1. Why bother? (yours) 2. So what? If nothing matters, why does that matter either?
I huess I am an existentialist because I see no non-question-begging way of moving someone from 1 to 2. Nietzsche tried to do this by deploying a range of rhetorical strategies he called genealogy and other tricks and gimmicks.
However, I won't work for nothing -- sorry Carrol, I like you but if you want our own personal philosopher you'll have to pay going rates, which are about $50K a year, pretty cheap. I will bill hourly as well. Call m a sophist if you like, but I never pretended to be Socrates, and like the Joker in the new Batman I think that if you are good at something you don't do it for free.
Jokes aside, you miss the point. I do no say:
1. Progress is inevitable or 2. Progress is irreversible or 3. Progress is unqualifiedly good or 4. he history of the last 300-400 years has been one of unqualified progress or 5. Things are getting better and better ever day in every way
Counterexamples are easily supplied. I mentioned Auschwitz to Jenny.
I'm nor Pollyanna or Comte. But I insist
1. There has been progress that's been good, quite a lot of it. The widespread eradication of everything on my original list is jut an unqualified good. 2. The rational only way we have of guessing what to do is to make predictions based on our revisable conception of the way he world works and the available data. We might be wrong, but we're no blinder than anyone else about anything. Even Nietzsche thought you could do this he made some prediction, some came true, others didn't.
It's only if you need a crystal ball that will guarantee you answers, preferably happy one, that you think this is a problem.
--- On Fri, 11/7/08, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> From: Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Down with progress(Was Re: Obama picks . . . .)(
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Friday, November 7, 2008, 10:09 AM
> This thread is evoking knee-jerk responses which rather than
> confront
> the theoretical problem, the problem of explaining
> historical change,
> instead plunge into an orgy of empirical data.
>
> By putting "progress" in scare quotes Doug admits
> that what he is
> writing has nothing whatever to do with the question I
> raised. And if he
> had not put it in scare quotes he would have obviously been
> assuming
> what is to be demonstrated.
>
> I was serious in posting that poem by Arnold. As far as I
> can see both
> Andie and Doug are merely repeating the argument of that
> poem. All we
> have to do is stick to the path and all will be well.
>
> There is no path. That is an illusion from extrapolating
> the events of a
> few centuries to all of hisoty, past and present.
> Particular
> imporvements tell us nothing about historical patterns.
> Neither does the
> terrifying death rate in Africa tell us anything about
> historical
> patterns.
>
> Carrol
>
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