Responsibility

JKSCHW at aol.com JKSCHW at aol.com
Tue Jan 25 19:01:09 PST 2000


In a message dated 00-01-25 16:14:02 EST, you write:

<< Anyway. H is not a major

> player, in moral philosophy much as I like the Conservatism book.

>

>Sam: That certainly isn't because of Honderich's abilities as a philosopher

and scholar.

He's able enough, certainly. But he lacks the sort of vision that G.A. Cohen has, much less Rawls or Nozick.


> He is not content with the neo-pragmatist-Edmund

Burke view that "this is the way we talk" or "this is the way we have

always done things so this is the way we are going to do it" especially

when comes to really serious things like politics.

Not all of us neopragmatists think that, of course. One thing abourt pragmatism is that _everything_ is up for grabs.


> Scruton in his

review of conservatism said "it had the tone of self-righteousness that

gave rise to movements like the Khmer Rouge."

Yeah, well. look who's talking, Mr. "Conservatism isn't about liberty, it's about authority."

> Your view (Justin) that philosophy or theory broadly speaking does not

and cannot change the world is a bit cynical.

Where you get that? I certainlly said nothing of the sort. I was talkinga bout moral philosophy, not theory in general. And I did not say "cannot"; I said that moral theory rarely changes minds or makes people better, any more than philosophy of science discovers truths about the world. Rather, moral theory offers insights into truths about morality, or anyway into the consequences of certain moral propositions, but such truths and consequences rarely if ever change minds by themselves.


> I don't think the right

wing would be where it is today if weren't for the efforts of their very

best intellectuals like Nozick, Hayek et.al.

Sure. And if Nozick and Hayelk wasa ll they had, they'd be where we are.


> One of the problems is that

left intellectuals are deliberately excluded from the opinion forming

press as well as the influential academic journals.

"The ruling ideas of the epoch are the idaes of the ruling class," I recall reading somewhere. In my experience, though, I will say that high quality left wing stiff can get published in the top academic journals. The general point is valid.


> Even John Rawls doesn't get reviewed in

the popular press but that is part of the anti intellectualism of

American culture.

Well, Rawls is really hard. Anyway, no philosophy gets that kind of review, never mind in the popular press, but in the quality general intellectual reader press in America, or virtually none.

> Rawls doesn't discuss retribution much but he clearly believes in

desert:

"It would be far better if the acts proscribed by penal statues were

never done. Thus a propensity to commit such acts is a mark of bad

character, and in a just society legal punishments will fall upon those

who display these faults." (ToJ 315,1st ed.)

This view is in line with New Right-individualist thinking.

Yeah, well, I agree with it, new right individualist me, although I'd say, and I think R would too on reflection, that bad acts may be deserving of legal punishment, but bad character cannot be, however much it may be deserving of contempt and ostracism.

--jks



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