Posted on 04/04/2002 9:17:09 AM PST by denydenydeny
Mr. Kopel's argument runs into very serious problems here. "Capitalism" does not believe anything. It merely embodies the economic consequences of the moral principle that individuals are unique, and that they have certain fundamental rights. Contrary to Kopel's apparent claim, capitalism is a result, not a source of authenticity.
As described here, Capitalism reduces to anarchy: According to Kopel, the only "authentic" things are created by individual. Anything that constrains individual desires "imprisons" us.
Kopel's own argument would seem to go against capitalism itself: the very pricing structure of capitalism contradicts him. We can pursue our dreams and desires only so long as we can afford to do so. Prices constrain "authenticity." And because prices reflect the wants, needs, and direction of society at large, those constraints are imposed not just by "somebody," but by everybody. In other words, capitalism represents the very "Culture" that Kopel claims denies our authenticity!
If capitalism represents the "good" in this argument, it cannot be defended on the grounds Kopel provides. We must instead rely on something else.
As it happens, which capitalism is built upon moral priciples. Moreover, those principles are assumed to be universal, and individuals are constrained to abide by them. By Kopel's lights, unfortunately, those principles are apparently not authentic, because they're not created by individuals. Indeed, they are in some sense imposed upon us.
At this point Kopel's simple "freedom vs. culture" model completely falls apart. To deny universal principles is to concede the debate to postmodernist thought. Yet admitting to universal moral principles is to admit that they are by their very nature "imposed" in some omnipotent way. The fact of "imposition" is therefore not determinative of authenticity, or the lack thereof.
Thus, Hitler or Khomeni can no longer be condemned merely because they "imposed authenticity." Their actions must instead be condemned -- if they can be condemned at all -- by comparing their actual actions to what they "should" have done.
This ultimately takes us to something he's missed, either accidentally deliberately. The battle is not just "between postmodernism and capitalism," it is between postmodernism and traditional Western morality -- which is to say, it is between postmodernism and Judeo-Christian morality.
This takes Kopel to a place he evidently does not want to go -- one may guess it's because he thinks it will lead him into a science-vs.-religion argument.
By avoiding the subject, however, he's simply given away the store.
Betty, your comments are welcome here on the history of philosophy, for I know you are well-versed. For that matter, your comments are welcome, period.
And I thought beckett's excellent mind might like some "grist for the mill" . . . ;-}
There is not much evidence to the contrary.
It is the out workings of philosophers/thinkers/dreamers that have given you this culture, this land. It is the fruit of others that may jeopardize those some privileges. It is a romantic idea you exist in this moment in time by your own force of will, but in truth, you neither define the parameters of your life, nor are you cable of anything but the most minor alterations of the set.
Now there's an "unfashionable idea," reflecting. Reminds me of a line from Voegelin: "In empirical action man is always necessitated physically and psychologically; there is no empirical freedom."
Still, man speaks of freedom as if it were something real. But if that were so, if Voegelin's insight is to be trusted, then freedom -- and necessity -- must have a source beyond "mere" empirical existence.
"To man," writes Voegelin, citing Schelling, "there must be conceded a principle outside and above the world; for how could he alone of all creatures trace the long way of evolution from the present back to the deepest night of the past, how could he alone ascend to the beginning of the ages.... The soul does not know, 'it rather is itself knowledge.'"
Somehow, man -- though bound up inextricably in and by the world, and therefore never able to find an empirical position outside the world from which to view it in its totality and (probable) infinity -- "knows" some things that are not empirically based or derived.
Post-modernism posits empirical existence as the "all there is, there is nothing else beside." There is no realm of the spirit; there is no right nor wrong, good nor evil; power is everything.
Practically speaking, I think it helps to understand power in its essentials as power over men. I think this is how the post-modernists understand it; which is why it is so appealing to them. I mean, we're not talking about the power of a great artist or such like here.
Kopel points out that the overwhelming majority of "leading lights" of post-modernism have been and are proponents of some sort of totalitarian persuasion or other. Once a man has been "sold" on the idea that he has no soul, is not a spiritually centered being, then he can be led to the habits of a slave -- for you have convinced him that the principle on which his genuine freedom rests does not "exist." Thus the mania for the destruction of the spiritual realm as the prime directive of the entire post-modernist movement.
The line of transmission from "God is dead" runs through "man has no soul," on to moral relativism, to the dehumanization of the person that occurs when man is regarded as physical body only; ultimately to the destruction of freedom -- and not just of the spiritually-based type, but of whatever empirical freedom remains open to human action.
Personally I'm glad George Bush is our "first post-post-modernist president." (I agree with Kopel on this.) They were a "bad lot." Time to bid them a fond adieu. best, bb.
Do you remember the moment when you understood that the philosophical constructs of men, whose names you did not know, ruled the minds that determined your earthly destiny?
Your rejoinder:
Really? You live in a cabin, isolated from all events and society. You don't read the news, vote, buy new refrigerators, educate your children? (more)
There is a complete disconnect between "philosophical constructs" and an isolated cabin in the woods. I am indebted to my forbears for thier gifts of industry, intelligence, intuition and inventiveness but they in no way rule my desiny. I do.
thank you for your thoughtful reply, how true
while here we are a bit like third graders being taken on a field trip, we are feeling rather smart and grown-up because mom let us choose our outfit today, oh the independence, the self confidence! And the mother smiles.
Yet the awareness that such a thing as independence could exist, or the longing for fair-play, or justice as grown-ups would call it, is one of the small proofs of the reality of more than what can "be sensed."
that is why I qualified destiny with earthly
All about us is a world fully functioning, the rules, while not stagnant, are fixed at any point in time. You are powerless to negate even the tiniest appointment. For a poor example take buying the new frig...you can buy it, you can not .....but what you can not do is live in a world where new refrigerators are not, where the convergence of economic theorist, and government have produced a moment in history when even the poorest fellow in town has refrigeration for his food. You are limited to a world where refrigerates abound and you powerless to change that.
That you say you rule your own destiny seems odd to me, maybe you mean that you are an adult, thinking for himself and choosing this or that, that you are not a slave - not a victim. Fair enough. And honorable. But the choices you can make are only the choices of this moment in time/space. You can not choose to be a knight in Arthur's court. You can not choose your parents. You can not choose to watch Gumby on Saturday mornings.
History is like a fast flowing river and you are a crimson leaf that fell from a sugar maple along the bank in Autumn.
That there maybe something inside you that knows of a place where river is not - that is what the posts above are about.
Nice post, bb. You know that I'm a fan of your insightful prose.
Perhaps belaboring the obvious, insofar as we are physical creatures, the demands of physicality (eating, sleeping etc.) constrain our freedom but we have, in this age, far greater freedom from these demands than at any former time in the history of humankind. How many U.S. parents have been driven to the edge of exasperation by their kids' "I'm bored", to make the homely point. We, humanity, have earned this freedom and we have found it best expressed in a political system that is least intrusive upon the individual. I am grateful but not complacent.
9/11 gave us the gift of contrast. It is abundantly clear that, whatever the rhetoric, the postmodernists in their enclave universities hate America and all it stands for. Their soul, in my view, has been twisted by their massive insecurities as they have "hidden" in their ivy-enclosed halls. We have mistakenly allowed them to avoid adulthood by our belief in specialization (and as we have the denizens of Hollywood) and for this gift of freedom from responsibility, they (plural) are perverting the minds of the young because, simply, misery does love company. A gift of freedom from responsibility is no gift and the cure is accountability.
Well, I do ramble, but "things" are not nearly so complicated as we humans are wont to make them. Nice to see you here, bb.
Well I obviously would not agree with this, and especially that government has produced anything. Government is, by and large, a parasite upon the producers and our government's contribution, until the 20th Century, has been to remain in the background enforcing the rights of individuals, thus allowing individuals and their creativity to build a great nation.
You seem much the pessimist. I am not. See my post to bb.
Your reply
Well I obviously would not agree with this, and especially that government has produced anything.
Maybe you misunderstood what I meant by produce, there must be more apt word, I was trying to make the small point that at any point in the time line of history the events of the preceding time structure the environment of that said point. When we arrive in our moment of history, the stage is set.
Your choices are limited by the broader environment created by those gone before and by your personal environment - your past, your age, your sex, your abilities, etc.
.But it does seem our opinions about the proper role of government might be very similar.
You seem much the pessimist. I am not. See my post to bb.
I don't know if pessimism is correct, (although I will admit to times of despair about the direction of our nation) yet there may be great joy in knowing that while we we have no control on where we are placed, the few choices that we do have really matter- both personally and in the broader culture, for your choices become, going back to my earlier analogy, part of the river that others will fall into little further down.
That Mr. Kopel has the gall to say this after disowning Sartre, Heiddeger, and Marx reveals his own superficial reading of these thinkers--a superficiality exceeded only in his idea of capitalism.
Hey P! You and I both know that the transmission of culture -- from father to son as it were (I'm going generic here) -- has been the primary directive of the educational process throughout history until quite recent times. When most Western countries decided to adopt the Prussian model of public education, forsaking the Classical model in the process, the unity of human knowledge went down the chute.
In the lower grades, the emphasis was then placed on "civic education" -- how to fit a person into the framework of the given society and its (putative) requirements, which at the time meant the requirements of industrial society.
At the collegiate level, the emphasis shifted to qualifying persons to practice as specialists of human knowledge -- in, say, law, economics, mathematics, medicine, history, physics, biology, the arts, etc., etc. The purpose at this level, and the post-graduate level, was to form expert "administrators" whose professional purpose it would be to direct the "quality" of human life.
What none of these people ever get these days, even at the highest pinnacles of Academe, is any notion that human knowledge encompasses more than just one's own speciality. And that, if you want to practice your specialty with excellence and distinction, you need to know how the discoveries of other human knowledge bases accumulated over history might shed some needful (helpful) light on your own problems.
But these days, the past is disdained -- yet some people claim to know what the future is. And isn't that an interesting problem, P?
I'd love to delve into the issue further here; but I've got to work tomorrow, so have to go to bed. Hope to catch up with you later. Peace and love, P -- bb.
The humanities academic left will never live down Sokal's ruse. It was a masterstroke.
On LOTR, I remember CBS film critic John Leonard's review of the movie. He never even mentioned the qualities or lack thereof of the movie itself. All the old lion Liberal (and former young conservative) could bring himself to say was that Tolkien was a "monarchist and a luddite who feared the advance of the mongrel hordes." Tolkien would probably plead guilty to the first two (he loved the King and hated technology), but Leonard is making mischief by accusing Tolkien of fearing the "mongrel hordes." On the contrary, he loathed the racialist policies then rising on the European continent and said so at every opportunity. But you see, postmodernist Leonard has to make the charge. He knows that only through the mechanism of identity politics can a historical figure be effectively discredited in the present muddle-headed culture. And Leonard wants to discredit Tolkien because his powerful morality play draws upon a construct that Leonard wants to deny, a construct in desperate need of deconstruction, one that he no doubt considers a simplistic, unforgiving, paternalistic and zero-sum myth --- the battle between good and evil that rages in every human breast.
I harbor these beliefs while earning my living in a very hands-on and competitive environment.
LOL, wouldn't blame you! Perhaps it would have been more helpful to have drawn the point. Which would be this: Our kids are indifferent -- and thus the American future is in jeopardy -- because the schools no longer transmit American culture and history, and Western historical culture more generally, as their prime directive. Ever since John Dewey, the great educationist innovator of the early 20th century, the American public schools have been put on the Prussian model. That means schools are no longer institutions of learning and thinking, they are institutions for the provision of "social adjustment." The Constitution that I know and love is simply no longer taught.
A high-school sophomore- or junior-level American government textbook that I had a chance to review a few months back is an example of what I mean. (Publisher: Prentice-Hall, as I recall.) It actually devotes a chapter to the "informal amendment process" -- e.g., executive orders, administrative rule-making, etc. -- and praised it as a natural constitutional evolution in response to the complexities of contemporary American life. It also beats the tom-tom for an imperial executive -- because Congress is just an untrustworthy pack of scurrilous politicoes, and you can never depend on them to "do the right thing." No wonder our kids are slack-jawed and glassy-eyed -- and totally cynical by age 12. Why should they care to get involved with issues like that?
They are never told the real American story (based on actual history -- i.e., not redacted to conform to passing, fickle, ideological fashions). They hear little about the Framers, if anything at all, or about the Constitution, that great culmination of American historical experience and Western political thought. The word "Liberty!" has not tickled their eardrums in all of what little high school history they are led kicking and screaming to take.
But they're being well fitted to be somebody's good, "reliable" employee some day; and "politically-correct" and tractible "citizen" to boot.
No wonder we've got problems: The public schools have become bastions of irrationality. They beget irrational graduates, some of whom (most these days, it seems) get to go on to college, to perfect their skills as soon-to-be members of the Managerial Class. Ignorant as sin, they are yet well-stocked in the ideals of human self-perfection, and in the tools for advancing and securing same. Peace and love, bb.
p.s.: Please forgive me if philosophy has slid over into polemics here. I simply find this situation deplorable.
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