Kantian Metaphysics and J.S. Mill’s Utilitarianism

As to the last post on Allan Bloom, if there are potential dangers in a Nietzschean reading on the Greeks, surely there are dangers in mixing Kantian metaphysics with politics?

In part, synthesizing Kantian metaphysics with political science is what Daniel Deudney has done in his book Bounding Power (addressed to Republicans), and he’s come up with some deep moral thinking and practical advice in an arena of global politics where greater depth is always needed.  However, there is also a certain idealism I’m extremely wary of. 

Kant’s metaphysics is successful enough but his political philosophy isn’t that impressive to me, especially in light of the success of our forefathers and British philosophers like John Locke.  The moral imperative doesn’t work so well “on the ground. “

In fact, I’ve suggested some ideas for those of us frustated with the current state of liberal ideas, or at least how they might benefit from a return to Mill and a more classical liberalism/utilitarianism. 

Perhaps it’s wise to keep the two separate: Kant’s metaphysics and a functioning, American utilitarianism. 

Thanks for reading, your comments are welcome.

See Also: What Can LIberalism Be? Much More Than It Is Now

J.S. Mill

A Few Thoughts On Allan Bloom–The Nietzsche Connection

Allan Bloom (wikipedia) wrote the Closing Of The American Mind in 1987.  It is a deep book, and an interesting one.  It is also, I believe, in a vein of thought that continues to affect American life…with mixed results.

There is a direct Nietzschean influence flowing through Martin Heidegger, Leo Strauss (wikipedia), and Allan Bloom…not to mention most 20th century art and existentialism.  In Strauss and in Bloom particularly, it manifests itself as an attempt to recover and reclaim the Greeks within the idea that Christianity is defunct and God is dead.  

If you accept this idea as they did, then there exists a great moral imperative (keep in mind for Nietzsche, there is no morality) to create anew, and this includes the necessity of reading Plato afresh without the centuries developed distorting lenses and layers of Christian doctrine.  (St. Augustine would be a good example of when Christian metaphyics and Greek thinking were conflated in earnest and with genius).   

————————————————————————————

Briefly,  I’d just like to point a few things out:

1.  Above the first university in the world, which Plato began, were the words.   “Let no one ignorant of mathematics enter here”    Whole areas of knowledge are left out of the approach mentioned above.

2.  In the world of philosophy, the importance of the works of Immanuel Kant.   If you’re going to do philosophy right, I find the idea important that you attempt to encompass all knowledge.  To my mind, Kant has been one of the few philosophers capable of realizing the inadequecies of metaphysics, yet in their pursuit uncovering truths that may just yet be affecting physics and our relation to the limits of what we can know. 

Kant also provided sound arguments for the impossibility of the existence of transcendant objects (including God)…yet he also may have demonstrated the impossibility of our reason to have certainty in such matters.

Benjamin Jowett’s translation of Plato’s Republic can be found here.

Thanks for reading…your comments are welcome.

Allan Bloom -Photo here from Dr Clifford Brickman

A Monty Python Take On Socialism

Not bad.  They don’t exactly seem like fans of monarchy either.

Some Philosophy Of Science At Bloggingheads

Full video here.

In the comments thread, you’ll find some people wondering at what science can and can’t do.  As to the why questions, science asks them all the time but seems to assert a certain kind of knowledge.  Beyond that…Metaphysics?  Religion? 

You’ve probably seen the Templeton Conversations around, where some interesting thinkers are asked if science makes a belief in God obsolete. 

Victor Davis Hanson In The New Criterion: Haven’t We Heard This Before?

Full article here.

Of course, he’s got some good points:

“As defenders of a unique discipline inextricably linked to the origin of American values and traditions, classicists also need to introduce the Greeks and Romans to a wider public, both to enrich contemporary American society and to bring both an ability to popularize and a much needed pragmatism to what has otherwise become a stultifying and often pedantically narrow field.”

Not much here you won’t find in Allan Bloom (which I think gets some things right and some things very wrong).  Values?  Well, the Greeks and Romans are important I suppose.  Anyways, we’ve gotten away from our intellectual roots:

“In acknowledgment of such frequent controversies and loud revisionism, the compromise is that “Western civilization” continues to metamorphose into something known as “World Civilizations”: India, China, Africa, and the New World merit roughly the same attention in the university core curriculum as the West, inasmuch as they are merely “different,” hardly less influential in the formation of Western and now global civilization.”

Okay, I’ll bite, there do seem to be some departments in universities intellectually adrift, too easily tethered to a set of ideas (certain French philsophers, moral relativism, probably even in response to logical positivism) that thus could be tethered to deeper classical, and Western ideas.  

Though as for the hubris of moral relativism, Hanson’s mixing of current politics and philosophy seems just as, if not more, guilty of hubris.  

Maybe I’ll just read Aristotle on my own…with an open and focused mind, asking questions.  Aren’t other people doing this in universities…without political agendas?

George Will On Stephen Colbert: Can The Right Avoid Many Dangers Of Idealism?

Full interview here.  (scroll to last video, link may not last long).

Will is public enough to have a character, but he’s deeper and less foolish than the dread Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and Bill O’Reilly.

As he navigates the tricky public-thinking-man-in-America waters, what are his ideas about how to move conservativism ahead?

His new book, ”One Man’s America…” here.  His most recent columns here.

Addition:  Will discusses China, Obama and McCain, and even Hillary Clinton here (~7:00 long)

From Bloggingheads: Where Moral Philosophy And Evolution Meet?

A brief discussion here.

A bit of what evolutionary theory can offer and what problems it faces with regard to moral thinking.

 

Roger Scruton In The City Journal: Cities For Living–Is Modernism Dead?

Full article here.

Paris has something that Scruton admires.  It’s not just an aversion to central planning (and perhaps the political and social philosophies associated with it) that makes Paris special, but also a resistance to modernism, and even postmodernist architecture.  Visitors will:

“…quickly see that Paris is miraculous in no small measure because modern architects have not been able to get their hands on it.”

Modernism may even have a lot to do with a certain aesthetic totalitarianism, a desire to grant the architect the ability to see all in his vision, and plan other peoples’ lives accordingly.

“…a later generation rebelled against the totalitarian mind-set of the modernists, rejecting socialist planning, and with it the collectivist approach to urban renewal. They associated the alienating architecture of the postwar period with the statist politics of socialism, and for good reasons.”

In modernism’s place (souless airports, blank modern facades speaking only to themselves) Scruton suggests Leon Krier’s New Urbanism and a return to more Classical architecture. New England towns might not be a bad place to start, but also:

“The plan should conform to Krier’s “ten-minute rule,” meaning that it should be possible for any resident to walk within ten minutes to the places that are the real reason for his living among strangers.”

Well, minus the car anyways.  Are you persuaded?

First National Bank of Houlton, Maine

Some of Le Corbusier’s work here, examples of Modern Architecture here.

See Also: Brasilia: A Planned City and Review Of Britain’s “Lost Cities” In The Guardian

 

“The Rebellion Within” At The New Yorker: Dr. Fadl and Al Qaeda

Full article here.

If you’re interested in some of the backstory of Al Qaeda (The Egyptian government’s brutality, its socialism and the extremely rigid Islamic backlash that’s formed in the Arab world) Lawrence Wright’s article has insight.

The ignorance, ideological extremism, brutality and essential suffering (to say nothing of the suffering they condone and inflict) of Al Qaeda may come as a surprise…or not.  

Will the Arab world still allow these men to speak for them?

Are they wearing out their welcome?

A Quote From Scruton On Kant And “The Aleph” By Borges

From Roger Scruton’s book:

“How can I view the world in its totality? And yet, how can there be explanation if I cannot? How can I explain the existence of anything if I cannot explain the existence of everything?  If I am confined for ever within my own point of view, how can I penetrate the mystery of nature?”

Ch 4, pg 66.

It’s not a literary theory, nor one of being, nor a psychological theory, nor one of mind, so how is it we come to know a world beyond ourselves, and what can Kant’s metaphysics (beyond physics) offer in this quest?

I’ve Been Asked To Provide A Literary Reference: Okay.  The Aleph?