Friday, August 26, 2022

Plato on democracy and tyranny

Over at Twitter, I posted a long thread of passages from Plato’s Republic setting out his account of how a democratic society’s fixation on liberty and equality yields the tyrannical soul.  You can read the thread here.  The relevance to the current situation in the West will be obvious, but it is a theme I explored in an American Mind article from a couple of years ago.

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21 comments:

  1. Vini TAugust 27, 2022 at 5:21 AM

    Thank God we have a down-to-earth philosopher like you, Ed!

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  2. UncommonDescentAugust 27, 2022 at 5:34 AM

    setting out his account of how a democratic's fixation on liberty and equality yields the tyrannical soul.

    There's a limit as to how much 'liberty' can a so called 'liberal' allow before tearing down the fabric of society.

    I have never heard the proponents of the 'love is love' campaign promoting the rights of people who would like to consensually participate in polygamous marriages, consensual sex between adult members of the same family or bestiality (although the consent part here becomes problematic, due to non-human animals having not rational capabilities).

    The 'marriage' they defend is always the monogamous one (as in you shall become one flesh). But that is discriminatory and arbitrary. Why stop there? Why not allow a woman being the 4th spouse of a man (or a homosexual man being the 4th husband of another man for example)? Why not allow incestuous marriages? Who are we to stop a woman who desires to marry her father or one (or several) of her siblings? (After all a woman can butcher her child up to the date of birth, so marrying her father would be much less evil). But 'liberals' don't want to go there, because they are massive hypocrites. They are the pharisees of our times. They want Christian values while depising Christianity and spitting in its face.

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    1. CosmicCatAugust 27, 2022 at 10:31 AM

      This comment has been removed by the author.

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    2. UncommonDescentAugust 28, 2022 at 8:52 AM

      @ Infinite Growth:

      Your biblical exegesis is quite interesting, but it has nothing to do with my comment. If 'love is love', then loving your father or brother is something to be proud too. As long as it is 'consensual', it'll be fine. If the conclusion makes you feel uncomfortable, that's something that does not concern me. The beauty of logic is that you can follow it to its unsavory conclusions.


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    3. UncommonDescentAugust 28, 2022 at 9:18 AM

      @ Infinite Growth:

      He acknowledges that he is not like the tax collectors because of God's grace.

      Why are you assuming the pharisee's gender? Are you a bigot, Infinite_Growth?

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  3. NormAugust 28, 2022 at 4:26 AM

    Power corrupts as they say.

    The other day, Republican Jim Jordan singled out the profession of philosophy while taking shots at the student loan reduction act. He lamented the fact that people will have to pay for some jobless philosophy major's degree in Los Angeles. I don't support the Student Loan Act one bit, it seems practically useless, within four years that debt is going to reach the same levels as now.

    But of all the professions you could choose to dunk on, why philosophy ?
    Mass Media Majors are the people that are most likely to become jobless and they are even more likely to be democrats, Go dunk on them. No one will even chide you for that because everyone hates the media.

    Disrespecting a profession as noble as philosophy by people in very high positions of power is just another sign of the tyranny of the elite one sees in society today.

    Doesn't even make sense to complain about the yearly downsizing of College Philosophy and Humanities departments if only a handful of philosophers are even willing to say a word against their own party leaders when they come after their profession.

    Perhaps the ultimate elimination of philosophy as a major from colleges is inevitable, but that is expected when you elect clowns.

    Also it seems as if the relative silence of catholic and conservative philosophers is that perhaps not completely dependent on it as a profession and that's totally fair. I respect that absolutely.

    It's just sad a noble field of human thought will very soon not find a place in colleges anymore.

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    1. AnonymousSeptember 1, 2022 at 11:49 PM

      While this is sad, it's more a reflection of what a philosophy degree has become, than anything else. These people aren't Scholastics.

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  4. GhostmanSeptember 1, 2022 at 10:45 PM

    Yes we need philosophy. I think we should be teaching the perennial philosophy in grade school and high school as well. We teach algebra and calculus. They are more difficult than philosophy in my opinion and less useful for a successful life. I know this proposal sounds crazy. Of course, we are so far in our govern from this being a reality. As Ed has mentioned before somewhere - just because there is so much bad philosophy, it doesn't mean there isn't good philosophy.

    I do think that good philosophy has to recognize God as a Creator, form and essence Giver and the principle of finality: "All things act for an end". I am obviously a fan of the existence of Christian philosophy as a reality. As long as our culture and the world in general continue on a trend towards atheism and rejection of authentic Christianity, the Tradition of Catholicism, I don't see how the perennial philosophy can have a revival. We can always hope, pray and witness with the truth using the wisdom many of us have been so fortunate to discover.

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  5. UncommonDescentSeptember 3, 2022 at 12:26 AM

    @ Ghostman:

    I think we should be teaching the perennial philosophy in grade school and high school as well.

    I think it should be mandatory. The cultural war is philosophical at its core, and the great bulk of the population is not well equipped to understand what is going on. Philosophical ignorance makes people vulnerable and leftists are very apt at sophistry and emotional manipulation.

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  6. UncommonDescentSeptember 3, 2022 at 9:54 AM

    @ Ghostman:

    Regarding the teaching of philosophy, I have been watching debates on YouTube concerning the abortion debate, and it has caught my attention that several people were using the act/potency distinction (although in a mistaken way, saying that the foetus is a potential life/human instead of an actual human life with the potential to become an adult).

    People know that essences are there (for example the essence of "humanity" in this debate and whether a child in the womb fits the description or not). Our society is going to re-discover hylemorphism one way or another (or it will keep spiraling down the rabbit hole and it will collapse). And the Internet, fast, cheap and almost universal today is, in my opinion, a better tool to reach people than the universities, which have become a cesspool of "liberal" politics and the churches of scientism.

    Let's pray and do our part. We were promised that the gates of Hell would not prevail. Today's Apostles use smartphones and create blogs :)

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  7. GhostmanSeptember 5, 2022 at 8:12 AM

    @UncommonDescent:

    I have a website and blog at https://aquinasforourtimes.com/. It doesn't get much traffic, but it is out there. You have some excellent insights in your posts.

    Regards,
    Ghostman

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    1. AnonymousSeptember 5, 2022 at 12:44 PM

      OMG Ghosty, don't encourage him!

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  8. AnonymousSeptember 5, 2022 at 9:37 PM

    I always encourage people who speak the truth. Are you on the blog to make a rational argument or just show your ignorance with the responses I have seen so far?

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    1. UncommonDescentSeptember 6, 2022 at 4:49 AM

      @ Ghostman:

      I have just finished reading your paper "The Connections Between Nominalism and Modernism". It's excellent and for what I have understood, you have been highly influenced by Professor Feser's body of work?

      The object of our intellect are things abstracted from reality.

      Exactly. In my opinion, he who dominates St. Thomas's philosophy of mind and his theory of intentionality, is he who is going to win this cultural battle. Materialists are obsessed with their "science", but they can not explain how we humans can acquire knowledge about the world. Their gobbledygook about the brain is just their admission of failure, that they can not support their position. But they are stubborn creatures, and unless we bring to the table a better alternative, they are not going to cave in. There are a some decent ones like Thomas Nagel and Fodor though (Fodor passed away a few years ago). Almost everyone in the philosophical camp knows that materialism is a walking corpse, but most of them believe there is no alternative.

      And it's quite ironic that we are living in an era where natures/essences are not real but people are obsessed with defending and promoting "Human Rights". That shows how schizophrenic our society has become.

      * I find the layout of your website pleasant and beautiful! :)

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    2. AnonymousSeptember 6, 2022 at 1:37 PM

      You say that your website doesn't get much traffic. Well ghosty, fancy that.

      Delete
  9. GhostmanSeptember 6, 2022 at 8:32 PM

    How much traffic does your website get Anonymous?

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    1. AnonymousSeptember 7, 2022 at 3:41 AM

      Loads - you wouldn't believe it, the thing keeps crashing!

      Arn't you the Catholic Deacon that- bizarrely - some odd fellow mistook for an atheist troll?

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    2. GhostmanSeptember 7, 2022 at 8:05 PM

      Can't remember. I have a short memory.

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  10. UncommonDescentSeptember 7, 2022 at 1:45 AM

    Salty Anonymous does not even have a name, much less a website :)

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    1. AnonymousSeptember 10, 2022 at 4:30 AM

      And your name is 'UncommonDecent' is it?

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    2. UncommonDescentSeptember 11, 2022 at 5:18 AM

      @ Anonymous:

      So you can do something useful with those neurons that Evolution has gifted you:

      Do you think that Mayr, when defining "biological species" as "members of populations that actually or potentially interbreed in nature" was acknowledging the truth of Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics? Because"actuality" and "potentiality" are distinctively Aristotelian terms.

      Maybe you could share this piece of knowledge with the the readers of your inexistent website.

      Delete

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