Posted February 20th, 2010

A friend asked me why I so heavily criticize the Republican Party today, so I felt I needed to give some specific reasons. I came up with nine, listed below.

Reasons why today's Republicans should not be elected to positions of power.

1) Republican Party activists place excessive emphasis on freedom in the marketplace, inappropriately treating it like a quasi-sacred moral value.

They generally over stress freedom in the marketplace in a time when there is too much power in the hands of large corporations. Why is there a movement on the right that places excessive moral value on economic freedom? In other words, why do they give so much weight to it? They are the heirs of Calvin, von Hayek and Ayn Rand. The latter two argue that the individual has a moral right to earn as much money as he can and that altruism has no place in society. But the ability to earn a lot of money is not the moral justification for American capitalism, and no mainstream political thinker ever said that capitalism exists in order to allow individuals to make a lot of money. No social system exists for particular individuals, although the effect of the system of course falls upon concrete individuals. Market-fundamentalists confuse a possible effect (that some will earn great weath) with a rationale for the system (utilitarian ethics). The intent of democratic-capitalism is to create a system of rules, laws and regulations which result in a well-ordered political-economic system. The purpose of this system is to enable more citizens to get their needs met in peace and prosperity than is likely in any known alternative system. This rationale is named utilitarianism.

The free-trade polices in relation to China in place since Clinton's time are a great example of a philosophy run amok. While lowering trade barriers and ensuring that American values were upheld once American firms began outsourcing may have made moral and practical sense, a healthy civilization does not allow a few of its citizens to determine the economic well-being of many others on the basis of a motive to earn great wealth, as is done when a few traders export jobs to China and then import goods whose low prices are made possibly only because Americans values do not have to be lived up to, including care for the environment, child labor laws, the right to unionize, and a decent living by American standards. It is both morally reprehensible as well as pragmatically dumb to allow such a high level of trade with a country that has values that are radically contrary to our own. The only reason we do is because we have allowed a philosophy to dominate which says that the few have a moral right to have total freedom, with no regulations, to do whatever they want to earn a lot of money.

2) Republican Party activists show a poor understanding of the source of a society's ethical values.

The activists who have pushed the Republican Party in a direction of a laisser-faire philosophy are sentimental about the source of ethics in society. Libertarians and free-market conservatives show little understanding of the source of morality in a culture, often believing it to be naturally sustainable. Like many of our English forefathers, secular libertarians in particular seem to hold that Christian values play no real role in making the United States an agreeable place to live! I challenge them to go to India and try to start a business without paying a bribe. The reason for this difference does not have as much to do with the absence or presence of freedom in the market place, but the absence or presence of a value system which comes from a specific Chrisitian tradition, e.g. Anglo-Protestantism. It is dangerous and myopic to assume that a culture's ethics can be sustained in a system which rewards only the strongest in society.

3) Republican Party activists and politicians are beholden to the narrowest of economic interests, promoting a status quo that would make Machiavelli proud. The former do not know this, while the latter do.

The style and substance of argumentation on the American right concerning policy is transparently in the service of narrow interests, e.g. the wealthy and corporations, to a degree that is significantly higher than any other political group or party in the last century. We cannot make claims that one party is totally in the power of private interests and another is not. This would be meaningless. What we can do is observe how much influence such forces have relative to other parties now as well as to the past. The best way to judge that the Republican Party is intellectually shallow and morally bankrupt is by observing the fact that they are making the same arguments they were making in 1982. At that time, these arguments concerning regulation, taxes and the size of government in general may have had some validity. It it disingenous for those on the right to criticize the Democratic Party today for putting the country into debt when they never criticized the Bush administration for enacting irresponsible tax cuts. Their reason for not criticising Bush was, again, not responsible, but in order to avoid "appearing to support the Democrats". But this is all very childish and not a way to govern seriously. Those that argue that taxes are too high or government has too much power over corporations sound as if they have been in a bubble for 25 years and have suddenly come out of it, picking up right where they left off. It is intellectually indefensible to argue for less regulation when banking, television, airlines, telecommucations, among others, have been highly deregulated since 1980. It is not morally or practically serious to argue that taxes should not be raised on upper incomes when the percentage of wealth going to the top 10% is much higher than it was in 1980. All of this is empirical fact, and not a matter of opinion.

4) Republican Party symphathizers in the media appeal to the worst instincts in their viewers, making more profits from the tendency of viewers to get hooked on the adrenaline rush that comes from the anger created by watching or listening to "right wing" talk show.

The public representatives of the Party in the media talk shows make use of appeals to resentment and anger to motivate their viewers. The relative health of the left of center is made obvious if only by the single fact that those on the left rarely listen to such media, even if it appeals to their sensibilities. This fact alone reveals a great deal about the psychology of the respective audiences of the right and left: individuals on the right are generally significantly more susceptible to group think than individuals on the left of center. While it is not politically correct to point out this psychological aspect of the American right, or any "organic party of the right" for that matter, this is a fairly obvious difference between the two parties, one so important that it may in fact determine which party one feels sympathy for.

5) The Republican Party is under the influence of a dangerous social philosophy known as Puritanism or Calvinism.

The underlying religious and specifically calvinist sensibilities of the country are present most powerfully in the Republican Party. I believe Calvinism, and Puritanism generally, is one of the most dangerous forces in the history of humanity. This sensibility is rooted in a deeply held belief system regarding the notion that God chooses to damn some and save others and that this is determined at the moment of birth. The cultural effect of this belief system is that it inclines its adherents to look for victims they can project their guilt feelings onto. The quasi-religious element in the Party’s belief system is the best way to account for the knee-jerk obstructionism to any other political party that does not adhere to this belief. For the most pronounced "sign" of the presence of Calvinism is the attempt to project one's guilt onto an "other", who can too easily become a new sacrificial victim. The proof of the dominance of a false religious sensibility on the right is the lock-step voting patterns. This is indicative of the presence of a motive to reject "the other", not the embrace of a truly religious sensibility. No serious religious group would publically discuss their strongly held political views, as we can witness when we observe the Jesuits. The Republican Party has been effectively taken over by group-think whose function is to preserve group cohesion. But the truth does not always support the maintenance of group cohesion.

6) The policies supported by Republican Party activists and politicians consistently and to a tee have the effect of increasing the wealth levels of top income brackets. Such a pattern tells us much.

The policies the Republican party and its activists support consistently have the effect of making those in top income brackets and corporations wealthier. This again is a pattern or trend that is empirically observable. Patterns do not lie; they are usually not a coincidence, and hence one is reasonable to wonder if these consequences are the true goal of the policy proposals, e.g. Bush's tax cuts. This pattern has grown significantly in the last 20 years relative to the other party's policy proposals. The Democratic Party has been more ambiguous around this issue, sometimes choosing policies which support the highest income brackets and sometime choosing policies which benefit the average person or the poor. The Republican Party to the extent that it enacts policies that consistently benefit the highest income brackets and corporate power creates at least the appearance of pursuing a governing style of Machiavelli, who believes that “might makes right.” The belief that “might makes right” has a long history in the West and is always alive even if in remission. The sentimentality of the American right, which allows itself to indulge in moral fantasies, blinds many of its members to these subtle political phenomena. In this case, the ownership of wealth makes the members of this party - relative to the members of the other party - believe that it is justified morally in the pursuit of policies which simply lead to more of the same. The moral justification again is appeal to a made-up right, the right of the individual to “earn as much as he can” as well as the fear that one is not saved if they do not have a lot of money at death.

7) The political leadership in the Republican Party increasingly shows that it wil say anything to get elected, showing signs of breakdown unseen in modern American history. This owes to the moral fanaticism of activists on the right, who have influence in the primaries.

Those who run for office in the Party, both in the House as well as Senate, increasingly show signs that they will do bad things in power if it keeps them in power. They are also not as bright when compared with their predecessors, in either party. The public pronouncements such individuals make are much more like appeals one would expect to hear in a society where the public had a 5th grade education. The empirical sign of this low education level is appeals to black-and-white thinking and appeals to resentment. e.g. anger at the "other". An additional sign of the breakdown of this Party is a refusal of its politican-members to lead or make decisions which need to be taken, e.g. raising taxes to lower the deficit or dealing with Social Security or health care. But because this group does not take government seriously, it simply allows the federal government to continue to weaken and necessary social programs to whither, even when the possible effect of this is grave harm to the stability of the lives of millions of people. Sarah Palin is the most recent and obvious example of this. It is noteworthy that she abandoned her political polisition in Alaska and immediately began to earn much more money as a spokesperson for a network that makes great profits by appealing to the worst instincts in viewers. It is also significant that no one criticized her for leaving public office.

8) The Republican Party and its underlying philosophy has become nihilistic. This is due to the fundamental materialism of its philosophy.

Their consistent opposition to policy proposals by Obama and the other party are not based on any true principles of good government, but on a kind of nihilistic belief that there is no common good that can be achieved by the country as a whole. Again, it is the fact that this opposition is thorough that reveals the bankruptcy of their philosophy. The use of the filibuster as a regular means of governing is illegitimate morally and untenable practically.

9) The Republican Party is dominated by individuals who have a strong psychological need to hold onto a rigid narrow view of life.

In regards to the so-called religious wing of the Party, the religious right: One cannot focus on criticizing others for moral failings and at the same time claim that one is a Christian. To do so is the height of absurdity and reveals a lack of understanding of Christianity. The individual does not become a Christian by speaking the truth in the public square, as if one is writing a theoretical paper on a topic of science, e.g. as when some refer to biblical text as "proof" that the earth was made in seven days. This is not because "there is no truth", but because the truth of religion in general and Christianity in particular does not exist in the form of theoretical truths as it does when understanding physical nature, e.g. gravity. Religious truth is existential, or practical, in the sense that it is supposed to change the quality of our way of living.

A necessary condition of becoming a Christian is to experience the loss of those things a person psychologically holds onto most tightly, including some version of the truth. But this is precisely what conservative-types find it so difficult to do, and in fact is often the reason they are conservative. In this sense they remind me of the rich man in the gospel who walked away very sad when Jesus told them to go and give up what was important to them. Because conservative types in our culture, if not all cultures, tend to confuse deeply spiritual and moral ways of living with subjective conviction that one is right intellectually about a moral claim, they prevent themselves from continually and repeatedly "letting go" of in the way that a Christian must.

Posted February 13, 2010

The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom?
BBC television documentary series

Since the time of Reagan, American society has increasingly become dominated by a radically individualistic, anti-social philosophy. This social, political and especially economic philosophy holds that individuals only care about themselves and that this is good. It is believed to be good because such self-interest is felt to lead to increased order and stability. This philosophy is a great example of the power of the Enlightenment: very intelligent, creative people can be influenced to adopt a philosophy even if it argues that people are basically selfish and that society is a place in which this selfishness is acted out. The appeal here for the intellectual is the ideal of a system. The attraction is the hope that we can apply one principle to society and make it function like an organized machine. This is the same spirit that animated communist idealogues of the first half of the 20th century. The susceptibility to being attracted by a (misguided) hope for self-running political-economic systems has always been the weakness of modern Western and American intellectuals, as witnessed in the 20th century in the form of Communism and Nazism, and now in the United States on the free-market/libertarian right. These movements have the same thing in common that all radical movements in those societies born of the Enlightenment share: they are inspired by a deep hope that human beings can apply a single principle to social organization and thereby lead us to a kind of perfection never before seen. (While many on the right tell themselves that they do not want to apply a system to control society, this is besides the point. This is an effective form of denial, but it does not matter that its adherents tell us or themselves that they love freedom. There is always a tremendous dinimishment in true freedom when such philosophies take hold.) The socially important fact for us is that intellectuals under the influence of the hope for a system that runs automatically on the basis of one principle are essentially moral fanatics. They are fanatics of the Enlightenment sort, a kind of fanaticism that is particularly difficult to diagnose. But as with all fanaticisms, from the Inquisition, the Salem Witch trials, the Nazis and Communists of modern Europe, we can be confident in our judgment that such fanaticism is becoming influential in society when we observe increased breakdown along economic, political and moral parameters. Such a breakdown has been increasing since the American "conservative" movement began pushing its anti-social understandings of freedom in the name of a hoped-for perfect system which will run itself on selfish motives.

Because it should strike any thoughtful goode citizen as strange that a political movement would actively embrace a philosophy that says selfishness is good, it requires explanation. More needs to be said. Why would otherwise serious intellectuals and activists embrace the assumption that selfishness as the sole organizing principle in social, political and economic life is good? The typical leftist response that money is the sole motive of the powerful is unhelpful and doesn't explain adeqately what we are witnessing since the 1960s: the replacement of a quasi-Christian social philosophy in the United States with a purely political philosophy born of the Enlightenment with its utopian hope for a society organized perfectly around one rational principle. The key to understanding this movement on the right is to observe the two closely related assumptions of those who favor it: 1) human beings are merely individuals and have nothing in common with each other, and 2) the essentially anti-social assumption that people are merely self-interested is seen as good for the reason that if applied practically, it leads to order. The moral judgment that this assumption is good is, again, the key to understanding the movement.

Here's the rub for us: because philosophy creates civilization, this philosophy has led us to a society in which its assumption are becoming truer. Our society is not more selfish because "people are selfish". as it believed by this movement. People are not selfish because this is natural, as we can witness in robust religious communities and African villages, for example. Our society is becoming more anti-social as witnessed by its business practices and anti-union attitude in particular because its underlying philosophy says people are anti-social. The United States is increasingly guided by the principle of "winner take all". Amazingly, in the series I reference here, James Buchanan, a significant thinker on the right in the 1970s, calls anyone who cares about the common good a "zealot". He shows he understands something important about Western political philosophy when he focuses on zealotry, and I've argued that zealotry or fanaticism is to be avoided. But I've also argued that this zealotry has shown up more powerfully in our society on the free market and religious right, not the left. Zealotry never had any power on the left in America, or in Europe for that matter. Destabilizing zealotry has always come from the Right. This is another paradox, given that this movement is motivated by an over-emphasis on social stability!

I have three sets of links below beginning with an excerpt from the Wiki page.

The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom (television documentary series)

All these theories tended to support the beliefs of what were then fringe economists such as Friedrich von Hayek, whose economic models left no room for altruism, but depended purely on self-interest, leading to the formation of public choice theory. In an interview, the economist James M. Buchanan decries the notion of the "public interest", asking what it is and suggesting that it consists purely of the self-interest of the governing bureaucrats. Buchanan also proposes that organisations should employ managers who are motivated only by money. He describes those who are motivated by other factors—such as job satisfaction or a sense of public duty—as "zealots".

Link to videos

Link to book review

   The purpose of this site is to attempt to shed light on the ideas - both modern and ancient - which have a significant impact on the way we live. While many view philosophy to be abstract and unrelated to our lives, I believe that the ideas we hold are the single most important factor in how well or poorly we live. I am particularly interested in the moral judgments we make about various viewpoints, both those we adopt as well as reject. One hope I have is to shed light on the sources of these judgments; these stances. More than even the content of ideas, it is the judgments we make about them which influence us most strongly.

         I have three aims on this site. The first is to gain insight into my own ideas by responses I receive. Second, to present and explicate the various ideas Americans are collectively and individually influenced by, and particularly ideas about which we make strong moral judgments. Third, the site as a whole is intended to convey a kind of comprehensive summary of the political, social and moral problems we face today and offer ideas to respond to them.  My assumption is that if we better understand not only the ideas influential in our society and the judgments we make about them, but the moral impulses behind why we do so, we might learn again to apply creative, pragmatic solutions to the unique problems we face today. One of the reasons we find ourselves in a political and cultural quagmire, I believe, is that the sources guiding the moral judgments underlying our practical decision making are a confused jumble. Basing our collective and often private decision making on this mismash has harmful effects on us both morally and spiritually as well as politically and economically.

        One of the issues we face as modern Americans is that, as individuals, we often live our lives on the basis of ideas and moral judgments which not only do not help us but hinder us from deepening our relation to what Socrates refers to as "the most important things". A question I consider is why we collectively but also individually feel so ambivalent towards what we claim to be our moral and spiritual ideals. (The links to the three texts left and below are to sources of our modern notions of morality and happiness as English speaking Americans. The ideas espoused here are very different from those found in pre-modern Christian and Greek sources.) The first indication of this ambivalence is discomfort with the notion that we might, after all, take our lives and all the potential good in them less for granted. In terms of the central idea of this site, the contrast between the good man and the good citizen, I believe that we Americans put a great deal of moral emphasis on being good citizens without questioning whether there is any significant difference between the way American civilization defines good citizenship, on the one hand, and what it is to live a truly good life, on the other. As I conceive modern individuals, to be modern will include, among other things, too easily assuming that there is no distinction between these two capacities we all have. All thinkers and prophets of merit argue that the distinction is to be taken seriously, and I will follow the tradition in doing so as well.

     Each person lives out of two capacities, then: a human being as such, but also as a member of society, or a citizen. The beliefs we adhere to in our capacity as members of the larger society do not get to the heart of truth. The beliefs grounding societies are not intended to. The nature of social and political life is such that opinions held in common must and always in fact do remain on the surface of things. This is as it has to be, for society could not function if each of us as members of society; as citizens, were continually questioning our commonly held beliefs. The movement of the 1960's failed to grasp this. Although it would not be practical to habitually question our beliefs as citizens, that is, in our capacity as members of a particular society with particular opinions about the good and bad, as noted above, we are not only members of a political society.  We are also persons, with the ability to reason and seek to discern the good and true. The question for us, then, is: does each of us as a person and not in our capacity as a member of a group always also have to remain on the surface of things in order to live well? While this "remaining on the surface" has its place in society as well as in politics, if we as single individuals care about the deep good; about our souls, if you will, then we will desire to respond to the call to go deeper. We must, that is, patiently and courageously habituate ourselves to a standard of truth much more rigorous than that which modern society prescribes, a standard never intended with the deepest good of the person in mind, but for the maintenance of political order and the attainment of the basic necessities of life.  This ethical and spiritual ideal - of going deeper and habitually questioning our opinions - is of course Socratic, but it is also quintessentially American as well. I would add that it is also Christian. For it is in the very nature of the truths of human existence, of philosophy and true religion, to remain elusive until the day we die. It is in sincerely seeking that we come into a relation to these truths, and only as such. This means that we are never to act or speak as if we have attained the deepest truths of human existence. Stated another way, this means we are to avoid conflating theology and political philosophy.

     I believe we Americans live with two paradoxes: On the one hand, we want to live truthfully as well as ethically. On the other hand, we have a strong need, indeed a willful desire to see our public, or political philosophy, as the peak of human thought as well as deeply moral. But political philosophy is not intended to attain a deep level of morality.  When we confuse the ends of true religion and spirituality with the ends of good political philosophy, we become susceptible to the temptation to define my good in terms of those structures in society whose purpose is the maintenance of social and political order and material well being. While these can properly be viewed as necessary to deeper spirituality and morality, they are not themselves to be defined as deeply spiritual and moral. Stated more simply, the fact that I live in a well-functioning political-economy is to be radically distinguished from the conditions which make my living deeply spiritual and moral. There is another temptation which comes with confusing the deepest ends of human existence with the conditions of order and material well being: Alongside viewing our political-economy in almost sacred terms, we Americans have a strong need to see ourselves as morally right and good. This subjective need too often wins out over a humility that is necessary if we are to continually seek to live truthfully and ethically. When we define our public, or political philospohy, as the peak of human development, we become less able and willing to acknowledge all sorts of limits . Not only does this stance cause a practical problem of facing up to and dealing with the limits of our own system. The belief that our political-economy and society has already attained the highest level of human development also keeps us collectively spiritually and morally immature. If we collectively feel we (already) have possession of the truth and that our political-economic system embodies it, we will experience ourselves as needing nothing else. (See my paper on the experience of need. ) We will feel ourselves to be self-sufficient. But if we are truly self-sufficient, then we have no need of being in relation to anything or anyone outside of us. This belief paradoxically distances us from what is most important: our true self, other people and God. A second and parallel paradox is the fact that we for the most part live richly in a material sense, but poorly in a spiritual and moral sense. This poverty, moreover, is not the kind praised in the tradition when we hear spoken of "spiritual poverty". Spiritual poverty is experienced when I am conscious that I need; that I am not, after all, self-sufficient. The blameworthy form of poverty occurs, paradoxically, when my feeling that I need nothing results in my ceasing to seek to relate to myself, others and God in any rigorous manner. A good indicator of our spiritual condition, in my view, is the quality of our relations to others. A question which can be utilized as a kind of practical test is: How honest are we with and towards others we claim to be close to in our lives, and relatedly, how truly accepting are we of, firstly, ourselves, and secondly, others, in the context of these relationships? I take it for granted that most of us live on the surface even in the context of that area of our live where we take it for granted we are being most true and real: In our relationship to those whom we tell ourselves we are close to. This includes our true self.

     Aristotle was perhaps being partially ironic when he wrote that the happy man is the one who needs nothing. For while this indeed is a sign of the materially wealthy man, it is simultaneously the sign of the spiritually impoverished man defined as he who feels he needs nothing and no one. Being able to hold this belief about myself is a stance that our culture praises, the most influential on our stance-making being Emerson's essay "Self Reliance". The stance that I ought not need anyone is one of the more significant examples of a commonly held belief which keeps us at the surface of things and, if felt to be a virtue, blocks us from living spiritually richer lives. If I a) hold the belief that it is good to become independent in the sense just spoken of, and then I b) pursue and subjectively attain a significant degree of this independence, I may come to experience myself as in need of nothing and no one. I am then less rather than more likely to seek to be in honest relation to myself and others. If on the other hand I courageously and humbly remain open to the reality of my own limits; my own deep need, I will be more likely to seek to develop relationships to what Socrates has called "the most important things" in life.   One of the basic themes of this site is that our ambiguous relation to the true highest good owes to the assumption that modernity is unambiguously good for us. Where pre-modern culture acknowledged limits and human need, modern culture in general and American in particular cultivates the stance; the judgment that limits and need are bad and thus to be avoided.

     I hold the working assumption that most of us Americans are, in our heart of hearts, modern through and through. What I am interested in is not any intellectual ideas we hold about modernity. Rather, I am interested in the fact that we often believe at a pre-conscious level that modernity will lead us to what is deeply good for us, in spite of the fact that modern political philosophy consciously rejects this aim. In other words, I am interested in the judgment we make about everything that comes as a product of modernity, for it is this judgment more than any intellectual notions we have about it that impacts the decisions and choices we make. Because the underlying premises of our society are not intended to cultivate the deep good for us as persons, when we make decisions in our lives assuming that they are, we at most remain "on the surface" of things, or worse, harmfully affect our very own selves; our souls.

     Paradoxically, in defining ourselves as modern, we tend to assume that we have a kind and degree of insight into the truth of human existence nowhere else attained by man. Part of the self-definition for us as modern people is to ignore or heavily discount opinions which are "not modern", read by us as "anything non-American".  What I am suggesting is that there is a very fine line for the American mind at the level of felt judgment between a) modernity and b) American. The assumption that we have a degree of insight into the truth that sets itself apart from all other insights can tend to have the practical effect of blocking us from seeing any truth in insights gained by others. This allows us to feel self-sufficient in the intellectual realm, and it has an effect similar to the desire for independence in the realm of relationships. It cuts us off from seeking truth in any ethically serious way. The logic of the belief that we already have the truth is that we have no real need to seek it, when it is the activity of continual seeking where we find a lived moral and intellectual integrity.

     The problem with assuming that modernity has brought us to the highest level of insight and acheivement possible to man is that the modern mind on the whole seeks to objectively understand and describe reality. Knowledge of the physical world and of man treated as part of that world is the goal, not the cultivation of living well, at least not in any spiritual or moral sense of the term "well".  A practical question we face today as concrete individuals is:  Where are we to find the source of living well if we do decide we want to live life on qualitatively better terms that those offered us by modernity? To critique modernity is not to say that it is bad, but simply that as persons we need something qualitatively distinct from what it has to offer us. In short, the thinkers who founded modern society often glossed over the distinction between the necessary conditions of life - e.g. economic well being and political stability - and higher ends of human life which are spiritual and moral in nature. To affirm the former never automatically brings about the latter, although we ought keep in mind that negating the former will almost always make the attainment of the latter harder, a point self-described radicals tend not to grasp. While the American model has the strength of making it easier for us to attain the necessities of bodily life, its weakness is that it glosses over the fact that the human person has a moral and spiritual dimension that is not well served when the goals of efficiency and order are the only ones we allow ourselves to talk about in the public space.  I believe we are beginning to see more clearly the unaccounted for costs we have been accruing by living for so long now as if our ultimate human purpose was to maximize our economic efficiency and fit into the needed mechanisms of society. We humans are not supposed to relate to the cosmos in the same way physical objects are related to the physical realm, this realm the original inspiration for the foundation of our political-economy as a system.  When we view ourselves as as if we are morally and spiritually void, objects in the physical world, we disable ourselves from 'accessing' or relating to what matters most. We treat ourselves as objects to be 'pushed around', rather than subjects who can think and discern the good from the bad; the better from the worse and live and act accordingly.

     Today we are often, individually as well as collectively, like a computer which grinds its hard disk because its drive is broken. We "grind" and remain in a practical and spiritual morass because, in relying almost exclusively for our private and public decision making on modern philosophical assumptions, we as individuals who are also members of a society no longer do what Plato told us was essential to a good life: actively seek the good. This "good" in a Platonic sense is qualitatively distinct from any object we merely gain objective knowledge of. This good is something that, when we relate to it in a certain qualitatively distinct way, affects the way we live, first individually and then social-politically. The good is not something we ultimately understand, in the way we understand phenomena in the physical world. This is one of the key insights Kant has developed in greater depth than any other thinker. To say that we do not access or relate to objects (German: Objekts) of ultimate importance with the use of empirical knowledge is not to conclude, as we often do, that we can gain no insight into these objects or how to properly and adequately relate to them. For that, the great spiritual traditions can teach us much. Rather, it is to emphasize that we get ourselves off track spiritually, morally and intellectually, as it were, if we live our lives on the basis of the assumptions that a) ultimate reality is knowable in the way gravity or electricity is knowable; b) that human beings are and should be treated like objects controlled by gravity or more generally, physical laws; c) that our primary task is to prove ultimate reality conceived along the lines of the physical sciences and demonstrate epistemic certitude of this reality. Our task today is not to come up with arguments we must theoretically prove to be right before we act on them, but to discern practically better decisions from practically worse decisions and act accordingly.

        A second area I focus on is more explicitly political in nature: As a site that I update from time to time, I will be attempting to persuade readers to consider a particular aspect of the American mind which has the the two-fold effect of a) bringing us to believe that we are isolated individuals and essentially must make it on our own in the world, resulting in b) an inability or at least great difficulty imagining how together, we concrete individuals who make this society up today can have a practically beneficial effect on our economic and political situation. This second theme is less spiritual in nature and more mundane, if you will. From the perspective of political philosophy, which aims to grasp the whole, this mundane realm is no less important than the spiritual and moral realm, for it comes prior to it in time if not importance.

Terence Hoyt
New Orleans, July 4, 2006

Email: thoyt@practicalphilosophy.net