Pure Liberal Fire


Guyau

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I was writing a personal note to Kyrel, but with only a stroke here and there, it should be just as well to go public right here, as follows. (Related)

Kyrel,

Your book Pure Liberal Fire looks to be a very appropriate title. I like the title, the cover, and the large typeset of the text.

If you ever do any tweaking on this, you might consider capitalizing Pure Liberalism, making it a proper name, like you did New Liberals. That way the reader knows from the get-go that you are conceiving and inaugurating a genre of liberalism, not simply appealing to history of liberalism for legitimacy of your conception Pure Liberalism, which you would then be challenged to defend by that history.

I like the first chapter “Fundamental Reality.” I like the easy flow here, which apparently continues throughout the book. I concur with most of this chapter’s propositions. As you might expect, I would not go along with “The world is truth incarnate.” You may not mean what is meant in the long tradition (pagan, Christian, and modern) holding to that perspective. I reject the traditional idea meant by those words. There is no sense in which truth, including the traditional eternal truth of logic and mathematics, is a prior to which fact of actuals and their potentials are as offspring. Fact first, then with mind joining to fact, truth.

I concur that all general truths can be known in the sense that no general facts are unknowable in principle. I have reason for thinking the collection of such potential truths is not finite, therefore not knowable in its totality, but my argument for this is a secret I am reserving for my book exclusively. Additional to that, and consistent with my discussion in the Objectivity essay “Volitional Synapsis,” I do not think that all particular facts (not general facts) are knowable. Not all past particular facts are knowable, because usually all trace of their particulars has been erased by subsequent physical processes. Among my pre-literate Choctaw ancestors, for example, there were particular individuals engaged in particular activities on particular days; and physical process leaves no path by which such particulars could be learned now these generations latter.

I think the second chapter “Theoretical Reality” is correct, though there is one proposition I’m still undecided on myself. That is the idea that no one “ever sincerely and earnestly desires the wicked.” Some of the killers in the infamous recent shootings at schools and at other congregations seem to desire the wicked. I suppose some of these killers may have come round to extraordinary powers of evading the true nature of what they were doing, and so could see it as something not really wrong. I don’t know. It seems on the face of it that they still knew what is evil and had come to desire it.

Hope to feedback more later, but meanwhile others might like to buy this book and comment in this thread.

Stephen

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no one “ever sincerely and earnestly desires the wicked.”

There will be days when you'll stand in the corner of a hall and listen to a creature on a platform talking ... about the work you love, and the things he'll say will make you wait for somebody to rise and crack him open between two thumbnails; and then you'll hear people applauding him, and you'll want to scream, because you won't know whether they're real or you are, whether you're in a room full of gored skulls, or whether someone has just emptied your own head, and you'll say nothing, because the sounds you could make - they're not a language in that room any longer

Strongly tempted to take my book out of distribution and dynamite the zip file link.

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Stephen -- Many thanks for the various compliments! :smile: The title and cover is based on "truth in advertising." I certainly don't feel it much when I write, but most people tell me I have a firebrand style when it comes to discussing/debating/elucidating the issues. I think "forewarned is forearmed," so hopefully no-one is too shocked when they read thru Pure Liberal Fire. My only real sense of being a ferocious and fiery discussant is the recognition that I usually have the most fun reading and listening to radicals, polemicists, and my presumably-fellow firebrands. I enjoy Bill Maher and Christopher Hitchens on the Left, as well as Ann Coulter and Pat Buchanan on the Right -- arguably a Murderer's Row of the rude, crude, obnoxious, and offensively self-indulgent! ;-)

It may be the case that "pure liberalism" is long-term, devastatingly powerful when uninflected and uncapitalized. This soft-spoken concept may ravish and destroy right-wing conservatism and left-wing progressivism, in culture and politics, as is my goal. Of course, you have a point, and my usage makes the idea harder to follow and perhaps even trust. I see the philosophy, and derivative culture, of liberalism as having existed for almost 2600 years, with conservativism and progressivism as being failures and deviations from truth and Aristotle's Golden Mean.

Unlike Rand, I have a mostly extremely low opinion of the mass-man. Still, I think pure evil doesn't really exist -- especially not in humans. The hoi polloi can always be controlled and manipulated. Later in the book I create a Paradise out of nothing but Hitlers, Stalins, Maos, Khomeinis, and Osamas! Profound truth seems to sometimes be paradoxical, and to contradict common sense. Nothing like what is claimed by Berkeley, Hume, Kant, and Hegel -- still, it sometimes happens. Truly aggressive and unjustified killers do exist and need to be summarily destroyed. Indeed, truly malicious, aggressive, and unjustified intellectual killers exist as well, and need to be summarily intellectually destroyed.

The facts that tragically disappear forever into the mist of time and chaos might be recovered if there was a recording device functioning then, as from a superior space alien.

Just some partial answers to your comments, Stephen! Philosophy has many hard, cold, clear truths in it; but many times it's a rich subject full of many interpretations and speculations.

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"There will be days when you'll stand in the corner of a hall and listen to a creature on a platform talking ... about the work you love, and the things he'll say will make you wait for somebody to rise and crack him open between two thumbnails; and then you'll hear people applauding him, and you'll want to scream, because you won't know whether they're real or you are, whether you're in a room full of gored skulls, or whether someone has just emptied your own head, and you'll say nothing, because the sounds you could make - they're not a language in that room any longer."

Have no fear: Good is stronger than evil. Truth is stronger than ignorance and lies. Even the Zarathustrans of the 500s BC knew this. Optimism and confidence about mankind and the future, along these lines, isn't pollyanna -- it's fact.

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Have no fear: Good is stronger than evil. Truth is stronger than ignorance and lies. Even the Zarathustrans of the 500s BC knew this. Optimism and confidence of this type isn't pollyanna -- it's fact.

Ozymandias: Text of the Poem

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,

Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown

And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,

The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains: round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

By Percy Shelley

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Kyrel,

Got it. Just read the introduction. I share your optimism, the universe is benevolent after all. But it is complicated. I find it hard to be patient with the people haters, the libertarians and objectivists and conservatives and religionists (including progressives) who call people stupid and cattle because they haven't come to the same conclusions they have. People are engrossed in their own lives, their own specialties, which is rarely "philosopher", and it takes time and fits and starts for culture to catch up to the discoveries of the mind. You have a great mind and thank you for sharing your thoughts.

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Kyrel,

Got it. Just read the introduction. I share your optimism, the universe is benevolent after all. But it is complicated. I find it hard to be patient with the people haters, the libertarians and objectivists and conservatives and religionists (including progressives) who call people stupid and cattle because they haven't come to the same conclusions they have. People are engrossed in their own lives, their own specialties, which is rarely "philosopher", and it takes time and fits and starts for culture to catch up to the discoveries of the mind. You have a great mind and thank you for sharing your thoughts.

In what way is the comsos bevevolent? Benevolent requires motive and motive requires some kind of persona. What and where is the Persona of the Cosmos. The way it looks to me is the Nature does not give a damn about us one way or the other. We are a happenstance possible under the apparent physical laws that seem to govern the Cosmos.

If an asteroid the size of Manhattan lands on Earth very soon we don't be possible under the laws of physics.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Well, I'm going contra Stephen; I think "the world is truth incarnate" for the simple reason my reason is easier to get my head around than Stephen's explanation*. That is, the world--or reality--as such truth is truth to be discovered. Go find it. Semantics, actually. We don't find falsehoods, we manufacture them. Anyway, we are down on the ground with axiomatic reasoning. A is A?

--Brant

*working on it

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Kyrel,

Got it. Just read the introduction. I share your optimism, the universe is benevolent after all. But it is complicated. I find it hard to be patient with the people haters, the libertarians and objectivists and conservatives and religionists (including progressives) who call people stupid and cattle because they haven't come to the same conclusions they have. People are engrossed in their own lives, their own specialties, which is rarely "philosopher", and it takes time and fits and starts for culture to catch up to the discoveries of the mind. You have a great mind and thank you for sharing your thoughts.

In what way is the comsos bevevolent? Benevolent requires motive and motive requires some kind of persona. What and where is the Persona of the Cosmos. The way it looks to me is the Nature does not give a damn about us one way or the other. We are a happenstance possible under the apparent physical laws that seem to govern the Cosmos.

If an asteroid the size of Manhattan lands on Earth very soon we don't be possible under the laws of physics.

Ba'al Chatzaf

It's benevolent until it isn't. Not much point in you and I worrying about that asteroid; we won't be here anyway in 30 years.

--Brant

until then?--party!

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Ba'al: "In what way is the comsos benevolent?"

Because there is only nature, there is no malevolent "super" nature. No supernatural phenomenon. Therefore it will eventually be understood by mankind (and coded in our nature) and the pitfalls avoided. The asteroids will be deflected etc.

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Ba'al: "In what way is the comsos benevolent?"

Because there is only nature, there is no malevolent "super" nature. No supernatural phenomenon. Therefore it will eventually be understood by mankind (and coded in our nature) and the pitfalls avoided. The asteroids will be deflected etc.

Malevolence and Benevolence both require intention which can only be produced by a sentient entity. The Cosmos is not sentient although sentient things dwell within in it. The Cosmos does not think, feel or intend. It just is.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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.

Except for dates and quotations, the chapter titled "The Smasher of Everything" is entirely false.

After reading "Smasher" I'm afraid I'm not competent to review this book. I, for instance, would need excellent knowledge of Kant and at least a few more philosophers, all beyond my ability and interest. I can work with political philosophy and many other associated disciplines; not pure philosophy as a string of mere morally powered asseverations which is also generally the leitmotiff of Liberal fire. Thinking, consideration and learning have nothing to do with someone else's end-stage evaluations being pounded into your brain by you, yourself, the reader, not just the author knocking on your mind's door. I know Kyrel is into showing the truth so we can then see it, but seeing the truth is not knowing it save through faith in who tells it. True, if you already know it you may not recognize it in different iterations but recognize it when shown those, but for that I'd like a lot of data or facts. Sad to say, this book seems to me to be only an invitation to get educated, but there's no bibliography. Fortunately, it's not too late to come up with one as we are living in the beginning of the age of ebooks. I recommend a bib. or suggested reading for each essay, not a conglomeration at the end. That's the only way I know to move this large in scale short in length tome out of intellectual obscurity and give it staying legs.

--Brant

but I'll continue to read it and probably comment--there are so many essays--and I'm sure there will be a meeting between my competence and knowledge and the author's and there might be value in the get togethers; I mean, I can sometimes see the reasoning that went into the thoughts (yes!--I'm that good! :smile: )

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Paraphrasing a bit, Mike wrote in #7: “I share your optimism. After all, the universe is benevolent. But it is complicated.” Mike is alluding to what came to be called “the benevolent universe premise” in Rand’s philosophy, which is related to, though not identical to her “pre-philosophic,” psychological outlook of “benevolent sense of life.”

Bob objects, as often he has, to talk of a benevolent universe. The propositions he brings against it are shared by all Objectivists. Careful expositors of that philosophy would and do set out the meaning of “the benevolent universe premise,” which is not what Bob presumes it is by his criticism. There is nothing wrong with coining special phrases for exactly delineated conceptions, for sake of economy, provided one notes the specialness of the phrase and explains the conception for which it stands. Here are some old, standard Objectivist explications.

From Leonard Peikoff’s 1976 lectures The Philosophy of Objectivism:

The “benevolent universe” does not mean that the universe feels kindly to man or that it is out to help him achieve his goals. No, the universe is neutral; it simply is; it is indifferent to you. You must care about and adapt to it. Not the other way around. But reality is “benevolent” in the sense that if you do adapt to it—i.e., if you do think, value, and act rationally, then you can (and barring accidents you will) achieve your values. You will, because those values are based on reality.

. . .

[quoting Rand 1957]

“We do not think that tragedy is our natural state. We do not live in chronic dread of disastr. We do not expect disaster until we have specific reason to expect it, and when we encounter it, we are free to fight it. It is not happiness, but suffering, that we consider unnatural. It is not success but calamity that we regard as the abnormal exception in human life.” (transcribed in The Ayn Rand Lexicon)*

From Allan Gotthelf’s On Ayn Rand (2000)

The benevolent universe premise is the view that the universe is open to man’s achievement and success—that the achievement of values and the enjoyment of happiness are the natural state, the norm, the to-be-expected. It is the view that suffering and tragedy are the accidental, “to be fought and thrown aside, not to be accepted as part of one’s soul and as a permanent scar across one’s view of existence.”

The benevolent universe premise is a metaphysical thesis. More precisely, it is what Ayn Rand calls . . . a metaphysical value-judgment. It is a view of the nature of the universe from the standpoint of man’s ability to achieve his ends and happiness.

. . .

Ayn Rand recognizes that success and happiness are not guaranteed, even to a rational, moral man. Success may depend in part on choices made by others. But the profound pleasure of being a person fit for reality is always an undercurrent.

. . .

The greatest amount of suffering in mankind’s history has not been due to anything about the nature of the universe. It has been due to the philosophies men have accepted. [No other alternatives?]

. . .

The universe is not itself literally “benevolent”—it is not a conscious entity that feels anything about man. But it is open to man. It is, says Ayn Rand, such that man can succeed in it and achieve his happiness—if he understands the universe’s nature and his own; if he defines objective, rational values; and if he chooses to pursue them with passionate intensity.

. . .

[These are] the main theses of Ayn Rand’s philosophic system on which her passionate advocacy of the benevolent universe premise rests.

  • The world exists—with identity. . . .
  • Man’s conceptual faculty—which identifies and integrates the material provided by his senses—is a powerful faculty, able to understand what things are and why they act as they do. . . .
  • Man’s nature is not fundamentally irrational nor is it at war with itself. . . .
  • Man’s life is the standard of moral value—his life in the world, the one reality there is. . . .
  • The only proper political system is one that creates the conditons of freedom necessary for man to pursue his life and happiness. (94–96)

There are, however, it seems to me, degrees of optimism in Rand’s writings (and in Kyrel’s?) going beyond what is grounded in her express “benevolent universe premise” as confined only to the natural world and our lives in it. Examples would be Rand’s 1957 talk of your virtue, within a proper political organization of society, as bringing you “irreversibly closer to the world of your moral ideal” (irreversibly?) and her 1943 viewpoint that “all the pain on earth—and do you know how much suffering there is on earth?—all the pain” comes from the social obstacles such as Roark will have to overcome (PK XI 137). The idea that all the pain on earth comes from human behavior is puzzling.* People often pump up the extent to which moral evils afflict us in comparison to physical evils.

It is interesting to compare Rand’s benevolent universe premise to Leibniz’ optimism and his harmonious universe. Leaving God to the side, the base of Leibniz’ view is Aristotelian substantial form, which he redrafted from what he received from Aquinas, Suarez, et al.* Rand ran with the moderns, such as Descartes, in casting out the conception substantial form. Identity in her sense did the necessary work, leaving out the unnecessary: cosmic, omnipresent teleology.

To Bob’s understandable reservations about benevolent universe in the benevolent universe premise, one might add reservation about premise. The sense in which it is a premise is not as a philosophical primary. It is premise to further conclusions and actions. But it is itself conclusion of more fundamental premises, such as articulated by Gotthelf above.

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It would be interesting to compare Kyrel’s vision of pure liberalism with the view of liberalism put forth in the writings of Tibor Machan. Here is a sample:

One of liberalism’s greatest virtues, namely its relegation of politics to a discrete realm of human life, is turned against it by a wide variety of collectivist demands. Indeed, it is a contradiction to demand that liberalism offer, in the context of a theory of limited politics, a total moral vision. Yet, what liberalism has achieved is to conceive of a political order in conformity with human nature—a system which requires each individual carry full responsibility for one’s own moral achievements and failures. Only where others would obstruct this individual responsibility may the government—the instrument of man’s political concerns—make a move, not for any other purpose. (Ayn Rand 1999, 89–90)
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.Except for dates and quotations, the chapter titled "The Smasher of Everything" is entirely false.

What are the two or three things which are most false about it? I know the subject of Kant is enormously complex. Perhaps you can also provide some internet links where a better analysis of his thought is found.

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...I share your optimism, the universe is benevolent after all. But it is complicated. I find it hard to be patient with the people haters, the libertarians and objectivists and conservatives and religionists (including progressives) who call people stupid and cattle because they haven't come to the same conclusions they have. People are engrossed in their own lives, their own specialties, which is rarely "philosopher", and it takes time and fits and starts for culture to catch up to the discoveries of the mind. You have a great mind and thank you for sharing your thoughts.

Mikee -- Thanks for the compliments, and for checking out my radical new book! In philosophical terms, people today are virtually all right-wing conservatives or left-wing progressives or some combination of these two. Or else they reject philosophy altogether as empty doubletalk and/or pernicious nonsense, both of which will make you less happy if you follow it -- not more. So they just guide their life with a handful of related aphorisms. Still...even these guys are secretly right-wing or left-wing, in my opinion. What's sad is that the up-wing isn't known to them. They aren't aware that there's a third option. The Right says believe in god, and self-sacrifice to it, and have a welfare state to coerce this. The Left says believe in the collective, and self-sacrifice to it, and have a welfare state to coerce this. But pretty much no-one says believe in yourself, and live for your own greatness and happiness, and have a liberal state to allow this. Ayn Rand considerably improved upon the liberal Greco-Romans, Renaissance/Enlightenment intellectuals, and the Austrian economic thinkers. Objectivism is a massively well-worked-out philosophy which is the most liberal thought-system to date!

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In what way is the comsos bevevolent? Benevolent requires motive and motive requires some kind of persona. What and where is the Persona of the Cosmos. The way it looks to me is the Nature does not give a damn about us one way or the other. We are a happenstance possible under the apparent physical laws that seem to govern the Cosmos.

The cosmos is consistent with itself, and doesn't contradict or attack itself. Thus it's a type of friend to itself, poetically speaking, and humans are entirely and naturally a part of this cosmos. Humans evolved to function very well inside the current universe, so the cosmos can be fairly said to be generally friendly and benevolent towards us.

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Sad to say, this book seems to me to be only an invitation to get educated, but there's no bibliography. Fortunately, it's not too late to come up with one as we are living in the beginning of the age of ebooks. I recommend a bib. or suggested reading for each essay, not a conglomeration at the end. That's the only way I know to move this large in scale short in length tome out of intellectual obscurity and give it staying legs.

A bibliography, or recommended reading list, might indeed be a good idea. Altho' I probably can't come up with one for each short essay.

A quick one from me now would be: For the New Intellectual by Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand, The Romantic Manifesto by Ayn Rand, The New Left: the Anti-Industrial Revolution by Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It by Ayn Rand, The Passion of Ayn Rand by Barbara Branden, My Years with Ayn Rand by Nathaniel Branden, Ayn Rand and the World She Made by Anne Heller, and Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right by Jennifer Burns.

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Sad to say, this book seems to me to be only an invitation to get educated, but there's no bibliography. Fortunately, it's not too late to come up with one as we are living in the beginning of the age of ebooks. I recommend a bib. or suggested reading for each essay, not a conglomeration at the end. That's the only way I know to move this large in scale short in length tome out of intellectual obscurity and give it staying legs.

A bibliography might indeed be a good idea. :smile: A quick one from me now would be: For the New Intellectual by Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand, The Romantic Manifesto by Ayn Rand, The New Left: the Anti-Industrial Revolution by Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It by Ayn Rand, The Passion of Ayn Rand by Barbara Branden, My Years with Ayn Rand by Nathaniel Branden, Ayn Rand and the World She Made by Anne Heller, and Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right by Jennifer Burns.

Oh, dear--these would be fine if you included a score or two more and not seeming all of the same ilk.

--Brant

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Concerning #18, Kyrel: You need to do the work for yourself. I’ll list some online sources. Much Kant is online also, but for that I recommend hardcopy and use the recent translations (last 20 years).

On one foot: Neither Kant nor any philosopher is the most evil man in history. Ideas move the world, but evil has not required the service of philosophy for its ideas. Neither Napoleon nor Stalin nor Hilter needed Kant’s ideas to win their ancient evils. Moreover, as Eichmann had to admit, when it came to the mass murders, he knew damn well that that was contrary Kant’s imperative to treat people as ends in themselves. Kant was not a proponent of irrationality (nor of enthusiasm in religion). He was a champion of reason so far as he comprehended it. He was a champion of modern science. He is difficult, but he is not talking gibberish. Your quote of his infamous remark about the crooked timber of humanity was a conception of human nature not one whit worse than was taught from Luther to every child in his or her catechism instruction (whether Lutheran, Pietist, or Reformed), and it was Luther and the teachings of the Bible that was, at least to WWII, the far greater influence, good and bad, on the people making war and death camps.

Some of my own works on Kant pertinent to your chapter are these:

Metaphysics of Kant and Rand

Normativity of Logic – Kant v. Rand

“Perception and Truth – Kant and Rand”

. . I. Sense and Mind – Rand

. . II. Empirical Realism – Kant A, B, C, D, E

. . III. Empirical Judgment – Kant and Rand A, B, C, D, E

"Kant's Wrestle with Happiness and Life"
.

. Part 1 – to 1781

. . Part 2 – towards 1785

. . Part 3 – into 1785

. . Part 4 – Moral Worth, Necessary and Free – A, B

Mysticism – Kant and Rand

Dewey and Peikoff on Kant’s Responsibility

Online Kant, at Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

Kant’s Account of Reason

Garrath Williams

Kant’s Critique of Metaphysics

Michelle Grier

Kant’s Theory of Judgment

Robert Hanna

Kant’s Moral Philosophy

Robert Johnson

Kant’s Social and Political Philosophy

Frederick Rauscher

Online, related to Kyrel’s book:

Liberalism

G. Gaus and S. D. Courtland

Robert Nozick’s Political Philosophy

Eric Mack

This entry at SEP appeared only yesterday.

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