No Democratic Perfection in the Birth of the USA
‘A Constitutional Counterfactual’, FreedomDemocrats, 1st December, 2009.I’ve linked with this item from the FreedomDemocrats, a free market libertarian group within the US Democratic Party, because...
View ArticleAcademic Peer Review: the Reality Exposed
Another Downfall parody on YouTube, but a great one. Hitler has to deal with a third reviewer of the paper he submitted to an academic journal, and goes nuts in the bunker.Hat tip, Michael Munger’s...
View ArticleMe on Montesquieu at LiberalVision
My summary of The Spirit of the Laws (1748), by Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1748). Liberal Vision, 3rd December.Main points:The impossible ideal of democratic republicanism based on...
View ArticleStyle, Hermeneutics, Speech; Ethics & Politics in Foucault
Some intermediate thoughts on working I’m doing on ethics and politics in Foucault. First.Something really obvious struck me earlier today, which is that The Hermeneutics of the Subjects , the book...
View ArticleMe on Mises’ Liberalism at LiberalVision and some supplementary comments
Click here to see my introduction to Ludwig von Mises and summary of Liberalism.The account of Mises largely avoids what I find most dubious in Mises, apart from a suggestion that he is too harsh on...
View ArticleFoucault: Genealogy, Hermeneutics, Ethics, Sexuality
Looking at History of Sexuality II (The Use of Pleasure) and III (The Care of the Self), as I have been over the last few weeks, I need to modify something I posted on 10th December about Foucault’s...
View ArticleAgonism and Virtue in Foucault’s Ethics
I’m looking at Foucault’s work on antique ethics in History of Sexuality, as an agonistic virtue ethics. It is virtue ethics, because it is an ethics of flourishing, in which human excellence is taken...
View ArticleFoucault, Virtue, Second Nature, Scepticism
John McDowell suggests that Aristotle’s ethics are a forerunner of second nature in German Idealism, the nature that comes from social existence( Mind and World, Lecture IV, which should be compared...
View ArticleFree Market Libertarians and Left Egalitarians Agree on Third World Poor
Some links on how egalitarian left moral and political philosophers concerned with Third World poverty and under development can find themselves in agreement with free market libertarians. Peter...
View ArticleKierkegaard, Wittgenstein, Paradox
I haven’t been blogging for months. One reason is that I’ve been writing a paper about the philosophy of paradox in Søren Kierkegaard and Ludwig Wittgenstein. It looks like it will be published later...
View ArticleKierkegaaard's Ambiguous Virtue Ethics
Kierkegaard is sometimes understood to be a virtue ethics theorist, that is he has a view of ethics derived from Aristotle’s discussion of excellence, habits and reflection in relation to action in a...
View ArticleKierkegaaard's Ambiguous Virtue Ethics
Kierkegaard is sometimes understood to be a virtue ethics theorist, that is he has a view of ethics derived from Aristotle’s discussion of excellence, habits and reflection in relation to action in a...
View ArticleProgress of Democracy in South and East Asia
Let’s demolish a widely held claim, sometimes made by people who should really know better.The main claim: East Asia is not democratisingSub-claim 1: Market economies are progressing in East Asia, so...
View ArticleNietzsche on the Neighbour; Hume on Sympathy
It seems to me that Nietzsche’s comments on the neighbour could be taken as comments on Hume’s view of sympathy in moral philosophy. I have placed a shortened version of aphorism 146 from Dawn at the...
View ArticleNietzsche and Aristotle on Gods, Humans, and Beasts
Yesterday’s post looked at Nietzsche’s relation to Hume’s view of sympathy through his comments on the Neighbour in Dawn 146. Altruism is an underlying issue there. We could take Nietzsche as a...
View ArticleNietzsche from Sympathy to Hospitality
A third post on Dawn/Daybreak (Mörgenrothe), referring to 174. Last few sentences of 174 can be found at the bottom of this post. I74 contains linked criticisms of sympathy and commercial society,...
View ArticleLink to TV Discussion of Adam Smith
C-Span (USA) discussion of Adam Smith’s economics and ethicsSamuel Fleischacker, left-liberal political philosopher, and Russ Roberts, free-market libertarian economist, discuss Adam Smith’s economics...
View ArticleNietzsche's Virtues
More general comments on Nietzsche’s ideas of virtues after some discussion in passages in Daybreak in recent posts. Concentrating on Daybreak, Gay Science, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which Nietzsche...
View ArticleDemocratic and Republican Moments in Nietzsche
One difficult and necessary discussion with regard to Nietzsche is his attitude to liberalism, democracy, and republicanism. To put it very briefly, there are just too many people with various...
View ArticleNietzsche's Republican Hero: Lazare Carnot
Daybreak, 167there is a a profound maxim worth laying to heart: ‘What matters is not people but things [quoted by Nietzsche in French]’. This maxim, is like him who spoke it, great, honest, simple and...
View ArticleNietzsche's Democratic Hero: Pericles
In Daybreak aphorism 168, Nietzsche is praising the historian Thucydides, author of the Peloponnesian War, an account of the 30 years war between Athens and Sparta. He refers to Thucydides as the...
View ArticleMax Weber on Political Liberalism
I’ve written about liberal political thought in Max Weber for LiberalVision recently.Points covered includeHis movement from conservatism to liberalismThe economic and social conditions of...
View ArticleMax Weber on Value Conflicts: Better than Berlin
The sociologist Max Weber had some important things to say about value conflict and value pluralism, that is the inevitably of many ethical values and conflicts between them. Go here and here for Weber...
View ArticleThis blog is finished. Go to Barry Stocker's Weblog for more blogging
This blog is finished. Go to Barry Stocker's Weblog for more blogging
View ArticleNew Blog: Barry Stocker Blog
No more posting on this blog except to say I now have a new blogBarry Stocker BlogNo more posts and no moderation of comments on this blog.Other places I have blogged are also now dead.Only blogging at...
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