"No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning oneself."~ Friedrich Nietzsche. (Translation by Stephen Hicks, pictured here with the quotation on the wall at Universidad de la Libertad in Mexico, where he delivered five lectures on philosophy of economics: Property, Trade, Money, the Enlightenment, & Entrepreneurism)
“The whole Idea of colonial policy was to take advantage of the military superiority of the white race over the members of other races. The Europeans set out, equipped with all the weapons and contrivances that their civilisation placed at their disposal, to subjugate weaker peoples, to rob them of their property, and to enslave them . . . If, as we believe, European civilisation really is superior to that of the primitive tribes of Africa or to the civilisations of Asia – estimable though the latter may be in their own way – it should be able to prove its superiority by inspiring these peoples to adopt it of its own accord. Could there be a more doleful proof of the sterility of European civilisation than that it can be spread by no other means than fire and sword?
“No chapter of history is steeped further in blood than the history of colonialism. Blood was shed uselessly and senselessly. Flourishing lands were laid to waste; whole peoples destroyed and exterminated. All this can in no way be extenuated or justified. The dominion of Europeans in Africa and in important parts of Asia [was] absolute. It stands in the sharpest contrast to all the principles of liberalism and democracy....”~ Ludwig Von Mises from, his 1927 book Liberalism. Hat tip Stephen Hicks, who points out (in his post 'Why liberal capitalism opposed imperialism and colonialism') that while "imperialism and colonialism are older than human history, and across the centuries virtually every culture in every part of the world practiced it," it was the culture of the Enlightenment that ended it — movements arising to abolish slavery and the second- or third-class status of women. "Keep in mind," he says, "that 200 years is a blink of an eye in human-historical terms. It normally takes many centuries to change cultural mindsets and long-established practices. The Enlightenment’s liberalism and capitalism relatively quickly undercut and did away with millennia of conquest-and-control baked into human traditions."
“What is it about the study of [modern] philosophy that tends to make brilliant minds stupid when it comes down to what are known as actual cases? Consider Martin Heidegger, Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Ludwig Wittgenstein ... four great names in twentieth-century philosophy: the first was a Nazi, the second died certain that America was responsible for all the world’s evil, the third was a Stalinist long after any justification for being so could be adduced, and the fourth lived on the borders of madness most of his life. Contemplation of the lives of philosophers is enough to drive one to the study of sociology.”~ Joseph Epstein from his Essays in Biography [hat tip Stephen Hicks]
I love it when historical/philosophical eras are trending.
Fortuitously, philosopher Stephen Hicks (author of the essential text Explaining Postmodernism) has posted this chart, conveniently summarising 'how the Enlightenment solved all of our problems.'
For reference, for the easily confused, the items in the third column are the desirable ones ...
NB: Check out all of Hicks's posts and lectures on the Enlightenment here.
| Image is from Aristarchus, the great Greek astronomer, from a tenth-century CE copy of his manuscript |
"Every civilisation of which we have records has possessed a technology, an art, a religion, a political system, laws, and so on. In many cases those facets of civilisation have been as developed as our own. But only the civilisations that descend from Hellenic Greece have possessed more than the most rudimentary science. The bulk of scientific knowledge is a product of Europe in the last four centuries.”~ Thomas Kuhn, from his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions [hat tip Stephen Hicks]
“Some leftists believe that the communist world would work if 'good people' were in control. But they don't realise that, by definition, good people don't want to control other people's lives.”~ attrib. Ludwig von Mises [hat tip Stephen Hicks]
“Everyone must have one thing they can excel at. It’s just a matter of drawing it out, isn’t it? But school doesn’t know how to draw it out. It crushes the gift. It’s no wonder most people never get to be what they want to be. They just get ground down.”
~ Haruki Murakami, from his novel Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (hat tip Stephen Hicks)
a) Existentialist.2. “Why does the universe exist?” is logically equivalent to:
b) Essentialist.
c) Excellent way to put yourself to sleep.
d) Guy who knew how to have his way with the ladies.
a) “Why doesn’t the universe not exist?”
b) Itself.
c) Asking for a one-way ticket to the mental ward.
d) All of the above.
a) True.4. Suppose during the exam that you look deeply into the soul of the person next to you and find the meaning of life. This would be:
b) False.
c) The statement must be deconstructed to reveal its hidden power agenda.
a) Proof that you have mastered the metaphysics portion of the course.5. The number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin is:
b) Cheating, and therefore a violation of the university’s Honor Code.
6. The greatest philosopher of the 20th century was:a) Infinite, since angels are non-physical beings and therefore not bound by physical limitations.
b) Zero, since angels are non-physical and dancing is by definition a physical activity.
c) Zero, since dancing is a lewd activity that morally pure angels would never engage in.
d) A statement that is in principle unverifiable and therefore meaningless.
a) That beret-wearing guy.Bonus Question
b) Scooby Doo.
c) Oprah Winfrey.
d) Greatness is over-rated.
So now you know what identity politics is, and something about what makes it stink: it stinks, because it says everyone who's born the same, or are grew up the same, thinks the same. So "stay in your lane"!
It suits the group-think merchants to promote this bullshit because (they hope) they can surf to political power on the group conflict it creates.
But how do they get away with it?
TODAY we burrow down into how this idiotic groupthink emerged into political life, and from where. And for that, we have to go all the way to Germany, and a bearded bloke in the British Museum Library, and their excuse for why the proletariat seems so generally happy with the fruits of capitalism, and wholly un-ready to revolt ...
Some Causes: Politics & Polylogism
"To the Frankfurt School, Freud offered a psychology admirably suitedto diagnosing the pathologies of capitalism… Thus Marcuse has anexplanation for the new generation of revolutionaries-in-training forwhy capitalism … seems to be peaceful, tolerant, and progressive—when,as every good socialist knows, it cannot really be—and for why theworkers are so disappointingly un-revolutionary. Capitalism does not merelyoppress the masses existentially, it also represses them psychologically."~ philosopher Stephen Hicks (Explaining Post-Modernism, pp 162-3)
THE POLITICAL OPPORTUNITIES REPRESENTED by encouraging group conflict were grasped early by the philosopher Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979).Marcuse had a rare heritage. He was a German Marxist from the Frankfurt School, and also a student of Martin Heidegger, who embraced Nazism during the later war. In the rarefied atmosphere of Sixties America, Marcuse's writings on revolt and political power would make him “the father of the New Left.”
From Marx, Marcuse got the rejection of reason as a universal tool. Like Marx, he promoted instead the notion of poly-logism – of so-called “multiple logics” – the idea that the conditions of one’s birth and upbringing “hard wire” your thinking and your very means of thought.You think we're all talking past each other? Of course, say Marcuse and Marx: because what's true in logic for your group is not true for mine. They do mean this literally:Marxian polylogism asserts that the logical structure of the mind is different with the members of various social classes. Racial polylogism differs from Marxian polylogism only in so far as it ascribes to each race a peculiar logical structure of mind and maintains that all members of a definite race, no matter what their class affiliation may be, are endowed with this peculiar logical structure. [Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action]It wasn't born as a "socialist" idea however. It was embraced by both right and left: For the European left at this time, the defining feature was class; for the European right, it was race. For both, the important thing was the collective -- the only difference was how the collective was defined.This could seem amusing. For one example, David Ricardo’s 200-year-old Law of Comparative Advantage (which demonstrates the win-win proposition of free trade) was condemned by German Marxists because he was bourgeois, by German racists because he was a Jew – and by German Nationalists because he was English! So that was it: free trade was out, without any need at all to address any of Ricardo’s reasoning. Because by this anti-principle of multiple logics, reason is no longer universal, and each group has its own “logic” – precisely the formula for dissent, disagreement, and disruption that a Marcuse was after.
Marcuse was reinforced in this rejection of reason by Heidegger, who called it that “most stiff-necked adversary of thought" – an obstacle to be discarded. Marcuse was happy to throw it out: bathwater, baby, and all.HE THEN SET ABOUT about redressing the problem apparent to every Marxist no matter how blind: that the masses were simply failing to become impoverished under capitalism, and would therefore never rise up in revolt in the manner than Marx had long predicted.On this troublesome point, Marcuse found comfort in the ideas of Sigmund Freud. When Freud applied his worrisome psychoanalytics to social philosophy, he found himself arguing that civilisation is “an unstable, surface phenomenon based upon the repression of instinctual energies,” the forces of civilisation having evolved (according to Freud) “by incrementally suppressing instincts and forcing their expression into polite, orderly, and rational forms. Civilisation is thus an artificial construct overlaying a seething mass of irrational energies in the id.”[1] To Marcuse and, the Frankfurt School, “Freud offered a psychology admirably suited to diagnosing the pathologies of capitalism.”[6]
It was not that the masses were not impoverished, argued Marcuse[3], who was blind to folk around him who were enjoying the fruits of rising post-war prosperity. It was simply, he argued, that individuals en masse were themselves blind to the so-called “structural impoverishment”that is allegedly implicit in the capital system,:“increasingly unaware that the apparently comfortable world they live in is a mask for an underlying realm of brutal conflict and competition.”[8]You didn't realise all that was seething underneath the surface of your weekly supermarket shop, did you.Since the proletariat themselves however are blind to this brutal, if implicit, “structural” oppression -- if Joe Sixpack enjoying his relative peace and comfort to much to even see it -- then Mr Sixpack must have his eyes opened! Opened, insisted Marcuse, by overt political action from outside the proletariat. By a “great refusal.” It was the job of the insightful activist, he said, to "lift the veil" from victims’ eyes. Only then would they rise up and overthrow their structural oppressors.
ALL THIS SOUNDS MAD enough. But first, he had to sell them a new idea of oppression. Instead of being happy in their own rising wealth and prosperity, they had to be taught to be unhappy in the alleged inequality of this blessings across the land -- to be upset that some others were pulling down more -- to be angry that the majority of the wealth, comfort, and power was in the hands of the "oppressors." To be angry about it, and to act.One of the first "direct actions" Marcuse called for was to silence these alleged “oppressors.” (This was "cancel culture" back in the sixties.) Silencing the alleged oppressors on the grounds of this new view of equality, based upon so-called “power differentials.” Silenced as a matter of "social justice." In his widely influential 1965 essay titled “Repressive Tolerance,”Marcuse argued that tolerance and free speech confer benefits on society only under special conditions that almost never exist: absolute equality. He believed that when power differentials between groups exist, tolerance only empowers the already powerful and makes it easier for them to dominate institutions like education, the media, and most channels of communication. Indiscriminate tolerance is “repressive,” he argued; it blocks the political agenda and suppresses the voices of the less powerful. If indiscriminate tolerance is unfair, then what is needed is a form of tolerance that discriminates. A truly “liberating tolerance,” claimed Marcuse, is one that favours the weak and restrains the strong. Who are the weak and the strong? For Marcuse, writing in 1965, the weak was the political left and the strong was the political right.[5]He went on to argue that that the forces of the left must therefore use the arguments of “tolerance” against the powerful forces of intolerance allegedly commanded by the capitalist class. He therefore demandedthe withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements that promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion, or that oppose the extension of public services, social security, medical care, etc. Moreover, the restoration of freedom of thought [sic] may necessitate new and rigid restrictions on teachings and practices in the educational institutions which, by their very methods and concepts, serve to enclose the mind within the established universe of discourse and behaviour – thereby precluding a priori a rational evaluation of the alternatives.[6]Remember, this is what he called "repressive tolerance."
If we summarise, he is arguing that“Because Western civilisation is inherently oppressive... speech should be free for those who oppose freedom, capitalism and the foundations of Western society, but not for those who defend them.”[7]And in case the reader misses it, Marcuse makes the point explicit:Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left. [8]This is a message impossible for any reader to miss. And they don’t.
[Remember some years ago for example when Chris Trotter was defending Helen Clark's illegal pledge-card spending as "acceptable corruption"? And then applauding her subsequent Electoral Finance Act “shutting down those with money [as] a necessary restriction on freedom of expression”?[10] That's where this comes from. Observe the widespread justification and even denial of the violence in Albert Park earlier this month? That's where it leads.]
Following this script, those who dissent from the new orthodoxy are shouted down, denied platforms, forced into sensitivity re-education courses, forbidden from speaking, intimidated, mobbed, and even threatened with violence to get them to shut up. Consider again University of Missouri professor Melissa Click’s call to her backers — “Hey, who wants to help me get this reporter out of here? I need some muscle over here!” [9] That was Marcuse’s message in action. So too is the shouting down of "TERFs" and "Nazis" by folk too ignorant to even know what Nazism means.
All is acceptable when it’s your Team’s corruption you're defending.
We see here too, slithering in from stage left, one of the most irrational ideas afloat on this whole sea of abject, anti-rational nonsense: the idea that is called intersectionality. It is this notion – justifying that some groups be made more unequal than others – that powers much of the tribalism shutting down modern debate.MORE ON THAT TOMORROW.CONTINUED IN PART 5: Intersectionality, or 'How some tribes are made more equal than others'PART 3 in a series explaining "identity politics," excerpted from one of my chapters in the 2019 book Free Speech Under Attack.
- Part 1: 'What is Identity Politics?'
- Part 2: 'Determinism isn't dead, it just smells that way'
- Part 3: 'Tribal Politics Means Zero-Sum Conflict'
NOTES[1] In his 1930 book Civilisation and Its Discontents
[2] Summaries of Freud and Marcuse are from Stephen Hicks’s Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault (Expanded Edition), (2013), pg 161-2.
[3] In his 1955 book Eros and Civilisation, making the obvious hat tip to Freud’s tome, and the 1964 best-seller One-Dimensional Man
[4] Ibid, pg. 162-163, summarising the Frankfurt School’s Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer
[5] Jonathan Haidt & Greg Lukianoff, The Coddling of the American Mind; How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure, pg. 65
[6] Herbert Marcuse, ‘Repressive Tolerance,’ 1965
[7] Steve Simpson, ‘At the Heart of the Attacks on Free Speech, (2015), collected in Defending Free Speech, ed. Steve Simpson (2016)
[8] Ibid.
[9] Tom Palmer, ‘The Three Most Pressing Threats To Liberty Today,’ Cato Policy Report, December, 2016
[10] Editorial, NZ Herald, 18 December, 2017, which noted that “during the controversy over this bill. Illiberalism reigned. ‘People shouldn't be able to say that,’ was a common refrain… There was often an implied trade-off: that shutting down those with money was a necessary restriction on freedom of expression. It reeked of political commentator Chris Trotter's disgraceful conclusion a year ago that the unlawful spending on Labour's pledge card had been acceptable corruption.”
"Over the past decade, the ancient Greek philosophy of Stoicism has seen renewed public attention... There are good reasons, however, to steer clear of Stoicism as a philosophy of life...
"Popular treatments of Stoicism universally stress the Stoics’ point that some things are 'up to us' and other things are not up to us, and that it’s crucially important to distinguish correctly between these... The problem, however, is that Stoicism endorses determinism — the view that our actions and choices are necessitated by factors beyond our control. So, strictly speaking, nothing is up to us. And if nothing is up to us, what use is ... anyone’s advice ... ? There is no philosophically consistent answer to that question, except: 'None whatsoever' ...
"Stoic philosophy leaves us with no causal power to impact events, only at best the ability (so far unexplained) to voluntarily accept our leash and accommodate ourselves to the inevitable. This may provide a false sense of solace to some, but it isn’t exactly an empowering perspective on life.
"For a philosophy to be useful as a guide, it must at least acknowledge that we have some genuine, volitional control over our actions and choices — actions and choices that make a difference to where we end up in life...
"[Volition for the stoic however] is not a matter of possessing the ability to control or impact the events of our lives — it is about being free from the frustration and pain that comes from wanting events to occur other than they do... [Stoicism] 'does not offer us a means of achieving happiness, but only a means of resisting pain.' ...
"From a psychological perspective, this approach to values is fundamentally an attempt to avoid pain, frustration and loss in a world in which everything you might want or love or care about is short-lived, easily lost and precariously kept. To the extent that you invest yourself in things over which you have no control, they hold, you will be perpetually unhappy.
"Now, it is true that intensely valuing life and the things you love involves the possibility of pain, loss and disappointment, sometimes acute. Stoicism’s advice is to steel yourself against that possibility by killing your capacity to value. This is not a recipe for inner peace; it is a recipe for destroying any possibility for happiness...
"To take seriously and to benefit from advice about what is up to us and what is not, we would need to reject any form of determinism (Stoic or modern) and embrace the fact that we have free will — and that requires thinking carefully about what precisely is within our power to change and what isn’t so that we can formulate our goals and orient our efforts rationally...RELATED READING:
"Contrary to the Stoic worldview, we live in a universe in which the achievement of genuine happiness is possible, provided we understand what is required to achieve it and we put forth the thought and effort it requires. And thus life can be, and properly ought to be, an ambitious and unrelenting quest for personal happiness and joy because the pursuit and achievement of these values is what makes life meaningful and worth living."
~ Aaron Smith, from his article 'The False Promise of Stoicism'
"So what is real freedom to [the German philosopher] Hegel?
“'It must further be understood [claims Hegel] that all the worth which the human being possesses—all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State.'
"In the broader context of Hegel’s philosophy, human history is governed by the necessary working out of the Absolute. The Absolute—or God, or Universal Reason, or the Divine Idea—is the actual substance of the universe, and its developmental processes are everything that is. 'God governs the world; the actual working of his government—the carrying out of his plan—is the History of the World.'
"The State, to the extent that it participates in the Absolute, is God’s instrument for achieving his purposes. 'The State,' accordingly, 'is the Divine Idea as it exists on Earth... One must worship the state as a terrestrial divinity.'
"In such worship, Hegel believed, we find our real freedom....
"And again, just in case we have missed Hegel’s point: 'A single person, I need hardly say, is something subordinate, and as such he must dedicate himself to the ethical whole.' And again echoing Rousseau: 'Hence, if the state claims life, the individual must surrender it'.”~ Stephen Hicks expounding Hegel's disastrous (and influential!) statism, in his post 'Hegel on Worshipping the State' [excerpted from Hicks's 2004 book Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault]
"Why life is 255 times better now than in 1800: [because] people have 8.5 times more stuff[1]; they have 5 times as much time to enjoy it[2]; and there are 6 times as many people.[3]"~ philosopher Stephen Hicks doing philosophy-maths in his post 'Why life is 255 times better now than in 1800'
NOTES (page references are to Deirdre McCloskey's 2006 book The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce):
1. Wealth: “The amount of goods and services produced and consumed by the average person on the planet has risen since 1800 by a factor of about eight and a half” (p. 16). The items consumed include more and better food, cleaner water, education, health care, safer technologies, and so on. Consequently:
2. Life expectancy: Increased wealth “raised the expectation of life at birth in the world from roughly 26 years in 1820 to 66 years in 2000” (p. 18). So if one is an adult by, say, age 16, the average amount of adult life rose from 10 years in 1820 to 50 years in 2000 — a factor of 5.
3. Population: “The world’s population increased from 1800 to 2000 by a factor of about six” (p. 15).
"What explains the cognitive disconnection in those who say both 'Governments ought to run stuff!' and 'Oil companies are evil!' ?"In the energy world, governments are by far the largest operators." *~ Stephen Hicks, from his post 'The Biggest Oil Companies in the World'
"Foucault’s grandchildren: The Enlightenment created a magnificent civilisation, yet three generations of postmodernism have bred a sub-culture of deniers—of facts, objectivity, truth, justice, and progress—and who combine that with vicious rhetoric and physical violence. Such activists’ enemy is reality, so they want and need to shut down anyone who persistently raises facts. Psychologically, such activists do feel—genuinely—under hateful attack when pressed with data and argument. They feel assaulted in their core. Shoot the messenger is a common response to unwanted news. So while hate speech is their immediate complaint, hate facts are their actual target."
~ philosopher Stephen Hicks, from his post 'Foucault's Grandchildren'
The Clock of Life, by Wilfred Grindle Conary
The clock of life is wound but once
And no man has the power
To tell just where the hands will stop,
At late or early hour.
To lose one’s wealth is sad indeed,
To lose one’s health is more.
To lose one’s soul is such a loss
As no man can restore.
The present only is our own.
Live, love, toil with a will.
Place no faith in ‘tomorrow’
For the clock may then be still.
| 'From Wealth is Good to Wealth is Bad,' etc. - diagram from Stephen Hicks's book Explaining Postmodernism |
"Once upon a time there were Progressives who actually believed in progress, who despite their flaws did believe in a brighter and better future. These were supplanted c. 1970 by a new Left with the new motto 'Learn to live with less, you hate-filled greedy bastards!' The Apollo programme was the last hurrah of the old Progressives, and Earth Day environmentalism was a manifestation of the new Left that supplanted them.
"Now those actually-for-progress Progressives had some major flaws. One was a willingness to bulldoze people’s personal plans in favour of their own Big Plans For Society. Another was to seriously underestimate just how poisonous socialism and government regulation are to an economy. But they still favoured a better, brighter, more prosperous future in a way the 'Learn to live with less!' Earth Day leftists did not."~ commenter 'Deep Lurker' at Samizdata
Philosopher Stephen Hicks answers, in one minute, the question: "What is Liberty?" -- part of his series of videos of Philosophy in Real Life.
"Objectivity [in journalism] does not mean not having an opinion. It means that one’s opinion is as fact-based and as logically integrated as one can make it.
"[It] does not mean unbiased. A bias is an automated result of one’s previous experience and thinking. A bias will be good or bad depending on how good or bad that previous thinking was. For example, one may have a bias against child-abusers or a bias in favour of clear language."Objectivity does mean that one engages in introspection to be aware of one’s biases, that one is willing to challenge and change one’s assumptions, and that one is willing to put one’s beliefs to social testing via editorial review, debate, and other types of feedback."~ Stephen Hicks, from his. "Primer on Objective Journalism"