Re: Re: I the Person

For example when healthcare is nationalized everybody feels a need to control what others eat because it's costing society (who are referred to as taxpayers usually) money when an individual is overweight.

-- ChristopherBurg, in response to Wendy McElroy's piece at Mises Daily

I disagree. The enlightened citizen takes pity on the individual who is compelled to make decisions that not only damage the individual's own health, but also the economic health and ultimately the actual physical health of neighboring citizens. An over-consumer is a parasite, not an activist for personal liberty. The individual who acts contrary to self-interest (by choosing to routinely avoid moderation) is not a beacon of individualism, but rather, an aberration of the natural order of things. Were such an individual to behave in such a way in a more primitive tribal culture, the individual would be culled from the society -- for the greater good. Or, such an individual would easily be dealt with by nature itself, saving the tribe the trouble.

Unfortunately, today, it is impractical (not to mention morally dubious) for society to expel or eliminate parasitic or criminal individuals. So instead, we have to imprison, rehabilitate, or marginalize them. This is just one of the the many costs of an advancing civilization that can only be brought about practically by the shared sacrifice between members and the distribution of such costs amongst its peoples.

And so we can see that the utopia of anarcho-capitalism in a modern civilization is an unrealistic fantasy. Following such reasoning to its conclusion, the application of deified individual liberty can only result in a regressive reductionism that culminates in a reversion to primitive tribalism at best, and the extinction of the human species at worst.

True liberty arises from the enlightened projection of the primitive and natural morality of the ideal tribal society to the gross mass of civilization with all of its deviation and extraordination, tempered by the pragmatic morality of the equilibrium of universal self-interest.

Objectivists

A summary of the social outlook of the Objectivist philosophy.

"I want everyone to get off my lawn, to leave me alone and just let me be, let me do whatever I want. If other people didn't get out of my way fast enough, or they didn't have the money to get out of my way thanks to pissing all their money away due to laziness, obviously it's their free choice to get hurt by me when I eventually steamroll some of the lazy and ignorant looters. Hell, in a way I am doing a service to society when I am culling the weak and the ignorant. Hell, I should even be paid for that service.

So I want all the freedom and I still also want all the benefits accorded by mutuality, society, good will, and cooperation.

I want all the benefits of cooperation and none of the costs.

I want to have a choice to cooperate or not to cooperate, while I certainly enjoy it when others overwhelmingly choose to cooperate with me. And if others think they are morally bound to cooperate with me, I won't do a thing to change that opinion! I just don't want to be bound by the same opinion myself.

It's OK for others to think they are morally bound to cooperate with me.

It's equally OK for me to think that I am not morally bound to cooperate with others, because after all, cooperation is meaningless if it's not of free will."

-- Nefandi, quoting a fictional representation of a Libertarian Republican, May 30, 2011

I was wrong about Kant

I was talking to Greg about Kant yesterday, and found I was wrong about two things.

First, I had said that Kant was from France, and was a Roman Catholic. This was wrong -- Kant was German, and raised in a Lutheran family. I think I had him mixed up with Descartes.

Second, at some point, I mispronounced Kant as "can't" for some reason, even though I had already been pronouncing it correctly during the conversation. Thanks Scott, for correcting me.


Greg sent me an instant message with a quote he attributed to Kant in which Kant seemed to deny knowledge and demo a need for faith instead.

Greg also said that Kant believed that morality is a function of duty to an obligation, and that the function of morality to duty was broken if fulfillment of the duty was beneficial to self.

Greg said that these two things were enough to condemn Immanuel Kant. He repeated that: condemn him.

I dunno about all that. I'll have to do some more reading.


I kinda like Kant. Here's something that he said that makes me like him:

"The [practical law] tells us what we have to do, if we wish to become possessed of happiness; the [moral law] dictates how we ought to act, in order to deserve happiness." (Critique of Pure Reason, p 452)

And also:

"All our knowledge begins with sense, proceeds thence to understanding, and ends with reason, beyond which nothing higher can be discovered in the human mind for elaborating the matter of intuition and subjecting it to the highest unity of thought." (Critique of Pure Reason, p 189)