[lbo-talk] A gem of a speech from Zoellick on socialists, anarchists, and anti-globo protesters

andie nachgeborenen andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com
Sat Jun 2 15:55:12 PDT 2007


Popper was right about a great deal, including in his theory of science (and I am no Popperian!). I really can't speak to his discussion of Plato, but while his treatment of Hegel in Enemies of the Open Society is ill-informed and lazy, probably because he treats Hegel as an antechamber of Marx, his critique of Marx is generally intelligent, informed, sympathetic, thoughtful, and generous.

Hobbes was not a Royalist per se but an enemy of civil war and armed violence. He was a believer in undivided sovereignty because he thought it was the only real alternative to civil and other war. He would have supported a Cromwellian Republic if he thought it could have imposed peace. He would have supported a Stalinist dictatorship, ditto. However, he was a fan of the bourgeois virtues of thrift, self-discipline, and gainseeking precisely because they gave a comparatively nonviolent outlet to the motivation of glory he saw as responsible for so much carnage. Recall that his opinions were formed not only during the English Civil War but also at the end of the Thirty Years War. Hobbes was basically for peace at any price. In lots of ways, understanding him in his times, it is hard to blame him even if one doesn't agree. The range of choices wasn't very good.

--- Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:


>
>
> james.irldaly at ntlworld.com wrote:
> >
> >> *****************
> >
> > So Karl Popper would say. But why was Plato's
> name put on Lenin's mausoleum? Marx did not belong
> to the sophistic tradition. The royalist Hobbes
> did. Sir Karl was a bourgeois wolf in proletarian
> sheep's clothing, crying crocodile tears over his
> prey (mixed metaphor intended -- it makes the image
> more Disneyesque).
>
> Well I can't answer re Lenin's tomb, but Marx was
> very protective of
> Aristotle, Plato, & Ricardo: _he_ could criticize
> them but was apt to
> snarl when others did. (Whitehead remarked, and I'm
> not sure Marx would
> have vigorously disagreed, that the history of
> western philosophy was a
> series of footnotes to plato.) As to Karl Popper --
> no one can be wrong
> about _everything_!
>
> Perhaps we have different perspectives on the
> Sophists: I certainly see
> the _whole_ "democratic" (rule of the people)
> tradition as flowing back
> to the Sophists, with their claim that Virtue could
> be taught: i.e.,
> that excellence was socially/historically grounded,
> not an inherent
> feature of select individuals. And one could argue
> that Hobbes's theory
> (materialist) was more important than his mere
> opinions (royalist).
>
> Carrol
>
> ___________________________________
>
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>

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