Items Posted by Jim Kalb
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Apr 17 21:40:44 EDT 1996
Article: 7435 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Roger Scruton article
Date: 15 Apr 1996 22:22:06 -0400
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An article by Roger Scruton from the Spring 1996 _City Journal_,
"Decencies for Skeptics", can be found at
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/W_Olson/decencie.htm
It's a good presentation of the case for nonreligious cultural
conservatism.
In the end, I'm quite dubious of the notion. Cultivated philosophical
conservatism worked in China and Rome, but there it was the possession
of a propertied upper class associated with imperial absolutism ruling
over an uneducated and superstitious populace that had no political
role. Where wealth, class and political power are fluid and the people
have a role in government I think something more compelling is needed.
He's right, though, that attempts to construct religious faith as a
basis for social order aren't likely to work. The difficulty is seeing
what that leaves us with other than the kind of society that's been
traditional in the Middle East, with fragmented allegiances among the
people and irresponsible despots as rulers.
Any other comments on the article?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week:
Deirdre wets altar of St. Simon's; no mists, for at last ewer dried.
From panix!not-for-mail Wed Apr 17 21:40:47 EDT 1996
Article: 7437 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Roger Scruton article
Date: 17 Apr 1996 07:24:31 -0400
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In <4l06np$dqt@infoserv.rug.ac.be> Denis.Constales@rug.ac.be (Denis Constales) writes:
>> The conservative policy in this
>> encounter should be to support the prejudice of ordinary people.
>Thereby increasing even further their influence and working in a decidedly
>antitraditional direction.
>> Liberal sarcasm is the
>> ideology of a ruling class--the class of "advisors," who inhabit the
>> universities, the government commissions, and the state bureaucracies,
>> and whose control over the channels of communication ensures that
>> their superfluousness will never be publicly acknowledged.
>Our superfluousness will not be publicly acknowledged as long
>as the "ordinary people" have not shed their "prejudice" in favour of
>science, formal education and academic titles; there's no need to "control"
>anything.
Part of the issue is the effect of the "channels of communication" on
the "prejudices of ordinary people". It seems to me the effect is
quite pervasive; if that's right then the idea of appealing from
manipulative elite sophistications to the sound instincts of the people
isn't going to work.
It's rather a problem for conservatism if there's no place where direct
experience and sound instincts can develop of themselves into a system
of life and thought, but in a media-drenched age that seems to be the
case.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week:
Deirdre wets altar of St. Simon's; no mists, for at last ewer dried.
From jk Sat Apr 13 09:14:19 1996
Subject: Re: Christianity in politics (Long)
To: ANGLICAN@AMERICAN.EDU
Date: Sat, 13 Apr 1996 09:14:19 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: from "Alan Wilson" at Apr 12, 96 10:53:27 pm
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Alan Wilson writes:
>The Christian vision embraces an order in which the kingdoms of this
>world become the kingdom of our God in the end... You cannot separate
>out the two, however convenient it is for politicians, or even pious
>Christians on occasion, to do so.
In the end -- but in the meantime the distinction remains important.
Radical attempts to reform one's own life have often been fruitful;
radical attempts to establish a theocracy or other kingdom of
righteousness through the means ordinarily called political have
usually been less so.
>Peter also analysed the phenomenon others have commented on, that right
>wing politicians often claim their politics is not politics, just
>common sense.
Suppose Leftie says "justice demands that social life be thoroughly
transformed, and I propose having the government do it because I'm
serious about getting results and besides failure to act is a kind of
action". Rightie might reply "if a ruling faction tries to remake
society as a whole through administrative means the results aren't
going to be good, if only because markets, traditions and accepted
informal practices reflect far more information, experience and complex
evaluative judgements than a bureaucratic process could ever accumulate
and bring to bear". If that's Rightie's view, he is likely to think of
markets and traditional views and practices as the necessary basis of
any tolerable society, and action by government administrators as an
intervention that needs some special kind of justification. He may
very well call the former "common sense" and the latter "politics".
Since that way of speaking reflects distinctions that are natural on
his understanding of society (with which I agree), it doesn't seem
disingenuous or stupid to me.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Age, irony, Noriega.
From jk Sat Apr 13 18:27:52 1996
Subject: Re: Christianity in politics (Long)
To: ANGLICAN@AMERICAN.EDU
Date: Sat, 13 Apr 1996 18:27:52 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <9604131821.AA04270@qni.com> from "C. Eric Funston" at Apr 13, 96 01:21:09 pm
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Fr. C. Eric Funston writes:
> Merriam Webster's 10th ed.
> Collegiate Edition (American) dictionary includes the following as part of
> its definition of "politics":
>
> "the total complex of relations between people living in society."
>
> That total complex would include the markets, traditional views, etc.
> Hence, a disctinction between these and politics is simply wrong.
It would be simply wrong if that were the only definition of
"politics". Usually the word is used in a more limited sense, though,
to refer to things that appropriatedly relate to elections,
legislation, and so on, but not for example to a ping-pong game among
friends or a mother nursing her baby. So it's not surprising that the
meaning to which you refer is given fifth and last in my own (old, 7th
edition) copy of Webster's Collegiate.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Age, irony, Noriega.
From jk Mon Apr 15 22:27:16 1996
Subject: Scruton and neocon religio-politicos
To: neocon-l@listserv.syr.edu
Date: Mon, 15 Apr 1996 22:27:16 -0400 (EDT)
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An article by Roger Scruton from the Spring 1996 _City Journal_,
"Decencies for Skeptics", can be found at
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/W_Olson/decencie.htm
It's a good presentation of the case for nonreligious cultural
conservatism, so I thought I'd post the cite here in view of the
discussions we've had.
In the end, I'm quite dubious of the notion. Cultivated philosophical
conservatism worked in China and Rome, but there it was the possession
of a propertied upper class associated with imperial absolutism ruling
over an uneducated and superstitious populace that had no political
role. Where wealth, class and political power are fluid and the people
have a role in government I think something more compelling is needed.
He's right, though, that attempts to construct religious faith as a
basis for social order aren't likely to work. The difficulty is seeing
what that leaves us with other than the kind of society that's been
traditional in the Middle East, with fragmented allegiances among the
people and irresponsible despots as rulers.
Any other comments on the article?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week:
Deirdre wets altar of St. Simon's; no mists, for at last ewer dried.
From jk Tue Apr 16 13:40:08 1996
Subject: Re: Scruton and neocon religio-politicos
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 1996 13:40:08 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <199604161358.JAA02280@phoebe.math.albany.edu> from "Mark Steinberger" at Apr 16, 96 09:58:42 am
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Mark Steinberger writes:
>Isn't a nonreligious basis needed if cultural conservatism is to unite
>members of different religions?
Depends on how nonreligious, how united and how different. The more
similar men's fundamental understanding of the world and their place in
it the more united they can be. Their fundamental understanding of such
things is the essence of their religion. If you're suggesting a
cultural conservatism based on no common understanding at all of man and
the world I don't think it's going to do much for anyone. If it's based
on a thin common conception its benefits will also be thin. Sometimes
of course thin benefits are the best that can be obtained, but why
idealize such a situation?
Cultural conservatism is a good thing. Like national security, public
health, and widespread elementary education it could be a basis for
cooperation among those who differ on other things, but for the reasons
suggested I don't see it as a sufficient basis for social order. It
doesn't make much sense for someone to say "my ultimate political
loyalty is that I'm a cultural conservative". For example, cultural
conservatism wouldn't be enough to support political unity in a society
composed half of John Loftons and half of Roger Scrutons, and the
Scrutons wouldn't able to eliminate the problem by saying "see here you
Loftons, our understanding of things is nonreligious so you're being
divisive if you don't accept it too."
>A good case in point is abortion. The pro-life movement in America
>clings to a specifically Christian view of the issue. In Orthodox
>Judaism, while abortion is considered very bad, it is still permitted
>or required in some cases where it would be forbidden to Catholics, for
>instance.
>
>By insisting on the most rigid Christian standards, the pro-life
>movement alienates Jews and other potential allies (e.g., advocates of
>fathers' rights). This is not a good basis for success, unless you have
>an all-or-nothing attitude toward the issue. Nor is it a good basis for
>coalition building in which groups unite over a variety of issues.
Presumably the potential allies could also make the coalition harder to
put together through intransigent insistence on distinguishing between
babies who deserve to live and babies who don't. If neither side
swallows its preferences both will find that the best is the enemy of
the good because their common opponents will win. What follows? That
one ally or the other should change what it ultimately thinks is best so
that its partners will feel more comfortable with it?
>Successful cultural conservatism should be rooted in cultural values
>that are broader than one particular religion. How else can we unite
>Americans and take common action?
>
>In particular, I suggest that Western culture in general (with roots in
>Judaism, Christianity, and classical cultures) should be the basis for
>an American cultural conservatism.
So what do you have against immigrants from China and India? Their
cultural values are more conservative than most. After all, it is the
Chinese who have Confucius and Western culture that has liberalism,
technological rationalism, etc., etc., etc.
My point in all this is not that there isn't such a thing as cultural
conservatism or that it's a bad thing, only that it doesn't touch people
deeply enough to serve as the basis of a social order, and that seemed
to be the role Mr. Scruton wants to give it. It could bring Americans
together to some degree, except for those Americans who don't like it,
but there has to be more than that.
If there's nothing everyone can unite on that touches us deeply enough
then there'll just have to be minorities living within a social order
based on things they don't buy into. Why would that be different from
what we have today or what has always existed?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week:
Deirdre wets altar of St. Simon's; no mists, for at last ewer dried.
From jk Wed Apr 17 06:09:08 1996
Subject: Re: your mail
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996 06:09:08 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <199604170351.XAA18441@emout06.mail.aol.com> from "John Lofton." at Apr 16, 96 11:51:44 pm
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> icos
Couldn't have said it better myself!
> Dear Jim Kalb: "Can two walk together, except they be agreed?" (Amos 3:3).
> Answer: No. So, what is it all must agree on to "walk together"? John Lofton.
Two can walk together to the extent they're agreed. Perfect unity is
not necessary for politics. There has to be enough agreement to
motivate self-sacrifice and willingness to die for country. That's
more agreement than liberal theory and practice can give us, which is a
problem for our present system.
Political necessities can encourage men to find agreement, which I
think is usually a good thing but sometimes not since compromise can be
unprincipled. It helps of course at least in the long run if what is
agreed on is true as well as accepted as true. Sometimes in politics
you never get to the long run though because something else happens
first.
I could go on with these platitudes forever ...
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week:
Deirdre wets altar of St. Simon's; no mists, for at last ewer dried.
From jk Wed Apr 17 10:28:58 1996
Subject: Re: Scruton and neocon religio-politicos
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996 10:28:58 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Apr 17, 96 01:03:28 pm
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I told Mark Steinberger pure cultural conservatism is not enough and
John Lofton Calvinist theocracy is not needed. Is that talking out of
both sides of my mouth?
I don't think so. It seems to me that a non-despotic political society
can't exist unless it is based on a common understanding of what life
is about that gives rise to common loyalties sufficient to motivate
self-sacrifice. Otherwise, the society will be unable to defend itself
against physical attack, and in in any event cooperation will break
down when the cost of buying people off who have complaints gets too
high. The only things that can motivate self-sacrifice are things
fundamental to a man's understanding of what he is and how it happens
that he is essentially part of something greater than himself. I don't
see how such things can be separated from religion. The skeptical
conservatism of which Roger Scruton writes has existed only in imperial
despotisms as the property of a privileged class on which the despots
relied for disinterested and intelligent administrators. I doubt its
relevance to our situation; possibly neoconservatives aspire to become
such a class, but if so I don't expect them to succeed.
So religion is necessarily part of politics. To avoid religious civil
war, the politics of any particular society must be based on a
particular religion that is definite enough to exclude or at least
radically limit religious conflict on issues considered political.
Thus, in America there is currently an attempt to base our politics on
the view that humanity and actual human impulses and desires are
divine, and to exclude other views from public discourse as heretical.
The terms "divisive" and "unconstitutional" are used rather than
"heretical", but the meaning is the same. Unfortunately, that
particular religious outlook won't work politically because it can't
provide sufficient motivation for self-sacrifice.
The less definite the common religious understanding ("civil religion")
the more restricted the scope of politics must be. Since politics
cannot be done away with except by despotism, civil religion cannot be
wholly indefinite in a free society. Therefore my disagreement with
Mark. On the other hand, not everything need be political, so
religious agreement on all points is not necessary as a political
matter either. Therefore I don't agree with what I take to be John's
position either.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week:
Deirdre wets altar of St. Simon's; no mists, for at last ewer dried.
From jk Wed Apr 17 10:52:07 1996
Subject: Re: Scruton and neocon religio-politicos
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996 10:52:07 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Apr 17, 96 01:03:28 pm
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> Francesca: I have not yet been able to get at Scruton's article
> because I don't have a WWW browser - it is always about to come
> next week.
Since the interest seems to be there I will circulate a copy to the list.
> Does anyone actually idealize the situation, or are they just saying
> that it is all that is currently political possible?
My thought (maybe not appropriately expressed) was that cultural
conservatism necessarily involves idealization of a people, its history
and its way of life. Non-religious cultural conservatism would involve
doing that to the American people with no reference to Christianity,
and if that were done I'm not sure what would come out, whether I would
like it, whether it could inspire anyone's love and loyalty, or whether
it would be identifiably conservative or even American.
> An ultimate political loyalty is not the same as an
> ultimate ultimate loyalty. Someone can say 'I like things to
> stay the same as they were in 1952 (or 1852), and I will vote
> for anyone who agrees with me.
A free society can't exist unless the loyalties that bind its citizens
to it make them willing when the time comes to lay down their lives for
it. Our situation in America today on that point is very awkward.
Therefore the unwillingness to accept any loss of our own men's lives
in our current foreign adventures and the touchiness surrounding
monuments to recent wars.
> Can't they muddle along, agreeing with the Loftons here and the
> Scrutons there?
"Muddling through" works fine if there are conventions that limit
government and if there are common loyalties below the level of
articulate thought. England has had both, so the phrase has a nice
sound there.
> Are you asking politics to give more than politics as such can give?
I think I'm only asking that politics have what it needs to exist as
such. Smarter men than I have of course observed that free politics
ends in despotism.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week:
Deirdre wets altar of St. Simon's; no mists, for at last ewer dried.
From jk Wed Apr 17 10:57:44 1996
Subject: Re: Scruton and neocon religio-politicos
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996 10:57:44 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <199604171418.KAA14107@phoebe.math.albany.edu> from "Mark Steinberger" at Apr 17, 96 10:18:35 am
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Mark writes:
> The quality of life should be important to all of us, independent of
> religious considerations, and should be a major motivation in
> political movements.
Agreed, that's why I compared pure cultural conservatism to public
health and national security.
> I do not think religion alone provides an adequate basis for making
> decisions regarding the social effects of government policies.
Also agreed. The question I raised is whether religion is necessary,
not whether it is sufficient.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week:
Deirdre wets altar of St. Simon's; no mists, for at last ewer dried.
From jk Wed Apr 17 11:06:23 1996
Subject: Re: Scruton and neocon religio-politicos
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996 11:06:23 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <3174F9FA@mailgate.brooklyn.cuny.edu> from "Edward Kent" at Apr 17, 96 09:59:00 am
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> Western religions and philosophies have been interacting for such a long time
> that their values -- except at the extremes -- are vitually
> indistinguishable.
> Summarily, if a moral appeal does not work, then one turns to a prudential
> one.
I suppose my line of thought has been that prudential appeals aren't
enough to maintain a free society. There has to be a common
understanding of the world such that people find moral appeals
compelling, more compelling if need be than self-preservation. They
will do so if they think morality is rooted in the nature of the world
and is part of what makes them what they are. The latter seems to me a
religious view or at least a view that as a practical matter can't be
disentangled from religious views.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week:
Deirdre wets altar of St. Simon's; no mists, for at last ewer dried.
From jk Wed Apr 17 14:43:19 1996
Subject: Re: Scruton and neocon religio-politicos
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996 14:43:19 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Apr 17, 96 05:58:05 pm
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> I have just read it
> once very quickly, so far. It takes an act of faith to
> believe that 'Romanitas' is resurrectable, but Christianitas
> is not.
He seems to view the essence of Romanitas as similar to the essence of
Imperial Confucianism and thus as something that can be reproduced
given the right circumstances. I've suggested what I think the right
circumstances are and won't repeat myself. He seems to think
Christianitas is not reproducible because modern intellectuals (unlike
intellectuals in classical antiquity) have become permanently
skeptical. I'm not sure why he takes that view. For my own part I'm
inclined to think that skepticism is not a long-term possibility.
> More detailed comment to follow after I
> finish writing atonement Lecture IV.
Looking forward to it.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week:
Deirdre wets altar of St. Simon's; no mists, for at last ewer dried.
From jk Wed Apr 17 21:28:32 1996
Subject: Re: Scruton and neocon religio-politicos
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996 21:28:32 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <3175492E@mailgate.brooklyn.cuny.edu> from "Edward Kent" at Apr 17, 96 03:22:00 pm
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> So I use prudential arguments as a back up.
Oh, I agree that people need all the arguments they can get. I was
concentrating on a different aspect of the situation, but that (you
might well say) was my problem.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week:
Deirdre wets altar of St. Simon's; no mists, for at last ewer dried.
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Apr 19 09:29:13 EDT 1996
Article: 7440 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Roger Scruton article
Date: 19 Apr 1996 07:38:15 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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References: <4kv08e$b59@panix.com> <4l06np$dqt@infoserv.rug.ac.be> <4l7oqd$ejh@gerry.cc.keele.ac.uk>
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In <4l7oqd$ejh@gerry.cc.keele.ac.uk> cla04@cc.keele.ac.uk (A.T. Fear) writes:
>I fear he's right when he says
>that a reversion to a now discredited form of rhetoric won't in the end
>work. We need to embody the norms we want in rhetoric more appropriate to
>the times. Any ideas?
Rem tene; verba sequentur. If there's nothing to grasp on to all the
words in the world won't help you.
Embodying our desires in rhetoric won't do the trick, certainly not if
the "trick" is persuading people reliably to do things they don't feel
like doing. Rhetoric can be helpful in sweetening things thought
obligatory for non-rhetorical reasons but it's not self-sufficient.
Common acceptance of obligations that don't depend on what we want is
indispensible. You don't get that by using the times as a standard.
Scruton's right that you can't conjure up religion as a fix, but that
doesn't mean there's some other fix.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week:
Deirdre wets altar of St. Simon's; no mists, for at last ewer dried.
From jk Wed Apr 17 14:18:42 1996
Subject: Re: me
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996 14:18:42 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <199604171518.AA07923@aplo1.spd.dsccc.com> from "Tom George" at Apr 17, 96 10:18:18 am
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> Oh. Poetry. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.... |-|
He also wrote intelligent conservative cultural criticism. Try _Notes
toward the Definition of Culture_.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week:
Deirdre wets altar of St. Simon's; no mists, for at last ewer dried.
From jk Wed Apr 17 21:37:36 1996
Subject: Re: The High Places
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996 21:37:36 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <13436148@prancer.Dartmouth.EDU> from "Gregory D. Wadlinger" at Apr 17, 96 01:23:38 pm
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> Hey, if I am on the church building committee and I want a Tiffany stained
> glass application featured in the sanctuary, I don't care if the artist is a
> pagan. The work will be done to my spec. and as long as that's the case, fine.
> Same with the guy/gal who builds the organ, carves the (ugh) icons -- ;-),
> etc...
I wouldn't mind if a pagan built the organ, but if he wrote and
performed the music and painted the icons and the stained glass it
would be a different matter. The music, the icons, and the stained
glass are supposed to express something. If the person who produced
them doesn't think what they're supposed to express is real will they
really be what they should? Will we experience them the same way?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week:
Deirdre wets altar of St. Simon's; no mists, for at last ewer dried.
From jk Thu Apr 18 06:43:25 1996
Subject: Re: Authority of the Church[3~
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 1996 06:43:25 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <199604180302_MC1-30E-BCD6@compuserve.com> from "Paul K. Hubbard" at Apr 18, 96 03:03:35 am
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Paul Hubbard writes:
> Now a
> third faulty idea has been put forward: that this institutionalized church
> also had, as one of its primary responsibilities, the +discernment+ of
> revelation.
I'm not sure what's at issue here. *Somebody* has to discern
revelation and interpret it. Some say that each man does it for
himself. In a sense that has to be true; if it is Councils or the Pope
or the consensus of the faithful that do the discerning the discerning
wouldn't do much for me unless I discerned at some point who those
specially authorized people are and the fact of their authority.
On the other hand, that way of looking at it leaves out something
essential. Our knowledge of things is not a simply individual act. It
rises above the animal level through the concepts, presuppositions,
understandings, and ability to trust the knowledge of others available
to us through membership in society. Presumably that principle applies
to our knowledge of spiritual things as much as to any kind of
knowledge, so an adequate revelation by God to us individually would
have to include revelation to the community of which we are members and
the public discernment of the revelation by the community.
> Will we say to this "But Lord, what about all my other Christian buddies
> from other denominations? If your Holy Spirit is guiding them too, how is
> it that we all come up with different interpretations?"
What's wrong with asking that question?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week:
Deirdre wets altar of St. Simon's; no mists, for at last ewer dried.
From jk Thu Apr 18 07:50:59 1996
Subject: Re: Scruton and neocon religio-politicos
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 1996 07:50:59 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Apr 18, 96 09:27:02 am
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Thus Francesca:
>I wish I knew enough about history of political theory to say whether
>rights doctrine grew out of natural law theory.
It seems to me that if you're used to talk about natural law and your
thought takes a radically subjective turn you'll start talking about
rights. Desires and impulses actually felt will become the fundamental
standard for action and therefore the source of what passes for
morality. If you notice that moral language has certain formal
qualities of universalizability you'll work up a logical system of
universal human rights based on treating various desires and impulses
("conceptions of the good", as you might call them grandly) equally.
>I have the feeling that Macintyre's assault on the socalled
>enlightenment idea of rights was counter-productive.
On the foregoing account one could attack enlightenment rights either
by attacking universal reason, which would also be an attack on natural
law as such, or by attacking the modern habit of taking subjectivity as
the starting point for philosophy. A thorough assault on universal
reason would I agree be unfortunate because it would leave us at most
with subjectivity and maybe not even that.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week:
Deirdre wets altar of St. Simon's; no mists, for at last ewer dried.
From jk Thu Apr 18 08:03:22 1996
Subject: Re: The High Places
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 1996 08:03:22 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <13485052@prancer.Dartmouth.EDU> from "Gregory D. Wadlinger" at Apr 18, 96 07:11:54 am
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> At Notre Dame in Paris and at St.Etiennes in Bourges I couldn't tell you
> whether the stained glass was done by a pagan or a believer.
If I attended services there I couldn't tell you (even if I understood
French) if the priest is a believer or a pagan who's just in it because
it's a sinecure and he likes fancy dress and ceremonies in artistic
surroundings and he finds Christian belief intellectually interesting
and enjoys composing homilies. Would it matter which he was?
> The artist, I think, in any case wants to get paid, and a client is not likely
> to pay for something that doesn't look the way it should.
Art affects us in more ways than we can recognize and make explicit.
Why should we put ourselves in the hands of someone we don't have
reason to trust at a time and place when trust is everything?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week:
Deirdre wets altar of St. Simon's; no mists, for at last ewer dried.
From jk Thu Apr 18 10:58:49 1996
Subject: Re: Scruton and neocon religio-politicos
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 1996 10:58:49 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <199604181206.IAA22906@phoebe.math.albany.edu> from "Mark Steinberger" at Apr 18, 96 08:06:08 am
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> The best you will get out of this thread is that Scruton is a lousy
> exponent for a non-religiously based cultural conservatism.
I think he's a very good exponent of what non-RBCC would have to be.
What does he say that you think should be left out? What does he fail
to include that should be there?
> Does this list ever concern itself with practical issues?
Up till now it's mostly been grand strategy, except for discussions of
how to stave off the impending annihilation of the list itself.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week:
Deirdre wets altar of St. Simon's; no mists, for at last ewer dried.
From jk Thu Apr 18 16:03:50 1996
Subject: Re: Scruton and neocon religio-politicos
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 1996 16:03:50 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <199604181835.OAA08384@fenris.math.albany.edu> from "Mark Steinberger" at Apr 18, 96 02:35:02 pm
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> First, I think religion has quite a bit more to offer people on a
> private plane than he seems to believe. Life really does provide
> opportunity and need for a real spirituality, and I think many people
> discover it quite naturally, despite the anti-religious propaganda
> that masquerades as "Enlightenment".
He says that religion dies if it has no public validity. That seems
right to me. Life is of a piece, and religion defines for us what the
world and we ourselves are. Man is a social animal, so religion must
tell us quite a lot about society or it falls short of its claim to
explain us to ourselves. Religion especially takes an interest in
ethical matters -- how we should live -- and our organized dealings
with others are ethically laden, sometimes even matters of life and
death. How could religion withdraw from them without denying itself?
> I also disagree with his emphasis on respect for past generations.
> Yes, one should respect one's own personal dead, but I put a lot more
> value on the accomplishments of the past than I do on past generations
> as an institution.
>
> It is precisely the notion of accomplishment that should be valued.
> Social values should be rooted in pragmatic reality. We can see what
> works and what doesn't.
So the standard is current theories about society rather than
presumptive acceptance of tradition. Has that standard itself worked?
It's not a conservative one.
> Basic morality is common sense, if your vision isn't clouded by social
> dogma of some kind. The work ethic makes life better for everyone. If
> you want a basic principle, try "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch."
The work ethic plainly doesn't make life better for everyone. In
particular, many people would prefer that others have the work ethic
and combine it with the generosity ethic. Why should such people
accept the simple work ethic when they can see that some more
complicated ethic would make things better for them?
> I disagree with Scruton's criticism of questioning things. The
> scientific method does validate traditional morality in many ways. We
> can all see the disastrous impact on society of the devaluation of the
> institution of marriage, for instance.
Sure, but marriage could be revalorized in all sorts of ways, including
ways that wouldn't interfere with whatever it is that I personally feel
like doing. Why, if I follow the scientific method and question
things, shouldn't I always come out in favor of a way of setting things
up that has the same general effect as traditional morality but doesn't
burden me personally? If other people don't like that way of doing
things why should I pay any attention to them?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week:
Deirdre wets altar of St. Simon's; no mists, for at last ewer dried.
From jk Thu Apr 18 19:54:05 1996
Subject: Re: Scruton and neocon religio-politicos
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 1996 19:54:05 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <199604182041.QAA08491@fenris.math.albany.edu> from "Mark Steinberger" at Apr 18, 96 04:41:25 pm
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Mark Steinberger writes:
> > Life is of a piece, and religion defines for us what the
> > world and we ourselves are.
> Judaism doesn't explain us or the world. It explains what we know of
> God and explains some of what he wants from us.
>
> There are many unanswered questions about the world.
I didn't mean that any religion answers all questions. It does seem to
me though that Judaism like Christianity and Islam tells us that the
world is the creation of a personal God who cares about man and his
conduct on earth, including his social conduct. Each also tells us that
man is made in the image of God (I am not sure about Islam on that
point) and that his fundamental duty is to do the will of God. They
also tell us the basics and some specifics of God's will for man.
As to Judaism, are the foregoing impressions simply wrong? If so, how?
No doubt there are other religions for example Shinto that are quite
different. I know too little about e.g. Japan to say what there has
played the role that Christianity has in the West.
> What I'm saying is that the basics of public
> morality are common sense, and are found in many religions, but don't
> necessarily require religion to grasp and accept.
>
> I also don't think all religions are uniformly moral. I have serious
> problems with Islamic fundamentalism, for instance.
>
> I also think modern leftism has become a religion, complete with its
> own morality and dogmas, and even a sort of messianism ("The state
> shall wither away" :-)). Moreover, I claim it is a destructive religion.
So you agree that there are at least two religions, Islamic
fundamentalism and Leftism, that reject the morality you adhere to and
identify with common sense. Each has had millions upon millions of
adherents who have included experienced and intelligent men possessing
what one normally thinks of as ordinary good sense. So I'm not sure
why you think common sense is sufficient for public morality when it's
obviously consistent with public moralities with which you have serious
problems.
Once a particular public morality is accepted its dictates will of
course be identified with common sense. That's as true in Islam as in
Christendom, Confucian China, Imperial Rome or the modern secular West.
"Common sense" is not the same in each case, though.
> The standard is to keep what has worked in the past and reject what
> has not.
>
> Jim Crow laws are an excellent example of something to be rejected.
> Conservatism must evolve, just as everything does. If you insist on
> following the behavior of the past, you should now embrace leftism, as
> it has been dominant in the West for the last 50 years or more.
I didn't say that under conservatism one necessarily does just what was
done in the past, only that one presumptively follows the past. The
alternative is to treat the past as mere evidence for what we should do,
which is the same as basing action wholly on current political theories.
That approach has led to things far worse than Jim Crow laws.
> In any case, I was speaking of the general public good and not about
> the good of the individual: Support for the work ethic by government
> institutions makes life better for the people as a whole.
Fine, but the question is what outlook will lead people to follow the
work ethic in their own lives even if some other ethic like the welfare-
scam ethic looks easier and more beneficial to the person making the
decision. My claim is that scientific pragmatism won't get you where
you want to go.
> > Sure, but marriage could be revalorized in all sorts of ways, including
> > ways that wouldn't interfere with whatever it is that I personally feel
> > like doing.
>
> The left has been attempting to do just that, but it will fail to
> produce the benefits for children that traditional marriage does.
Marriage that's just like traditional marriage except that it lets
people in exactly my situation do what I want to do would have all the
same benefits. The most accurate statistics couldn't distinguish the
results. So why wouldn't it be more consistent with the pragmatic and
scientific attitude for me to favor that new kind of marriage?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week:
Deirdre wets altar of St. Simon's; no mists, for at last ewer dried.
From jk Fri Apr 19 06:40:24 1996
Subject: Re: Scruton and neocon religio-politicos
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Fri, 19 Apr 1996 06:40:24 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <960418221731_473181322@emout19.mail.aol.com> from "John Lofton." at Apr 18, 96 10:17:32 pm
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> "Theocracy" means Godly-rule. Why are you against this?
The difficulty of having confidence that those entrusted with
government would in fact rule in a Godly fashion. Doubt that the means
ordinarily called political are of leading importance in God's action
in the world. Inclination to believe that men overestimate both their
own righteousness and the efficacy of force.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week:
Deirdre wets altar of St. Simon's; no mists, for at last ewer dried.
From jk Fri Apr 19 06:44:36 1996
Subject: Re: Scruton and neocon religio-politicos
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Fri, 19 Apr 1996 06:44:36 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <960418222311_473185764@emout16.mail.aol.com> from "John Lofton." at Apr 18, 96 10:23:11 pm
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> What, exactly, is a "prudential" appeal? By what standard are we to
> know if such an appeal is right or wrong, good or evil? John Lofton.
An appeal to the natural reason common to all men that tells us for
example that pain is an evil and that our actions have consequences
that we can foresee to some degree.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week:
Deirdre wets altar of St. Simon's; no mists, for at last ewer dried.
From jk Fri Apr 19 09:57:36 1996
Subject: Re: Scruton and neocon religio-politicos
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Fri, 19 Apr 1996 09:57:36 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Apr 19, 96 02:26:35 pm
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Thus Francesca:
> Incidentally, Jim has said on this matter that you
> can't have sacrifice without religion. What about
> many of Kipling's short stories about sacrifice for
> a beloved, for the tribe, for the Roman Empire? Kipling
> had no explicit dogmatic religion.
I suppose my line of thought (more implicit than explicit) was to call
"that for which you are prepared to sacrifice" your "religion", and to
claim that under current circumstances a "religion" as so defined would
have to be something very like what we ordinarily call a religion to
motivate the widespread and reliable willingness to sacrifice a
non-despotic social order requires.
Sacrifice for one's beloved is idiosyncratic, and besides we sometimes
fall out of love and feel none the worse for it. We don't live in a
tribal society -- our loyalties are dispersed, so sacrifice requires
some overarching loyalty standing behind and justifying every
particular loyalty and bringing them into a system. Otherwise we would
just go with the particular loyalties that suit our convenience at the
time. I don't think even a world empire ("humanity") is sufficient to
be the object of such an overarching loyalty because we believe
humanity can and should be held to some standard beyond itself. So
that leaves some transcendent principle, very likely one conceived as
personal because that seems (to me anyway) metaphysically more
satisfying and because as a practical matter it's easier to feel
loyalty to a person than loyalty to an abstract principle.
I should add that tribes and the Roman Empire could not have existed
without their religions, and that I don't know of any atheist love
stories that end happily. Human love is visibly insufficient except
within a larger setting of love. Maybe I should also add that dogmatic
religion arises when people become contentious, and contention seems
durably to be with us. All of which proves that the future belongs to
dogmatic religion. So there.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week:
Deirdre wets altar of St. Simon's; no mists, for at last ewer dried.
From jk Fri Apr 19 15:01:44 1996
Subject: Re: Scruton and neocon religio-politicos
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Fri, 19 Apr 1996 15:01:44 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <3177BA3C@mailgate.brooklyn.cuny.edu> from "Edward Kent" at Apr 19, 96 12:07:00 pm
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> justice which is a sort of 'If you scratch my back, I'll scratch
> yours' arrangement which can handle quite a bit of 'self-sacrifice'.
Can it handle enough, though? It does create habits of giving up
smaller advantages for larger and more durable ones and so can keep a
lot of daily life going. Not all life is daily life, though. Also, it
makes a difference in how people act, and whether there's enough trust
to keep the mutual back-scratching going, if they believe justice
reduces to self-interest.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week:
Deirdre wets altar of St. Simon's; no mists, for at last ewer dried.
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Apr 22 08:18:36 EDT 1996
Article: 7451 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: The American Way influence in third world contrys
Date: 22 Apr 1996 08:17:43 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 24
Message-ID: <4lftd7$4rn@panix.com>
References: <4l8pch$1tm@vivaldi.telepac.pt>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In <4l8pch$1tm@vivaldi.telepac.pt> vinicius writes:
>The american industris of all kind are destroing the third world
>contrys whit the strong right wing capitalism.Tv shows like Beverly
>Hills 90210 are one of the most sikinig and pathetic poisining show
>betewn manys.Shows like that erase the mind of midle class teenagers,
>(even in america) making they think the biggest problem in the world
>is if they want they gonna buy a car or a motocicle wen they turn 16.
>This is just one of many problems in the american industry of all kind
> FUCK THE AMERICAN WAY
> (I didnt said fuck the americans)
Is it specifically capitalism or the right wing that is the problem?
The goal of the left is destruction of the traditional institutions
that provide the only apparent basis for a social order not based
exclusively on unsocialized impulse and desire on the one hand and
technology (means/end rationality) on the other. As to Beverly Hills
90210, TV producers and writers are heavily leftish. So for that
matter are people in the advertising business and magazines oriented
toward elite consumption (the _New Yorker_ or _Vogue_, say).
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do geese see God?
From panix!not-for-mail Mon Apr 22 14:15:54 EDT 1996
Article: 7454 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Roger Scruton article
Date: 22 Apr 1996 14:15:43 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 21
Message-ID: <4lgicf$ng0@panix.com>
References: <4l7oqd$ejh@gerry.cc.keele.ac.uk> <4l7tv7$fa9@panix.com> <4lgfef$92f@news.ios.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
drotov@castle.net writes:
>Here we are in alt.revolution.counter playing the left's game of social
>and cultural engineering. This is the number one folly of movement
>conservatism.
What can you do? To start with, you can try to understand what's going
on, and proposing and discussing things that might make a difference is
as good a way of starting as any. You can try to live well yourself,
promote the things that promote living well, and fight the things that
make living well more difficult. Maybe something will come of it,
maybe not.
What counts in your view as social and cultural engineering? All action
intended to affect general social and cultural conditions? How about
denouncing social and cultural engineering in the hopes there'll be less
of it and as a result the world will be a better place? Does that in
itself constitute social and cultural engineering?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do geese see God?
From jk Sat Apr 20 05:54:09 1996
Subject: Re: Scruton and neocon religio-politicos
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Sat, 20 Apr 1996 05:54:09 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <960419220328_473924215@emout13.mail.aol.com> from "John Lofton." at Apr 19, 96 10:03:29 pm
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> There is no "natural reason common to all men." Regenerate, saved, Godly
> men think very differently from the heathen. John Lofton.
Your first sentence does not follow from your second, and Saint Paul
disagrees with it. See Acts 17:18 ff. and Romans 1:18 ff.
In any event there is a natural reason that tells us how to build
aquaducts that don't fall down. The Romans had that reason and other
forms of prudence even though they were heathen.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week:
Deirdre wets altar of St. Simon's; no mists, for at last ewer dried.
From jk Sat Apr 20 06:13:48 1996
Subject: Re: Christians and Capital Punishment
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Sat, 20 Apr 1996 06:13:48 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <3178234B@mailgate.brooklyn.cuny.edu> from "Edward Kent" at Apr 19, 96 07:36:00 pm
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> How is it that a majority of Americans, who claim to be predominantly
> Christians support, capital punishment? The answer is quite clear. Wannabe
> American Christians have little or no idea what their religion really
> entails.
God and Caesar again. Government necessarily involves the use of
force, including deadly force. The way Christ was treated by Roman
soldiers is not really an argument for the abolition of armies even
though armies do things that are far worse than killing quickly and
painlessly a small number of people guilty of crimes such as murder.
It is of course possible to oppose capital punishment on Christian
grounds. It may be correct to do so. Historically, though, few
Christians have opposed it in principle, and its recent abolition in
Europe has had less to do with increased acceptance of Christianity
than reduced sense of personal responsibility under a moral law
transcending feeling and impulse.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week:
Deirdre wets altar of St. Simon's; no mists, for at last ewer dried.
From jk Sat Apr 20 12:06:45 1996
Subject: Re: Scruton and neocon religio-politicos
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Sat, 20 Apr 1996 12:06:45 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Apr 20, 96 03:42:01 pm
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Francesca shared:
> Disagreement is expressed as "pain".
> Thus no conversation is possible - he says his colleagues never
> talk about theology among themselves.
They don't even bother to feel each other's pain any more, or is that
just a formula used in the course of power-plays?
> Contention requires
> overarching agreement, or historical agreement. After fifteen
> hundred years of Christianity practised, Protestants and
> Catholics began to argue about the Eucharist, the sources
> of Authority, etc.
The agreement can be mere agreement that there is some sort of natural
reason in which we all share. Hence (I suppose) early apologetics,
although I don't really know anything about them.
> I think there are going to be four Christians hiding out
> in catacombs. I agree they will all be dogmatists.
John Lofton note: Francesca reveals herself as a greater extremist
than you!
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week:
Deirdre wets altar of St. Simon's; no mists, for at last ewer dried.
From jk Sun Apr 21 13:32:54 1996
Subject: Re: Scruton and neocon religio-politicos
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Sun, 21 Apr 1996 13:32:54 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Apr 21, 96 02:39:43 pm
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> In The Virtues, Peter Geach says there are four 'natural virtues'
> which can be known by all human beings, courage, justice (& two
> others I forget), and three 'supernatural' virtues which one
> has only by being given them by God, faith, hope & charity.
I presume the other two are temperance and prudence. That's the usual
list, anyway.
> I geuss much of this debate may be about whether one can run a
> country on the four natural virtues.
Part of the debate is what is required for a social order in which
people reliably adhere to a generally consistent understanding of the
four natural virtues even when it costs them something serious to do
so. "Self-interest rightly understood" doesn't seem to me to do the
job. So the question is whether the natural virtues supported by
natural reasoning is enough.
(Next message will have new palindrome.)
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week:
Deirdre wets altar of St. Simon's; no mists, for at last ewer dried.
From jk Sun Apr 21 16:43:47 1996
Subject: Re: Scruton and neocon religio-politicos
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Sun, 21 Apr 1996 16:43:47 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Apr 21, 96 08:21:53 pm
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Francesca A. Murphy writes:
> I reply to the charge of being called a more extreme
> dogmatist than John Lofton:
Not a charge of anything, we're all in this together. An advantage of
social incoherence is that it disabuses one of the notion that there is
something called "common sense" that is sufficient for the purposes of
life.
> I am not a Biblicist, and nor do I disbelieve in
> the existence of natural reason.
>
> However, I believe that the religious act and
> its object(s) are sui generis.
Do you think the religious act is avoidable? You and Bill have
mentioned myth. It seems that the modern or maybe postmodern view is
that any ontological commitment is myth. "Myth" seems to include
anything that is opaque to reason, which perhaps includes the validity
of reason itself. One might say that the religious act is belief in
the truth of a myth.
La Rochefocauld says that those who live without folly are not so wise
as they think. He knew something, it seems to me.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do geese see God?
From jk Sun Apr 21 21:49:37 1996
Subject: Re: Scruton and neocon religio-politicos
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Sun, 21 Apr 1996 21:49:37 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: from "Jeffrey W. Reed" at Apr 21, 96 09:18:21 pm
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Jeff Reed writes:
> Dogma would be an
> unexamined set of beliefs that one can, and should, not subject to
> refutation and proof.
Dogmas aren't unexamined. They are never defined without an enormous
aamount of analysis and debate pro and con. Their subsequent
interpretation and application requires further analysis and debate.
It is true that once defined they are constitutive of further
discussion.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do geese see God?
From jk Mon Apr 22 06:03:45 1996
Subject: Re: Scruton and neocon religio-politicos
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 1996 06:03:45 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Apr 22, 96 09:52:16 am
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Francesca:
> And Scruton's Romanitas is based on myths - beautiful and
> true ones, as I consider, but tell that to anyone who thinks
> Aeneas was a DWM.
Doesn't it help that he was a politically-engaged third-world immigrant
to Europe?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do geese see God?
From jk Mon Apr 22 06:07:14 1996
Subject: Re: Scruton and neocon religio-politicos
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 1996 06:07:14 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Apr 22, 96 09:39:28 am
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Says Francesca:
> I find it hard to believe that Western Civ. has been on the
> skids for 800 years.
It could nonetheless be true. A man begins to die the day he's born.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do geese see God?
From jk Mon Apr 22 07:09:08 1996
Subject: Re: Scruton and neocon religio-politicos
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 1996 07:09:08 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Apr 22, 96 11:20:24 am
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Francesca writes:
> > > However, I believe that the religious act and
> > > its object(s) are sui generis.
> The religious act is the sight of a particular ontological domain
> - the holy.
>
> I think you can make some ontological committments without
> committment to the holy.
Once you make those ontological commitments can you avoid the holy
without obfuscation?
What I have in mind is that knowledge of anything whatever might
require evaluative judgments and a world in which evaluative judgments
are objectively valid might have to be a world in which God exists.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do geese see God?
From jk Mon Apr 22 13:38:34 1996
Subject: Re: Christians and Capital Punishment
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 1996 13:38:34 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <317B84BA@mailgate.brooklyn.cuny.edu> from "Edward Kent" at Apr 22, 96 09:07:00 am
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Edward Kent writes:
>if one traces the history of Christianity, one discovers that it was
>horribly compromised by its 'conquest' of the Roman Empire.
Christianity has an unsettled relation to any social order, I think.
It wants the Kingdom of Heaven, while social order is hardly thinkable
apart from the organized use of deadly force, unmerited differences in
wealth, power and social position, sacrifice of the innocent, idolatry
of actual human collectivities and so on, none of which have a place in
the Kingdom of Heaven.
The most obvious conclusions to be drawn from Christianity are that we
should obey the powers that be except in special circumstances, but
live ourselves in accordance with standards other than worldly
standards. There's not much direct guidance on what to do when Caesar
becomes a Christian (as in the later Roman Empire) or when Christians
participate in controlling Caesar (as in a democratic society).
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do geese see God?
From jk Mon Apr 22 13:57:29 1996
Subject: Re: Scruton and neocon religio-politicos
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 1996 13:57:29 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Apr 22, 96 05:57:56 pm
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Francesca:
> 1) I don't think God has to exist for me to be able truly
> to say 'My wet slippers are by the bed', 'my cat is pregnant'.
>
> Statements of fact can be true or false without being
> evaluative. I can describe a situation without evaluating
> it - up to a point.
My puzzlement is how you can be justified in believing a description is
true unless the belief really is justified. To say a belief is
justified, though, seems to require objective evaluative standards.
What evidence makes it right to believe something?
> 2) Is there not some truth in Wittgenstein's 'Of
> that whereof we cannot speak we must be silent'?
>
> It points to the fact that the holy is a region
> of its own. It has its own language.
Its language, I am inclined to think, completes, justifies and makes
more comprehensible the rest of language. That is why natural theology
and theology that does not consist purely of negative statements is
possible.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do geese see God?
From panix!not-for-mail Tue Apr 23 08:59:20 EDT 1996
Article: 7455 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: The American Way influence in third world contrys
Date: 22 Apr 1996 14:16:42 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 20
Message-ID: <4lgiea$nsj@panix.com>
References: <4l8pch$1tm@vivaldi.telepac.pt> <4lgfoa$92f@news.ios.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
drotov@mai.castle.net writes:
>>The american industris of all kind are destroing
>>the third world contrys
>
>Get off your third world ass and do something about it.
>
>>Shows like that erase the mind of midle class teenagers,
>
>Local culture is helpless before American TV? I pity you.
>
>> FUCK THE AMERICAN WAY
>
>Don't you have a local way you could busy yourself with?
Are you proposing that our friend engage in social and cultural
engineering?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do geese see God?
From jk Tue Apr 23 06:11:07 1996
Subject: Re: Scruton and neocon religio-politicos
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Tue, 23 Apr 1996 06:11:07 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: from "Jeffrey W. Reed" at Apr 22, 96 09:45:29 pm
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> Machiavelli, however, still felt their was a
> public role for religion, as a set of beliefs and principles that would
> provide common ground and a common set of values, which were important to
> the preservation of the state. In his private belief Machivelli was,
> essentially, a pagan Roman. In his public belief, he remained a Catholic,
> because that was expected of every Florentine citizen.
So are neocons would-be Machiavels?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do geese see God?
From jk Tue Apr 23 08:56:00 1996
Subject: Re: Scruton and neocon religio-politicos
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Tue, 23 Apr 1996 08:56:00 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <960423082418_476174479@emout09.mail.aol.com> from "Bill Riggs" at Apr 23, 96 08:24:19 am
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> Not that our educational system is any great shakes.
> But we do know what we are doing, and why we're doing it. We don't need the
> structure, because the whole idea of American schools is to let the cream
> rise to the top. I don't think that is encouraged in Britain.
I thought American schools had three purposes:
1. Give everyone what he wants and say it's all equally good.
2. Train everyone in the skills, attitudes and responses necessary for
the smooth functioning of a technocratic regime, including what are
called tolerance and multicultural sensitivity.
3. Print and hand out diplomas that help the customers get comfortable
jobs that pay well.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do geese see God?
From jk Tue Apr 23 11:54:07 1996
Subject: Re: Scruton and neocon religio-politicos
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Tue, 23 Apr 1996 11:54:07 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Apr 23, 96 04:40:24 pm
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> > What evidence makes it right to believe something?
>
> I think you are going endlessly to double requests for justification
> in on themselves.
Justification must come to an end. That's a philosophical function of
God -- in order for us to have knowledge our chain of justifications
must end in something that is self-justifying. Many people have
identified "the self-justifying" with God; you seem to identify it with
a pregnant cat. The former approach leads to natural theology, the
latter to David Hume.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do geese see God?
From jk Wed Apr 24 18:37:28 1996
Subject: Re: Scruton and neocon religio-politicos
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 1996 18:37:28 -0400 (EDT)
Cc: neocon@abdn.ac.uk
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Apr 24, 96 12:19:03 pm
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Dr. FAM writes:
> 1) I don't need inner illumination to see that the Cat is
> pregnant.
I dunno. People who vigorously campaign against God seem to end up
having trouble with Truth and Knowledge too. My extremely vague theory
is that knowledge depends on objectively valid evaluative principles,
and those depend on a God that can only be understood as personal, but
I have trouble pulling my thoughts together on any subject under the
best of circumstances, let alone after a couple of post-workout beers,
so I'll just have to leave it at that. Maybe more later.
> Have you had Welcome to Necon? Some people seem to have,
> since they immediately unsubscribed when they got my
> message.
I have. Don't worry, though -- the old list has been shrinking all
week but is now growing again, so new blood seems to be arriving.
> Have you tried sending a message to Neocon as a whole?
I'll cc this to neocon. I got Riggsie's "I'm on" message. One thing
you should get your computer guys to tweak is the "From:" field. If
the "From:" was neocon@abdn.ac.uk instead of the particular person
posting the message the "reply" function in most people's mail software
would work correctly, to send replies to the whole list.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do geese see God?
From jk Thu Apr 25 06:08:20 1996
Subject: Re: Scruton and neocon religio-politicos
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 1996 06:08:20 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy" at Apr 24, 96 12:19:03 pm
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Francesca wrote some of the following:
> > > > What evidence makes it right to believe something?
> > >
> > > I think you are going endlessly to double requests for justification
> > > in on themselves.
> 1) I don't need inner illumination to see that the Cat is
> pregnant.
>
> 2) I know that Augustine thought that one does, but did
> he actually create a natural theology - I would say no.
>
> 3) You know there are positions inbetween Hume's 'sensism'
> and Augustine's illuminationism.
>
> 4) None of the traditional arguments for the existence of
> God are arguments from the possibility of human thought.
To say that "why is it right for me to believe the Cat is pregnant"
leads to an endless regress sounds to me like some sort of sensism
rather than a position intermediate between sensism and
illuminationism. Also, are you saying that no natural theology could
be based on the possibility of human knowledge?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do geese see God?
From jk Thu Apr 25 07:42:40 1996
Subject: Re: Liberalism & Neoconservativism (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 1996 07:42:40 -0400 (EDT)
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> > > Dear Liz,
> > >
> Why don't you kick in and get us going?
> > >
> > OK gang,
I'll comment on what Liz wrote. I also put together a summary of where
I thought the discussions were:
1. Neoconservatism seems to be an attempt to retain and strengthen
conservative elements, which have greatly weakened over the past 30
years, within the respectable mainstream of American national thought.
2. "Conservatism" has to do with aspects of social life that can be
reduced to neither individual preference nor technological (e.g., market
or bureaucratic) rationality and can best be grasped through tradition.
One might be a neoconservative either because he likes those aspects for
their own sake or because he thinks they are needed for social order.
3. Neoconservatism therefore seeks to make tradition authoritative,
and to promote commonly-accepted principles that are understood to
transcend both individual preference and technological rationality.
4. That's easier said than done -- hence all the discussions of
religion, Scruton's skeptical pietism, etc. The tendency within the
respectable national mainstream is to think that what the
neoconservatives seek is bigoted and authoritarian. Paleoconservatives
and others consider neoconservatism dishonest and doomed to failure as
an attempt to create ultimate loyalties for ulterior motives. The
neoconservative standpoint, though, is that the alternative to their
approach is radical social fragmentation. Hence the discussions of
fundamentalism, multiculturalism, and so on.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do geese see God?
From jk Thu Apr 25 07:58:23 1996
Subject: Re: Liberalism & Neoconservativism (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 1996 07:58:24 -0400 (EDT)
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Liz writes:
> > I propose that, to the extent that neoconservatism cannot
> > disassociate its moral underpinnings from that of liberalism, is also the
> > extent to which it would be incoherent to oppose liberalism politically.
I assume you mean "it would be incoherent for neoconservatism to oppose
liberalism politically".
> > ( in the use of the word "liberalism" I am leaning very much towards the
> > John Rawls conception of the word)
> >
> > Thus, something along the "fundamentalist line" of moral underpinnings
> > becomes not opportunistic, but rather, necessary. One must find a moral
> > basis to engage in the political act of for example, cutting back on
> > welfare moms. One has to make it "morally right" or it won't fly
> > politically.
I sympathize with what I think you're saying. Pure neoconservatism,
like liberalism, takes letting everyone equally do what he feels like
doing as the ultimate moral standard. The neocons however observe that
if their ultimate standard becomes the day-to-day operational standard
there are going to be problems -- for example, there isn't going to
have enough sexual restraint and stable family life to make a tolerable
society possible (for one thing, there are going to be problems with
childrearing that all the therapists and early childhood intervention
teams in the world aren't going to be able to solve). So the publicly
stated standard of morality has to be something different from what the
neocons believe the standard ultimately to be. Fundamentalists and for
that matter orthodox Christians generally do not have that problem.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do geese see God?
From jk Thu Apr 25 11:34:29 1996
Subject: Re: Liberalism & Neoconservativism III (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 1996 11:34:29 -0400 (EDT)
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> > I sympathize with what I think you're saying. Pure neoconservatism,
> > like liberalism, takes letting everyone equally do what he feels like
> > doing as the ultimate moral standard.
>
> Francesca
>
> I propose that neocon needs a different, metaphysical conception of
> liberalism. In this conception, freedom is a transcendental
> attribute of God, and therefore a Good Thing in and of itself.
We could also have conception of despotism in which power is an
attribute of God and therefore a Good Thing. I'm not sure what
connection either conception would have with politics. For us, neither
freedom nor power are good without restriction.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do geese see God?
From jk Thu Apr 25 15:29:29 1996
Subject: Theocracy on probation (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 1996 15:29:29 -0400 (EDT)
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Francesca writes:
> Theocracy is on probation on this list. The first time
> anyone is burned by a theocrat, the theocrat is expelled.
> The Athenians knew how to go about this. I may be a neocon
> but I am not a liberal!
It's good to see ostracism brought back, but what will substitute for
the potsherds?
Query for the day: neocons seem to be somewhere between liberals and
theocrats. Just where are the boundaries?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do geese see God?
From jk Thu Apr 25 15:39:10 1996
Subject: Re: Liberalism & Neoconservativism (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 1996 15:39:10 -0400 (EDT)
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> Right, Liz. Apart from God, we can't be good. Indeed, apart from God, we
> don't even know what "good" is. John Lofton.
That seems right, since we wouldn't exist and _a fortiori_ wouldn't
know anything but for God. But can we know something of the good
without full recognition that the existence of the good and our
knowledge of it implies the existence of God? (Neocon implication: if
we can, then it seems that there could be a "thin" civil religion,
perhaps consisting only of Scrutonian piety, that the members of a
society could share in good faith even though their particular
religious views varied.)
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do geese see God?
From jk Fri Apr 26 06:11:34 1996
Subject: Re: Liberalism & Neoconservativism III (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 1996 06:11:34 -0400 (EDT)
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Liz R Robinson writes:
> Imagine if the "impulse" towards neocon was fostered by
> perceived excesses of a liberal state. So, the impulse BEGINS at the
> desire to cut back on welfare moms, and then backtracks from that, seeking
> some sort of moral underpinning after the fact, and then sort of
> opportunistically dances back and forth between economic and moral
> arguments. One finds no continuity of religious tradition or Christian
> concern for the social good here. Arguably, the notion of the goodness of
> cutting back on welfare moms would be antithetical to the political
> Christ, would it not?
I agree that neoconservatives broke with liberalism because they
thought liberalism was going too far, and wasn't going to result in a
tolerable society in the long run. I also agree it's been hard for
them to develop a coherent view of things and remain neocons.
They were mostly intellectuals more interested in culture than
economics, and a lot were former socialists, so they didn't start by
saying welfare is a bad idea, they mostly started by saying
anti-Americanism and liberationist cultural demands are a bad idea. It
has taken them a long time to come around to the view that the New Deal
was a bad thing. "Welfare moms" I suppose are somewhere in the middle
of that range of issues.
As to the political Christ, it seem to me the issue is whether he
thinks a society in which the bottom-line social institution is the
family or one in which it is the government bureaucracy would be
better. I don't see why he would prefer the latter, but I recognize
that many people consider the point an obvious one. Possibly the
reason they think the point obvious is that the government has more
force at its disposal and so they think that every serious
responsibility should be assigned to it because then we can be sure
it'll get taken care of adequately. Things haven't worked out that
way, though, so I think there's no good reason to consider the
political Christ a statist.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do geese see God?
From panix!not-for-mail Fri Apr 26 06:17:55 EDT 1996
Article: 7461 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: panix!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Roger Scruton article
Date: 24 Apr 1996 12:46:18 -0400
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cla04@cc.keele.ac.uk (A.T. Fear) writes:
>P wanted everyone, save the Guardians to whom the truth would be told,
>in his Republic to believe in a Golden Lie which aimed to preserve
>social stability.
I don't think unifying myths that the upper classes don't believe in can
be relied on. The upper classes will never differ by nature and
training from the lower orders in the way Plato's _Republic_ required.
>If people are irrational, which I think as CRs we can probably take as
>read, and hence need appealing to in this way, and conventional
>religion won't work as social cement won't work things are looking
>bleak for traditionalists if a new sort of cement can't be found.
The obvious cement is tradition viewed as a vehicle of revelation. Have
there been lasting societies that haven't been held together by that?
Examples are Confucianism in its nonatheistic form, catholic
Christianity and Americanism, although you don't like the last example.
In the absence of that kind of tradition you get a mixture or
alternation of chaos and tyranny, with the CRs either trying to restore
tradition if that looks at all possible or withdrawing into smaller
communities with their own tradition.
>Actually I think rhetoric is crucial. aristotle remarked that there's
>little point in knowing anything iof you can't communicate it
>effectively to others
Rhetoric is indispensible, but subordinate. You have to know something
first.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do geese see God?
From jk Fri Apr 26 17:59:30 1996
Subject: Theocracy on probation V(ish) (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 1996 17:59:30 -0400 (EDT)
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Thus FM:
>I propose that liberalism has something to do with the rejection of
>force and the belief that one can rule by reason alone.
The reason might be technological reason, which tells us how to get
things given actual wants, or evaluative reason, which tells us what we
should want. The tendency in liberalism, like the tendency in modern
life generally, is to emphasize the former and discount the latter.
If that's right, then the modern liberal would demand a system that
gives everyone what he actually wants and thus does away with the need
for force. Put another way, the liberal would make the satisfaction of
the actual desires of individuals the summum bonum and take a
technological approach to social organization for the sake of
approximating that summum bonum.
>Neocons believe in some universal political reason/rationality. It is a
>notably intellectualist form of conservativism. They don't reject
>force, they would believe in a just war, for example.
What is the goal of their reason? Was Plato a neocon? Or is their
reason technological reason maximizing the satisfaction of given
desires, in which case an objection to their position would be that
technological reason if generally accepted as the measure of all things
would make social order impossible so the neocons would end up as would-
be guardians promoting religious myths for public consumption that they
reject for themselves.
>Theocrats would be happy to rule by force, without explanation beyond
>circular Bible bashing.
Someone might think that force is necessary in politics, that it should
be used to defend and promote a good society, and that our understanding
of the good society and how it is defended and promoted, like our
understanding of other evaluative and practical arts, is something that
is learned through experience, inspiration and tradition rather than
something that can be captured in explicit and demonstrable
propositions. Would such a view, which after all would have to depend
on authority backed by force when argument fails, be covered by your
description of the theocratic view?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do geese see God?
From jk Sat Apr 27 07:44:45 1996
Subject: Theocracy on probation V(ish) (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Sat, 27 Apr 1996 07:44:45 -0400 (EDT)
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Another couple of thoughts:
> >I propose that liberalism has something to do with the rejection of
> >force and the belief that one can rule by reason alone.
>
> The reason might be technological reason, which tells us how to get
> things given actual wants, or evaluative reason, which tells us what we
> should want.
It seems that in the case of liberalism "reason" would very likely be
technological reason, because figuring out some way to give people just
what they happen to want would be the most direct way of avoiding the
need to use force. If the things people want conflict absolutely,
despite all the techno-cleverness in the world, technological reason
might also be able to come up with advanced methods of propaganda and
psychological manipulation to change wants so that the conflicts would
disappear. If neither economic organization nor psychological
manipulation eliminated all disputes, liberals could choose between
giving up their ideal of a world without conflict (and thereby giving
up their idealization of themselves as unusually good people as well as
the justification for their political power) or treating those who
stand in their way as less than human. In the latter case they might
for example call their opponents "bigots", "hate-filled fanatics",
"fundamentalists", and the like.
> >Neocons believe in some universal political reason/rationality. It is a
> >notably intellectualist form of conservativism. They don't reject
> >force, they would believe in a just war, for example.
>
> What is the goal of their reason? Was Plato a neocon?
More generally, this kind of view seems to end up calling for rule by a
small class of those with special knowledge, and for the propagation of
myths among the mass of the people, who aren't capable of reliably
grasping and acting on universal political reason/rationality, designed
to induce support of the regime. The myths Plato proposed in the
_Republic_ were at least intended to be an image of the truth that
would benefit the souls of the people in accordance with their
capacities. I don't think anything of the sort would be true of myths
concocted by a ruling class composed of liberals become realists, who
recognize that a fully rational and conflict-free politics is
impossible but retain their original view that the good consists in the
satisfaction of actual preferences.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do geese see God?
From jk Sat Apr 27 10:06:50 1996
Subject: Moral Suasion versus Legal Enforcement? (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Sat, 27 Apr 1996 10:06:50 -0400 (EDT)
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Edward Kent writes:
> Responding to Jim's thoughts on tradition's role in neoconservatism, does it
> make a difference whether one is asserting the value of tradition:
>
> 1) for one's own group
> 2) persuasively for others as well
> 3) by legal enforcment?
>
> The last only would entail the charge of authoritarianism.
The obvious issue is whether sources of knowledge other than tradition
-- pure reason and empirical social science perhaps -- are sufficient
for the purposes of government. Francesca might tell us that the
liberals think that reason and science known and accepted by everyone
is sufficient and the neocons the same of reason and science possessed
by a governing elite. I think both views are clearly wrong, and as a
practical matter the latter is authoritarian anyway.
> This was the distinction that divided classical liberalism and conservatism
> in the nineteenth century J.S. Mill versus Sir Leslie Stephen
Do you mean Sir Leslie's brother James Fitzjames? Incidentally, since
we're talking about neocons and how everyone is related to everyone
else, what are the chances that Norman Podhoretz will end up with a
niece who bears the same relation to him as Virginia Woolf to James
Fitzjames Stephen?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do geese see God?
From jk Sat Apr 27 10:13:25 1996
Subject: Re: Theocracy on probation VI (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Sat, 27 Apr 1996 10:13:25 -0400 (EDT)
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FM:
> >
> > >I propose that liberalism has something to do with the rejection of
> > >force and the belief that one can rule by reason alone.
> The reason I am speaking of is not technological reason. By technological
> reason I assume you mean pragmatic reason plus the will power to bring
> one's goals into being. This is the sort of reason attacked by
> Luther, in the Commentary on Galatians, by Jacques Ellul in The
> Technological Society, by Jurgen Moltmann (etc). Nor do I mean
> evaluative reason, if by that you mean a Kantian practical knowledge
> of the (moral) noumenon.
What kind of reason is it? By techno-reason I mean the knowledge of
means to arbitrary ends (possibly those of others as well as one's
own). By evaluative reason I meant the reason that discerns and orders
goods and thus is not satisfied with arbitrary goals.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do geese see God?
From jk Sat Apr 27 10:21:30 1996
Subject: Re: Theocracy on probation VII (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Sat, 27 Apr 1996 10:21:30 -0400 (EDT)
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Francesca:
> I am not speaking of technological reason. Given that two days
> ago on the 'Lazarus' list, you were giving the existence of human
> reason as an argument for the existence of God, you know quite
> well there are other types of human reason Jim!
OK, but the question was what kind of reason is basic to liberalism,
not what kinds of reason exist in general.
> The reason of which I am speaking is the power to know truths
> as they are embedded in the human condition.
Would someone who thought that someday there would be an anarchic
theocratic utopia in which all was peace and harmony because all had
accepted Jesus in their hearts be a liberal? Suppose in the meantime
he thought public education and detailed regulation of social life were
necessary because we're not there yet. Would he still be a liberal
because his ultimate goal is a society without force or coercion?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do geese see God?
From jk Sat Apr 27 10:40:12 1996
Subject: Re: Theocracy on probation VIII (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Sat, 27 Apr 1996 10:40:12 -0400 (EDT)
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> You can't think a traditional society into existence.
True enough. We can all agree it would be good to understand the
situation we're in. One question to consider is what a political
society would look like that attempted to dispense altogether with
truths that can be grasped only through tradition. What would the
conception of the good be in such a society by reference to which
public measures are judged? What would the relation between rulers and
ruled?
My own picture of the future is something rather like traditional
middle eastern society, with a small clique ruling by force over a
hopelessly fragmented society with which it has no organic connection,
and life being carried on within sectarian communities that minimize
relations with each other. Maybe that picture is overly gloomy, but I
think we should consider proposed alternatives like neoconservatism
soberly with regard to what they really amount to and their prospects
of success.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do geese see God?
From jk Sat Apr 27 13:53:10 1996
Subject: Re: Theocracy on probation IX (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Sat, 27 Apr 1996 13:53:10 -0400 (EDT)
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Francesca:
> I am speaking of the reason which knows some ends, if not all
> ends.
If it is reason that has fragmentary and one-sided vision of ends, it
seems that it would become more useable (possibly, useable at all) if
it were helped out by some procedure that brought the fragmentary and
not-fully-articulate vision of ends achieved by a variety of men over
generations into some reasonably coherent whole. Tradition seems to be
such a procedure. We know that tradition has been able to serve as a
basis for politics. Are there any grounds for believing that the
reason of which you speak would be adequate to the task in the absence
of tradition?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do geese see God?
From jk Sat Apr 27 13:57:53 1996
Subject: Re: Theocracy on probation VII (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Sat, 27 Apr 1996 13:57:53 -0400 (EDT)
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Francesca:
> 1) Anyone who thinks X is wrong but necessary because we are not
> there yet is a Marxist, not a liberal.
Actual liberals believe in government and therefore consider coercion
necessary even though as you say they would like to do without
coercion. Does that mean there are no liberals, only Marxists?
> 2) What means is this person using to bring about an anarchist
> theocracy? If they want to go off and live with the Amish, and leave
> everyone else to get with their own business, they are a paleocon.
> If they want to elect a President who also wants an anarchist
> theocracy, they are probably an inadvertent Stalinist.
If there were a liberal who voted for Bill Clinton instead of joining a
commune somewhere would he be a Stalinist?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do geese see God?
From jk Sat Apr 27 14:09:59 1996
Subject: Moral Suasion versus Legal Enforcement? (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Sat, 27 Apr 1996 14:09:59 -0400 (EDT)
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Edward Kent writes:
> Jim, Which one was it that debated Mill.?
I don't know of any formal debates. I know that James Fitzjames
discussed and denounced (politely and respectfully of course -- they
were both Victorian gentlemen) Mills's ideas, and that he was the one
who wrote on politics and law while Leslie wrote on literature.
> I don't think we need fear any sort of "reason" overwhelming what has shaped
> us. Our problem is to adapt our traditional roots to changing circumstances
> in ways that are coherent and viable.
Whatever we do that takes a few things into account that can be clearly
grasped and readily manipulated is called "reason" because it's easy to
talk about and argue for. It does seem to me that such things can be
overvalued and that they can disorder the complexity of arrangements
that have developed in accordance with our perceptions of what promotes
the good life. In fact, it seems to me that's actually happened.
When we talk about "tradition" we don't mean this or that effect of the
past, we mean a system of things that can become disordered without
however freeing us from the past.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do geese see God?
From jk Sat Apr 27 14:21:13 1996
Subject: Re: Moral Suasion versus Legal Enforcement? (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Sat, 27 Apr 1996 14:21:13 -0400 (EDT)
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> > Francesca might tell us that the
> > liberals think that reason and science known and accepted by everyone
> > is sufficient and the neocons the same of reason and science possessed
> > by a governing elite.
Francesca
> I have never said anything about a governing elite. I am speaking of
> universally accessible reason.
Universally accessible, but some use force against others (unlike
liberalism as you describe it). It seems to me those who are
recognized as correct reasoners authorized to use force against others
to vindicate their conclusions would constitute a governing elite.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do geese see God?
From jk Sat Apr 27 14:28:43 1996
Subject: Re: Theocracy on probation X (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Sat, 27 Apr 1996 14:28:43 -0400 (EDT)
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Francesca:
> I don't say neutral traditionless reason is a wonderful thing
> by God! What I say is that, the only reason open to a society which
> cannot agree on what its traditions mean and which has by and large
> cut loose from those traditions is that brought to bear by
> neoconservativism.
I just wonder whether there is such a reason except maybe technological
reason. Does neutral traditionless available-to-everyone
non-technological reason tell us anything sufficiently definite to act
on? If not, what is the advantage of basing government on claims to
that kind of reason over basing it on bible-thumping fundamentalism,
apart from the fact that different people would be in the saddle?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do geese see God?
From jk Sat Apr 27 14:34:16 1996
Subject: Faculty Psychology Is Dated (Reason) (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Sat, 27 Apr 1996 14:34:16 -0400 (EDT)
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Ed Kent:
> So you guys trying to figure out which kind of 'reason' you like are
> confusing a mental faculty with what's in there (the mind -- if you must
> think of it being a container). Really what you are trying to find are the
> values you wish to live by, the world-view that feels confortable and the
> goals that you and I and other should be pursuing.
I think by "reason" I have meant something like "system of assumptions
and procedures for arriving at practical conclusions".
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do geese see God?
From jk Sat Apr 27 14:37:12 1996
Subject: More on universal reason
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Sat, 27 Apr 1996 14:37:12 -0400 (EDT)
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Francesca:
> Unlike the various sectarian postmodernisms, the neocon
> position accepts belief in universal reason.
So if there's a universal reason that functions perfectly well without
embodiment and development in a particular tradition, how come people
don't all agree on what it says? Is everyone except the neocons evil
or stupid?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do geese see God?
From jk Sun Apr 28 06:28:42 1996
Subject: Re: Moral Suasion versus Legal Enforcement? IV (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Sun, 28 Apr 1996 06:28:42 -0400 (EDT)
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> > > > Francesca might tell us that the
> > > > liberals think that reason and science known and accepted by everyone
> > > > is sufficient and the neocons the same of reason and science possessed
> > > > by a governing elite.
> >
> > > I have never said anything about a governing elite. I am speaking of
> > > universally accessible reason.
> >
> In attempting to define the neocon as against
> the liberal & theocon, I have been speaking of the
> merged intellectual personality of the neocon Theoriser
> (like George Weigel or Michael Novak etc). I was not
> referring to Politicians - those who actually govern.
Theorisers and Politicians would both constitute elites, with the
Politicians presumably looking to the Theorisers for guidance in the
ideal neocon state. I say that because it seems that a neocon state
would be much less likely than a traditionalist state to operate
without explicit theory -- it can't rely on habit, ingrained attitudes,
and so on because it is based on the view that those things no longer
form a coherent system in the modern urban society you visualize. Nor
does it rely simply on the popular will or the will of some other
despot. Therefore it relies on universally accessible reason,
apparently worked up into the form of an explicit theory guiding the
state. That seems to require a guiding group of Theorisers.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From jk Sun Apr 28 14:16:26 1996
Subject: Re: More on universal reason II (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Sun, 28 Apr 1996 14:16:26 -0400 (EDT)
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Francesca:
> "..the reality expressed by the nous symbols is the structure in the
> psyche of a man who is attuned to the divine order in the cosmos,
> not of a man who exists in revolt against it; reason has the
> definite existential content of openness toward reality.." (E.Voegelin,
> Anamnesis, pp. 97-98)
Did Voegelin have any views on the relationship between participation
in that reason and participation in particular human traditions? My
own view is that if you reject tradition in principle the only thing
you're going to become attuned to is your own mindless preconceptions
and unsocialized impulses.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From jk Sun Apr 28 14:40:40 1996
Subject: Re: Moral Suasion versus Legal Enforcement? V (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Sun, 28 Apr 1996 14:40:40 -0400 (EDT)
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Francesca:
> 1) I think you are dreaming up an H.G. Wells scenario which
> is unlike reality. Neocon in the role of policy advisors
> do not wish to become our Guardians. They advise Politicians to
> do things like letting schools opt out of local government
> control, or to privatize nationalised industries, or to
> cut back on regulations for small businesses. Some of these
> things have backfired in ways they did not envisage, but
> there you go.
You make them sound like minor-league technicians, proposing particular
fiddles to make this or that work better. My impression is that their
approach to politics is far more overarching. If it's not, why would a
lecturer in divinity find them of interest from a professional
standpoint, and treat their views as if they were equal in generality
to liberalism and theocracy?
If they do in fact have an overarching view of politics, then that view
has consequences that can be discussed in evaluating that view, even
though as a practical matter a great many things will have to happen
before those consequences can be realized.
> 2) The neocons don't tell people to stop belonging to
> traditions. They just observe that this traditionless
> condition seems to be a fact for many of the people around
> them.
> Again and again, the neocons are advising politicians
> within this situation, not creating the situation.
Perhaps the issue is how radical the rejection of tradition has been,
and exactly how bad it would be if tradition really were rejected. Is
a traditionless condition something one can work with? The neocons as
you depict them seem to say "yes", which I think is mistaken.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From jk Sun Apr 28 15:00:06 1996
Subject: Re: Theocracy on probation XI (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Sun, 28 Apr 1996 15:00:06 -0400 (EDT)
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Francesca
> Whether or not they hypostatize a faculty called reason, neocons
> think we can 'know' that ordered freedom is a Good Thing.
What content can they give to that knowledge? "Ordered freedom" might
mean an economic and legal system that efficiently produces a large
gross national product, thereby giving people plenty of money to buy
what they want, and also frees us to the extent possible from
burdensome personal obligations by means of a well-organized welfare
system, easy divorce, publicly-funded abortion, etc. It also might
mean a system of law, education and culture designed to inculcate
self-control and individual responsibility. Or maybe a system to bring
people to know the freedom they can only find in Jesus.
> I don't get the impression that theocons think so.
Maybe theocons think the last-mentioned system constitutes ordered
freedom. Or maybe they think universal reason says that serving God is
an Ever-So-Much-Better Thing. In the latter case, how will the neocons
convince them they're wrong apart from thumping their copies of the
complete works of Lord Acton?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From jk Sun Apr 28 17:46:08 1996
Subject: Re: Roger Scruton's skeptical piety
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Sun, 28 Apr 1996 17:46:08 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19960428185025.006ee0c4@swva.net> from "seth williamson" at Apr 28, 96 02:50:25 pm
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Seth Williamson:
> >Their message is simple: "God is dead--but don't spread it around."
>
> Sounds like Scruton himself to me.
I think that's so. Not just Scruton, though -- I think that any
serious rejection of the antireligious viewpoint calls for a much more
thorough break with the ways of thinking and institutions that count as
authoritative today than most educated and even modestly successful
people are likely to make. Even the conservative temperament that
mistrusts individual reason can be an inducement to irreligion under
current circumstances.
> > The principal damage done by liberalism has not been
> > intellectual--for the loss of religious belief could hardly be avoided, once
> > the habit of inquiry had grown in us.
>
> Roger's a priori assumption, which is not to be subjected to
> skeptical questioning: all religion is folderol.
Why be harsh on a man who seems depressed? I understand from someone
who ought to know that he tried to become a Christian but couldn't
sustain it. One comment of his in an interview, possibly relevant to
other discussions, was that it's hard to be a Christian when there
isn't any Church.
> Does this guy actually KNOW any real Christians?
It seems that when he showed up at the meetings and looked around him,
he didn't see any, and when he looked at the names on the letterhead he
didn't see any there either. Anyway, that's what I take his comment in
the interview to mean.
> >But the contempt of liberals is something that conservatives must learn to
> endure.
>
> Whatta screaming wuss.
He is or was a professor of aesthetics, and obviously has acute
sensibilities. I take it that's your point here.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From jk Mon Apr 29 06:42:43 1996
Subject: Re: Theocracy on probation XI (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 1996 06:42:43 -0400 (EDT)
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Bill Riggs:
> > Or maybe they think universal reason says that serving God is
> > an Ever-So-Much-Better Thing. In the latter case, how will
> > the neocons convince them they're wrong apart from
> > thumping their copies of the complete works of Lord Acton?
>
> By whipping them in the marketplace ? (Of ideas, of course :)
An appeal to the market is not the same as an appeal to the universal
reason in which all share, which is what we started off with as the
standard among neoconservatives. But maybe that is the point of your
other post, in which you extend the logic of intervention in the
marketplace to the marketplace of ideas.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From jk Mon Apr 29 11:30:51 1996
Subject: Re: Theocracy on probation XIV
To: div093@abdn.ac.uk
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 1996 11:30:51 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: from "div093@abdn.ac.uk" at Apr 29, 96 02:13:35 pm
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Francesca
> I heard that Hayek regarded competition in the marketplace as at
> least analogous to the use of reason.
He also thought tradition was necessary to create the rules that make
it possible for the marketplace to function properly. See his _Law,
Legislation and Liberty_.
On a somewhat different topic, why does putting the will of God into
the picture make reason vanish? Wasn't Voegelin big on the in-between
character of human life? Can't both reason and revelation be valid and
necessary? I'm a bit rusty on Suarez, though, so maybe I missed the
point ...
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From jk Mon Apr 29 13:11:32 1996
Subject: Re: Moral Suasion versus Legal Enforcement? VI (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 1996 13:11:32 -0400 (EDT)
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FROM FRANCESCA:
> It is in my view possible to argue about politics with someone
> not exactly in the same tradition as oneself. It is in my view
> almost impossible to argue about theology with someone not
> in the same tradition as oneself.
I find the world more of a piece than that.
Saint Paul and Saint Thomas thought it was possible to argue about
theology with those of other traditions, and they knew more about it
than I do. On the other hand, Mao thought political power grew from
the barrel of a gun, and he was doubtless equally expert in his own
line.
> The capital G means I mean a Good as an end and not just a means.
> The capital G means freedom as a transcendental attribute of being.
I think a conception of freedom can make sense only by reference to a
conception of substantive goods. Free, but free for what?
> There is not much else politicians and their advisors can
> do except work with a traditionless condition.
A society wholly without tradition would be in the same position as a
man with no memory whatever -- not recognizably human. So we are
plainly not in a traditionless condition. All that we have depends on
what traditions there are. All that we can hope to have depends on the
development of tradition.
> If you want to bring back tradition by force, you are a
> Utopian.
It is utopian to think that force is not sometimes a necessary part of
the defense of tradition or for that matter the establishment of a
tradition. Why should tradition be different in that regard from other
good things relating to politics?
> If you think any of our politicians are up to bringing
> back tradition, you are not the pessimist I take you for.
It may be true that all our politicians do is add to disorder. If so,
to accept reality is to accept that the only worthwhile politics lies
outside formal politics.
> You realise of course the irony of this debate - on the
> Newman list, you are defending me from attack by a
> weird anti-traditionalist in the question of the formation
> of Scripture.
If it were possible to avoid ironies the subject would be too simple to
justify transAtlantic debates.
> You seem to me to be wanting theology to jump in and tell
> politics what to find, whereas I think that politics ought to
> have its own autonomy.
Relative autonomy, but not severance. They both have to do with a
single world that we know imperfectly in several ways. The liberal
error is to attempt to separate politics wholly from questions of
ultimate purpose. The error of actual theocrats is to attempt to
reduce it to such questions. Each must respect the other; from the
liberal standpoint that principle is of course a denial of what they
think the proper degree of autonomy of politics should be.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From jk Mon Apr 29 15:45:39 1996
Subject: Re: Moral Suasion versus Legal Enforcement? VII (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 1996 15:45:39 -0400 (EDT)
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Francesca:
> Can you show by direct quotation that neoconservatives such
> as Weigel, Novak, Kristol, etc. actually do separate politics
> from questions of ultimate purpose?
No.
You seem to think the two can and today should be separated. You tell
me neocons work within a setting of traditionless politics, which it
seems to me would be a politics separated from questions of ultimate
purpose. Liberals explicitly insist that the two be separated, of
course.
> If you want a politics of ultimate purpose, you have to
> define human nature & what it is for and where it is going,
> and then get all Americans to agree with you on this definition.
> This has proved impossible.
Why is it necessary to get everyone to agree on something before it
becomes politically useable? I thought that was your definition of
liberalism (no force!) and you rejected it. In fact, the only clear
distinction I see between liberalism and neoconservatism as you present
them is that neocons use force with a better conscience.
My second answer is that liberalism views the maximum equal
satisfaction of actual human preferences as the ultimate purpose of
existence. So they do in fact have a politics of ultimate purpose, and
one that not all Americans agree on. (You may remember the lengthy
argument I had on this point, until the other party got tired of it, on
the other list.)
Liberalism even has an implicit theology, one in which God is emergent
as self-legislating value-conferring consciousness. So liberalism's
claim to avoid ultimate issues fails; they just can't be avoided. You
call them liberals, I call them successful theocrats who find it
helpful to disguise what they're doing. They say "divisive" instead of
"schismatic" and "unconstitutional" instead of "heretical", but it
comes to the same thing. (I don't comment on neoconservatism because
you've made it a mystery just what it is.)
> You want politicians to make explicit what can only be
> implicit. Implicit knowledge is another word for
> tradition.
Implicit knowledge doesn't exist unless it sometimes gives rise to
and legitimates explicit actions that could not be explained on other
grounds.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From jk Mon Apr 29 15:48:09 1996
Subject: Re: Theocracy on probation XV (fwd)
To: neocon@abdn.ac.uk (neo)
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 1996 15:48:09 -0400 (EDT)
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Francesca:
> But nor do I think that revelation should be a direct source
> for practical politics. It may be the ultimate horizon,
> but it can't replace practical thinking about how to get
> to the horizon.
I would expect the nature of the ultimate horizon sometimes to affect
practice decisively. Otherwise why even think about it?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From jk Thu Apr 11 08:30:23 1996
Subject: Re: Universalism (was Re: ANGLICAN Digest - 4 Apr 1996 )d
To: ANGLICAN@AMERICAN.EDU
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 1996 08:30:23 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: from "Chris W. Moore or Bill Dilworth" at Apr 11, 96 00:10:21 am
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Bill Dilworth writes:
> >God made us and the world in accordance with his will, he governs the
> >world, and we are sometimes tortured. Since past events are
> >unchangeable, it is an eternal truth that innocent children have on many
> >occasions been tortured to death.
> if you really believe in this kind of god--a god who
> unleasehes famine, child molesters, AIDS, wars, and
> various other horrors as part of some Great Unknowable
> Plan--all I can say is that your god sounds like my devil.
What are your specific disagreements, clause by clause, with the
language first quoted?
As I said in the paragraph following the quoted language, I don't
really understand the existence of evil, or why it is as evil as it is,
although like anyone else I can speculate and suggest abstract
arguments on the subject. I haven't suggested a GUP theory -- that's
your contribution and not mine.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Age, irony, Noriega.
From jk Thu Apr 11 08:55:02 1996
Subject: Re: Universalism (was Re: ANGLICAN Digest - 4 Apr 1996 )
To: ANGLICAN@AMERICAN.EDU
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 1996 08:55:02 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: from "Chris W. Moore or Bill Dilworth" at Apr 10, 96 10:40:46 pm
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Bill Dilworth writes:
> If Hell exists, Who thought it up? Who created it? Who
> set up the machinery to send the damned there. No, I am
> afraid that if Hell exists, God is stuck with responsibility
> for it.
Does the same point apply to the existence of evil generally? If not,
why not?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Age, irony, Noriega.
From jk Thu Apr 11 16:53:25 1996
Subject: Re: God the Author of Evil? (was Re: Universalism)
To: ANGLICAN@AMERICAN.EDU
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 1996 16:53:25 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: from "Chris W. Moore or Bill Dilworth" at Apr 11, 96 11:06:09 am
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Bill Dilworth writes:
> >God made us and the world in accordance with his will, he governs the
> >world, and we are sometimes tortured. Since past events are
> >unchangeable, it is an eternal truth that innocent children have on many
> >occasions been tortured to death.
>
> Yes, God made the world, but not everything that happens
> here is his will.
Never said it was. That is why I emphasized our free will as both an
example of God's goodness, in conferring such a Godlike dignity on us,
and as a source of evil through our bad choices. I didn't say our
choices are God's choices.
The issue, I think, is whether eternal separation from God is something
we might choose through free will, perhaps because we couldn't bear to
admit that God is God and not we ourselves. Your position seems to be
that we could (and obviously do) choose other stupefyingly horrible
things but not that one.
> I will grant that the way that the world is set up
> sometimes causes unavoidable pain--for example,
> the very act of death causes pain, both to the one
> dying and to those left behind. But I am confident
> that God "does not willingly afflict or grieve the
> sons of men." (Lamentations 3:33)
This doesn't seem consistent with your comment on the suggestion that
Hell might exist as something the damned choose for themselves, which
as I recall was that if God set up a situation in which there was such
a choice to be made and someone made it you would hold Him responsible
for the consequences. (I don't think I am distorting what you said,
but we don't understand each other very well and I apologize if I have
done so.)
> But it is our duty to actively work and pray against
> this sort of thing, not try to palm it off as the will
> of the Almighty.
I'm not sure what I've said that you're arguing against here. See my
comments above.
> >If it's eternally
> >true that people have been tortured I suppose we already know enough
> >to confer on God the title you mention, if that's the right way to
> >look at things. [The title was "Eternal Torturer" or something of
> >the sort.]
> No, I do not think that this is the right way to look at things at all.
Nor do I. Nor do I know why the real existence of Hell would make such
a title more appropriate than the eternal truth that people have been
tortured.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Age, irony, Noriega.
From jk Thu Apr 11 19:50:40 1996
Subject: Re: Collectivism
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 1996 19:50:40 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19960411221940.0069afa0@swva.net> from "seth williamson" at Apr 11, 96 06:19:40 pm
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> As somebody who (I presume) places ultimate authority in
> Scripture, how do you reconcile that authority with the undoubted
> historical fact that the Church survived for centuries without a
> canon of Scripture and that, when it got one, it was the Church
> who chose it?
I'm not inclined to put ultimate authority in Scripture to the
exclusion of all else, but how strong is this argument? It would be
hard to take the Church seriously if it could not recognize things but
were limited to choosing them. If your bishop said tomorrow "This
Nicene Creed and Trinity stuff is a lot of baloney" you might start
looking for a new bishop, even though the Church survived for centuries
without the Nicene Creed and without defining the doctrine of the
Trinity.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Age, irony, Noriega.
From jk Thu Apr 11 20:03:26 1996
Subject: Re: Universalism (was Re: ANGLICAN Diges
To: ANGLICAN@AMERICAN.EDU
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 1996 20:03:26 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <316D4C10@ms-smtp.wa.com> from "James Walley" at Apr 11, 96 11:12:00 am
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James Walley writes:
> >1) when a person merits hell through rejecting God, it isn't God who
> >tortures that person -- hell is self-inflicted.
>
> Then what, in your opinion, happens to one who decides he no longer
> wishes to be tortured through self-inflicted choices, and wishes to turn to
> God and be healed? (I am speaking of after this life, obviously.)
That assumes his experiences are temporal like our own, that he keeps
on learning and rethinking things, and that he never makes fundamental
decisions once and for all unless the decision goes the right way. The
first assumption I can't evaluate. The second seems to assume that he
hasn't really turned away from God, the source of all light, and the
third seems somehow unsatisfying, as if we were disabled from ever
doing something and really meaning it and having it count.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Age, irony, Noriega.
From jk Fri Apr 12 20:00:23 1996
Subject: Re: God the Author of Evil? (was Re: Universalism)
To: ANGLICAN@AMERICAN.EDU
Date: Fri, 12 Apr 1996 20:00:23 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: from "Chris W. Moore or Bill Dilworth" at Apr 12, 96 12:15:04 pm
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Bill Dilworth writes:
>Juxtaposing "God governs the world" and "we are sometimes tortured"
>does seem to invite that reading.
My intention in juxtaposing the two statements was to indicate a problem
(the problem of evil) that I don't think we can solve, and since we
can't solve it it's hard for us to say that Hell is inconsistent with
God's justice and love.
>I think that people are certainly free to reject God. I seriously
>doubt that, in the face of eternity, we could keep it up. It's not a
>question of God forcing us into Heaven--I just don't believe that
>humans have the sort eternal stamina to reject God forever.
The sin against the Holy Ghost, I think, is refusal to answer when he
calls. If we get to the point of disconnecting the doorbell and
telephone and nailing the mail slot shut it doesn't take much stamina
to keep it up, especially when the alternative is something as
horrifying as recognizing that we are not God.
>As I understand the doctrine of Hell as presented by its proponents, it
>is a state of being designed by God to give sinners their eternal
>comeuppance--it's not a side effect of something else.
Do they use the expression "comeuppance"? I thought "divine justice"
was more common, and that it was not thought of as something extraneous
to a person's acts and what he has made of himself by them. Be that as
it may, I was arguing against universalism, the view that we know or
have solid grounds for confidence that everyone will be saved, rather
than for any very specific view of what things will be like for those
who are lost if there are such.
>And this talk of "sinners choosing Hell" strikes me as a somewhat
>disingenuous way of distancing God from the doctrine of Hell. The
>language traditionally associated with Hell speaks of things like
>"judgement", "punishment"--I don't recall tradition proposing anything
>like "The Last Choice". Even if there were such an option, I find it
>impossible to believe that anyone in their right mind would make an
>informed choice for Hell--and keep it up.
The language used to speak of God is necessarily inadequate. I tend to
think of "judgement" and "punishment" as referring to the circumstance
that when our life is complete, then for all eternity it is whatever it
has been and we are whatever we have become. Our being eternally what
we have made of ourselves would be at once judgement and punishment.
That way of viewing it is also grossly inadequate because it's much too
abstract, and I'm sure for other reasons as well, and maybe it makes no
sense to anyone else, but it helps me by hinting at how God's justice
can be something that can't be separated from what we do and are, rather
than something added from outside as your "comeuppance" language
suggests.
As to "The Last Choice", I'm inclined to think of our whole life as our
last choice. If not, why bother with it? And I'm not so sure no one
would choose Hell. The way to eternal life is to accept that we don't
own ourselves, we are not the center of our own world and our wishes are
not what matters, which is at least in principle to accept our death and
the death of all that is dearest to us. Who wants to do that?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Age, irony, Noriega.
From jk Fri Apr 12 20:10:30 1996
Subject: Re: Collectivism
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Fri, 12 Apr 1996 20:10:30 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19960412225326.006d56e4@swva.net> from "seth williamson" at Apr 12, 96 06:53:26 pm
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> I wasn't suggesting the Church can't recognize things. Only
> that the fact that the Church had to decide what was in the canon
> and what was out suggests a kind of ontological priority which
> would seem to be a logical difficulty for the sola scriptura
> people.
The Church has to recognize the books composing Scripture as such
before it can view them as the ultimate authority. On the other hand,
you have to recognize whatever your ultimate authority is before you
can treat it as such. Are the two situations parallel?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Age, irony, Noriega.
From jk Sat Apr 13 18:52:00 1996
Subject: Re: Sabbath Blessing
To: ANGLICAN@AMERICAN.EDU
Date: Sat, 13 Apr 1996 18:52:00 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <199604131918.PAA01683@mail.ottawa.net> from "Molly Wolf" at Apr 13, 96 03:18:06 pm
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Molly Wolf writes:
> The other list
> has been focusing on judgment and damnation -- on what we think will happen
> to others (never ourselves!) in the Life to Come.
How do you know people with enough of an interest in such subjects to
discuss them never think they have any personal relevance?
> Find me a person who *wants* God's discernment and insight, who
> wants God's judgment for him- or herself, who wants to be classed among the
> goats, not the sheep, and I'll find you someone who's either telling lies or
> circling Saturn.
Same question. My own inclination is to think that God's judgement and
the beatific vision are the same thing -- undistorted contact with
reality. The idea is far too terrifying to "want" in any ordinary
sense -- we "want" things that fit into what makes us comfortable, and
contact with God isn't like that. Nonetheless, anything less would be
unworthy of creatures God created capable of knowing him. After all,
the strongest point in favor of universalism is that in the end we
can't want separation from God either.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Age, irony, Noriega.
From jk Mon Apr 15 16:41:32 1996
Subject: Re: The High Places
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Mon, 15 Apr 1996 16:41:32 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <13300541@prancer.Dartmouth.EDU> from "Gregory D. Wadlinger" at Apr 15, 96 01:52:44 pm
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> The Roman Catholic church is mainly for schmucks who
> are not especially zealous. :)
> --- end of quoted material ---
> Yeah, but do you know what "schmuck" means?
>
> I think it means penis.
Literally "jewelry", figuratively as you say, and by a doubled figure
of speech as used originally. Maybe a claim to have skipped the
intermediate figure would pass?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week:
Deirdre wets altar of St. Simon's; no mists, for at last ewer dried.
From jk Tue Apr 16 07:48:43 1996
Subject: Re: Visit of Bishop Jane Dixon
To: ANGLICAN@AMERICAN.EDU
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 1996 07:48:43 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <19960416095427453.AAE135@brutus.datastar.net> from "Larry Wagoner" at Apr 16, 96 04:54:52 am
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> I find the suggestion that
> people should stay away from the worship of the Lord absolutely incredible
> and as close to an absolute sin as ever I have seen here.
Suppose a parishioner thought that on a particular Sunday in his parish
services were going to be presented in an exceptional manner intended
to make a point regarding an ecclesiastical controversy rather than
purely for the sake of the worship of the Lord. Would it be absolute
sin for him to object and suggest that people attend services somewhere
else instead? Would it make a difference if part of the point at issue
in the controversy were whether the person celebrating Eucharist is
qualified to do so? He might be wrong in his substantive views, of
course, in any number of ways, but the quoted comment goes very far.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week:
Deirdre wets altar of St. Simon's; no mists, for at last ewer dried.
From jk Tue Apr 16 13:54:06 1996
Subject: Re: a question or two
To: ANGLICAN@AMERICAN.EDU
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 1996 13:54:06 -0400 (EDT)
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barbara wolf writes:
>like most Americans we focus on sexual behavior as if it were the
>principal way of judging people's moral character.
I don't think it's specifically an American matter. After all, what is
at issue are traditions, such as the male priesthood and disfavor of
homosexuality, that were brought here from other places, long antedated
Columbus, and are still viewed as important elsewhere.
It seems to me that what's going on is that some people continue to
think that sex is fundamental to the social order while others have
come to view it more as a matter of individual preference. The former
tend to favor traditional standards regarding sexual conduct and roles
while the latter view such things as oppression.
One way to understand the conflict is to consider that people who think
that sex (that is, marriage, the family and so on) is fundamental would
naturally give standards relating to sex the same prominence in their
moral thinking that other people give matters relating to formal
politics and economics.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week:
Deirdre wets altar of St. Simon's; no mists, for at last ewer dried.
From jk Tue Apr 16 20:17:53 1996
Subject: Virtue, and sex-free sin! (was D*x*n List maybe???)
To: ANGLICAN@AMERICAN.EDU
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 1996 20:17:53 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <199604161631.MAA13047@mail.biddeford.com> from "barbara wolf" at Apr 16, 96 12:31:03 pm
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barbara wolf writes:
>Since we seem to get terribly exercised about Sin, I wonder if we
>might not like to discuss:
>
> The forms some *other* sins than the sexual ones--for instance,
> how does the Church treat the proud? the angry? the
> slothful? Do we use Scripture, tradition, and reason
> to help people identify these?
The liturgy has a lot that deals with our pride in one way or another.
The emphasis on the glorification of God and the recognition of our
dependence on him and the need for penitence are antidotes to pride.
Recognition that God is God eliminates pride, so whatever the Church
does to promote that recognition helps with pride as well. Anger I
think melts away if pride is overcome.
Sloth I suppose has traditionally been countered by various disciplines
-- prayer at set times, fasting and so on.
One difficulty with pride and sloth is that they can permeate the things
we do but it's harder to identify them with concrete acts or specific
desires or states of mind than say lust or greed. They have to do with
the general orientation of the will and so go deeper and can be harder
to recognize and deal with.
> OR (as a treat) What is the relationship of faith to the virtues?
> In fact, what *are* the virtues (with no one taking
> refuge in the little old lists, by the way--and no
> weaseling, either)? Why are we so besot with "sins",
> and why are we so uncertain about our strengths?
Faith frees us from ourselves and makes us part of a spiritual and moral
world that includes God and others along with ourselves. If perfect it
would make virtuous conduct effortless.
I remember a story about a pastor with a parishioner who told him that
she couldn't help doing spiteful things to her mother-in-law, who had
treated her badly. The pastor's advice was to do what she felt she had
to do, but first to talk it over with God. She followed the advice,
and felt all desire to act as she had drop away. It just made no sense
to do those things in the world she had placed herself in by engaging
in prayer.
We are uncertain about our strengths and worry about sins because we
don't know ourselves and are conscious of our separation from God. I
don't see, by the way, why "sins" should be put in quotation marks or
what's wrong with little old lists of virtues. Sin is no less real than
other evils. Also, there have been a lot of Christians for a long time,
and some of them must have known something, so why not pay attention to
the lists they made?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week:
Deirdre wets altar of St. Simon's; no mists, for at last ewer dried.
From jk Sat Apr 20 06:17:49 1996
Subject: Re: Scruton and neocon religio-politicos
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Sat, 20 Apr 1996 06:17:49 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <960419220019_473921766@emout15.mail.aol.com> from "John Lofton." at Apr 19, 96 10:00:21 pm
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> If God is not to rule us, through His Law, who or what will? John
> Lofton.
We are to be ruled by God. The use of force by some of us against
others of us can only be a subordinate part of a crude approximation of
our rule by God. It is necessary all the same, but we shouldn't put
too much faith in it.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week:
Deirdre wets altar of St. Simon's; no mists, for at last ewer dried.
From jk Sun Apr 21 07:45:59 1996
Subject: Re: Scruton and neocon religio-politicos
To: NEOCON-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Sun, 21 Apr 1996 07:45:59 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <960420202326_474469711@emout19.mail.aol.com> from "John Lofton." at Apr 20, 96 08:23:27 pm
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> Dear Jim: God tells us: "But the natural man receiveth not the things of the
> spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them,
> because they are spiritually discerned" (I Corinthians 2:14). Could anything
> be plainer? The saved and the unsaved reason according to radically different
> presuppositions. John Lofton.
I didn't say that natural reasoning is sufficient for everything, for
example for Christ crucified, which is what Paul is speaking of. My
only claim is that it's valid and tells us many true and useful things
and is sufficient for cooperation on many issues if not for social
order in general.
Paul himself seems to think that natural reasoning exists and rightly
used leads men to God: "I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto
spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ" (I
Corinthians 3:1). He evidently thinks it worthwhile doing so, just as
he thinks it worthwhile to address all men where they actually are. He
also thinks that the spiritual knowledge now possible to us has radical
limitations, and for that reason the greatest spiritual gift possible
for us is not faith (let alone knowledge) but charity (I Corinthians
13).
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week:
Deirdre wets altar of St. Simon's; no mists, for at last ewer dried.
From jk Wed Apr 24 18:13:09 1996
Subject: Re: Gnostic Loathing of Matter
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 1996 18:13:09 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <199604241737.AA12222@aplo1.spd.dsccc.com> from "Tom George" at Apr 24, 96 12:37:31 pm
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> > 1) Eusebeus of Caearea was wet on the Incarnation also
>
> So what? If someone is wrong on one point of doctrine, is he wrong on
> all other points, too?
If you don't get the Incarnation right you're not likely to get the
Real Presence right either. Both have to do with the mode of God's
presence in the material world.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do geese see God?
From jk Sun Apr 28 20:49:40 1996
Subject: Re: Authority of the Church[3~
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Sun, 28 Apr 1996 20:49:40 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <199604281252_MC1-36F-534A@compuserve.com> from "Paul K Hubbard" at Apr 28, 96 00:07:24 am
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Paul H:
> > Will we say to this "But Lord, what about all my other Christian buddies
> > from other denominations? If your Holy Spirit is guiding them too, how is
> > it that we all come up with different interpretations?"
> There is nothing at all wrong with this question, provided that we are not
> asking it just prior to abdicating our personal, existential
> responsibility to maintain the authority equation regardless of what others
> do. For all their faults, one important principle the Reformers have taught
> us is that the individual with his Bible, guided by the Holy Spirit can be
> right, and majority traditions can be wrong.
There's something to personal, existential responsibility. On the
other hand, there's something to authority too. Is accepting tradition
more of an abdication of our personal, existential responsibility than
accepting the Bible? Has it been an important principle reformed
reformers have taught us that the individual can be right, and majority
traditions and the texts they identify as holy can be wrong?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From jk Mon Apr 29 12:39:05 1996
Subject: Re: Authority of the Church[3~
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 1996 12:39:05 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <199604290952_MC1-370-35B6@compuserve.com> from "Paul K Hubbard" at Apr 29, 96 09:51:34 am
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Paul H. writes:
>[The Church] does not, by its tradition or by its authority select,
>discern, or develop God's Word.
You go to the bookstore and they have a number of books for sale, the
canonical books of the Bible and those rejected from the canon sold
separately as pamphlets, the _Book of Mormon_, the Koran, and _120 Days
of Sodom_. *Someone* has to discern which ones are God's Word. Your
point apparently is that the someone has to be you personally. Could
the mode of discernment consist in discerning which corporate body
(let's call it a "church") looks most reliable, full of grace or
whatever and trusting their judgment? Your trust in their judgment
would no doubt dissipate if they did too many things you couldn't help
but find outrageous, but presumably something similar would be true
with respect to the collection of books in which you have come to trust
as God's Word.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
From jk Mon Apr 29 15:06:53 1996
Subject: Re: Gnostic Loathing of Matter
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 1996 15:06:53 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <199604291733.AA15915@aplo1.spd.dsccc.com> from "Tom George" at Apr 29, 96 12:33:14 pm
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Tom George writes:
> > From: Francesca Murphy
> [...]
> > I have not called you or anyone else on this list an
> > heretic. Apart from anything else,
> [...]
>
> You did say, "If you want to do without general ecumenical councils of
> the Church - you have no homoousios (Nicaea I). Its a cold world
> without the homoousios!" That's pretty close.
I just wanted to interject that on the mailing list she runs Francesca
threatened that if there were any incidents of burning at the stake she
would kick off the theocrats involved.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod.
Do let me know if you have comments of any kind.
Back to my archive of posts.