29 ideas
| 20109 | Hegel inserted society and history between the God-world, man-nature, man-being binary pairs [Hegel, by Safranski] |
| Full Idea: Before Hegel, people thought in binary oppositions of God and the world, man and nature, man and being. After Hegel an intervening world of society and history was inserted between these pairs. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Introduction to the Philosophy of History [1840]) by Rüdiger Safranski - Nietzsche: a philosophical biography 05 | |
| A reaction: This is what Popper later called 'World Three'. This might be seen as the start of what we islanders call 'continental' philosophy, which we have largely ignored. Analytic philosophy only discovered this through philosophy of language. |
| 23274 | World history has no room for happiness [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: World history is not the place for happiness. Periods of happiness are empty pages in history. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Introduction to the Philosophy of History [1840], 3) | |
| A reaction: Clearly, Hegel thinks the progress of world history is much more important than happiness. This idea gives backing to those who don't care much about the casualties on either side in a major war. |
| 23275 | The state of nature is one of untamed brutality [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The 'state of nature' is not an ideal condition, but a condition of injustice, of violence, of untamed natural drives, inhuman acts and emotions. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Introduction to the Philosophy of History [1840], 3) | |
| A reaction: He agrees with Hobbes, and disagrees with Rousseau. Hobbes's solution is authoritarian monarchy, but Hegel's solution is the unified and focused state, in which freedom can be realised. |
| 23276 | The soul of the people is an organisation of its members which produces an essential unity [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The soul [of the people] exists only insofar as it is an organisation of its members, which - by taking itself together in its simple unity - produce the soul. Thus the people is one individuality in its essence. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Introduction to the Philosophy of History [1840], 3) | |
| A reaction: Hegel is seen (e.g. by Charles Taylor) as the ancestor of a rather attractive communitarianism, but I think Popper is more accurate in seeing him as the first stage of modern totalitarianism. The people seen as one individual terrifies me. |
| 23125 | Most good social changes are incremental, rather than revolutionary [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: More permanent positive social change is made incrementally rather than by revolutionary transformation. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1) | |
| A reaction: This is the standard liberal response to revolution. Revolutionaries obviously consider such a claim to be very naïve, and a failure to grasp how deep the changes need to go. |
| 23126 | Conservatives often want peace, prosperity and tolerance, but not social fairness [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Many conservatives want their world to be peaceful, properous, and pluralist, just as liberals do, but they don't particularly care that it be fair. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1) | |
| A reaction: Every conservative will have a sense of what is fair (such as appropriate punishments, and keeping of contracts), but they are more inclined to think that fairness must be fought for by individuals, not imposed by governments. |
| 23132 | Conservatives believe obedience and rank are essential to social order [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The idea that the appearance of submission and obedience and rank are essential to order is at the heart of the conservative ideal. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2) | |
| A reaction: [He has just quoted Edmund Burke writing of Marie Antoinette] I once heard Richard Hare say that he thought social order would be best modelled on the army. A colleague once told me that obedience is a prime duty of a school teacher. |
| 23128 | The opposite of liberalism is dogmatism [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The opposite of liberalism is not conservatism but dogmatism. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1) | |
| A reaction: Nice. It pinpoints the liberal opposition to both extremes of normal politics. It might make anarchists their allies, though! |
| 23142 | People are fallible, so liberalism tries to distribute power [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Liberalism makes the idea of fallibility into a political practice by trying not to have too much power concentrated in one place or part of the system. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: There is a potential inefficiency and failure to focus on key goals implicit in this aim. It may be a good idea for a peacetime democracy, but a terrible idea for a wartime army. To stop corruption, don't let anyone do anything? |
| 23143 | Liberals have tried very hard to build a conscience into their institutions [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: What liberalism can say on its own behalf is that no system of power in human history has tried harder to insert a corrective conscience into its institutions. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: What we are learning in recent years is that wonderful liberal institutions can be quietly eroded by the forces of darkness, once those forces have sufficient control of the media to hide what they are doing. The 'rule of law' is wobbling. |
| 23141 | Left-wingers are inconsistent in their essentialist descriptions of social groups [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: A criticism of the left is that it is essentialist at some moments, and wildly anti-essentialist at others. We can call this opportunistic essentialism. Gender is fluid - except for transgender kids. Race is a construction - except for white races. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Interesting. Gopnik's solution seems to be to abandon all social essentialism as wicked. In this context he is probably right, but I am firmly committed to the idea that many entities in the world have essential natures. 'Bourgeois'. |
| 23124 | Liberal community is not blood ties or tradition, but shared choices, and sympathy for the losers [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The liberal idea of community is not one, as it is for many conservatives, of blood ties or traditional authority. It rest on the idea of shared choices …including even a sense of sympathy for those caught on the losing side of the argument. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1) | |
| A reaction: The key point is that most liberals (other than extreme libertarians) have a strong sense of community, contrary to the standard criticisms offered by communitarians. |
| 23127 | Liberal community includes flight from the family, into energetic reforming groups [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Where conservatives believe in the renewal of traditional community, liberals believe as well in the flight from family and tradition into new kinds of communal order. …It is an idea of assembling confidence and energies for reform. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1) | |
| A reaction: He cites Greenwich Village as an example. This suggests that his vision is a little narrow. His communities are for radicals who flee to join like minds in big cities. Politics must care about community for those left behind. Pubs, sport and pets. |
| 23138 | Modern left-wingers criticise liberalism's control of culture [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Most left-wing critiques of liberalism now turn more often on its cultural power and its cultural illusions. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: As opposed to older Marxists critiques of the exploitation of workers. This is certainly fertile ground for interesting studies of our culture. It is very hard to grasp the influence had by the endless stories we expose ourselves to. |
| 23272 | The human race matters, and individuals have little importance [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Individuals are of slight importance compared to the mass of the human race. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Introduction to the Philosophy of History [1840], 3) | |
| A reaction: A perfect statement of the anti-liberal viewpoint. Hegel is complex, but this is the strand that leads to ridiculous totalitarianism, where the highest ideal is to die for the glory of your nation. Importance can only start from individuals. |
| 23129 | Right-wingers attack liberal faith in reason, left-wingers attack its faith in reform [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The right-wing critique of liberalism is largely an attack on its overreliance on reason; the left-wing one, mostly an attack on its false faith in reform. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2) | |
| A reaction: I doubt whether sensible liberals do rely too much on reason, though they do rely of scientific evidence (after peer review!). No one can doubt that lots of reforms have occurred, so it must be frustration with the very slow process. |
| 23133 | Cosmopolitan liberals lack national loyalty, and welcome excessive immigration [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Critics say liberal cosmopolitanism is indifference to national loyalty, making them easily contemplate going elsewhere and, worse still, welcoming in the world through unsifted immigration. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2) | |
| A reaction: There is certainly some truth in this. Not all liberals are so cosmopolitan, though. It is interesting to observe whether people who retire stay in their old community or move to somewhere quite new. |
| 23139 | Liberalism's attempt to be neutral and colour-blind erases cultural identities [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The 'colour-blind' universe of 'neutral' liberalism is actually an attempt to erase cultural identity and history. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: This is the modern critique of liberalism [centred on the Intersectionality of Bell Hooks or Kimberlé Crenshaw], which analyses alienated minorities, and their emphasis on their difference in response. It can lead to 'identity politics'. |
| 23135 | Classic Marxists see liberalism as the ideology of the bourgeoisie [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The classic Marxist account shows liberalism as merely the ideology of the bourgeoisie. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: The word 'merely' does an awful lot of work in philosohy! I suspect that 'bourgeoisie' is self-defining here - as the believers in liberalism - given that lots of Marxists emerge from the middle classes. |
| 23140 | Environmental disasters result not from capitalism, but from a general drive for growth [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: It is the drive for growth, not capitalism in particular, that makes environmental disasters happen. Those caused by the command economics of Eastern Europe were far greater than even the worst known in Western Europe. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: So the next question is whether you can have capitalism without a drive for growth. I would have thought not, given the role recycled profit plays in driving capitalism. Command economies are more easily swept away. |
| 23273 | In a good state the goal of the citizens and of the whole state are united [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: A state is well constituted and internally strong if the private interest of the citizens is united in the universal goal of the state. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Introduction to the Philosophy of History [1840], 3) | |
| A reaction: The obvious question is who decides on the goals, and what to do with the citizens who don't accept them. |
| 23130 | Popular imperialism gives the poor the belief that their acts have world historical meaning [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Popular imperialism is the cosmopolitanism of the poor, the lever by which the small and impotent come to believe that their acts have world historical meaning. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2) | |
| A reaction: It is not only the poor who like imperialism. The focus of this popular attitude is the armed forces, and especially the army, where personal bravery is most obvious. The army gets strong support, no matter how dubious are its activities. |
| 23131 | Patriots love their place, but nationalists have a paranoid ethnic hostility [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The patriot loves his place and its cheeses; …the nationalist has not particular affection for the place, but employs his obsessive sense of encirclement and grievance on behalf of acts of ethnic vengeance. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2) | |
| A reaction: 'Vengeance' seems a bit strong. John Le Carré said nationalists are distinguished by the need to have enemies. Russia is particularly obsessed with 'encirclement'. |
| 23136 | Liberal free speech is actually paid speech [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: What liberals call free speech or a free press is invariably paid speech. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: He give this as the left-wing view of liberalism. The much-hated social media are a substantial breech in this tendency. Sales of newspapers are declining everywhere, so the battle is for television channels. |
| 23134 | A 'free' society implies a free market, which always produces predatory capitalism and inequalities [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: 'Free societies', as a matter of practical fact, always mean free-market societies - and free markets will never sponsor more than predatory capitalism. Inequalities always emerge. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: This is part of his account of left-wing objections to liberalism. The crux of the liberal view is a conviction that the worst of capitalism can be restrained. This began to look doubtful once huge multinational companies emerged. What to do? |
| 23271 | The goal of the world is Spirit's consciousness and enactment of freedom [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The final goal of the world is Spirit's consciousness of its freedom, and hence also the actualisation of that very freedom. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Introduction to the Philosophy of History [1840], 3) | |
| A reaction: I have the impression that this ridiculous idea has been very influential in modern French philosophy, since they all seem to be dreaming of some perfect freedom at the end of the rainbow. Freedom is good, but this gives it a bad name. |
| 23270 | We should all agree that there is reason in history [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: We ought to have the firm and unconquerable belief that there is reason in history. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Introduction to the Philosophy of History [1840], 2) | |
| A reaction: This is a ridiculous but hugely influential idea, and I have no idea what makes Hegel believe it. It is the Stoic idea that nature is intrinsically rational, but extending it to human history is absurd. Human exceptionalism. Needs a dose of Darwin. |
| 1748 | Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless. | |
| From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.Ar.3 |
| 5989 | Archelaus said life began in a primeval slime [Archelaus, by Schofield] |
| Full Idea: Archelaus wrote that life on Earth began in a primeval slime. | |
| From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Malcolm Schofield - Archelaus | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a fairly clearcut assertion of the production of life by evolution. Darwin's contribution was to propose the mechanism for achieving it. We should honour the name of Archelaus for this idea. |