Sometimes the Man Of God can be found tying a physicist to a chair to beat a confession from his lips, in the name of God.
Sometimes, the Man of Progress can be found tying a physicist to a chair to beat a confession from his lips, in the name of Man.
Perhaps human ignorance is the rule, not the exception. If true, then all of us, no matter what we know, nor how much truth we seek, shall always be prone to error. Being men, we shall always be full of temptations.
Perhaps each of us is corruptible, often through our strengths. Maybe we have something like a storage locker of childhood memories and experiences, favored principles and outsourced thoughts. Maybe over time this mass settles into something like a reef. I picture a few shafts of sunlight making their way down to the reef; schools of fish foraging for food there in the currents, but…you know what I mean.
The reef becomes more sterile as we age.
Something I’m pretty sure is true: Beneath the liberal idealist/secular humanist, sometimes of exemplary moral character, is an activist. Beneath the more principled activists (sometimes of admirable/exemplary character), are the less principled agitators. Amongst the less principled agitators (tactically smart and reactive), tend to be pools of ignorance; a frenzy of manipulated actions and group dynamics (money, propaganda, political machinists etc). Amongst the less-principled agitators tend to be radicals, terrorists, and a few intellectuals. Unfortunately, some people just want to watch the world burn.
Every new thing isn’t a good thing.
As to the truth/knowledge claims of many secular humanists/liberal idealists: I believe (challenge me) we are coming to understand more of how the brain/mind works by peering inside, much as X-rays revolutionized areas of medicine a century ago (no miracles, just steady and sometimes remarkable progress). This new knowledge won’t justify many claims of progressive political actors, seeking the same old things: Money, power, influence and the power to guide public sentiment.
Space-science is also an expanding frontier (gathering new data to come up with new hypotheses (the JWST telescope, let’s build one on the moon), despite the current waste, bureaucratic rot and hubris at NASA.
Join me in defending the free-thinker and principled naturalist/scientist against the latest committee meeting; the cruel opportunism of flatterers and Luddites and against the shifting political winds. He might have discovered a new natural law, or he might be a crackpot.
But, then, consider joining me to defend the exemplary Man Of God. Not only does such a man find himself amongst activists, agitators, radicals and power-seekers within the Church, but increasingly finds himself working against public sentiment outside the Church. If such a man defends speech and the minority protections found within Constitutional Law….we’ll need it. He might be a man of wisdom and character, or he might just be a crackpot.
But, hell, maybe I’m wrong.
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Full entry here.
Of course, there are other ways to think about freedom, as the entry suggests:
‘The two sides identified by Berlin disagree over which of two different concepts best deserves the name of ‘liberty’. Does this fact not denote the presence of some more basic agreementbetween the two sides? How, after all, could they see their disagreement as one about the definition of liberty if they did not think of themselves as in some sense talking about the same thing? In an influential article, the American legal philosopher Gerald MacCallum (1967) put forward the following answer: there is in fact only one basic concept of freedom, on which both sides in the debate converge. What the so-called negative and positive theorists disagree about is how this single concept of freedom should be interpreted. Indeed, in MacCallum’s view, there are a great many different possible interpretations of freedom, and it is only Berlin’s artificial dichotomy that has led us to think in terms of there being two.’
So perhaps, as a product of his times, Berlin needed reasons to explain how the Soviets could justify taking away individual liberties in the name of abstract freedom.
‘MacCallum defines the basic concept of freedom — the concept on which everyone agrees — as follows: a subject, or agent, is free from certain constraints, or preventing conditions, to do or become certain things. Freedom is therefore a triadic relation — that is, a relation between three things: an agent, certain preventing conditions, and certain doings or becomings of the agent. Any statement about freedom or unfreedom can be translated into a statement of the above form by specifying what is free or unfree, from what it is free or unfree, and what it is free or unfree to do or become. Any claim about the presence or absence of freedom in a given situation will therefore make certain assumptions about what counts as an agent, what counts as a constraint or limitation on freedom, and what counts as a purpose that the agent can be described as either free or unfree to carry out.’
Any thoughts and comments are welcome. From the last paragraph:
‘What perhaps remains of the distinction is a rough categorization of the various interpretations of freedom that serves to indicate their degree of fit with the classical liberal tradition. There is indeed a certain family resemblance between the conceptions that are normally seen as falling on one or the other side of Berlin’s divide, and one of the decisive factors in determining this family resemblance is the theorist’s degree of concern with the notion of the self. Those on the ‘positive’ side see questions about the nature and sources of a person’s beliefs, desires and values as relevant in determining that person’s freedom, whereas those on the ‘negative’ side, being more faithful to the classical liberal tradition, tend to consider the raising of such questions as in some way indicating a propensity to violate the agent’s dignity or integrity. One side takes a positive interest in the agent’s beliefs, desires and values, while the other recommends that we avoid doing so.’
I almost always recommend avoiding doing so in the pursuit of liberty.
The classical liberal tradition…looking for classical liberals in the postmodern wilderness: Isaiah Berlin’s negative liberty: A Few Thoughts On Isaiah Berlin’s “Two Concepts Of Liberty”… From George Monbiot: ‘How Freedom Became Tyranny’…Looking to supplant religion as moral source for the laws: From The Reason Archives: ‘Discussing Disgust’ Julian Sanchez Interviews Martha Nussbaum.New liberty away from Hobbes?: From Public Reason: A Discussion Of Gerald Gaus’s Book ‘The Order of Public Reason: A Theory of Freedom And Morality In A Diverse And Bounded World’…Richard Rorty tried to tie postmodernism and trendy leftist solidarity to liberalism, but wasn’t exactly classically liberal: Repost: Another Take On J.S. Mill From “Liberal England”