Rolling Political Philosophy Thread

lol ryan you should really read that sloterdijk 'critique'

i really should!

it's got fart jokes

sold

I just farted btw

i bought it as an undergraduate (god knows why or what i thought it was, i think i saw it in a barnes and noble) and it has been sitting on my shelf ever since.

fucker has a lotta pages, hope there are a lot of fart jokes

point taken that the academic left has theoretical reasons (which is imo a more cynical explanation than the ops) but i don't think that is what is animating the vast majority of the left who ime are coming from a more - idk - like sensational affect phenomenology. it is painful to see someone suffer, you want to do something to help with that, but most ppl* feel that "charity starts at home," so focusing on how yr responsible for their suffering is a neat way to bridge that gap.

* admittedly this resonates w/ me atm bc i've been reading about dolphin social groupings and the gombe chimpanzee war where i think these tribal loyalties are so crystalized

some about jerkin it too

haven't seen any about farting while jerkin it

but there are a lotta pages left

http://www.vice.com/read/undergrads-today-are-the-worst-a-tas-confession

find this weird though:

the reason why academics who engage in theory are so keen to denounce their "own" society is because its this gesture which enables their whole critical project in the first place

*the* reason? rather than academics who engage in theory living in ~the west~ and thus being first-party to their society's exploitations?

strikes me as sorta like "I pushed my car off a cliff for the excellent photo opportunity!"

sterl: accurate

who don't have the time of day for anyone who can't immediately process obtuse burns about Heidegger or whatever. Basically, professional philosophers are the worst people.

*the* reason? rather than academics who engage in theory living in ~the west~ and thus being first-party to their society's exploitations?

i think if you take "theory" to be a particular form of societal self-description then yeah distinguishing yourself from that society in order to describe it seems like a necessary move. i dont think this distinction has to be negative a la "denounce" but that's the way the particular tradition we're talking about often works. i think this form of theory from the start doesn't identify with western society--that's its whole raison d'etre!

a good example of a theorist who refused to do this and got all kinds of hell for it is richard rorty.

anyway, im dodging the question, which is why western academics are drawn to do this in the first place--but in rortyan terms think there's a good ethnocentric reason for that in koselleck! or "what is enlightenment?" even!

thanks for koselleck recommendation

Ryan I've read most of irony solidarity & contingency but I don't quite understand how rorty is more(?) ethnocentric?

Can u recommend a critique that deals w that?

sure: Rorty's own "On Ethnocentrism" in Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth. what i mean when i call him ethnocentric is that i think he's very forthright about his unwillingness to locate a place for critique outside of society...so the only to do is "draw a moral" (as he would put it) based on our cultural values as best we can seeing as it is impossible to locate ourselves outside of them and thus judge them from an "absolute." in turn, i think a very good critique of this ethnocentric position can be found in Tom Cohen's Anti-Mimesis. it's a thorny issue.

Rorty otm? as a complete outsider to "theory" I'm surprised they've staked out a position so at odds with Nietzsche; Rorty's view is by contrast straight out of Nietzsche. I should read Rorty (I loved his late sartorial style (blue pants e.g., church lady chic), my aspiration when I'm 80 or whatever)

Rorty's view is by contrast straight out of Nietzsche

a version of nietzsche, a version of wittgenstein, a version of heidegger

haven't read rorty in a long time (since undergrad days), should reread. it's a strange situation (or strange relation to philosopher): iirc i found him very congenial, almost too congenial, to my own thinking, intuitions, situation-- but maybe for that reason (unfairly) don't take him or read him seriously enough. funny, if i were asked to pick philosopher closest to my own views, rorty would be one of those to come to mind-- yet feel great disengagement from him. it's like he articulates in plain language metaphysical situation as i see it-- but there's something too easy, too readable, too facile, disappointing about his overall philosophy/ response (though it's not like i've read anything more convincing, either). like lol he's not tortured & complicated & mystifying enough. (and offers v little help in tackling thorny political problems, though i don't necessarily expect that from a philosopher.)

his appeal to/ avowal of 'ethnocentrism' (along with its metaphysical ungroundedness) is compelling (hits close to home for me), yet ultimately seems simplistic

one great thing about rorty is how seriously he takes "literature" (and relation of philosophy & literature), though iirc his literary readings are not particularly profound

i <3 stanley cavell more

euler otm about his style. attended a talk once; very charming witty man.

like lol he's not tortured & complicated & mystifying enough. (and offers v little help in tackling thorny political problems, though i don't necessarily expect that from a philosopher.)

my own take on rorty (in my forthcoming book!) piggyback's off cohen's argument to argue something not terribly far from this. more or less that while he's otm about the conditions of our thinking his appeal to ethnocentrism is too straightforward because that space rests on a logic of exclusion to which it remains blind. that's the short version, but you sorta see the outcome of this when he dismisses the likes of foucault and other european thinkers as "private ironists" with little useful to say about the social space.

in any case, rorty is a uniquely useful thinker because he's a congenitally clear one, and he's willing to following his argument through to it's logically extreme conclusion. i used to not like his thought very much, but his unfrozen caveman american philosopher routine has grown on me a lot.

sorry for garbled posts. i think i am ever so slightly dyslexic and when i write too fast it comes out weird--hopefully the meaning can be inferred!

agree with your posts. would be v interested to read your book!

his unfrozen caveman american philosopher routine

lol (& otm)

that is, am v interested; would read

ok here's my question:

in the United States, despite some exceptions, the left and right are pretty well understood. the right-wing is in favor of less government regulation and involvement in the market (at least ideologically, let's put aside whether right-wing capitalism is actually as govt hands-off as it purports to be), and more government involvement in social and foreign affairs issues. by contrast the left, generally speaking, is against government involvement in social and foreign affairs but in favor of more government involvement in the economy. obv this very general statement has a lot of holes in it- eg what do you do w/ libertarians? do these ideologies really correspond to the actual policies promoted by different political groups that self-identify as right or left-wing, etc. so my question is really on the most superficial level - is it incidental that the two primary methods of self-identification have lined up this way? is there an alternate reality where the two parties are more consistent on issues of govt involvement (one party against govt involvement in the economy, foreign affairs, social issues, and one party pro govt involvement in all the above), or that they align differently? or are there good reasons why, in the US at the very least, history has lined them up in this particular configuration?

have-lots vs have not-so-muches

what does that mean? i don't understand how it answers my question.

is your question, are there good reasons for ~history~

because

are there good reasons to have these particular facets bundled together like this (like a consistent ideology motivating each constellation of ideas) or is it an accident of history

there's an obvious power bloc in Western democracies whose interests align with having as little as possible government interference in the economy and regulation of business - the source of their wealth and power is directly tied up with the development of government by representative democracy.

why this same group favours more expansionist foreign policy = trade, resources, overseas markets

And domestic social interference? Doesn't seem like a good fit for unbridled capitalism

one wants ones workers well-behaved, sober and fit for duty.

otoh tho we see US corporations more-or-less lining up behind a progressive social agenda vis-a-vis diversity issues

to some extents tho these are facts of history - 18th century capitalism was not necessarily the friend of free markets for example

there's a distinct split in right wing parties across the West between a libertarian and a paternalist wing now

I don't really know about history in US, but in Denmark, the main right-wing party is called Venstre, which means 'The Left'. They were the lefties, the radicals, the freedom-demanding bourgeoisie, against the conservative monarchist right, called simply Konservative. Of course, with the workers party, Socialdemokraterne, everything switched left.

But back then, it kinda alligned: The Left, the bourgeoisie, was for free markets, and were against censorship, religion, etc. The Right was monarchistic, clerical, national, etc.

that alignment makes more natural sense to me - it's more internally consistent

similar situation in England, made slightly more fraught by having a constitutional monarch, which meant both original parties supported a version of royalty

today's right wing economic orthodoxy is a fairly recent development compared to the parties that have adopted it

there's an obvious power bloc in Western democracies whose interests align with having as little as possible government interference in the economy and regulation of business - the source of their wealth and power is directly tied up with the development of government by representative democracy.

why do poor people vote for right wing parties then? plz don't say false consciousness

false consciousness

lol

maybe bc wealth is a requirement for becoming cosmopolitan - affording rent/ownership in a big city, trips to other parts of the world, engagement w/ business in other countries, etc - whereas there is no similar mechanism for the poor to move from tribal/nationalism/protectionism?

i don't like simple false consciousness arguments, but i think there are complex arguments to account for people failing to act in their own best interests

also i think the best interests argument is often very limited? it generally means best economic interests but there's no reason to think that humans are always more motivated by economic success than by religious beliefs. like when obama made the famous "clinging to arms + bible" comment, he was suggesting that they only find value in those things bc they aren't finding value from participation in the economy. but i think there are lots of reasons to believe that ppl are motivated by more than how much money they're making.

sure, but even in the economic sphere there's plenty of examples of "i will spend this money on having fun tonight even tho i know i'm going to need it to get thru the rest of the month"

long term thinking and big picture thinking are probly not natural human skills on the whole

It has a lot to do with social standing, I think. It has a lot to do with cultural identity, with group identity. It's like that old joke, which I witnessed in person once: When a holocaust survivor, a German-American university teacher, was asked if he wanted to be called German, American or Jewish, he answered: 'Professor.' He had a professional identity, which trumped his cultural one.

Of course, the nobility, the old Right, never had professional identities, that was the entire point, that they had their power from their personal, familial, historical identities. For the bourgeoisie, professional identity can take over. For the working classes, it becomes much harder, especially once the value of labor becomes so immensely devalued as it has been over the last decades.

So yeah, cultural, 'moral' values is important to old money and no money alike.

interesting question which i've thought about but don't have good answer to
do think political/ideological constellations (& their relationship to parties) change, reorganize, & are to significant extent historically contingent (e.g. affected by events)

but it's dense, many-stranded historical contingency, which makes those constellations, looked at synchronically, seem overdetermined (when genealogical investigation wd show it's not)
elements diverging & coalescing for different reasons at different times
interesting to trace, for example, what happened over time to constellation 'classical liberal'

btw not sure yr (admittedly superficial) characterization of current left/right in america (of course diff in diff countries) is quite accurate, in particular re less/more government involvement in 'social' affairs

e.g. an nra supporter, concerned about religious liberty, who wants option of home-schooling kids, is (in significant respect) not for more but less government involvement in 'social' sphere
maybe as over time mainstream culture & gov't has become more 'progressive'; so social conservatives wd seek or feel more of an alliance with libertarians (though of course it's uneasy tense relationship)

alliances/coalitions seem more like products of 2 party systems where there's little mileage in forming a breakaway party than in more plural proprortionally representative systems

well... except I think parliamentary systems see a lot of the same alliances. At least, I think so. UK ILXORs, am I wrong?