What great philosopher said this?

[Roger Bissell]

Here is the quote: "It is not to be expected that kings philosophize or that philosophers become kings, nor is it to be desired, because possession of power corrupts the free judgment of reason inevitably."

Who said it? And does knowing that change your opinion of him?

I'll be back in the evening to see if anyone can come up with the answer (without Googling!).

Merry Christmas, everyone!

REB

[Alfonso Jones]

Here is the quote: "It is not to be expected that kings philosophize or that philosophers become kings, nor is it to be desired, because possession of power corrupts the free judgment of reason inevitably."

Who said it? And does knowing that change your opinion of him?

I'll be back in the evening to see if anyone can come up with the answer (without Googling!).

Merry Christmas, everyone!

REB

.

The answer is Kant.

Bill P

[kiaer.ts]

Sounds like Kant. No, it would not change my opinion. (A & ~A) > (B & ~B).

[BaalChatzaf]

Sounds like Kant. No, it would not change my opinion. (A & ~A) > (B & ~B).

( A & -A ) -> ( B & -B ) <-> -( B & -B ) -> -( A & -A ) so what you wrote is correct.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Alfonso Jones]

Sounds like Kant. No, it would not change my opinion. (A & ~A) > (B & ~ B) .

( A & -A ) -> ( B & -B ) <-> -( B & -B ) -> -( A & -A ) so what you wrote is correct.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Bob -

I'm glad you participate on Objectivist Living.

Bill P

[kiaer.ts]

Sounds like Kant. No, it would not change my opinion. (A & ~A) > (B & ~ B) .

( A & -A ) -> ( B & -B ) <-> -( B & -B ) -> -( A & -A ) so what you wrote is correct.

Ba'al Chatzaf

WTF!? You would think the program would distinguish between symbolic logic and emoticons. Lucky Goedel doesn't post here, or he would think that glitch proves something. I meant to say (A & ~A) > (X & ~X) but the emoticon interpretation seems equally valid.

[Brant Gaede]

Sounds like Kant. No, it would not change my opinion. (A & ~A) > (B & ~ B) .

( A & -A ) -> ( B & -B ) <-> -( B & -B ) -> -( A & -A ) so what you wrote is correct.

Ba'al Chatzaf

WTF!? You would think the program would distinguish between symbolic logic and emoticons. Lucky Goedel doesn't post here, or he would think that glitch proves something. I meant to say (A & ~A) > (X & ~X) but the emoticon interpretation seems equally valid.

@$#$*)*_)++)*(*&(%$%$#$))*&&%%&^$^&=*&%$**&(*(*(*$#@$#@!#$#^%$$#^^%$$^$$&

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

@$#$*)*_)++)*(*&(%$%$#$))*&&%%&^$^&=*&%$**&(*(*(*$#@$#@!#$#^%$$#^^%$$^$$&

--Brant

Is that a Boolean curse and swear?

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

@$#$*)*_)++)*(*&(%$%$#$))*&&%%&^$^&=*&%$**&(*(*(*$#@$#@!#$#^%$$#^^%$$^$$&

--Brant

Is that a Boolean curse and swear?

If I told you what I said I'd have to kill you. You'd be able to decipher all my writings.

--Brant

[Roger Bissell]

Good going, Bill -- unless you Google'd it, of course.

Actually, Kant's comment was of about the same level of insight as Lord Acton's "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Perhaps Kant is where Acton got his inspiration.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

REB

[syrakusos]

Merry Christmas, everyone!

REB

Sorry I did not see that in time to show off. I mean, I think that we are all academically trained well enough to know a trick question and to guess the answer. If had been Polanyi or Schlegel, we'd all still be filling up the blue book.

Edited December 26, 2008 by Michael E. Marotta

[Selene]

Folks:

It's not who is quickest to the buzzer or the philosophical or definitional point, it is how the observation or the opposition logically gets resolved in a rational, analytical manner.

Adam

[Brant Gaede]

Folks:

It's not who is quickest to the buzzer or the philosophical or definitional point, it is how the observation or the opposition logically gets resolved in a rational, analytical manner.

Adam

that's no fun.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Sounds like Kant. No, it would not change my opinion. (A & ~A) > (B & ~ B) .

( A & -A ) -> ( B & -B ) <-> -( B & -B ) -> -( A & -A ) so what you wrote is correct.

Ba'al Chatzaf

WTF!? You would think the program would distinguish between symbolic logic and emoticons. Lucky Goedel doesn't post here, or he would think that glitch proves something. I meant to say (A & ~A) > (X & ~X) but the emoticon interpretation seems equally valid.

Ted (and anyone else concerned),

Unfortunately, there is an annoying emoticon that uses "b" plus ")". If someone wants to use "b" surrounded by parentheses, there are two ways to do it (until I wade through the technical server-side stuff one day and figure out how to delete that critter). The first is to disable emoticons for that post. Here is how you do it:

The second is to put the message in a "code" box. For example, here is what happens without anything:

(a) blah blah blah, (B) blah blah blah, © blah blah blah, and (d) blah blah blah

Notice that I have the emoticon for "b" and a copyright symbol for "c". (However, the copyright symbol will not appear with only the right parentheses symbol, like when you make a list.)

Now look at this in a code box.

(a) blah blah blah, (b) blah blah blah, (c) blah blah blah, and (d) blah blah blah

The button to do this is right beside the quote button on the same line as the formatting buttons):

There is another work-around by using a period or space:

(a.) blah blah blah, (b.) blah blah blah, (c.) blah blah blah, and (d.) blah blah blah

(a ) blah blah blah, (b ) blah blah blah, (c ) blah blah blah, and (d ) blah blah blah

Michael

[Mikee]

I did google this quote and found it in google books "Between Past and Future" by Hannah Arendt. Hannah Arendt looks interesting. I think I read something of hers many years ago but can't remember what. Does anyone have an opinion on her? Thanks.

The book was: "The Origins of Totalitarianism". I remember it affected me strongly. It was probably around 1975 when I read it so I don't remember the details.

Edited December 26, 2008 by Mikee

[kiaer.ts]

Thanks, Michael.

[Alfonso Jones]

Good going, Bill -- unless you Google'd it, of course.

Actually, Kant's comment was of about the same level of insight as Lord Acton's "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Perhaps Kant is where Acton got his inspiration.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

REB

No Googling (you may recall that I'm one of those on this list who suggested strongly that it would not be a bad idea for some on OL to actually read Kant to find out what he said, instead of accepting caricatures based one one and two sentence quotes or paraphrases) - until after I identified Kant, and wanted to check my memory.

Kant had his moments - though he created amazingly impenetrable prose at times.

Bill P

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Here is Peikoff's opinion of Hannah Arendt. The quote is from The Ominous Parallels, Chapter 13 - The Concentration Camps (p. 256).

Hannah Arendt, the best and most philosophically inclined of the commentators, is also, in regard to her ultimate conclusions, the worst, i.e., the most perversely wrong-headed.

This is where Peikfoff does the switch meaning in the middle of an argument dance.

Either Rand's idea that logic will kick in on a bad premise and take it to its inevitable disastrous result is valid, or her idea is false and a social system can be constructed entirely on whim, without logic altogether. According to Peikoff, he insinuates the last so he can bash Ms. Arendt. Obviously she was not condemning logic per se, nor condemning the application of logic to premises. She was identifying adherence to logic divorced from reality as a form of cognitive blindness. Peikoff certainly used this meaning enough in his book to bash the Nazis. Here is some more of Peikoff's quote to get an idea of his reasoning (direct continuation from above):

In a final warning, she singles out for special attack the attitude which she regards as a major source of the Nazis' evil and of their success: an unswerving commitment to logic. The Nazis, she says, and the masses attracted to them, were "too consistent'' in pursuing the implications of a basic premise (which she identifies as racism); they gave up the freedom of thought for "the strait jacket of logic" or "the tyranny of logicality"; they did not admit that complete consistency "exists nowhere in the realm of reality," which is pervaded instead by "fortuitousness."(28)

Like the other commentators but even more so, Miss Arendt moves in the modern intellectual mainstream, accepting without challenge all its basic ideas, including the conventional derogation of logic. Thus she can fail to see what her own book makes all but inescapable: that the essence of Hitler's theories was not consistency, but unreason; that "fortuitousness'' is a property not of reality, but of Nazism; and that "logicality" is not tyranny, but the weapon against it.

It is a sin to study the agony of a continent of victims and end up offering as explanation the intellectual equivalent of a drugstore nostrum, or worse: end up preaching, as antidote, an essential tenet of the murderers. It is a sin and a portent.

[Note: The reference is to The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt.]

How's that for a cognitive knee-jerk?

Rand approved and endorsed this text, but she really does not need this kind of demonization of experts and other thinkers to justify her own merit. Especially when their words are given meanings they did not and would not use.

Her merit is great enough to stand on its own. This kind of thing actually detracts from her.

Michael

[Mikee]

Thanks Michael. Peikoff makes me very tired.

I was saddened and depressed by Ayn Rand's death. A year or two later I was excited when browsing the bookshelves in a local bookstore to find a "new" Ayn Rand. I was soon disappointed to find nothing new, a compilation of old work combined with writings of some guy named Peikoff. His sense of life, to me, seemed the polar opposite of Ayn Rand's. I got the feeling of seeing maggots eating the body of a loved one and slammed the book back onto the shelf. I will not read Peikoff regardless of the fact of people I otherwise respect recommending this or that of his to read.

I think your evaluation of his "critique" of Arendt is accurate. I also believe he is a detractor from the life and works of Ayn Rand. "With friends like this you don't need enemies" comes to mind.

I am going to find and re-read "The Origins.." and perhaps one or two others of Arendt's. "The Life of the Mind" looks interesting.

[Chris Grieb]

Mikee; Peikoff had the nerve to complain the some people like the Branden's were living off Ayn Rand's corpse when he was the worst example of it. The only reason he was Ayn Rand's heir was he wouldn't stand up to her at any level. Ayn Rand thought this was friendship.

[Selene]

Michael and the rest of you folks who have labored in the fields of the post Rand-Branden split:

I, until I joined this forum, was not aware of how "difficult" it was for all of you.

I kind of perceived this was on it's way when I was with NBI in the 60's and exited from the Randian segments and immersed myself in the libertarian political movements.

I never liked Peikoff, when I ran into him at various functions and political events when he was, I believe teaching at Brooklyn College.

As far as my experiences with Arendt's works, many of the folks of the Jewish communities that I know were impressed with the argument that there was a fundamental failure in the psyche of the German Jewish population that was wedded to the physical acquisitions and concepts of property/possessions that caused them to avert their eyes to the destructive centralization of Aryan power.

Michael: What do you make of Peikoff's utilization of a theological semantic like:

"It is a sin..." and "It is a sin and a portent."

Adam

[Alfonso Jones]

Michael and the rest of you folks who have labored in the fields of the post Rand-Branden split:

I, until I joined this forum, was not aware of how "difficult" it was for all of you.

I kind of perceived this was on it's way when I was with NBI in the 60's and exited from the Randian segments and immersed myself in the libertarian political movements.

I never liked Peikoff, when I ran into him at various functions and political events when he was, I believe teaching at Brooklyn College.

As far as my experiences with Arendt's works, many of the folks of the Jewish communities that I know were impressed with the argument that there was a fundamental failure in the psyche of the German Jewish population that was wedded to the physical acquisitions and concepts of property/possessions that caused them to avert their eyes to the destructive centralization of Aryan power.

Michael: What do you make of Peikoff's utilization of a theological semantic like:

"It is a sin..." and "It is a sin and a portent."

Adam

I'm not Michael, but I'll share an observation about Peikoff anyhow: He seems to be very fond of "ought" type statements.

I'd like to quote Galt, from the big speech:

"If I were to speak your kind of language, I would say that man's only moral commandment is: Thou shalt think. But a 'moral commandment' is a contradiction in terms. The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments."

Bill P

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Michael: What do you make of Peikoff's utilization of a theological semantic like:

"It is a sin..." and "It is a sin and a portent."

Adam,

I don't see anything sinister or indirectly hypocritical here. All I see is a rhetorical flourish.

I do see, however, a rhetorical flourish more typical of Rand than Peikoff. As this was given at the end of the chapter, I believe he was trying to imitate her style of winding up an essay with a prediction of universal doom if mankind does not wake up and take her advice (i.e., adopt the right philosophy).

The trouble with that style is if you do not pull it off right, it sounds an awful lot like Chicken Little's cry of "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!"

Some may not agree, so I shall leave each to judge such impact for himself/herself.

Anyway, who gets to be Foxy Loxy?

Michael