[lbo-talk] nice man

Ted Winslow egwinslow at rogers.com
Thu Apr 5 11:26:20 PDT 2007


Doug asked:


> What's the context of that? With "thinks and feels rightly," does JMK
> mean people like him?

The context is a largely complimentary (some of this needing to be taken with a large grain of salt given claims he makes elsewhere about Hayek's "values") letter to Hayek about The Road to Serfdom.

Yes he does, but he also acknowledges personal deficiencies in the context of emphasizing the strongly anchored irrationality he claims is the most difficult to overcome obstacle in the way of actualizing a capacity to think and feel rightly. He claims elsewhere that it's this strongly anchored irrationality that's expressed in the Bedlamite aspects of Hayek's thinking and feeling (and of Newton's).

"I still suffer incurably from attributing an unreal rationality to other people's feelings and behaviour (and doubtless to my own, too). There is one small but extraordinarily silly manifestation of this absurd idea of what is 'normal', namely the impulse to protest - to write a letter to The Times, call a meeting in the Guildhall, subscribe to some fund when my presuppositions as to what is 'normal' are not fulfilled. I behave as if there really existed some authority or standard to which I can successfully appeal if I shout loud enough - perhaps it is some hereditary vestige of a belief in the efficacy of prayer.” Collected Writings, vol. X, p. 448

Ted



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