Some more bragging to compensate for the free-riding modesty of PoT’s bloggers: Roderick Long has an article out on the dispute over markets with and without limits: “The Limits of Anti-Anti-Commodification Arguments: James Stacey Taylor in Markets with Limits versus Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski in Markets without Limits,” International Journal of Applied Philosophy, vol. 37:2 (Fall 2023), pp. 1-10. The publication date is given as 2023, but the issue just came out. Continue reading
Category Archives: ethics
First Thoughts on Pettit’s Republicanism
I want to get some basic thoughts on Philip Pettit’s book, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government, on the record. Pettit’s ideas have the virtue of being not so far out in left field (from my own perspective) as to be hopeless, yet strange enough to be difficult to grapple with. What follows really are just some first thoughts, not very elegantly expressed, and not very certain.
Continue readingFrom the Molinari Vaults
To my surprise I discover that I never uploaded the PDFs to the articles in the 2nd issue (2019!) of the Molinari Review. I’d intended to have an interval between print publication and web publication in order to incentivise people to buy the print edition, but I hadn’t intended to have a five-year interval. I thought I remembered posting the PDFs a while ago, but apparently my memory befoozled me. (Well, the past few years have been … complicated.)
Okay, so I’ve uploaded them now. Thus if you’re one of those penurious souls who never purchased the hard copy, you can now read the articles for free! Check out Jason Lee Byas defending market anarchism vis-à-vis communist anarchism; Joseph R. Stromberg defending Gabriel Kolko’s account of the role of big business in setting up the regulatory state; Thomas Lafayette Bateman III and Walter E. Block on the political implications of the free will debate; an exchange between Jan Narveson and James P. Sterba over whether a commitment to welfare rights follows from libertarian premises; and an exchange among Gus diZerega, Chris Matthew Sciabarra, and your humble correspondent on the merits and demerits of libertarianism in general and Ayn Rand in particular.
All this Molinari goodness is available via this link.
By the way, the 3rd issue (which will feature, inter alia, a reply to Stromberg from Robert Bradley Jr. and Roger Donway, along with Stromberg’s counter-reply) has been nearly ready to go for a while now; I just haven’t found the time to put the damn thing together. Maybe this summer? (It’d be nice if the 3rd installment of the Molinari Review could appear before the still-longer-awaited 3rd volume of Harlan Ellison’s Dangerous Visions anthology, due out this fall. People have been waiting for that sucker since 1973.)
“It’s OK to Be Gay”: Hamtramck and the Jihad for Gay Pride
This Washington Post article tells the story of a betrayal–a double betrayal, really. The first betrayal is the one mentioned in the article itself. The Muslims of Hamtramck, Michigan accepted the generosity and hospitality of pro-immigrant activists, including Pride activists, then stabbed them in the back.
In June, after divisive debate, the six-member council blocked the display of Pride flags on city property — action that has angered allies and members of the LGBTQ+ community, who feel that the support they provided the immigrant groups has been reciprocated with betrayal.
“We welcomed you,” former council member Catrina Stackpoole, a retired social worker who identifies as gay, recalls telling the council this summer. “We created nonprofits to help feed, clothe, find housing. We did everything we could to make your transition here easier, and this is how you repay us, by stabbing us in the back?”
That betrayal is obvious. The other one is harder to see, but just as real. The Muslims of Hamtramck have not only betrayed their neighbors but their co-religionists: Muslims abroad fighting for gay rights and pride. Continue reading
Titanic Malice
The response to the Titan submersible event has, in my view, been both remarkable and bizarre. Some people have found it an occasion for gallows humor; others have tried to suggest that the crew/passengers felt no suffering as they died. Still others tell us that we should celebrate the heroism of people who take risks to explore the unknown, and point out that civilization itself depends on its bold risk takers. I find all three of these reactions delusional, and diagnostic of the delusions of our society.
Continue readingEstlund’s Defense of Ideal Political Theory
In “Human Nature and the Limits (If Any) of Political Philosophy,” (2011) David Estlund defends what are sometimes called “ideal” or utopian political theories against the charge of being incompatible with human nature. For example, a utopian socialist or egalitarian political theory might require a degree of selflessness from the citizenry that it is entirely unrealistic to expect flesh and blood humans to possess. Therefore, it is said, the political theory is defective and false. To this familiar objection, the familiar reply from defenders of utopian political theory is to claim that human nature is indeed up to the demands of their theory, or at least it will be once the dog-eat-dog pressures imposed by capitalism have been swept away and we enter the New Jerusalem.
But Estlund does not take this tack. What distinguishes his defense of utopian political theory is a willingness to agree for the sake of argument that we can know in advance that people will never bring themselves to act as the theory requires—which means he acknowledges that the theory should never be implemented, since to do so would bring catastrophic social dysfunction. Nevertheless, this does not invalidate the theory! Such a utopian political theory would remain the normative ideal: we ought to rebuild society on the model it prescribes and comply with its moral demands on our personal actions. Only, since we will never so comply, we ought not to rebuild society in the way it prescribes. But that does not mean there is anything wrong with the theory.
In what follows, I will elaborate and critique Estlund’s argument. TL;DR: The main thrust of his argument makes a valid and interesting point, but not one that saves ideal theory’s bacon.
Continue readingMarkets Limited, Friendship Unlimited
The Molinari Society will be holding its mostly-annual Pacific Symposium in conjunction with the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association in San Francisco, 5-8 April 2023. Here’s the schedule info:
Molinari Society symposium, part 1:
Author Meets Critics: Gary Chartier, Understanding Friendship: On the Moral, Political, and Spiritual Meaning of LoveG4D. Thursday, 6 April 2023, 6:00-8:00pm, Westin St. Francis Hotel, 335 Powell St., San Francisco CA 94102, Elizabethan C (2nd floor).
chair:
Roderick T. Long (Auburn University)author:
Gary Chartier (La Sierra University)critics:
Neera Badhwar (University of Oklahoma and George Mason University)
Michael Pakaluk [in absentia] (The Catholic University of America)
Roderick T. Long (Auburn University)Molinari Society symposium, part 2:
Author Meets Critics: James Stacey Taylor, Markets with Limits: How the Commodification of Academia Derails DebateG7E. Friday, 7 April 2023, 7:00-9:00pm, Westin St. Francis Hotel, 335 Powell St., San Francisco CA 94102, Olympic (2nd floor).
chair:
Roderick T. Long (Auburn University)author:
James Stacey Taylor (The College of New Jersey)critics:
Amy White (Ohio University)
Roderick T. Long (Auburn University)[Glen Whitman (CSU Northridge), previously announced as an additional commentator, had to withdraw.]
Gerald Gaus on the Primacy of Individual Moral Perspectives
In “Social Morality and the Primacy of Individual Perspectives” (2017), Gerald Gaus responds to critics of his The Order of Public Reason (2011) as part of symposium on that book. I presume The Tyranny of the Ideal (2016) is a continuation of the ideas earlier and more formally developed in the 2011 book. The 2017 essay is valuable because it aims to “sketch a modest of recasting of the analysis” presented in the 2011 book. That is, more or less the whole argument of 2011 is restated in new terms, and obviously much abbreviated. The following is a brief summary of the argument and one of its implications.
Continue readingThe Beautiful People
Is it legitimate to criticize someone’s physical appearance? I don’t mean: is it legitimate to have or even express personal preferences about someone’s physical appearance. I mean: is it legitimate to issue an objective verdict on someone for looking the way they do, e.g., criticizing the very structure of a person’s face for giving them the facial appearance they have? Continue reading
Connie Rosati on “The Lincoln Virtues”
I spent the weekend at the American Philosophical Association’s (APA) Central Division meeting in Denver, my first APA, believe it or not, since 2011. It was a good time, certainly a welcome relief from my day job in health care revenue cycle management.
The APA is always punctuated, if that’s the right word, by a “Presidential Address,” a lecture given by the distinguished philosopher who is president of that particular division. This meeting’s presidential address was given by Connie Rosati of the University of Texas at Austin, an ethicist whose work I only know in a superficial way. Rosati gave an interesting talk on what she called “The Lincoln Virtues,” meaning a set of virtues associated with, or nicely exemplified by, Abraham Lincoln. The virtues in question involve a certain kind of magnanimity, generosity, and humility–not quite Christian and not quite pagan, but maybe a synthesis of the two or a mean between them. Think of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, and you’ll get the basic idea: “with malice toward none, with charity for all,” asserted by a president approaching imminent victory in a bitter civil war. (The address was given about a month before the Union’s victory in the US Civil War.) Continue reading
Policy of Truth 