>> This is what baffles me about Brian's thought:
> he begins with an anti-individualist premise
>
> I am not anti-individualist. What I believe in
> is that there is no-self. An important distinction
> exists between these two positions. You have
> made this observation before and I always feel as
> if you are proposing that the concept of
> anti-individualism is the equivalent of the Buddhist
> concept of no-self. You bring bafflement upon
> yourself when you do this.
>
It sure is baffling, alright! ;-) Perhaps you should explain what "no- self" means? I suppose I could understand this whole thing in a Buddhist context of Gautama's individualistic flight from the world!! ( 1/2 ;-) -- the 1/2 serious part: I have to hunt it up, but there is some interesting alternative views in both Sankara's debates on samsara, as well as Heidegger's thoughts on thrown-ness, etc).
>> . . . but almost always ends with an obnoxious
> moralism which depends on a radical individualism
> for its validity.
>
> What is obnoxious about it? Or is all moralism
> obnoxious?
>
The point about people taking responsibility -- at worst its the go- to moral trope of the moderately (or better) literate right-wing(er). At best, it is highlighting a non-issue in a preachy manner. Isn't that obviously obnoxious -- not what you write, but what conceptual framework, judgement, and prescription, the term implies?
--ravi