Ethical foundations of the left

Kenneth MacKendrick kenneth.mackendrick at utoronto.ca
Sat Jul 28 11:05:25 PDT 2001


At 12:42 AM 7/28/01 -0700, you wrote:


>So what would an H. analysis of the Bonn conference on Greenhouse
>mitigation look like; if he were the Phil Jackson giving a half-time
>speech to the participants about their communicative strategies, what
>would he say? There's a situation that provides a robust 'test case'
>and it's all on video. Easy for a CA ethnography of scientific
>discourse.....

He would express his solidarity with an 'ethics of sympathy' but argue that our intuitions cannot guide us into rational decision making. He would point out the political importance of it all, discuss a few examples of contemporary environmental problems, probably mention Walter Benjamin and Schelling, and criticize the 'mystical' or 'new-age' obscurantist aspects of the Green Party in Germany. It would a firm but fair analysis - too liberal for the Marxists, too theoretical for the Greens, too rhetorical for the activists, and too stuffy and conservative for the 'youth of today.'

a guess, ken



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