap between the elites and the people (eg Hume belief and desire model). It follows that as this rationality gap widens, appeal to evocate or invocate emotions directly and immediately will become the source for action eg getting votes. The technocratic rise then perhaps drives the recourse to speakers to generate immediate feelings and pseudo ecstatic's experiences in the audience becomes seen as the bottom line. Rhetoric is replaced by techniques of "motivational speakers'. The incomprehensible institutions are forced to try to generate kind of reflex response in the audience. and this is seems as best achieved though extreme examples of risk and vulnerability and harm. What the technocratic loose is any real rational belief in the audience and so the attempt to trigger an immediate fear or shame and use a single most horrifying case as the image for all desire action.
the disenchantment of reason and the sublation and utilisation of pseudo ecstatic and revelatory experience then are in a way necessarily connected.
Gifford lecture site:
"It is thought, not action, that ultimately moves the universe. An essay may be a greater thing than a decisive battle, and a speech more momentous than a change of dynasty. The scholar, the thinker, and not the fighter, is after all the world’s master.”
Adam Lord Gifford, “Ralph Waldo Emerson,” in Lectures, 7.
Riceour "Oneself as Another" has long discussion of law and justice.
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More from my Trump comments:
Part B1 So for example if a law is made that bans burning the flag, then "not burning the flag" can be interpreted as "patriotic" or just forced adherence to the law. That means the possibility of public patriotism a genuine voluntary spirit of patriotism becomes obscure, because it could always be interpreted as an act of fear, rather than legitimate free consent.
Example 1: No one really thinks the long applause that Stalin's speech's got during the purges indicate a spirit of consent and agreement rather than fear.
Also similar is the street talk of "respect" out of fear and out of consent, I think are under a logical error of confusing acts of non involvement with disrespect, that is respect is a positive voluntary act to be de jure. Disrespect has to be also involve clear negative intention against the other. Its similar to the problem of Radical Evil in this sense. In a way though the sciences and the laws representation of man as causally subject/or object under external causes and forces and ontologically self interested from the start, obliterates any notion of intention, it's the distinction between what H.L.A. Hart called being obliged and being under an obligation in law and science and law now make this indistinguishable.
Example 2: The great 1990's 2000's British Rock n Roll band Oasis are getting back together and have announced some gigs. Here's my responce:
"Its happening. Oasis have announced some gigs for next year, but they arn't doing Glastonbury, and i wanted to make a point of not seeing them at Glastonbury, and now i can't. Like i can't not see em at Glastonbury if they arn't going there anyway.
I guess they've stolen my thunder too."
It like non one can be a respectful person to others if the law and psychological science wants to force and engineer people into: gestures or performances of mindless habit and reflex in conformity with the law or a rule as opposed to acting in accord with the rule.
(Note: Its in Kant on acting out of duty reverence as opposed to mere accord, and Wittgenstein in acting in mere conformity with a rule and out of a rule. I will have to check these references I'm not happy that I'm correct and redo it later. That ties me to obligations as opposed to being open for my comments to be deleted as errored or false, deliberate or factual misinformation.)
The "spirit" of agreement and consent from Hegel as de jure ends, when done though causal science and law becomes nothing but according social engineered "social cohesion" reflex through fear and habituation. This is not Bilder or culture in 19the century German idealism though which made freedom and voluntary acts central as opposed to subjection under external forces and causes alone. its in a great scene in the movie "The Fall of the Roman Empire". You can choose to track down the reference or not as you wish and have the capacity and capability to do such a reflective act.
In this sense the whole enlightenment science and law with its image of man is threat to freedom immediately in its concept. For it says man must be driven to act primarily by external forces, not trusting internal intentions and freedom.
Wittgenstein when to be "not racist" in action is wholly matter of fear of punishment and self interest then its becomes impossible not to be racist on any interpretation as someone might say they are acting only out of fear of the consequences.
Its like the lefts talk about the past as if: where there is no law in that society to prevent an act, then everybody must have been doing it regardless of character and freedom. The logic though is mesmerising though in that this approach seems to make dissent to this system as only possible in the negative place. ie to dissent from legal scientific subjection it appears that the only option is to act in their negative and say be actively racist. but of course this is an error and a place they have set for you at the table with a poison chalice.
I'm thinking of a very nice, genius Danny Kay movie scene here.
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Part 2: Our world of science is meant to be demythologised, but as Wilfred Sellars put it, science is saddled with myths of things in themselves and absolute givens of right and utility, that pretend to Transend our consent, and that would have it that we are subverted in its sublime complexity. there is no conspiracy of scientists cynically doing this, it is a problem of the logic and language of modern notions of force of law of contract in science. This is the British myth of science without myth, and without a positive feedback cybernetic implication for man's life.
The British myth is the myth of a non-mythical science of man particularly with respect to the transformation of moral, ethical and political vocabulary, and in our present days its projects of the elimination by the sciences of psychology and sociology etc. Britain is guilty of the construction of the myth of the non-mythical in its aesthetic drawing together of many diverse strands from elsewhere foreign and domestic. i am talking about the rhetorical power of Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan in a time of absolute political and religious crisis in Britian and Europe and later America during the English Civil War the Thirty Years War. Hobbes turned to a scientific image of man in a mythical state of nature, a state of war without real recognisable distinguishable groups over time and space. Internecine and fluid conflict depicted in Behemoth as the organs of the body politics coming apart and in conflict with each other. For its modern relevance compare the line in the Last Valley when Michael Cain's character is told that a certain castle or city siege has been successful, and he says "I don't know if that a good or bad thing anymore. I don't know what it means" exposing the mythical character of fact. Compare with when in 1990s a post-Soviet Nuclear Submarine base had its electricity cut off for non-payment of bills, and send tropes to electric power station to demand, at gun point, they turn the power back on.
For me then the British myth is of a world without myth, Thomas Hobbes Science of Man and his successful political synthesis in his contemporary context but and myth that will come to depict Hobbes as acting out of self-interest and the deconstructing him out of existence. Many centuries later scientifically orientate philosophers and scientists will have no problem in voicing their nonexistence, even with no trace of irony.
for Hobbes in relation to language see: "Why Does Language Matter to Philosophy" Ian Hacking (also see his "Social construction of what?") i can't list all the writers on Hobbes but mention Michael Oakeshott, Leo Strauss, Quinten Skinner. For a wider philosophical context May Midgley "Beast and Man" and Derrida's last Seminars "The Beast and the Sovereign vols 1 and 2".
My way into this kind of critique is lost to me in the annuls of time, so a bit of mythical and simple autobiographical reconstruction would be long-ago Wittgenstein's critique of James Frazer, philosopher of science Nicholas Maxwell, and Thomas Nagel, Bernard Williams, to John McDowell. Then again maybe these names just function to give my account the myth of legitimacy by claims to authority in an age still with the age of Ad Hominin? (Upto 26:00mins)
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I know Russell Square and Gordon square very well, I was a graduate student based there, with Imperial Collage and UCL in a room that was then the base of The History and Philosophy of Science Medicine and Technology Institute back in 1990. The room was where Bradley, Russell, Moore, T.S Eliot, and i think Wittgenstein would meet. I went back a few years ago and the little room had transubstanciated into a big office block. One reason i left was the philosophy of science there was going to be over taken by Bayesian methods of Rational and justification. This i had learned following discussions around a massive conference i attended on Bayesian induction. On the one side was a position that this was the thing to be in, as it was going to sweep the whole of London University and then some. I was told by those on the left and right to by a cheap house in Camden as i would make loads of money. I naively thought that when Labour get in the middleclass debt fuelled London housing bubble would stop. How foolish of me. On the other side was me a Northerner who though Bayesian Inference as a con. I left to do degree philosophy modules and build up a deeper understanding of the wider philosophical tradition, as my background was only physics and maths. I later realised that what was happening was an example of an interpretation of Kuhn's Paradigm Shift, wherein a new approach or direction is grounded in a lot of new entrants juts jumping on what they think will be the next big thing. Indeed as with stocks and shares and democracy, if enough jump on board it makes it so, regardless of its intrinsic value or truth or rationality. later with the accompanying rapid growth and expansion of the Institute i figure3d it was also an example of Imere Lakatos's theory of institutional Science and Research programs with funding that shape the direction of science. I think Lakatos was on the left (at Chicago with Sellars for a while and Hemple i recall).
I think the clever bit though was to get rid of the idea of a charismatic leader of the project and replace it with an anonymous origin less formulae of sorts for international equality human rights and Justice, as is fitting for a global looking London.
Personally I have no regrets i learned going forward that the only thing early Bayesian had was its connection of justification back to a person and so responsibility. That kind of Bayesian personalist and subjective interpretation though was rapidly going out of fashion. That those who stayed and got their 3 million pound houses in North London for £150,000 back then, would be profiteering without responsibility or real consequential return, both in theory and practice.
So from 1992 it was Kant, Kant, and Kant, Wittgenstein and Wittgenstein and Heidegger for me. If i had stayed i wasn't good enough at the maths and computing anyway to make any real contribution to taking it forward anyway.
(Note also the cheap bars in central London, and the rise of the Secrete Party Scene might be a bit of an anomalous "reason" to. The Bayesians had not factored in the cheap bars and new Party scene into their Algorithms for science by anonymous mob rule.)
My supervisor though was very good but he was a bit of an outsider at the time, as i recall.
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To move closer to the question of legitimacy and de facto de jure, here below is a relevant post for that journey, that i made as comments to a Donald Trump Speech in Arizona 3 days ago.(The time reference is from Trumps YouTube version)
Part A1: At 5:00 mins in Donald Trump refers to his friends comment after the debate with Joe Biden, who criticised Trump's claim of success in that debate: "No you got him out of the race with that debate". I guess in terms of high politics as: nominal representations of "the people" in rational debate, in the very old enlightenment tradition, was about seeking agreement, within a framework of science and law. Here "common sense" can be thought of as a task to arrive by argument to agreement between the people mediated by nominal representatives. But the enlightenment traditions of and from science and law presupposes, or posits, or assumes, or makes an axiom, that the people are aggregated individuals in self interest. Its central to Hobbes naturalistic view of man as self interest. This self interest view in Hobbes is expressed in two vocabularies or in two traditions: in the pre modern Aristotelian tradition the centre is Character and agent understood within a framework of contrasting virtues and vices: Hobbes then centres man not as seeking the mean of virtues between vices of excess and vices of deficiency, but as centred in individual vice eg pride and hubris. But Hobbes also places his new man as self interested and to be understood in terms of the new sciences of man such as behavioural psychology. That is in Hobbes we have man expressed in the pre modern tradition as vice, and in the modern tradition as self interest. Man is thus an ambiguous figure between or in both camps: "being in" the Aristotelian vocabulary of Character vice only, on the one hand; and "being-represented" as self interested and understandable though external causal sciences.
Now my view is that the difference here is that:
in the Aristotelian tradition we are "already being-in-agreement with others in a community and seeking to relate this or accommodate this with others. This is a process that begins "in" a orientation "in already common sense agreement" in a "finite "world"" and might seek its expansion while remaining within the Virtues;
but the modern tradition then begins with man scientifically represented as Universally the same for all humans, the same in that all human are equal or identical in seeking self interest and as essentially then in universal global internecine conflict from the point of view of the whole "planet", which then is finite but under an infinite task.
Kojevie mad the contrast the tile of his book "From a closed world to an infinite universe". the modern method of doing this task is though technologies of science and law to engineer a instituional bias and source for reaching a universal agreement of all humans on the planet. it seems a nice idea especially to the young, but it means the image of man remains self interest throughout the process, and so the substantive agreement between connected people within Virtue and vice, is sublated or transubstantiated or de-substantiated, or alienated (Feuerbach Marx) into the science as the laws and their institutions and the experts in them. Thus here traditional man "in virtue and vice" man is split such that in the modern we have the people as whole self interested ie vice and the experts and institutions as wholly virtuous or orientated towards the whole of humanity as opposed to subjects they see as of see as self interest. This of course begs a question for the moderns, in that if they begin with all humans as represented as self interested, then, surly the experts are really self interested too. They are not Aliens or Angles or Gods. This inclusion of the expert represents of self interested populations as also part of the self interested population. There expertise in science a law perhaps is meant to transform them beyond self interest or to represent them, especially in the logic and semantics of science and law, as them as the figure of the universal to the people as the figure of a particular case. Thus the enlightenment contains a deep problem here of its legitimacy of the whole picture when everyone is seen as self interested “represented” and “representers”, for then all the weight of agreement becomes a technical scientific and legal task: the experts then see themselves and their instructions as the only source of agreement orientated towards the whole planet a planet they see as populated by self interest and global internecine conflict.
The old tradition of common sense then begins within a community in assumed agreement already before the sciences and laws and institutions get to work, the new tradition sees common agreement as a universal task to be technocracied by the experts. Where the former begins in wise limits of scope of peoples relations, the later represents man as a self-interested deficiency “who” is set on in a process of unlimited scope excess and hubris for agreement of all people already captured as scientific legal objects.
It is obvious then that the former view begins with a wise recognition and reflect of special and temporal limits, while the latter is on a destiny project to remove or sublate all such limits they called “de-territorialisation”.
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More from my Trump comments:
Part B1 So for example if a law is made that bans burning the flag, then "not burning the flag" can be interpreted as "patriotic" or just forced adherence to the law. That means the possibility of public patriotism a genuine voluntary spirit of patriotism becomes obscure, because it could always be interpreted as an act of fear, rather than legitimate free consent.
Example 1: No one really thinks the long applause that Stalin's speech's got during the purges indicate a spirit of consent and agreement rather than fear.
Also similar is the street talk of "respect" out of fear and out of consent, I think are under a logical error of confusing acts of non involvement with disrespect, that is respect is a positive voluntary act to be de jure. Disrespect has to be also involve clear negative intention against the other. Its similar to the problem of Radical Evil in this sense. In a way though the sciences and the laws representation of man as causally subject/or object under external causes and forces and ontologically self interested from the start, obliterates any notion of intention, it's the distinction between what H.L.A. Hart called being obliged and being under an obligation in law and science and law now make this indistinguishable.
Example 2: The great 1990's 2000's British Rock n Roll band Oasis are getting back together and have announced some gigs. Here's my responce:
"Its happening. Oasis have announced some gigs for next year, but they arn't doing Glastonbury, and i wanted to make a point of not seeing them at Glastonbury, and now i can't. Like i can't not see em at Glastonbury if they arn't going there anyway.
I guess they've stolen my thunder too."
It like non one can be a respectful person to others if the law and psychological science wants to force and engineer people into: gestures or performances of mindless habit and reflex in conformity with the law or a rule as opposed to acting in accord with the rule.
(Note: Its in Kant on acting out of duty reverence as opposed to mere accord, and Wittgenstein in acting in mere conformity with a rule and out of a rule. I will have to check these references I'm not happy that I'm correct and redo it later. That ties me to obligations as opposed to being open for my comments to be deleted as errored or false, deliberate or factual misinformation.)
The "spirit" of agreement and consent from Hegel as de jure ends, when done though causal science and law becomes nothing but according social engineered "social cohesion" reflex through fear and habituation. This is not Bilder or culture in 19the century German idealism though which made freedom and voluntary acts central as opposed to subjection under external forces and causes alone. its in a great scene in the movie "The Fall of the Roman Empire". You can choose to track down the reference or not as you wish and have the capacity and capability to do such a reflective act.
In this sense the whole enlightenment science and law with its image of man is threat to freedom immediately in its concept. For it says man must be driven to act primarily by external forces, not trusting internal intentions and freedom.
Wittgenstein when to be "not racist" in action is wholly matter of fear of punishment and self interest then its becomes impossible not to be racist on any interpretation as someone might say they are acting only out of fear of the consequences.
Its like the lefts talk about the past as if: where there is no law in that society to prevent an act, then everybody must have been doing it regardless of character and freedom. The logic though is mesmerising though in that this approach seems to make dissent to this system as only possible in the negative place. ie to dissent from legal scientific subjection it appears that the only option is to act in their negative and say be actively racist. but of course this is an error and a place they have set for you at the table with a poison chalice.
I'm thinking of a very nice, genius Danny Kay movie scene here.
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Also like war, Covid has accelerated technology. We are having a similar kind of inflation in the amount of paper work and electronic forms supplied to us by every kind of organisation. It is inflation because the amount of actual human care, the gold standard for health, has at the same time diminished. If you take a Berkley-ian view it all looks so good on the web site, but we have to do more and more with all those forms and text messages and web site links to follow. Its a semblance a simulacra, and the deflation of care is probably linked to the rise of feminism's view of men, unless that traditional notion of feminine natural care is a myth of their construction. What better place to enjoy the praxis of personal political terror, than to have a mask of trust, in an organisation that is deified, where the sisters back each other up, and the men and the police all think its their prime job to do the chivalry project if they whistle. Those women know this, and orientate their action accordingly. They also know they can't be sacked or disciplined since workers are in short supply. This is what is symmetrical to what the lowest of men do. Irigaray: different kicks for different genders. Here's a line, I think, from your era "A moving paper fantasy".
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Part 1: The Marxist claim to discover a scientific grounding for the radical revolution change in terms of progress, came under severe criticism from philosophers of science in the second half of the 20th century. They said its was teleological and end destiny determined. it was said to be theology of the advent disguised as utopian science. They wanted to reject all teleology form science. G.A. Cohen responded to this by reformulating Marxism through functionalism. Now in this the technological "forces of production" at the base are both determined by institutional structures and arrangements: the "relations of production", but also such requirements for future technological forces determine the relations' of production. A new bit of tech will be deemed to be an advance or improvement on productivity outcomes compared to existing tech. This anticipated differential improvement will proved the rational for choosing the tech route, but then will also mean that various social arrangements and institutions must change to afford the utilisation of the new tech. An extreme example is the need for creating a new city of industry for great productivity, but this will require mass population movements and if forced, will mean changes in the constitution and orders of rights in the super structure for the economic base. The Critiques focused on the processes of removing private property rights and ownership of private property say in compulsory purchase, but this is just one example and not privileged in the system.
With Cohen then comparisons of outcomes from different possible future technologies rather than end criteria do the work of deciding change. I think he must have been familiar with Nelson Goodman's work. Anyway there is both a recognition of a kind of conservativism here against a view of economics as dealing with abstract ideas like an individual from nowhere with no social culture instituional context (eg Hobbes and self interest atomism), but like Hegel, with the recognition of context comes the demand that it change, or progress, but this demand is in terms of future choices for change towards greater growth and production.
Now then with Cohen's approach you can use the predicted improvements in productivity as a reason for changing the institutional, super structural, cultural and dispositions of the social world. It strikes me that free market capitalism has a similar substantive effect of change on traditions and institutions. The Marxist say the outcome is the increase utility for all gives increase of utility for each, while the free markers claim the increase of each person utility will increase the utility for all. Both will set about wanting to disrupt and change institutions and social arrangements on the basis of increased utility. One will focus on inequality and the other on total productivity, and argue over this. At the level of policy both sides then will propose future outcomes improvements for their tech projects, and the required changes to traditions and institutions for this. What has changed recently is the scope of the social relations to be changed has massively expanded. So central in this was the change in the role of international human rights institutions and utilities and more internationalisation of education and people private homes and domestic life that they call and institutions as if its function was the production of useful labour even if it’s not very good at this. The family and community are both treated as institutions composed of people following rules, but now the context of productive increase in utility for the good or goods, has shifted to decreasing the production of risk. Now the family and community are approached as requiring intervention to decrease such productions. Now they didn’t use economic outcomes as the base for this change, rather they used expanded notions of harm drawn for selected historical data and first person reports. In this human rights and the law, with psychology and socio cultural sciences of data and comparisons of intervention outcomes in reducing risk of harm appears to be the base. But are the new left primarily interested in economic outcomes, and use the legal functions appropriation of quasi moral ethical arguments for this outcome or are they really first interested in reducing harm for its own sake. With the international rights equality and justice relations of production they don’t need to make this obviously an either or, they can claim both. The liberal free marketers are left to the double down on the family and community as risk in need of more intervention, maybe police and prison rather than psychological and social projects, and offer opportunities for new private business as opposing employment in an expanding public sector focused on interventions in families and communities.
The simple dichotomies of the left, the far left and the liberal right, State owned or private enterprise, the social body verses the individual, negative freedom verses positive freedom are really idle in the real issue concrete debate now. If they have a role as totalities for each ideology if left to itself, and as limits in an ontological opposition with each other. They are thus sued as if each claims a teleology for the other based in abstraction neither have a much of a functional investment in. but of course these are real possibilities for both and in reality the teleology’s are still there not as destiny but as an “as if” like a vanishing point or perspective point that the local actions are moving towards, but without intention. And so no one is responsible in either of these ideologies.
In a way the feminist and racial critiques might well want to make equality as privileged over total productivity. Thus they accept that State investment in girls education in science might well mean less returns of benefit for the same cost if deployed on boys but this they hold as justice over the good. Anyway in practice it’s down to policy production, and who produces it and for whom and who they represent if a politician. So rather than this requiring a synthesis of the Right and the Good, this problem is outsourced to the voters and who they vote for. There is still much burocratic work to be done in the details but no need to be explicit on any principle of synthesis here. If you fail on outcomes then talk about equality, if you fail on equality talk about outcomes, if you fail on both, well talk about some other country that is worse off, or this country in the distant past.
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Part 2: Conservatives in opposition will probably go on these kinds of differences over data details, there is no decision procedure it will go on for ever without halting. Utility and rights are like natural law in the sense that their denial seems impossible. And so they talk about utility and equality based criticisms, but for complex reasons of the multi logics in play here, self-contradiction and apparent hypocracies multiply. It’s because the relations of production are manifold and forces of production are not disjunctive to them, that there is no possibility of any consistent transitivity commutitativity, reflexivity and community relations here beyond a two place relation “A IR B”. The problem comes into view but only intuitively for me in Carol Vorderman’s maxim for liberals in the general election that was vote strategically depending on place and political context. For me it’s the problem of my maxim from 1972 to always support whatever team are playing Arsenal. Now in a way I have no responsibility or dividend here for the “not-Arsenal” winning. But of course if I do support a particular team it might be in that teams interest for Arsenal to beat another team if they are in close conflict in the league tables or a cup group.
The problem is the functional approach is an abstract functional to just not an atomic abstraction and totality. Its multiple running time series not really first a set, but determine with modality operators. The lack of unity here in these functional abstractions means for each object and terms the intrinsic and extrinsic, the necessary and the contingent, the inner and the outer, the public and the private, are really only minimally categorical in the expressivity for each function on its own. This probably means any political discourse in these terms trying to talk about more than two or three policies at the same time will necessarily be in contradiction: e.g. undecidable, inconsistent, and incomplete. The problem with relations emerged 200 years ago with Galois, the problem of contradiction here a 100 years ago with Godel.
Are the conservatives being forced to have to say something logically opposed to the liberals and the left like: families for less useful human capital production, or families for more domestic risk, family’s against rights and equality and opportunity? Is the functional logicof the left and right exhaustive of reasons. One thing is clear these political legal scientific reasons, are not reasons that have persons behind them, only data arguments. Arguments only experts can join in without just repeating other expert assertions. Reasons without persons, de-subjectivisation the construction of anonymity and immunity. Power without responsibly. Maybe they both discovered if you build a system in which the people in it are immune from responsibility then it will be more efficient in outcomes. You see there are later differences in a market and vertical difference too both of race and gender. But the real difference is anonymous rulers of policy and the objects and subjects under them.
I will post this to other comments because i was working on those YouTube programs at the same time as this. Up to 26 mins here.
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Part 1 Maney thanks for the talk, I’m inspired even though I’m only part way through. I have to write now, but I'm too tired to exercise virtue here and try and do justice to this discussion, not least because I am a layperson on Ancient and Medieval history. But i want, if I may, to just say a few things.
Firstly, there is a strange irony here, in that you seem to be engaged in a practice of deconstruction of mythology, by placing myths as contextual historical constructions, which quickly collapse in any genral or universal normative force when we see them as not just depicting in narrative synthesis of internal and external, foreign and domestic, personal and political conflict, but as themselves just various pragmatic moves that are imminent and particular to the eternal game of conflict. That is the myths are viewed as having no transcendent aesthetic truth, but only as a kind of propaganda function at the time that has the effect of leaving a trace of itself in shaping the future. We might say we moderns study the structural differences and conditions emergence of these myths, the narrative and metaphorical mechanisms tropes etc they draw on and reconfigure. They may not claim to truth but just as a person's false belief can explain a person action particularly in historical understanding that has to consider real agents making (by synthesis and judgement in a situation) events in action that appear as supernatural to the law like course of nature. Myths become, like anything else pragmatic, revealing a privilege narrative by the winners of a political contest and now as advent is still political contested for pragmatic purposes. The contemporys just ask will this story work for me, for us. Will it help to keep the bodies buried. everyone knows they have effect in shaping our actions and interpretations, but no one thinks are they true: it just isn't a question we moderns think is worth asking. Think of Kierkegaard's view of Lessing's natural theological attempts to find scientific proof for the real historical Jesus.
So there is a strange historicism here of depicting myths as, out of water, already from a privileging of modern views of it as say function pragmatic utility. but we moderns are correct to be sceptical of manufactures rhetorical devices and aesthetic images. but the irony here also is that the views of modern science are taken as realist: as about "things in themselves" in the past or the present or even the future, events and events of man himself and even, with say Foucault: the invention of man himself, wea re not a thing in itself but once a mere accidental branch of homo to homo Sapien and now a constructed concept: itself the creation and origin of the myth of man as a creative construction for power. We moderns as embarking on projects in the scientific image of man have sought to tear down all mythologies of the premodern pre-enlightenment, and as claimed by Nietzsche and Anscombe the death of God, the death of myth, has grown up to include the death of the human agent, the author, no one knew (perhaps Henry of Ghent) that the advent of Galilean science would eventually turn on its creator and annihilate him. Science had a hidden clause, a double effect, a freedom from agent liability, that was to draw on a prescientific language a destiny to transubstantiate man into its own image of being a part of a mechanism, of rights and utilities transcendent ends. So purpose and action are still alive in the modern legal mechanical machine of politics, it's just a purpose that exceeds and diminishes the human purposes. A strange dynamic hyperstatic groups of contested purposes in which man is a tool for the purposes and is measured by them. Aristotle's root model of agency and virtue from the ancient and medieval world is not just eliminated but transformed into alienating institutional functions. The contested battle of myths and narratives continues in seeking utility right now. When man is gone, we will have no recognisable notions of consent only people under networks of forces, myth being just one in the toolbox of political science and the new numbers rhetoric and graphs aesthetic. but we don't need some Arthur myth from who knows when, for who knows what, to return for our silent awe.
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Part 2: But politically and in terms of conservatisms we have to work from within where we are, and people today do reason like this and policy is though institutions that are structed like this. But it is not such a problem when we realise even the origin speaking and reasoning practices of the left and liberal are really incongruent to the policy applications in the ways i have outlined. Indeed the conservative ahs the challenge, that neither the left or the right have in their discussion with opponents. Whereas the left and liberal will point out errors in each other and in conservative tradition, these are errors of opponents viewed from within their own logic. The conservative cannot make this simple move to thrown the opponent into a radically incorrect space as a negative of their own logic. The conservative cannot place an errored opponent as simple wrong as if their position does not really exist is an illusion or a propositional negative. Rather the conservative has to have a genuine place for the opponents positions. This means that the way in which opponents are wrong is far more complex and requires a good understanding of conservative judgements and responsibility etc. This partly then is a hermeneutic approach (see Quentin Skinner) but it will help also to clarify conservatism not in terms of say adherence to Burke as a bible origin or as a simple competitor to Smith or Marx, but rather the conservative in thinking actual policy has to work from within what is already their, what is already their is shed loads of left and liberal ideas reasonings and structures, the conservative must a priori work with as moments of the traditions they are not as such alien or radically outside even the tradition of conservativism. Kant has the answer to my mind if we think his work beginning with dialectics then onto the constructive part not the order of his writings. Kant writes in part as laying out something that looks on the surface as another rational system, but its content is drawn from taking seriously his opponents positions. In the end he finds these supposed and opposed origins of his opponents as in error in that they just take one dimension of policy and try to place all others under it, and as such by abstracting out their other and then bringing it under a single system they make judgment abstract and singular and of one series. as such an abstract rule then it has no limits, no given end as such only an infinite demand and reduction of all to it. That is Kant called them origins as transcendent ideas each wants to be the abstract everything all is reduced to. They are dynamic in that they regulative judgement but in a drive to opposing purities. This has to be dealt with at the level of the problem from Kant of the unity of judgement and unity of the self and unity of the object, a unity though by de-abstracting the various abstract ideas in a situation and occasion. This de-abstracting then recognises the genuine place of series function infinite but singular projects, but sees them as post facto decathlon events as series abstractions from a Gladiator. There cannot be a synthesis of these since its too late, rather we look to how the abstractions were made that made the Gladiator into a set of series events and get the original unity in place and so see how the infinite project functions are a valid act but applied to an abstract a which then can provide no limit or halting switch.
the picture of judgment that emerges is one that re-refers directly back to the judge as responsible. We see then what is different about conservativism is the place of agent finite responsibility, in contrast to the opponents who's logical structure of ideas really functions to make the judger a calculator and so replaceable and so anonymous and so not really responsible. The systems of ideas are systems of exculpation for their "agents".
Conclusion: conservativism cannot be liberalism for the English first or left wing universal Rights of white men. If what you are after is a system of self interest by another name or social justice by another name, where you can slag of opponents like they slag us off, or see it as a way to make money as a new conservative start up sales pitch, or a ways to get the English as a UN protective rights Charter, then i think conservativism has these as moments but cannot be expressed as deductions abductions and exculpations and double effects by its speakers. these are in paly but not as absoluters.
Thanks you for the lecture so far Mr Starkey. You are right about the Burke stuff as bad writing for the most part i did the Burke Pain debate writings in a under graduate course in 1991. Boring at the time. Two years after that we did J-F Lyotard and Kant on the sublime, not boring, but difficult for sure. Some time after that i took the notions of legitimacy and agreement in judgment as in Kant's 3rd Critique as the key to this.
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Very good: I was feeling tired after taking in the first half hour but I could have a You Tube break.
Some points: I don't agree that the idea of abstract right is alien or external to the English Common Law and Political institutions. Rather it the idea of Justice from Plato Cicero (but I think though neo-platonism), seen in abstraction and extension from within common law. This is very difficult to give shape to. I talked about the Kantian transcendental approach above. That from Kant has to deal with structures in politics not expressed in Kant. One way is to take something like abduction and inference as basic, which involves a kind of anti-foundationalist conservativism: in Wilfred Sellars inference involves probability based on a acquaintance with a state of affairs already in play, a kind of Common sense based starting point or a beginning in difference, privilege or prejudice. Then reason involves both maintaining a structure of necessity over time and space but with affordance though probability increments. That is the necessity is not in itself but only within the probability inference and the probability inference also presupposes the necessity its itself maintains. I used to call it "held holding". Then the idea of pure given necessity would be a self internally and independent (free from other series) determining series and this series as connected "in" law. Now this abstract idea of series and law in itself is really an error, in that the single law is a infinitely small limit case of probability ie when it is 1 over all time. Now then this is the look of the abstraction a probability of 1. But now the opposite of law would look like a probability of zero eg we say impossibility. This though is not another "series say of "impossible events" ". That makes no sense. so rather it is the idea less than even a series less than impossible. Really kind of singular atom. That is when we loose necessity we loose all sense of even impossibility in the probability space. Impossibility is not empirical here i.e. say zero, but the limit of sense. They say chaos means no law, and law requires order.
So that places that which opposed law or "is"(!?) anomic as disorder as chaos. but really its atomism. thus the counter to Right and Reason as universal is not chaos but individual abstract atomic right. Problem here is the Reformations freedom of the individual from the Church hegemony of Right and Natural Law can easily be blamed for the 30 years War. Which was why the Germans (before they were all "Germans") took so long to get a unified State and when they did drew on Hegel 's notions of Right and the old Aristocracy of Germany well knew this in late 19 th early 19 th century and went to university to get retraining in modernism and ideal reason to run the unified state to come with science and absolute Universal reason. and then some.
The point about inference was debated after Frank Ramsey's paper and his early death, by a number of people on the edges of the Vienna Circle. Braithwaite Popper and others. (in Sellars' and Fegle "Readings in Analytical Philosophy" 1950ish) now AI is meant o be able to reproduce this running differential s over singular series assuming all the others are constant for a incremental change.
The use of Sellers here is just by way of trying to illustrate how the Universal and the particular are not external to common sense and common law but just one series of common sense function assumed to be independent and self sustaining. then such a series has no limit is infinite. My view means then as series in original organic unity before they are series abstractions, means there can be no zeros as these like infinity are products of post abstraction.
Thus when the local is viewed under Universal Right it looks like prejudice and bias and in relational already to another as unfair. but if the Universal is an abstraction from the local then its cannot have legitimacy to then simply re-present that local as originally biased and in unfair relations to another. There is no foundational Criteria here before the local. but also from earlier then the single individual atom is also unsayable as its would have to be before the law.
This is akin in someways to trying to think how universal Right came form a specific culture at a specific time and place. Like Kierkegaard's Critic of Hegel that God the universal appeared as a particular at a moment in pre ordered time and space. its got similarity with the "historical a priori" in Foucault, which is where i started wit this problem like 15 odd years ago in seminars.
Thank you for the great lecture and discussion David Starkey and the students.
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Note Part 1: In my post i made reference to the debate (1930's to 1960s mostly) over the role justification and legitimacy of probability in science. I referenced Braithwaite on the side defending probability and Popper as against. This debates context is usually taken to concern the debate over legitimacy of Quantum Mechanics and its statistical interpretation. Certainly this was Braithwaite's background even though he was made Chair of Moral Philosophy at Cambridge. I think making Braithwaite, a scientist, the Moral philosopher might have been in part to engage a debate between science and religion with C.S. Lewis and Elizabeth Anscombe perhaps on the side of religion. This would follow the Catholic Church's reengagement with science, with a leading physicist being also a Catholic Priest. Perhaps a re run of the debate between Galileo and the church, which, contrary to myth, those on the Church's side were also leading mathematicians in the same university Galileo had attended.
As well as this background to the debate, there is also the context of Keynes work on probability and Ramsey's. The main exponent of the statistical and probability approach was Reichenbach: "The Logical Foundations of the Concept of Probability"; "On the Justification of Probability"(in Feigl and Sellars "Readings in Philosophical Analysis" (1949)). What is at stake in think here are the contexts of: a) using statistical data in economic and the social sciences and its justification; and b) the debate in the philosophy of history between Hampel's nomonlogical view of Explanation e.g. law like relations between objects events DN model, and the interpretive hermeneutical approach, that denies Hemple's methodology, and stresses thinking in terms of Understanding and agency for the human sciences. This is not of course a contrast between explanation as under law and Understanding as probability though, perhaps the contrast between objectivity as law and understanding in terms of agent's aims. This was how von Wright made the contrast in his Explanation and Understanding, one that is not alien to the contrast between science as determining law and human agency as will or intention. The later position later is equated with Aristotle by the Catholic thinkers and so the science and religion debate can go on in this enlightenment verse tradition contrast. Also in play is then the debate between Popper wanting to demarcate science in terms of physics and maths from social and psychological science making the later pseudo sciences as claims not expressed as law like and so not being falsifiable.
This debate has in a way to my mind returned due to John's McDowell's Mind and World"(1995), in which he claims that in order to fit the Aristotelian picture of human agency and reason, we need to let go the concept of nature as law. Indeed he proposes thinking of nature terms of human sensibility though the Aristotelian contrasts of Actuality and Potentiality. His argument turns on the failure of epistemology of human sensibility to apprehend thought's directedness to objects in the world (intentionality) if we stick with the notion of sensible nature as law like. This though would not mean falling in to the wrong opposition that of thinking of nature then as probability.
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Note Part 2: This clearly opens up the contrast in a political context of legitimacy from epistemology's justification. This debate then has become the question of the relation of science to the social political and legal. In contemporary views (Horizon Europe) in contrast to McDowell this had lead to making a strong link between science as objective outcomes and political order as the rule of law (Reichstag). To my mind this is not just some burocratic choice or democratic demand. Rather Hegel makes such a claim and it seems to me to demonstrate the opposite solution to McDowell's problem. The problem of interpretation and application of science in terms of consequences e.g. objective outcomes, is that different places and times present problematic "fit" between the science as law or probability and the "rough ground" in which its is applied. The Hegelain solution is then that science as reason in action must "sublate" the different contexts that is bring them to freedom and reason as law. Thus on my view science does not proceed to passively understand and explain an independent world, and then do things within it, rather science “presupposes” a “flat” world in order that it can apply its tools uniformly from the origin of place and temporality. That is the political social demand of the uniform rule of law over the scientific territory appears as a kind of material condition for the possibility of the application of science at all. That is on their interpretation the application of science necessitates a certain homogeneity of its domain, science as the application of science, then demands, on this view, a particular hegemonic politics and the rule of laws as transforming and homogenising different contexts. So political social psychological science does not so much arrive on the scene to then change it rather it demands the scene to change for the sake of the science. This is a totally Hegelain view, that culture and context and difference have to be rationalised in accord with efficiency and Right and equality as freedom in law and concept. We can think of this as both Taylorist Efficiency projects and Social Justice Equality projects, these now not as opposites. The irony is that the social justice equality project of difference and diversity is really one of Hegelian hegemony. I can put in in McDowell’s terms that the ground and context of application of science or just science understood pragmatically demands of the natural environment that it be actualised to the same for space and time dominion. That is the environment and human beings and there socials structures are seen as “Potentially” efficient and just from being actually inefficient and unjust. Hegelain reason and science then is at once a political project of a certain universalising and homogenising kind that involves thinking of freedom not as agency in context but expressed and infinitely expressible through law and legal concepts. That is, in Hegel, freedom is that of the scientific state to, on the basis of the science of efficiency and justice equality, to grasp and change the social legal order as increased freedom from rough and different natures. The idea at the of this project would be social and psychological science would transform human nature and the environment to such an extent that the scientific relations would move from being merely probabilistic to nomological. A kind of Kantian regulative idea. The problems with this for real freedom is obvious not to mention the power and wealth it would give to scientific institutions and who funds, them and for what. In the application of science to the world there is much more of a social engineering going on than is disclosed just in terms of measurable narrow and thin objective targets. Indeed someone might say it is the universal control and the transfer and alienation of freedom from the individual to the state or super state that is the real purpose and targets of efficiency and equality are just the excuse. The science of right and freedom then was set up in opposition to tyranny and prejudice totalitarianism and colonialism. Now in this way of science and politics, in Hegelain fashion what is set up as the opposite turns back into its original opponent though a process freedom as notion.
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