Political Norms Are Not Universal

The libertarian view is that political norms are universal and can be justified independent of cultural differences. But this is not correct. The terms “liberty,” “democracy,” “justice,” and “rights,” are political concepts, and their actualization and justification is contingent on the culture of a political community (nation). To figure out just what liberty, democracy, justice, and rights look like in a society, we must be acquainted with the local culture. Political norms cannot be universal; they have to be contextual—or developed in relation to a political community. In order to give a logical description of liberty, democracy, justice, and rights, the philosopher must begin by describing the political community in the context of which he is philosophizing. The political community forms the foundation of all political norms—and the purpose of political norms is to explain the political and moral values of a particular political community.

Unlimited Freedom Leads to Unlimited Despotism

The intellectuals and politicians who propose that the western countries should use their military power to force countries in the Middle East to accept a liberal form of governance are like the deluded revolutionaries that Fyodor Dostoevsky has described in his book The Possessed. These revolutionaries think that they can establish a paradise after overthrowing the existing regime through a violent revolution. Shigalyov, the intellectual character in The Possessed, who is a historian and social theorist, and a key thinker for the revolutionaries, has developed a plan for post-revolution reorganization of mankind. But the realization dawns on him that the reorganization of mankind will entail a huge cost—more than 100 million people will be killed and many more will be enslaved in the attempt to create a paradise. He confesses, "My conclusion stands in direct contradiction to the idea from which I started. Proceeding from unlimited freedom, I end with unlimited despotism.” This has an important lesson for the Middle East: Political liberty and free market cannot be established in most countries in this region. Here the choice is between secular despotism and theocratic regime.

A Perfect Society Cannot Be Conceived

The philosophies which describe a perfect society are utopian and bogus. A perfect society cannot be conceived by the human mind. The structure of any society is based on two types of theories: legal theory and ethical theory. The arguments in both ethical theory and legal theory are interminable. There will never be a consensus on what is the best constitution and what is good moral behavior. Since it is not possible to conceive of an ultimate legal theory and an ultimate moral theory, a perfect society is beyond the reach of the human mind. Imagining a perfect society is like imagining the Kingdom of Atlantis. We will never know what a perfect society is, and what we don’t know we cannot create.

On Fukuyama’s Idea of End of History

In his 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man, Fukuyama introduces his readers to his end of history thesis; he says that in future there will not be any conflict about the most legitimate type of government because it is now established that the liberal type of government is the final form. Later he denied that he believed in the end of history, but in his book he has written these lines: “What we may be witnessing in not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government. This is not to say that there will no longer be events to fill the pages of Foreign Affairs's yearly summaries of international relations, for the victory of liberalism has occurred primarily in the realm of ideas or consciousness and is as yet incomplete in the real or material world. But there are powerful reasons for believing that it is the ideal that will govern the material world in the long run.”

On Reason and Emotions

Emotions are as innate to man as reason is. A man of reason, who has suppressed or overcome his emotions, is usually a totalitarian and a dogmatist. A good human being is a man of both, reason and emotions. Reason cannot be trusted when it operates without regard for emotions. Likewise, emotions cannot be trusted when they operate without regard for reason. Both reason and emotions are fallible, but when they work together in a man’s mind, then he has a better chance for making the right choices. I often come across philosophers who invoke reason to attack emotions. But an examination of their philosophies will show that their ideas are bogus. Reason is ineffective if it does not have access to the common sense that is reflected in a man’s emotions.

On Kant’s Categorical Imperative

Immanuel Kant has argued for only one categorical imperative which is best known by his formulation: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.”

The Kantian categorical imperative is a product of reason alone. Kant understood reason as the faculty that discerns and dictates universal laws. He has posited that if reason dictates a moral law, then that law will be capable of being universalized—it would necessarily dictate that you must act according to the universal law, or in accordance to the maxims which can be universalized.

With his categorical imperative, Kant is not preaching a moral law which may dictate your acts. He is giving you the freedom to make your own choices. He is saying that you can act according to your own reason, and that it is your task to figure out what the rule of your reason is. There is only one caveat—you can act only as you would expect others to act.

On Kant’s Moral Theory

Kant believed that moral theories, such as Aristotle’s eudaimonia, Hume’s notion of utility, and the Stoic principle of apathy, are not sufficiently general, universal, and fundamental. He was questing for a universal, a priori law of moral action that is determined by reason, and he realized that such a moral law can be a priori, only if it’s a law of action free of the desire of achieving any aim or good. In his Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, he writes, “There is no possibility of thinking of anything at all in the world, or even out of it, which can be regarded as good without qualification, except a good will.” Kant realized that there is no state, goal, or object that can be regarded as intrinsically or universally good; everything, including happiness, love, intelligence, or health, is compatible with moral wrong, Moreover, there is a divide between moral theories that are based in the right and those that are based in some ultimate good or value that our actions ought to maximize. The aim of achieving good outcomes like love, happiness, health, or something else cannot dictate our moral ideas. What is morally right is to be understood only in terms of a rule. We have to do what is right, not because it’s expected to lead to a good end, but because it’s right. Moral actions are not only according to duty, but also because of and from duty. In judging morality of actions or social policies, consequences are irrelevant.

Hume’s Influence on Einstein

In his essay, “No absolute time,” Matias Slavov talks about the influence that Hume has exercised on Albert Einstein’s conception of time and his theory of relativity:

“Einstein learned an empiricist theory of concepts from Hume (and plausibly from Mach and the positivist tradition). He then implemented concept empiricism in his argument for the relativity of simultaneity. The result is that different observers will not agree whether two events are simultaneous or not. Take the openings of two windows, a living room window and a kitchen window. There is no absolute fact to the matter of whether the living room window opens before the kitchen window, or whether they open simultaneously or in reverse order. The temporal order of such events is observer-dependent; it is relative to the designated frame of reference.

“Once the relativity of simultaneity was established, Einstein was able to reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable aspects of his theory, the principle of relativity and the light postulate. This conclusion required abandoning the view that there is such a thing as an unobservable time that grounds temporal order. This is the view that Einstein got from Hume.”

On The Self-Love Of The Libertarians

Jean-Jacques Rousseau has described two kinds of self-love: amour de soi (self-love based on the desire of preserving the self) and amour propre (love of self as it is seen by others that has the potential for leading to envy, vice, and misery). I think that amour propre is the right term for describing the self-love that the libertarian intellectuals feel for themselves.

The libertarians are narcissistic—they are convinced that their solutions for political, economic, and moral problems are always moral and correct. When they look into the mirror, they imagine a halo of saintliness on their head. Many libertarians seem convinced that others see them as they see themselves, and if there is a person who does not believe in their perfection, then there must be something wrong with him, either he is ignorant or irrational or both.

Every libertarian intellectual yearns for the approval of other libertarians. It is praise of the peers that they value more than anything else. They have no time or energy to try to understand the concerns that are driving the political opinions of vast majority of people in their country who are not libertarians. They are often clueless about what is really going on in their country.

On The Jacobin Religion Of Reason

Alexis de Tocqueville describes the religious passion of the Jacobins in his book The Old Regime and the Revolution. Here’s an excerpt:

“The French Revolution acted, with regard to things of this world, precisely as religious revolutions have acted with regard to things of the other. It dealt with the citizen in the abstract, independent of particular social organizations, just as religions deal with mankind in general, independent of time and place. It inquired, not what were the particular rights of French citizens, but what were the general rights and duties of mankind in reference to political concerns.

“It was by thus divesting itself of all that was peculiar to one race or time, and by reverting to natural principles of social order and government, that it became intelligible to all, and susceptible of simultaneous imitation in a hundred different places.

“By seeming to tend rather to the regeneration of the human race than to the reform of France alone, it roused passions such as the most violent political revolutions had been incapable of awakening. It inspired proselytism, and gave birth to propagandism; and hence assumed that quasi religious character which so terrified those who saw it, or, rather, became a sort of new religion, imperfect, it is true, without God, worship, or future life, but still able, like Islamism, to cover the earth with its soldiers, its apostles, and its martyrs.”

Burke on the "Flies of a Summer"

Edmund Burke believed that reason alone is not sufficient to keep most men in line—this is because most men do not employ the rational faculty at all, and even those who employ it often do so without sufficient knowledge and experience; common sense and the wisdom of ancient custom (or traditions) are far more effective instruments for enabling people to come together and live with some kind of peace and harmony. If men start altering their cultural institutions and their constitution whenever they wanted, Burke reminds us, then the present generations will lose their connection with the wisdom of the past generations—this is a recipe for tearing down a civilization. In Reflections on The Revolution in France, Burke warns the people of Britain that if, like the French, they get seduced by the ideologies which promise “liberty, equality, fraternity,” then the fire of revolution would consume Britain too as it had consumed France. He coins the phrase “flies of a summer,” to refer to a society that has developed an insatiable appetite for rapid transformations: “By this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often and as much and in as many ways as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken; no one generation could link with the other; men would become little better than the flies of a summer.”

On the Theistic Projects of the Atheists

Modern atheism is a project for manufacturing new earthly religions and gods. Every atheistic movement in the last two hundred and fifty years has tried to found its own earthly religion and develop its own gods. During the French Revolution, the Jacobins first established an atheistic religion called the Cult of Reason, and then its rival religion called the Cult of the Supreme Being. Auguste Comte established a positivist religion of humanity in which he was revered as a godlike figure. In the former Soviet Union, the communists indulged in an orgy of self-deification—they deified Karl Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and other communist leaders. Despite her claims for being a stickler for reason and logic, Ayn Rand established a cult called objectivism whose followers worship her as the final authority on everything. The present day liberals, who are mostly atheistic, make massive misuse of the mainstream media for self-deification.

Tolstoy: The Fox Who Tried to Become a Hedgehog

In his essay, “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” Isaiah Berlin divides thinkers into hedgehogs and foxes—the hedgehogs are those who know one big thing, like Aquinas and Dostoevsky, while the foxes are those who know many things, like Hume and Turgenev. Berlin posits that Tolstoy was a natural fox who tried to become a hedgehog. He says that being a natural fox Tolstoy had the capacity to slice through all kinds of illusions and enter the minds of the most unpleasant characters, but he aspired to have a big vision too, and that led to the destruction of his sense of reality. Berlin ends his essay with these lines:

“Tolstoy’s sense of reality was until the end too devastating to be compatible with any moral ideal which he was able to construct out of the fragments into which his intellect shivered the world, and he dedicated all of his vast strength of mind and will to the lifelong denial of this fact. At once insanely proud and filled with self-hatred, omniscient and doubting everything, cold and violently passionate, contemptuous and self-abasing, tormented and detached, surrounded by an adoring family, by devoted followers, by the admiration of the entire civilised world, and yet almost wholly isolated, he is the most tragic of the great writers, a desperate old man, beyond human aid, wandering self-blinded at Colonus.”

On The Problem of Induction

The problem of induction is a legacy of David Hume even though he never used the word “induction” in his works. In a series of works, the first of which is his A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume offers his arguments against induction. He shows that the truth of the premises of an inductive argument, even if it enjoys a great deal of evidential support, do not necessarily lead to the truth of the argument’s conclusion.

Hume points out that for you to have the reason to believe the result of your inductive inference, you must have the reason to believe that the uniformity principle—which states that unobserved instances resemble observed instances—is true. We can have an inductive argument only when past performances resemble future results in ways that will allow us to make generalizations about those future results. But the reason to believe in the uniformity principle is not self-evident.

Hume divides claims into two categories — “relations-of-ideas claims” and “matter-of-fact claims”. The matter-of-fact claims, he points out, can be either true or false based on the facts in reality that can be observed directly. However, the relations-of-ideas claims are true or false by virtue of the concepts, or ideas, that they involve—to establish the truth or falsehood of such claims you have to go out into the world and verify.

Now the uniformity principle is not a relations-of-ideas claim because there is nothing in the concepts involved in the claim that will guarantee its truth. But if all claims are either relations-of-ideas claims or matter-of-fact claims, and the uniformity principle is not a relations-of-ideas claim, then it must be a matters-of-fact claim.

The uniformity principle is a claim about the unobserved since it talks about unobserved instances resembling observed instances. But since the uniformity principle is itself a matter-of-fact claim about the unobserved, it means that you can have a reason to believe that the uniformity principle is true, only if you already have the reason to believe that the uniformity principle is true.

But this means that the justification for the uniformity principle comes from the uniformity principle—the argument is circular and therefore it is invalid. Thus Hume has reached the conclusion that he wants—he has shown that there cannot be any non-circular logical argument for believing in the answers that we derive from inductive arguments.

There are several ways by which Hume’s argument against induction can be rejected. I am not getting into those arguments in this post—but it is worth noting that while there can be any number of arguments to establish a particular view of induction, there cannot be any ultimate solution to the problem. It is not necessary that there should be a solution to every philosophical problem—the problem of induction is one of those problems for which there is no solution.

On the Role of Skeptics in Philosophy

Skeptic thinkers have played a crucial role in the development of philosophy in all ages. Much of the philosophical thought in the world has arisen as response to or in defense of the questions and doubts that they have raised. A skeptic is not necessarily an iconoclast, or a destroyer of knowledge—in many cases, he is the thinker who is extremely concerned about the truth and is not prepared to accept anything less.

Even if he conforms with the prevailing cultural and political norms, truth is of paramount importance for the skeptic. He persists and probes. He asks the tough questions and raises doubts which force the philosopher who is trying to expound a particular view of the world to develop better arguments for defending his position. The attacks of the skeptics often result in identification of the problems in a philosophy, and this gives the philosophers a chance to address the problems and improve the quality of their philosophy.

However, only those skeptics are effective who are good dialecticians, skillful in the art of argumentation.

On Modern Philosophy’s Misuse of "Reason"

"Reason" is the most misused word in modern philosophy. A large number of modern philosophers, who relentlessly pontificate about the “faculty of reason,” are clueless about the nature of reason. They talk about reason not because they are convinced about reason's efficacy, but because they want to be regarded as “philosophers of reason”—they are after buttressing their own pro-science and pro-objectivity image.

What is this faculty of reason? The modern philosophers who talk about it have no answer to this question. They fail to explain how the faculty of reason comes to know the things it knows. Is the faculty of reason a mechanism or collection of mechanisms in the brain, or is it something else? The philosophers have no answer. For them “faculty of reason” is just a label—they are incapable of providing any detail about what reason might be.

Since they can’t provide a proper explanation of how the“faculty of reason” operates in a man’s mind, their idea that all knowledge is derived through the “faculty of reason” is useless. The idea that all knowledge is derived from the facility of reason can be taken seriously only if it is based on a logical discussion of what the faculty of reason is and how it operates in a man’s mind.

A New Era Every Month

In Ancient times, an era would last for at least two or three centuries. The end and the beginning of an era would be marked by tectonic historical events. In our time, an era is associated with frivolous events and there is a new era almost every month. Whenever anything slightly important happens, we hear on TV that this is “the beginning of a new era,” or “the end of an era.” An important politician loses an election, or a celebrity dies, “it is the end of an era”; a new sportsman wins a tournament or a movie of a new actor does well, “it is the beginning of a new era.”

Strauss on Nietzsche’s Attack on Socrates

Leo Strauss, in his Introduction to his 1966 book Socrates and Arisophanes, notes that Nietzsche’s attack on Socrates must be understood as primarily a political attack:

"[According to Nietzsche, Socrates] is the prototype of the rationalist and therefore of the optimist, for optimism is not merely the belief that the world is the best possible world, but also the belief that the world can become the best of all imaginable worlds, or that the evils that belong to the best possible world can be rendered harmless by knowledge: thinking can not only fully understand being, but can even correct it; life can be guided by science; the living gods of myth can be replaced by a deus ex machina, i.e., the forces of nature as known and used in the service of "higher egoism." Rationalism is optimism, since it is the belief that reason's power is unlimited and essentially beneficent or that science can solve all riddles and loosen all chains. Rationalism is optimism, since the belief in causes depends on the belief in ends, or since rationalism presupposes the belief in the initial or final supremacy of the good. The full and ultimate consequences of the change effected or represented by Socrates appear only in the contemporary West: in the belief in universal enlightenment and therewith in the earthly happiness of all within a universal state, in utilitarianism, liberalism, democracy, pacifism, and socialism. Both these consequences and the insight into the essential limitation of science have shaken "Socratic culture" to its foundation: "The time of Socratic man has gone." There is then hope for a future beyond the peak of pre-Socratic culture, for a philosophy of the future that is no longer merely theoretical, but knowingly based on acts of the will or on decisions, and for a new kind of politics that includes as a matter of course "the merciless annihilation of everything degenerating and parasitical." Nietzsche himself has said that in order to understand a philosopher one acts soundly by first raising the question of the moral or political meaning of his metaphysical assertions. Hence it would seem that his attack on Socrates must be understood primarily as a political attack."

Why I Am Not A Liberal

By disparaging the theistic roots of the dominant moral, cultural, and political conceptions, the atheistic liberals appear to be endorsing the highly flawed political goals of the Enlightenment. Like the Enlightenment philosophers, the liberals are full of hatred for modern civilization—they want to undermine the value of traditional knowledge, culture, and political institutions on which modern civilization is based.

They envision a “new world” which owes no debt to the past and whose intellectual, political, and moral systems are under their complete domination. But the truth is that some of the worst acts of barbarism have been committed by regimes that promise to wipe the slate clean and create a completely new world—for instance, the Jacobin terror at the time of the French Revolution, or the Bolshevik terror under Stalin’s new economic order.

The political goals of the Enlightenment by which the liberals are motivated can never be achieved, because these goals are against the laws of nature. However, the devastation caused by their policies does not make the liberals stop and reconsider their political goals—they keep going till they have completely destroyed the nation in which they are operating.

What it Means to be Postmodern?

What it means to be postmodern will depend on your view of what it means to be modern and pre-modern. If you are convinced that modern philosophy is better than pre-modern philosophy (medieval as well as ancient), then you will loathe the idea of postmodernism. But if you recognize the political and moral problems that are there in the modernist doctrine, then you will empathize with the postmodernist rebellion against modern philosophy. Postmodern means “after the modern” and that is the sense in which philosophers use it. Postmodern philosophy does not necessarily entail the deconstructions of Derrida or the post-pragmatism of Rorty and Foucault--the origin of postmodernism can be traced back to Nietzsche and Kierkegaard.

Heidegger On The Bondage Of Technology

Heidegger had a negative view of technology. He thought that technology leads to a decline in our ability to experience the world. His discussion of the problem of technology is an extension of the claim that he has made in his Being and Time that from Plato onward the history of Being has been one of gradual forgetting. We have been forgetting or ignoring what it is meant to be—a phenomena that he describes as the oblivion of Being. In his essay, “The Question Concerning Technology,” (Chapter 1; The Question Concerning Technology & Other Essays, by Heidegger), he says that the modern man views of nature and other human beings as a resource for achieving his ends. Due to the normalization of the technological view of the world, people have lost track of myriad ways of experiencing the things as they are—as spiritual, as beautiful, as uplifting, as something of personal value; they have become convinced that since everything can be transformed by the power of technology, nothing has inherent character and value in itself. He notes that the capitalist west and the communist east are both in the bondage of technology, and that rejecting technology will not free us from this bondage: only the acknowledgement of the danger of technology will.

On the False Hopes of the Liberals

The liberals are convinced that all men can be perfected by using the persuasive powers of the intellectuals and the coercive powers of the government. But this is not true. Perfection is unachievable because it represents an ideal state, and an ideal state is always a figment of imagination; it's not something that can be achieved. The real world is a hard place—and it takes something more than the hopes and rationalizations of the liberals to defend the interests of civilization in a hard world.

On the Origin of Political Philosophy

Politics is as old as humanity itself. Humans have never existed in a state of nature; since the time they evolved (between 300,000 to 200,000 years ago), they have lived in tribes or societies. Some kind of political action would have been necessary to enable the early humans to cooperate with each other for improving their chances for survival.

Political philosophy is different from politics—it came into being tens of thousands of years after the arrival of the first humans. It was discovered in the middle of fourth century BCE by Socrates in Athens. Philosophy predates Socrates by several centuries, but in the Western philosophical tradition, he is often seen as the first political philosopher.

Socrates has had such a massive impact that the philosophy before his time is known as presocratic. The presocratic philosophers made inquiries into the workings of the natural world, and on issues related to ethics, religion, possibility of knowledge, and the nature of societies. Socratic philosophy, in contrast to presocratic philosophy, is primarily political.

On the Gulf Between Reason and Politics

The notion that a government can be established on the foundation of reason is based on the misconception that all human beings are capable of using reason in the correct way. Why would we need a government if all human beings were men of reason, in which case, everyone would be capable of governing themselves and they would not pose a threat to the rights of others? The truth is that between politics and reason, there exists a wide gulf. In the area of politics, passions, prejudices, emotions, rational or irrational fears, and the attachments based on family, religion, and race play a very critical role.

“Don’t Tread on Me” is Machiavelli’s Republican Principle

The role that the principle of “don't tread on me” plays in a republican society has been explained by Machiavelli. In the Discourses on Livy, he points out that the citizens of republics dislike being dominated. If the nobles try to usurp too much power, they will have to face the wrath of the citizens. He advises the nobles to avoid “treading” on the rights of the citizens. He praises the founders of republican nations and the citizens for their goodness and virtue and their love of liberty. He claims that in republics, the citizens hold superior moral values and political sense than the nobles (the leaders of the government).

Machiavelli and The Renaissance

Machiavelli was disenchanted by the scholarship, art, and politics of the Renaissance. He does not deign to mention the prominent humanist scholars of his time in his Discourses on Livy. The only modern scholars that he mentions are Dante, Lorenzo de' Medici, and Flavio Biondo—while he mentions 19 ancient scholars, he begins the Discourses by criticizing the scholars who ignore the “ancient values” in politics, because they believe that they can honor antiquity by buying fragments of ancient statues for their homes. He is, however, convinced that the ancients were superior than the moderns and he reminds his readers that to devise a good political system we must relearn ancient virtues. The ancients that he admires are not the Greeks of the Classical Period (when the polis was the model of an ideal state), but the Roman Republic. Machiavelli's antagonism with the Renaissance is apparent from his criticism of Cicero, who for the humanists, was the most towering intellectual. Machiavelli insists that Cicero corrupted the Roman Republic by importing Greek philosophy, which made the Roman Republic weak and decadent. He is sympathetic to Cato’s failed cause of ridding Rome of the influence of Greek philosophy.

On Machiavelli’s Republicanism

The strength of a republic comes from the morality of its citizens and once the citizens become corrupted, they cannot be made moral again—Niccolò Machiavelli makes this point in his work, the Discourses on Livy. He notes that while a republic is created by the politicians (he uses the word, “Princes”), it’s the citizens who maintain it because they are more moral and trustworthy than the ruling class. In times of danger, there is greater stability and courage in the citizens than in the ruling class. But once the citizens become morally corrupted, the republic loses its strength and it faces a stark choice between a violent revolution, which can rip the nation apart, and statism (an Empire), which may keep the nation together but will take away the freedom that the citizens enjoy. In his direct comparisons between the ruling class and the citizens, Machiavelli demonstrates his republicanism.

Ancient Athens Versus Sparta

Since the end of the Peloponnesian War, about 2500 years ago, it has been a trend among the intellectuals to condemn Ancient Athens, which was a clamorous democracy, and praise Sparta, a totalitarian state. Most of them are of the view that an Athenian type democracy has no mechanism to prevent passions from taking over its politics—and as it cannot be stable, it will always be lacking in military strength to avoid being conquered by a Sparta type of state. Plato and Aristotle despised Athenian democracy (probably because Socrates had been condemned to death by an Athenian mob). In Ancient Rome, Cicero and Seneca have criticized Athenian democracy. Machiavelli, in his Discourses on Livy, rejects the Athenian system on the ground that it is prone to violent revolutions. Even the founders of modern America rejected the Athenian system. In The Federalist Papers, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay argue that an Athenian type democracy is not a good model for nations to follow. In The Federalist, No. LIV, Alexander Hamilton or James Madison note: “Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.” In The Federalist, No. LXIII, Alexander Hamilton or James Madison note: “Popular liberty might then have escaped the indelible reproach of decreeing to the same citizens the hemlock on one day and statues on the next.”

Is Total Liberty Viable?

Most libertarians see total liberty as a solution to all social problems. But I think their view of society is naive. While liberty may solve one set of problems, those that are an outcome of the nature of the government, it will lead to the rise to new problems by breeding powerful enemies, both inside the nation and outside it.

From the history of the last 2500 years we learn that the free nations are often rocked by violent revolutions, and they are constantly being attacked by the totalitarian nations and barbarians groups. Liberty is relatively easy to attain, but it’s hard to retain.

Only those who are capable of taking responsibility for their own life appreciate liberty—rest of the population may find the idea of being free problematic and cruel, and they may come out in support of political groups which promise to reduce the level of freedom that the citizens enjoy. Over a period of time, the nation will become divided between those who want liberty and those who despise it—this is a recipe for civil war.

A free nation is a natural enemy of nations that aren’t free—therefore it must invest in a strong military to defend its borders. But to maintain a good military you need to raise money, which can only come through taxes and economic regulations.

Vātsyāyana: On Perception and Verbalization

In his Nyayasutra, Vātsyāyana says that while our cognitive states, including the perceptual state, are inextricably connected with an implicit or overt word, the act of attributing a word to an object is not an essential part of our perceptual act. In other words, perception is different form verbalization—we can perceive an object even if we don’t know the linguistic destination of the object. Vātsyāyana gives the example of a child who has concepts before he acquires the corresponding words.

Bimal Krishna Matilal, in his essay, “Perception and Language,” (Chapter 1; Epistemology, Logic, and Grammar in Indian Philosophical Analysis; Edited by J. Ganeri), offers the following explanation of Vātsyāyana's view:

“In the sense perception of a child (who has not yet learned words to designate things) words do not play any significant role. When a person learns the name of a thing and perceives that thing, he says that it is called such-and-such. But, as far as his awareness of that object is concerned, it does not differ very much from the case of a child's perception. This shows that designation by name is not an essential factor in our perceptual process or cognitive act… Vatsyayana acknowledges the fact that we conventionally designate our apprehension of an object by the name of that object. But he also points out that we can, and sometimes do, use artificial means to indi­cate whether our designatum is the object itself or our apprehension of that object.”

Vātsyāyana's interpretation of perception leaves several points unexplained and leads to many other problems. However, according to Matilal, Vātsyāyana can be seen as the first philosopher to make a distinction between conception and its phonological realization—but it is possible that Vātsyāyana was reporting on the ideas developed by an earlier philosopher.

On the New Truths and the Old Truths

There are two ways by which knowledge can be acquired: first, by discovering new truths; second, by rediscovering the old truths.

A nation that focuses on solely the new truths will never have peace and stability—it will be rocked by revolutions and counter-revolutions. On the other hand, a nation that is devoted solely to the old truths will also not fare well—its politics will become disconnected from the present as the politicians and the intellectuals will fall into clutches of the genie from the past, or the baggage of history; such a nation will face the risk of being ripped apart by a civil war over historical issues.

A nation must strive to strike a judicious balance between the new truths and the old truths. There is progress and stability when the new truths and the old truths march hand in hand.

On The Religious Status of the Aristotelian Unmoved Mover

I believe that John Herman Randall, Jr. has written his book Aristotle with two purposes in mind: first to explicate Aristotle’s philosophy, and second to destroy Thomas Aquinas’s interpretation of Aristotle (and basically the entire medieval tradition of Aristotelianism). Randall attacks Aquinas on several issues. He is particularly unrelenting on the issue of Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover which has been identified by Aquinas as a God of religion, but Randall insists that the religious interpretation is incorrect. He notes that motion is eternal—you can trace a “particular” motion to the one that has caused it, but there was never a time when motion began. Like time itself, motion has no beginning. He sees the Unmoved Mover as both the final and the formal cause of motion. He writes, “The Unmoved Mover has nothing whatever to do with any “creator” of motion, any “beginner” of “initiator” of motion—with any “first cause” in any temporal sense of “first.” It's a logical explanation, not a physical cause; a natural law, not a force.”

Randall makes the case that the Unmoved Mover must not be identified with God of any religion. “It is not even the eternal “sustainer of the world, in a Neoplatonic sense; for to Aristotle, the world does not need to be sustained, it needs rather to be explained and understood.” He says that Aquinas was indulging in double talk when he identified Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover with the God of religion. But in one passage, he accepts that in Aristotle's early writings we detect a religious significance being attached to the Unmoved Mover: “Of course, it appears that the early, Platonistic Aristotle, who presumably set down Book Lambda, did attach religious feeling to the ultimate postulate of his cosmological theory, to his ultimate principle of explanation for the world of processes.” The mature Aristotle, Randall notes, had no interest in religious thinking. “The one thing the mature Aristotle did not understand and apparently had no interest in investigating, was religion. This makes the use of his thought by the great medieval traditions as a religious apologetic seem a colossal irony.”

Is Ludwig Wittgenstein Overrated?

Crispin Sartwell, in his article, "Overrated: Ludwig Wittgenstein," says that Wittgenstein "inspired decades of needless self-destruction among his disciples." Here's an excerpt:

"Wittgenstein’s reputation for genius did not depend on incomprehensibility alone. He was also “tortured”, rude and unreliable. He had an intense gaze. He spent months in cold places like Norway to isolate himself. He temporarily quit philosophy, because he believed that he had solved all its problems in his 1922 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, and worked as a gardener. He gave away his family fortune. And, of course, he was Austrian, as so many of the best geniuses are.

"He intimidated and disabled very smart people besides Russell. Wittgenstein convinced G.E. Moore that he’d been using the wrong philosophical method, and that he had a much better one. The new method had only one drawback for Moore: “I’ve never been able to understand it clearly enough to use it.”

"Famously, Wittgenstein’s ideas about language and logic had been transformed by the time he returned to a fellowship in Trinity College, Cambridge in 1929. Or perhaps not: the point is controversial, as is all interpretation of his work. Early Wittgenstein was replaced by the Late Wittgenstein, whose views are most fully expressed in his Philosophical Investigations, and who is the Wittgenstein beloved of most Wittgensteinians."

On John Herman Randall’s Atheistic Aristotelianism

John Herman Randall, Jr.’s book Aristotle can be seen as an atheistic presentation of Aristotelian philosophy. He rejects the theistic way of looking at Aristotle that was developed during the medieval period by Thomas Aquinas. In the Introduction to his book, Randall declares that he is not a medievalist and that his interpretation of Aristotle carries no trace of the work on Aristotle done during the medieval period. In the book's first chapter, “Aristotelian Approach to Understanding,” he frowns on Aquinas’s religious background:  “But I am not sure of Thomas; about him there can be doubts, for after all he was a Christian saint, even if, like a good follower of Saint Dominic, he was a cherub filled with the knowledge of God, rather than like Saint Francis, a seraph inspired wholly with the love of God.” Randall says that Aristotle cannot survive translation into Latin and since Aquinas could read only Latin, the Aristotelianism of Aquinas cannot be held as a true representation of Aristotelian thought. Randall is impressed by Spinoza’s rejection of all religious institutions and notes that other than Aristotle, Spinoza is the only philosopher in Western tradition who tried to understand the world.

History is Full of Deceptive Words

Like appearances, words can be deceptive. The words that historians use to describe the intellectual and social aspects of the past often foster a false impression in modern minds: “humanism,” “renaissance,” “feudalism,” “enlightenment,” “dialectic,” are modern linguistic innovations, which reflect today’s sensibilities and have little to with the past. The scholars in the fifteenth century didn’t use the term “humanism”; they were not aware of the concept of humanism—they didn’t think they were living in the period of the Renaissance. Between the ninth and fifteenth centuries, people didn’t see their social system as feudalism—they had a different conception of their society. The term “enlightenment” came into being in the middle of the nineteenth century and it quickly acquired a meaning that is different from the way the French Enlightenment philosophes saw themselves. Aristotle uses the word “dialectic,” not in the modern Kantian sense but for the science of what happens when, instead of thinking by ourselves, we try to convince others.

Aristotle’s Philosophy Is Not Closed, But Open

John Herman Randall, Jr. notes that while Aristotle’s thinking is systematic and he is a great systematizer, his philosophy is an open system. Here’s an excerpt from Randall's book Aristotle (Page 30):

"Aristotle’s own thinking is not closed… but open. For Aristotle knowledge is not a neat “system,” but a living growth, like a tree—it goes on and on, it is biological. Nous is life, the flowering of the world-life. Note Aristotle’s keen sense of the continuity and the cumulative growth of scientific inquiry. Each science, and knowledge as a whole, is provisional and open. Aristotle makes many distinctions not to classify and catalogue a subject matter—he is no Linnaeus—but as instruments of living research."

Randall makes a good point on the openness in Aristotelian logic (Page 30-31):

"Even logic, “Analytics,” is for Aristotle not a science but a dynamis, a “power”; a techne, an “art”; an organon, a “tool.” Aristotle’s analysis is never an end in itself, but is always for the sake of “knowing,” of science. It may be suspected that Aristotle would have had little sympathy with modern mathematical logic, which aims at beauty rather than use, and takes the view of the Platonic tradition, that logic is a “science,” the science of order."

The Development Set by Ross Coggins

Excuse me, friends, I must catch my jet
I’m off to join the Development Set;
My bags are packed, and I’ve had all my shots
I have traveller’s checks and pills for the trots!

The Development Set is bright and noble
Our thoughts are deep and our vision global;
Although we move with the better classes
Our thoughts are always with the masses.

In Sheraton Hotels in scattered nations
We damn multi-national corporations;
Injustice seems easy to protest
In such seething hotbeds of social rest.

We discuss malnutrition over steaks
And plan hunger talks during coffee breaks.
Whether Asian floods or African drought,
We face each issue with open mouth.

We bring in consultants whose circumlocution
Raises difficulties for every solution –
Thus guaranteeing continued good eating
By showing the need for another meeting.

The language of the Development Set
Stretches the English alphabet;
We use swell words like “epigenetic”
“Micro”, “macro”, and “logarithmetic.”

It pleasures us to be esoteric –
It’s so intellectually atmospheric!
And although establishments may be unmoved,
Our vocabularies are much improved.

When the talk gets deep and you’re feeling numb,
You can keep your shame to a minimum:
To show that you, too, are intelligent
Smugly ask, “Is it really development?”

Or say, “That’s fine in practice, but don’t you see:
It doesn’t work out in theory!”
A few may find this incomprehensible,
But most will admire you as deep and sensible.

Development set homes are extremely chic,
Full of carvings, curios, and draped with batik.
Eye-level photographs subtly assure
That your host is at home with the great and the poor.

Enough of these verses – on with the mission!
Our task is as broad as the human condition!
Just pray god the biblical promise is true:
The poor ye shall always have with you.

On Judging Aquinas

Anthony Kenny, in 𝘈 𝘕𝘦𝘸 𝘏𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘞𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘯 𝘗𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘰𝘱𝘩𝘺, 𝘝𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘮𝘦 𝘐𝘐: 𝘔𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘦𝘷𝘢𝘭 𝘗𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘰𝘱𝘩𝘺; p. 76:

"The secular reaction to the canonization of St. Thomas’ philosophy was summed up by Bertrand Russell in his 𝘏𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘞𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘯 𝘗𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘰𝘱𝘩𝘺. ‘There was little of the true philosophical spirit in Aquinas: he could not, like Socrates, follow an argument wherever it might lead, since he knew the truth in advance, all declared in the Catholic faith. The finding of arguments for a conclusion given in advance is not philosophy but special pleading.’

It is not in fact a serious charge against a philosopher to say that he is looking for good reasons for what he already believes in. Descartes, sitting beside his fire, wearing his dressing gown, sought reasons for judging that that was what he was doing, and took a long time to find them. Russell himself spent much energy seeking proofs of what he already believed: 𝘗𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘪𝘱𝘪𝘢 𝘔𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘢 takes hundreds of pages to prove that 1 and 1 make 2.

We judge a philosopher by whether his reasonings are sound or unsound, not by where he first lighted on his premisses or how he first came to believe his conclusions."

Nyaya Theory: On the Perception of Attributes

A substance is a thing, and an attribute is something that tells us what the thing is like. Here’s an account of the Nyaya view of attributes, from Satischandra Chatterjee’s book The Nyaya Theory of Knowledge (Page 176-177):

"An attribute (guna) is defined as that which exists in a substance and has no quality or activity in it. A substance exists by itself and is the constituent (samavayi) cause of things. An attribute depends for its existence on some substance and is never constitutive of things. It is a non-constituent (asamavayi) cause of things in so far as it determines their nature and character, but not their existence. All attributes must be owned by substances. So there cannot be an attribute of attributes. An attribute is itself attributeless (nirguna). An attribute is a static property of things. It hangs on the thing as something passive and inactive (niskriya). So it is different from both substance and action. There are altogether twenty-four kinds of attributes. These are: colour (rupa), taste (rasa), smell (gandha), touch (sparsa), sound (sabda), number (samkhya), magnitude (parimana), differentia (prthaktva), conjunction (samyoga), disjunction (vibhaga), remoteness (paratva), nearness (aparatva), fluidity (dravatva), viscidity (sneha), knowledge (buddhi), pleasure (sukha), pain (duhkha), desire (iccha), aversion (dvesa), effort (prayatna), heaviness (gurutva), merit (dharma), demerit (adharma) and faculty (samskara)." 

Not all attributes can be identified through sense perception—some are imperceptible to sense perception and there are those that can be perceived only through internal perception, which is due to the internal sense of manas.

On Politics and Culture

Politics and culture are two dimensions of social reality which often move in different directions. The political party that wins the electoral battle often ends up ceding ground in the cultural space. In countries, where the conservatives win most elections, the cultural institutions become liberal over a period of time, whereas in countries where the liberals (leftists) win most elections, the cultural institutions acquire a conservative character.

Leibniz And The Reaction To Modernity

Leibniz was not the Panglossian optimist that Voltaire had portrayed him in his 1759 satire Candide—he was a pessimist. In his mature years, Leibniz was harried by the premonition that Europe was on the verge of being ripped apart by anarchy and revolution. He was oppressed by the realization that the world that he has described in his monological writings is not real; it is a mirage. Matthew Stewart, in his book The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World, suggests that the reaction to modernity was first instantiated by Leibniz. Here’s an excerpt (page 311):

"Kant’s attempt to prove the existence of a “noumenal” world of pure selves and things in themselves on the basis of a critique of pure reason; the nineteenth-century-spanning efforts to reconcile teleology with mechanism that began with Hegel; Bergson’s claim to have discovered a world of life forms immune to the analytic embrace of modern science; Heidegger’s call for the overthrow of western metaphysics in order to recover the truth about Being; and the whole “postmodern” project of deconstructing the phallogocentric tradition of western thought—all of these diverse trends in modern thought have one thing in common: they are at the bottom forms of the reaction to modernity first instantiated by Leibniz."

During his lifetime, Leibniz made an impact on the lives of hundreds of people—he was close to key scientists and politicians, and he was deeply involved in political affairs of his time. But his funeral was a meager affair. Stewart writes (page 306): “Yet, to judge by his funeral, it would seem that he died, like a windowless monad, having touched no one very deeply at all.”

Existentialism, Alienation, Sartre, and Ayn Rand

For the existentialist philosophers in the twentieth century, alienation was a natural theme—they talk about alienation that results from social pressures, mass culture, and modern technologies, and they often indulged in deifying the alienated individuals as men of virtue, rationality, and knowledge. I think, Ayn Rand’s fiction owes a debt to the existentialist deification of alienated individuals. In 1938, Jean-Paul Sartre published his novel Nausea in which the leading character is a tall, red-haired, alienated young man called Antoine Roquentin. In Rand’s 1943 novel The Fountainhead, the leading character is Howard Roark, a tall, red-haired, alienated young man. I am not sure if Roark’s name and physical characteristics are inspired by Sartre’s Roquentin.

On Hume’s Objective History, Politics, and Economics

Skepticism in metaphysics and epistemology does not imply skepticism in history, politics, economics, and moral theory. The writing career of David Hume is a proof of this fact. In his first major work A Treatise Concerning Human Nature, Hume made several skeptical pronouncements and earned the reputation of a skeptic philosopher. But there is not a trace of skeptical thoughts in his The History of England in which he narrates the history "from the invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution of 1688.” The book was a bestseller in Hume’s time and it continues to be regarded as a standard history of England—it has gone through more than a hundred editions. In his writings on politics and economics (contained in his Political Discourses), Hume presents an objective view of the world. In his essays on politics, he calls for small government which will not encroach on the rights and privacies of the citizens. In economics, he makes a case for lower taxes and free trade. He advocates making Britain a free port where free commerce is allowed with all nations. The theory of morality that Hume offers, in his works like An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, is based on a realist view of the world and human nature. There is not a trace of skepticism in Hume’s moral theory. His essays on morality, politics, and economics have inspired the thinking and work of Adam Smith, who was his lifelong friend.

On The Nyaya Theory of Perception

The Nyaya theory holds that there are four distinct and independent methods or sources of knowledge — perception, inference, comparison, and testimony. All the four methods of knowing are of equal importance in respect of their value and importance, but perception (pratyaksa) can be seen as coming first and being the most fundamental because the other three methods of knowing must also make use of perception at some level.

Satischandra Chatterjee, in his book The Nyaya Theory of Knowledge, offers the following perspective on the Nyaya view of the critical role that perception plays in inference, comparison, and testimony (Page 129):

"For the Nyaya, however, perception is the basis on which we have a knowledge of other truths by inference as well as by comparison and testimony. Inference as a method of knowledge depends on perception. The first step in inference is the observation of a mark or the middle term (lingadarsana), and the observation of the relation between the middle and the major term. Hence, inference is defined as that knowledge which must be preceded by perception (tatpurvakam). Similarly, upamana or comparison as a method of naming depends on perception of the points of similarity between two objects. So also sabda or testimony is dependent on perception inasmuch as the first step in it is the visual or auditory perception of written or spoken words, and such words must come from a person who has a direct or intuitive knowledge of the truths communicated by him. So we see that perceptual knowledge is the ultimate ground of all other knowledge by inference, comparison and testimony."

In other words, perception is the final test of all knowledge—it is a direct source of knowledge, and the other three methods of knowing also presuppose perception.

The Utopianism of Libertarianism

The libertarian political vision is based on the utopian notion that all men are rational and moral. If given total freedom, they will act rationally and morally and through their enterprise and hard work they will contribute to the betterment of society. Alas, this utopian view of man is not true. If all men were capable of behaving rationally and morally, then the libertarian-style nations would have been created 2000 years ago. The reason we don’t have libertarian nations is because all men are not rational and moral. If the strong arm of the law is removed, many will be tempted to violate the rights of others.

On Medieval Swordplay

I am reading Johan Huizinga’s The Autumn of the Middle Ages (Translated by Rodney J. Payton and Ulrich Mammitzsch). Here’s a passage in which he is offering his perspective on swordplay and chivalry that defined the culture of this period (Page 89):

"Medieval swordplay differs… from Greek and from modern athletics by its much reduced degree of naturalness. To increase its warlike tone it relies on the excitement of aristocratic pride and aristocratic honor, on its romantic-erotic and artistic splendor. It is overladen with splendor and ornamentation, and overfilled with colorful fantasy. In addition to being play and exercise it is also applied literature. The desires and dreams of poetic hearts see a dramatic representation, a staged fulfillment in life itself. Real life was not beautiful enough; it was harsh, cruel, and treacherous. There was little room in courtly and military careers for feelings of courage that arose out of love, but the soul is filled with such sentiments, and people want to experience them to create a more beautiful life in precious play. The element of genuine courage is most certainly of no less value in a knightly tournament than in a pentathlon competition. Its explicitly erotic character was the cause of its bloody intensity. In its motives the torment is closest to the contests of the Indian epics; in the Mahabharata, too, fighting over a woman is the central idea." 

Using evidence that has been gathered mostly from literature and art, Huizinga has done a convincing reconstruction of the emotions, hopes, motivations, and fears of the people in France and the Netherlands during the 14th and 15th centuries.

Modern Philosophy and the Alchemy of Synthesis

Like the ancient alchemists who believed that they could create gold by combining base metals, several modern philosophers believed that they could develop a perfect system of knowledge by integrating different disciplines. But instead of developing a fully synthesized system of knowledge, they gave rise to new kinds of intellectual and political problems.

The attempt to synthesize ethics and epistemology with science resulted in the problem of scientism. The attempt to synthesize anthropology and sociology with history resulted in the problem of historicism. The attempt to synthesize politics with science resulted in utopianism which climaxed in the killing fields of the Soviet Union. The attempt to synthesize logic with linguistics resulted in analytic philosophy. The attempt to synthesize metaphysics with science resulted in Logical Positivism.

The lesson to be learned from the failure of scientism, historicism, utopianism, Logical Positivism, and analytic philosophy is that a complete system of knowledge can’t be developed. In the age of modernity, science and industry have made great progress, but philosophy has been a failure because the modern philosophers acted like the ancient alchemists and got mired in impossible projects.

Strauss on Maimonides’ the Guide For the Perplexed

In his essay, “Literary Character of the Guide for the Perplexed,” (Chapter 2; Persecution and the Art of Writing by Leo Strauss), Leo Strauss notes that Maimonides’ the Guide For the Perplexed should be seen as an esoteric explanation of an esoteric doctrine. Here’s an excerpt:

"It is for this reason that the whole work has to be read with particular care, with a care, that is, which would not be required for the understanding of a scientific book. Since the whole teaching characteristic of the Guide is of a secret nature, we are not surprised to observe Maimonides entreating the reader in the most emphatic manner not to explain any part of it to others, unless the particular doctrine had already been clearly elucidated by famous teachers of the law, i.e., unless it is a popular topic, a topic only occasionally mentioned in the Guide.

"The Guide is devoted to the explanation of an esoteric doctrine. But this explanation is itself of an esoteric character. The Guide is, then, devoted to the esoteric explanation of an esoteric doctrine. Consequently it is a book with seven seals."

According to Strauss, while Maimonides is denying the relevance of political philosophy, he is using an esoteric style of writing to subtly show the importance of political philosophy.

The Trouble With Objectivism

David Bentley Hart is spot-on about Ayn Rand's objectivist cult. In his article, “The Trouble With Ayn Rand,” he writes: "And, really, what can one say about Objectivism? It isn’t so much a philosophy as what someone who has never actually encountered philosophy imagines a philosophy might look like: good hard axiomatic absolutes, a bluff attitude of intellectual superiority, lots of simple atomic premises supposedly immune to doubt, immense and inflexible conclusions, and plenty of assertions about what is “rational” or “objective” or “real.” Oh, and of course an imposing brand name ending with an “-ism.” Rand was so eerily ignorant of all the interesting problems of ontology, epistemology, or logic that she believed she could construct an irrefutable system around a collection of simple maxims like “existence is identity” and “consciousness is identification,” all gathered from the damp fenlands between vacuous tautology and catastrophic category error. She was simply unaware that there were any genuine philosophical problems that could not be summarily solved by flatly proclaiming that this is objectivity, this is rational, this is scientific, in the peremptory tones of an Obersturmführer drilling his commandoes.”