Curt Doolittle

Source: Original Site Post

  • Curt Doolittle’s answer: Interesting question. Good answers. Let’s look at how w

    Curt Doolittle’s answer: Interesting question. Good answers. Let’s look at how we can ask this question. 😉 [code ]Technical Innovation <-> Practical Utility <——> Popular Influence[/code] Successful Technical Hard to argue that the Russel-Frege-Kripke chain didn’t provide answers but it’s …

  • Who Is The Most Influential Living Philosopher?

    Interesting question. Good answers. Let’s look at how we can ask this question. 😉

    Technical Innovation <-> Practical Utility <------> Popular Influence

    Successful Technical
    Hard to argue that the Russel-Frege-Kripke chain didn’t provide answers but it’s also hard to argue that they weren’t wasting their time. Because Babbage-Cantor-Goedel-Turing produced superior methods and answers.

    Failed Technical
    The failure of Brouwer(Physics), Bridgman(mathematics), Mises (economics), Hayek(Law), and Popper(Philosophy) to understand that the ‘ideal’ disciplines had failed to include operations as a test of possibility, operational grammar to prevent pretense of knowledge,

    Influential and Contributory:
    Searle(cognition), Jonathan Haidt(morality), Daniel Kahneman(cognition), Nassim Taleb (probability and cognitive biases). Unfortunately we can’t list Popper(via negativa), Hayek(Social Science = Law), Keynes(Monetary Marxism), Turing, and Rawls who are demonstrably more influential but not living.

    Popular Influence But Otherwise Meaningless:
    Dennet et all.

    1.                      Categorical Construction: 
    2. Scientific <----------------> Ideal <-----------------> Experiential
    3. Descriptive Causality                             Experiential Causality
    4. Scientific Categories  Normative Categories        Arbitrary Categories
    5. Operational     Analytic     Literary   Conflationary   Continental
    6. Aristotle                     Plato                       (many)
    7.  
    8.                         Tends to Result In:
    9. Truth                         Utility                   Preference
    10. Markets,                    Regulation                   Command
    11. Nash Equality             Pareto Equality           Command Equality 
    12. Natural Hierarchy       Political Hierarchy      Bureaucratic Hierarchy
    13. Classical Liberalism     Social Democracy               Socialism
    14. Rapid Adaptation       Windfall Consumption      Redirected Consumption
    15. Hyper Competitive    Competitive in Windfalls   Competitive when Behind

    I would make the following observations:

    1) The continental (German) program has been a failed attempt, since the time of Kant (through Heidegger), to produce a secular, rational, version of Christianity. The French program (Rousseau through Derrida) has been a demonstrably successful program but a devastatingly destructive one. The Abrahamic program’s second revision (Marx, Freud, Boaz, Cantor, Mises, Rothbard, Strauss) has been catastrophic. And between the French Literary, Continental Rational, and Abrahamic Pseudoscientific movements, the attempt to restore the Aristotelian(scientific)/ Stoic(Mindfulness) / Roman(Law) / Heroic(Truth, Excellence, Beauty) program responsible for human progress in the ancient and modern world has been nearly defeated.

    2) The analytic program was exhausted with Kripke, and in retrospect the analytic attempt to produce both formal logic of language, and a science of language will be considered a failure. For example, there is nothing in analytic philosophy that is not better provided by Turing.

    3) The principle function of academic philosophy today appears consist of the self correction of existing errors prior to exhaustion of the philosophical program (termination of the discipline) in the same way that the analytic program exhausted itself. (If you list philosophers and their innovations this is what appears to be occurring. The discipline is exhausting itself as a dead end).

    4) The principal influences on intellectual history are being provided by the sciences. In particular they are eliminating the last refuge of philosophy: the mind. And science is doing so via-negativa: through the incremental definition and measurement of cognitive biases (errors).

    5) Science, if understood as an organized attempt to produce deflationary truthful (descriptive) speech, and the use of scientific categories (necessary and universal), will continue to displace the discipline of philosophy, and the use of philosophical categories, terminology and concepts. And (assuming I am correct), what remains of the discipline of philosophy will be reducible to the continuous refinements of the scientific method’s production of constant descriptive categories, terminology, and operational grammar. And the cross disciplinary adaptation of local categories into universal categories.

    6) Science is less vulnerable to error , bias, suggestion and deceit, in no small part because the common problems of philosophy: suggestion, loading, framing, obscurantism, overloading, and the Fictionalisms (pseudoscience, pseudo-rationalism, and pseudo-mythology(theology)) are prohibited by the demand for Operational language, declared limits, and full accounting of consequences. It certainly appears that since the beginning of the 20th century we have been far busier eliminating errors of philosophy than philosophers have been busy discovering innovations.

    7) Greek philosophy arose out of the common law of torts. Roman philosophy explicitly functioned on the common law of Torts. The Abrahamic Dark Age (conflating idealism, law, and religion) followed, but we were rescued by the reconstruction of north sea trade and the English common law of Torts (Bacon). And as far as I can determine,

    8) As we have seen with continental and political philosophy, just as we saw with theology, and especially Abrahamic theology, the principle purpose of unscientific speech has been deception, propaganda, the propagation of ignorance, and the conduct of rule, and the expansion of warfare. With theologians and philosophers responsible for more deaths than generals and plagues. Between Zoroaster, Muhammed, and Marx, we have more deaths than all but the great diseases including malaria and the black plague. Philosophers and theologians have done more harm than good, largely functioning as a middle class opposition to the current form of rule.

    9) Philosophical language then is a dead language, and perhaps an immoral one – and rationalism a dead technology. And they will be incrementally combined institutionally and normatively into theology, with Literary Philosophy(Plato and his heirs), merely representing it’s position on the spectrum of Aristotelian/Stoic/Roman/English Law (science), Confucian Reason, French Literary Idealism, Platonic Rational Idealism, Continental and Augustinian Fictionalism, and Abrahamic and Zoroastrian Fictionalism.

    10) The use of non philosophical categories to construct *moral literature* in the French and Italian model will persist forever. Although largely as a means of resistance against the sciences, and the status social, economic, and political status quo.

    In this context we have to ask what we mean by Influential, or Great Philosophers, because:
    (a) Unless we are talking scientists who function as public intellectuals, philosophers, or Social Critics (practitioners of critique), or Moral Fictionalists (wishful thinkers), it really doesn’t appear that philosophy is a living or useful language or discipline.
    (b) it’s hard to argue there are any currently living and working rationalists of any substance. They are largely Moral Fictionalists.

    Let’s look at the list:

    Dennett, Harris, Hitchens, Dawkins. The atheists. It’s worth noting that Dawkins was correct and Gould was wrong – about almost everything. (Surprisingly). Harris and Hitches practice critique but nothing else.

    Zizek practices Critique and has nothing to offer – and is honest about it. I mean, what solutions does Zizek provide? None. And he says so.

    Chomsky practices Critique, has nothing to offer – and is dishonest about it. He is an interesting example of how people with high intelligence and verbal acumen can construct elaborate deceptions. Between Chomsky and Paul Krugman, a half dozen people could spend their entire careers demonstrating their use of cherry picking, loading, framing, overloading with incommensurables, straw men, and heaping of undue praise. His insight into ‘universal grammar’ but categories of increasing complexity is largely correct and we can see that in brain structure today. However, he speaks about world affairs by constantly making the error (intentionally), that rational choice is scalable – just as did Marx. And he has no concept of economics whatsoever, and no political statement can be made any longer independently of economics – especially once we understand that the term economics has nothing to do with money and everything to do with the voluntary organization of individuals through the use of incentives provided by money.

    Hofstadter is a good example as any, but again, he is a public intellectual and a literary aesthete. Did he really provide any insight that was not visible in the literature of the time?

    So in closing, I would say, that:
    1) There are no influential rationalists, because the program is complete and it’s been a dead end. The reasons for this would require I write a tome.
    2) That there are many scientists that serve as public intellectuals, and this will continue.
    3) There remain and always will be a market for moral literature.
    4) That scientific philosophy, if completed, as ‘the discipline of due diligence against ignorance, error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, overloading, and deceit, will replace the discipline of philosophy.

    But that won’t stop people over invested in a dead frame of reference from attempting to practice it. Why? It’s cheap and science is expensive.

    https://www.quora.com/Who-is-the-most-influential-living-philosopher-1

  • Who Is The Most Influential Living Philosopher?

    Interesting question. Good answers. Let’s look at how we can ask this question. 😉

    Technical Innovation <-> Practical Utility <------> Popular Influence

    Successful Technical
    Hard to argue that the Russel-Frege-Kripke chain didn’t provide answers but it’s also hard to argue that they weren’t wasting their time. Because Babbage-Cantor-Goedel-Turing produced superior methods and answers.

    Failed Technical
    The failure of Brouwer(Physics), Bridgman(mathematics), Mises (economics), Hayek(Law), and Popper(Philosophy) to understand that the ‘ideal’ disciplines had failed to include operations as a test of possibility, operational grammar to prevent pretense of knowledge,

    Influential and Contributory:
    Searle(cognition), Jonathan Haidt(morality), Daniel Kahneman(cognition), Nassim Taleb (probability and cognitive biases). Unfortunately we can’t list Popper(via negativa), Hayek(Social Science = Law), Keynes(Monetary Marxism), Turing, and Rawls who are demonstrably more influential but not living.

    Popular Influence But Otherwise Meaningless:
    Dennet et all.

    1.                      Categorical Construction: 
    2. Scientific <----------------> Ideal <-----------------> Experiential
    3. Descriptive Causality                             Experiential Causality
    4. Scientific Categories  Normative Categories        Arbitrary Categories
    5. Operational     Analytic     Literary   Conflationary   Continental
    6. Aristotle                     Plato                       (many)
    7.  
    8.                         Tends to Result In:
    9. Truth                         Utility                   Preference
    10. Markets,                    Regulation                   Command
    11. Nash Equality             Pareto Equality           Command Equality 
    12. Natural Hierarchy       Political Hierarchy      Bureaucratic Hierarchy
    13. Classical Liberalism     Social Democracy               Socialism
    14. Rapid Adaptation       Windfall Consumption      Redirected Consumption
    15. Hyper Competitive    Competitive in Windfalls   Competitive when Behind

    I would make the following observations:

    1) The continental (German) program has been a failed attempt, since the time of Kant (through Heidegger), to produce a secular, rational, version of Christianity. The French program (Rousseau through Derrida) has been a demonstrably successful program but a devastatingly destructive one. The Abrahamic program’s second revision (Marx, Freud, Boaz, Cantor, Mises, Rothbard, Strauss) has been catastrophic. And between the French Literary, Continental Rational, and Abrahamic Pseudoscientific movements, the attempt to restore the Aristotelian(scientific)/ Stoic(Mindfulness) / Roman(Law) / Heroic(Truth, Excellence, Beauty) program responsible for human progress in the ancient and modern world has been nearly defeated.

    2) The analytic program was exhausted with Kripke, and in retrospect the analytic attempt to produce both formal logic of language, and a science of language will be considered a failure. For example, there is nothing in analytic philosophy that is not better provided by Turing.

    3) The principle function of academic philosophy today appears consist of the self correction of existing errors prior to exhaustion of the philosophical program (termination of the discipline) in the same way that the analytic program exhausted itself. (If you list philosophers and their innovations this is what appears to be occurring. The discipline is exhausting itself as a dead end).

    4) The principal influences on intellectual history are being provided by the sciences. In particular they are eliminating the last refuge of philosophy: the mind. And science is doing so via-negativa: through the incremental definition and measurement of cognitive biases (errors).

    5) Science, if understood as an organized attempt to produce deflationary truthful (descriptive) speech, and the use of scientific categories (necessary and universal), will continue to displace the discipline of philosophy, and the use of philosophical categories, terminology and concepts. And (assuming I am correct), what remains of the discipline of philosophy will be reducible to the continuous refinements of the scientific method’s production of constant descriptive categories, terminology, and operational grammar. And the cross disciplinary adaptation of local categories into universal categories.

    6) Science is less vulnerable to error , bias, suggestion and deceit, in no small part because the common problems of philosophy: suggestion, loading, framing, obscurantism, overloading, and the Fictionalisms (pseudoscience, pseudo-rationalism, and pseudo-mythology(theology)) are prohibited by the demand for Operational language, declared limits, and full accounting of consequences. It certainly appears that since the beginning of the 20th century we have been far busier eliminating errors of philosophy than philosophers have been busy discovering innovations.

    7) Greek philosophy arose out of the common law of torts. Roman philosophy explicitly functioned on the common law of Torts. The Abrahamic Dark Age (conflating idealism, law, and religion) followed, but we were rescued by the reconstruction of north sea trade and the English common law of Torts (Bacon). And as far as I can determine,

    8) As we have seen with continental and political philosophy, just as we saw with theology, and especially Abrahamic theology, the principle purpose of unscientific speech has been deception, propaganda, the propagation of ignorance, and the conduct of rule, and the expansion of warfare. With theologians and philosophers responsible for more deaths than generals and plagues. Between Zoroaster, Muhammed, and Marx, we have more deaths than all but the great diseases including malaria and the black plague. Philosophers and theologians have done more harm than good, largely functioning as a middle class opposition to the current form of rule.

    9) Philosophical language then is a dead language, and perhaps an immoral one – and rationalism a dead technology. And they will be incrementally combined institutionally and normatively into theology, with Literary Philosophy(Plato and his heirs), merely representing it’s position on the spectrum of Aristotelian/Stoic/Roman/English Law (science), Confucian Reason, French Literary Idealism, Platonic Rational Idealism, Continental and Augustinian Fictionalism, and Abrahamic and Zoroastrian Fictionalism.

    10) The use of non philosophical categories to construct *moral literature* in the French and Italian model will persist forever. Although largely as a means of resistance against the sciences, and the status social, economic, and political status quo.

    In this context we have to ask what we mean by Influential, or Great Philosophers, because:
    (a) Unless we are talking scientists who function as public intellectuals, philosophers, or Social Critics (practitioners of critique), or Moral Fictionalists (wishful thinkers), it really doesn’t appear that philosophy is a living or useful language or discipline.
    (b) it’s hard to argue there are any currently living and working rationalists of any substance. They are largely Moral Fictionalists.

    Let’s look at the list:

    Dennett, Harris, Hitchens, Dawkins. The atheists. It’s worth noting that Dawkins was correct and Gould was wrong – about almost everything. (Surprisingly). Harris and Hitches practice critique but nothing else.

    Zizek practices Critique and has nothing to offer – and is honest about it. I mean, what solutions does Zizek provide? None. And he says so.

    Chomsky practices Critique, has nothing to offer – and is dishonest about it. He is an interesting example of how people with high intelligence and verbal acumen can construct elaborate deceptions. Between Chomsky and Paul Krugman, a half dozen people could spend their entire careers demonstrating their use of cherry picking, loading, framing, overloading with incommensurables, straw men, and heaping of undue praise. His insight into ‘universal grammar’ but categories of increasing complexity is largely correct and we can see that in brain structure today. However, he speaks about world affairs by constantly making the error (intentionally), that rational choice is scalable – just as did Marx. And he has no concept of economics whatsoever, and no political statement can be made any longer independently of economics – especially once we understand that the term economics has nothing to do with money and everything to do with the voluntary organization of individuals through the use of incentives provided by money.

    Hofstadter is a good example as any, but again, he is a public intellectual and a literary aesthete. Did he really provide any insight that was not visible in the literature of the time?

    So in closing, I would say, that:
    1) There are no influential rationalists, because the program is complete and it’s been a dead end. The reasons for this would require I write a tome.
    2) That there are many scientists that serve as public intellectuals, and this will continue.
    3) There remain and always will be a market for moral literature.
    4) That scientific philosophy, if completed, as ‘the discipline of due diligence against ignorance, error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, overloading, and deceit, will replace the discipline of philosophy.

    But that won’t stop people over invested in a dead frame of reference from attempting to practice it. Why? It’s cheap and science is expensive.

    https://www.quora.com/Who-is-the-most-influential-living-philosopher-1

  • Gossip > Critique > Propaganda

    Gossip > Critique > Propaganda

  • Gossip > Critique > Propaganda

    Gossip > Critique > Propaganda

  • Nationalism

    by Daniel Gurpide 1. I think that ‘nationalism’ has to be clarified and put into historical perspective so as to become a really empowering technology. (CD: ok) 2. My priors so that you understand where I come from: I have relatives in Spain, France, Norway and the UK; I studied in Madrid, Paris, Cambridge, and Dresden; I lived in Tanzania, Bolivia, New York, Switzerland, and Germany. I consider myself a ‘good European’. (CD: ok) 3. Nationalism only has meaning for me if understood as a doctrine capable of expressing in political terms the philosophy and vital needs of European man in 2017 (I am thinking not in geographical, but in anthropological terms—the white man—and including both the peoples of the continental homeland as well as ‘Europe overseas.’ Their plight is common and, even if they are unaware of it, they are experiencing a similar fate—they all suffer from the same disease). (CD: agreed) 4. European nations are condemned either to exit from history and be melted down into a shapeless and faceless global mass, or to turn into the substance of a future nation and people. (CD: agreed) 5. It is convenient to distinguish between two different ways of posing the ‘national question.’ One, developed in France, sees a nation essentially as a construction operated by a state, and bound ab initio to a restricted horizon, a closure: historically, the closure and separation from Empire. This attitude cannot but immediately give rise to the problem of fixing national borders: in this case first for the natio francorum without; then, for the political and cultural identities within those borders, on which ‘reduction’ is operated. This policy of self-exclusion without (from the Imperium), and homologation and repression of internal identities and differences within, was pursued by French absolutism—and to its ultimate consequences with the French Revolution. Subsequently it was emulated by all the democratic revolutions in Europe, to the point when all nationalisms based on ‘the masses’ and exclusion of ‘the other’ arrived, necessarily, at contemporary one world universalism. (CD: agreed) Contrary to appearances, the one world ideology—which today impregnates the dominant culture and the political praxis of international institutions—is only superficially in contradiction to the presuppositions of the form of nationalism described above. Withdrawal into oneself implies, intrinsically, recognition, sooner or later, of equality among nations. The dream of political universalism is but the reproposal, on a global scale, of the very process that led to the formation of the nation-state. (CD: agreed) 6. Where the memory of the Roman imperial model persisted, and where the project of a Holy Roman Empire as restoration of the classical order remained politically active through the Middle Ages the process of ‘national’ unification did not take place (except partially and on a small scale) until the Romantic Age: during the nineteenth century. It assumed a deeply diverse aspect. (CD: agreed) In this case, it is not the state that builds a nation and stimulates a national consciousness, but rather a national consciousness which, in its maturity, seeks to express itself politically through one state. Belonging, for example, to the German or the Italian nation was not, initially, a fact on which to build national consciousness, but rather an idea (in its political sense): a spiritual attachment to a project that needed to be defined and was linked to an old imperial vision of a hierarchically organised cosmos. (CD: agreed) 7. Today, the situation of European nationalism is analogous. Europe – Magna Europa – does not enjoy a real existence. Europe is only the destiny of those who recognise themselves as part of it. Furthermore, it is precisely to this ‘ghost,’ to this choice of culture, values, civilisation (i.e., the regeneration of history)—to this myth—that the faith of the good European is addressed. Ultimately, it is also contrasted with the jumble of states and petty-states inhabiting our continent, together with their squalid supranational bureaucracies. (CD: agreed) 8. There is another reason why European nationalism should associate itself with the second model described above: the very same idea of Europe amounts to a transfigured re-emergence of the imperial vision. The unification of Europe on the model of the Jacobin nation-state—and in direct opposition to regionalist tendencies (even perhaps forcing linguistic, cultural, and administrative homogenisation)—is unthinkable. There is a further reason: the non-existence of the matter of Europe’s borders. Europe is not a territory, but rather a destiny offered to all who can trace an ethnic and spiritual relationship to it. (CD: agreed) This consideration helps clarify how un-European, in this sense, are institutions like the Council of Europe, an institution of which Turkey is a member today—and perhaps Israel tomorrow. (CD: agreed) 9. With the Industrial Revolution, humankind entered into a phase of planetisation. None may avoid such planetary perspective or dream of impossible isolation. Planetary order is unavoidable. It is fated to come about, sooner or later. Tomorrow’s Great Politics cannot be conceived or pursued without a ‘world order’. (CD: Um. Either I dont understand what you’re getting at, or I don’t agree. i’m not sure which. What I see is vacillation between opening and closing, expanding and contracting, civilizations in response to circumstances, and some having the free capital to adapt and some not.) 10. Institutionally, we should study carefully three models: Switzerland, the USA Constitution (Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, and Adams) and Ancient Rome. My contribution today regarding Rome: (CD: agreed 100% that those are the three ‘scales’. Swiss > American > Roman. 11. The planetisation that is taking place demands a ‘cosmic order.’ Will such order be ‘imperial’ or ‘egalitarian’? In that the future is open, this must remain unknown: we can merely commit ourselves to one or to the other. (CD: Ok so this is where we are not seeing the same thing and that’s why I asked the question.) The egalitarian solution implies the reduction of humankind ad unum, the emergence of the ‘universal type’ and of global standardisation. The imperial solution is hierarchical. If freedom in egalitarian dialectics is one absolute opposed to another (the denial of freedom), in imperial dialectics, freedom is merely a relative proposition directly linked to the notion of social responsibility. Within the Imperium, only the right of the best is absolute, measured according to the virtue manifested by humankind at a particular moment. However, Imperium is also, from a planetary perspective, the only means of preserving differences, thanks to the principle of unicuique suum, which implicitly recognises the fundamental inequality of values and identities. Imperium may be seen as the alternative to globalisation: strength and cohesion in diversity as a model of planetary organisation. (CD: I see speciation as an opportunity.)

  • Nationalism

    by Daniel Gurpide 1. I think that ‘nationalism’ has to be clarified and put into historical perspective so as to become a really empowering technology. (CD: ok) 2. My priors so that you understand where I come from: I have relatives in Spain, France, Norway and the UK; I studied in Madrid, Paris, Cambridge, and Dresden; I lived in Tanzania, Bolivia, New York, Switzerland, and Germany. I consider myself a ‘good European’. (CD: ok) 3. Nationalism only has meaning for me if understood as a doctrine capable of expressing in political terms the philosophy and vital needs of European man in 2017 (I am thinking not in geographical, but in anthropological terms—the white man—and including both the peoples of the continental homeland as well as ‘Europe overseas.’ Their plight is common and, even if they are unaware of it, they are experiencing a similar fate—they all suffer from the same disease). (CD: agreed) 4. European nations are condemned either to exit from history and be melted down into a shapeless and faceless global mass, or to turn into the substance of a future nation and people. (CD: agreed) 5. It is convenient to distinguish between two different ways of posing the ‘national question.’ One, developed in France, sees a nation essentially as a construction operated by a state, and bound ab initio to a restricted horizon, a closure: historically, the closure and separation from Empire. This attitude cannot but immediately give rise to the problem of fixing national borders: in this case first for the natio francorum without; then, for the political and cultural identities within those borders, on which ‘reduction’ is operated. This policy of self-exclusion without (from the Imperium), and homologation and repression of internal identities and differences within, was pursued by French absolutism—and to its ultimate consequences with the French Revolution. Subsequently it was emulated by all the democratic revolutions in Europe, to the point when all nationalisms based on ‘the masses’ and exclusion of ‘the other’ arrived, necessarily, at contemporary one world universalism. (CD: agreed) Contrary to appearances, the one world ideology—which today impregnates the dominant culture and the political praxis of international institutions—is only superficially in contradiction to the presuppositions of the form of nationalism described above. Withdrawal into oneself implies, intrinsically, recognition, sooner or later, of equality among nations. The dream of political universalism is but the reproposal, on a global scale, of the very process that led to the formation of the nation-state. (CD: agreed) 6. Where the memory of the Roman imperial model persisted, and where the project of a Holy Roman Empire as restoration of the classical order remained politically active through the Middle Ages the process of ‘national’ unification did not take place (except partially and on a small scale) until the Romantic Age: during the nineteenth century. It assumed a deeply diverse aspect. (CD: agreed) In this case, it is not the state that builds a nation and stimulates a national consciousness, but rather a national consciousness which, in its maturity, seeks to express itself politically through one state. Belonging, for example, to the German or the Italian nation was not, initially, a fact on which to build national consciousness, but rather an idea (in its political sense): a spiritual attachment to a project that needed to be defined and was linked to an old imperial vision of a hierarchically organised cosmos. (CD: agreed) 7. Today, the situation of European nationalism is analogous. Europe – Magna Europa – does not enjoy a real existence. Europe is only the destiny of those who recognise themselves as part of it. Furthermore, it is precisely to this ‘ghost,’ to this choice of culture, values, civilisation (i.e., the regeneration of history)—to this myth—that the faith of the good European is addressed. Ultimately, it is also contrasted with the jumble of states and petty-states inhabiting our continent, together with their squalid supranational bureaucracies. (CD: agreed) 8. There is another reason why European nationalism should associate itself with the second model described above: the very same idea of Europe amounts to a transfigured re-emergence of the imperial vision. The unification of Europe on the model of the Jacobin nation-state—and in direct opposition to regionalist tendencies (even perhaps forcing linguistic, cultural, and administrative homogenisation)—is unthinkable. There is a further reason: the non-existence of the matter of Europe’s borders. Europe is not a territory, but rather a destiny offered to all who can trace an ethnic and spiritual relationship to it. (CD: agreed) This consideration helps clarify how un-European, in this sense, are institutions like the Council of Europe, an institution of which Turkey is a member today—and perhaps Israel tomorrow. (CD: agreed) 9. With the Industrial Revolution, humankind entered into a phase of planetisation. None may avoid such planetary perspective or dream of impossible isolation. Planetary order is unavoidable. It is fated to come about, sooner or later. Tomorrow’s Great Politics cannot be conceived or pursued without a ‘world order’. (CD: Um. Either I dont understand what you’re getting at, or I don’t agree. i’m not sure which. What I see is vacillation between opening and closing, expanding and contracting, civilizations in response to circumstances, and some having the free capital to adapt and some not.) 10. Institutionally, we should study carefully three models: Switzerland, the USA Constitution (Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, and Adams) and Ancient Rome. My contribution today regarding Rome: (CD: agreed 100% that those are the three ‘scales’. Swiss > American > Roman. 11. The planetisation that is taking place demands a ‘cosmic order.’ Will such order be ‘imperial’ or ‘egalitarian’? In that the future is open, this must remain unknown: we can merely commit ourselves to one or to the other. (CD: Ok so this is where we are not seeing the same thing and that’s why I asked the question.) The egalitarian solution implies the reduction of humankind ad unum, the emergence of the ‘universal type’ and of global standardisation. The imperial solution is hierarchical. If freedom in egalitarian dialectics is one absolute opposed to another (the denial of freedom), in imperial dialectics, freedom is merely a relative proposition directly linked to the notion of social responsibility. Within the Imperium, only the right of the best is absolute, measured according to the virtue manifested by humankind at a particular moment. However, Imperium is also, from a planetary perspective, the only means of preserving differences, thanks to the principle of unicuique suum, which implicitly recognises the fundamental inequality of values and identities. Imperium may be seen as the alternative to globalisation: strength and cohesion in diversity as a model of planetary organisation. (CD: I see speciation as an opportunity.)

  • The Choices

    a) Rule (conflict resolution), b) Government(commons production), c) Market(Consumption production) 1 – Rule of Law vs Discretionary Rule 2 – Production of commons by a spectrum of discretion: individual, oligarchical, syndicalist, democratic. 3 – Distribution of control of property between rulers and citizens. 4 – Distribution of proceeds of the market between rulers and citizens. Capitalism (consumption), Socialism (commons production), Authoritarian(institutional production) 5 – Balance of Proceeds between consumption and commons and institutions.

  • The Choices

    a) Rule (conflict resolution), b) Government(commons production), c) Market(Consumption production) 1 – Rule of Law vs Discretionary Rule 2 – Production of commons by a spectrum of discretion: individual, oligarchical, syndicalist, democratic. 3 – Distribution of control of property between rulers and citizens. 4 – Distribution of proceeds of the market between rulers and citizens. Capitalism (consumption), Socialism (commons production), Authoritarian(institutional production) 5 – Balance of Proceeds between consumption and commons and institutions.

  • There ISN’T A Definition Of Fascism (Really)

    THERE ISN”T A DEFINITION OF FASCISM (REALLY) Fascism doesn’t actually have a definition. Look it up. What it’s reducible to is the application of total war (national organization for military and political conflict) to economics (national organization for economic and political conflict). The Nazis even took it all the way to aesthetics. (Which was one of their principal innovations.) If we look at what the fascists did and their incentives it’s just an attempt to resist the twin cosmopolitan strategies of communism and capitalism. In rough colloquial terms it means little more than suppression of the market for opposition. Or rather, intolerance for opposition.