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Tag Archives: irrationalism
Diminutive Greatness and Fanny Price
This post is the final part of an essay on Mansfield Park, being posted in instalments.
Mansfield Park
Preface
Introduction
Method
Critiques
The Moral Law Within
Fanny and Edmund
The Crawfords
Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram
Mrs Norris
The Quiet Thing
Enlightenment
Kantian Deontology
King Lear
Romanticism
The Satirical Inheritance
Conclusion
Epilogue: Diminutive Greatness & Fanny Price
Epilogue: Diminutive Greatness & Fanny Price
We have re-read them all four times; or rather, to speak more [...]
Posted in Mansfield Park Also tagged Enlightenment, ethics, Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, philosophy, rationalism, Romanticism, sentimentalism Leave a comment
Kantian Deontology
This post is part of an essay on Mansfield Park, being posted in instalments.
Mansfield Park
Preface
Introduction
Method
Critiques
The Moral Law Within
Fanny and Edmund
The Crawfords
Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram
Mrs Norris
The Quiet Thing
Enlightenment
Kantian Deontology
King Lear
Romanticism
The Satirical Inheritance
Conclusion
Epilogue: Diminutive Greatness & Fanny Price
4.1. Kantian Deontology
deontology. The ethical theory taking duty as the basis of morality; the view that some acts are [...]
Posted in Mansfield Park Also tagged Christianity, Enlightenment, ethics, Jane Austen, Kant, Mansfield Park, Marilynne Robinson, philosophy, rationalism, Romanticism, sentimentalism Leave a comment
President Blair?
The principles of international community apply also to international security.
We now have a decade of experience since the end of the Cold War. It has certainly been a less easy time than many hoped in the euphoria that followed the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Our armed forces have been busier than ever – delivering [...]
Posted in topical Also tagged ethics, Nuremberg, rationalism, sentimentalism, Tony Blair, war crimes Leave a comment
Brooks and Lazy Debt Moralism
I do enjoy reading David Brooks, perhaps because there are few I disagree with so agreeably. David has written a column today praising the responsibility of the Tories for their fiscal responsibility. I suppose responsibility is a relative thing and relative to the Republicans the Tories are indeed responsible. The problem is that nobody has [...]
Posted in topical Also tagged debt, ethics, GOP, politics, public finance, sentimentalism, Tories Leave a comment
Marilynne Robinson on Family
Carrying on a series posts in which I snatch random fragments, magpie style, from Marilynne Robinson’s enchanting Death of Adam Essays I offer a couple of fragments from the Family essay.
For some time we seem to have been launched on a great campaign to deromanticize everything, even while we are eager to insist that more [...]
Posted in classics Also tagged Marilynne Robinson, modernity, rationalism, Romanticism Leave a comment
Marilynne Robinson on Facing Reality
Further to my last post, I read another of Marilynne Robinson’s essays from The Death of Adam today, Facing Reality. The shock of reading these essays is not easy to catch. The total inadequacy of my own writing, and indeed the gulf between this and other contemporary non-fiction prose is shocking. I have read [...]
Posted in classics Also tagged ethics, Marilynne Robinson, modernity, philosophy, physicalism Leave a comment
The Post-rational Discourse
Henry over at Crooked Timber has posted Centrism as Tribalism on how centrists can be just as strident and aggressive as the partisans. This is indeed an excellent point! I am especially fond of it because it highlights something I have been saying, that the breakdown in rationality is systemic to our ethics. Henry [...]
Posted in topical Also tagged Christianity, culture wars, Enlightenment, ethics, Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, philosophy, sentimentalism Leave a comment
Climate Science, Science and Humility
John Quiggin has just posted on the thoroughgoing mess the Australian conservative opposition is getting itself into over climate change in Delusionist disaster down under, which set me thinking about what is going on with the climate change thing. Anyone following this blog will know that I am not only aware of science getting some [...]
Posted in topical Also tagged climate change, controversy, ethics, intelligent design, philosophy, religion, science Leave a comment
Roman Polanski
It saddened me when I saw the news of Roman Polanki’s arrest for skipping bail 30 years ago. It didn’t know a great deal about the case but there seemed to be something a little arbitrary about waiting so long and then choosing this moment to bring him to justice.
I don’t wish Polanski any ill [...]
Posted in topical Also tagged controversy, ethics, philosophy, progessives, sentimentalism Leave a comment
Not There Yet
James Balog on Time-lapse proof of extreme ice loss (h/t: Chris Bertram). The stop photography is aimedet at demonstrating graphically the effects of climate change happening right now, to try and make it real instead of abstract argument over computer models predicting bad stuff in the future.
Paul Krugman’s column today suggests that principle opposition to [...]
Reductionism in Economics
Having collected some of the thinking in the economic civil-war debates in my last post I would like to now throw out a few general observations.
John Quiggin in a recent post at Crooked Timber notes some of the causes of the schism, he thinks partly due to the recent increase in polarization in the political [...]
Posted in topical Also tagged Chicago School, controversy, economics, ethics, reductionism, systems theory Leave a comment
Economics Roundup
Krugman on Skidelsky
Krugman has a review of Keynes: The Return of the Master (h/t Krugman). Krugman continues to bait the fresh water economists but provides a neat summary of the Chicago school’s essential innovation, or, depending upon your perspective, regression to neo-classical economics.
In addition Krugman looks at the evolution of the master’s thought between 1936 [...]
Posted in topical Also tagged Chicago School, conflict, controversy, economics, Keynes, neo-Hooverite, Paul Krugman, Real Business Cycle Leave a comment
Mansfield Park Update
I am sorry for the drought in posts: I am working on the Mansfield Park essay. It is taking longer than I anticipated, and I find it hard to break away from this in the middle, but it is going well. As it will take another day or so I will force myself to take [...]
Posted in commentary Also tagged Alasdair Macintyre, Enlightenment, ethics, Jane Austen, moralist, philosophy Leave a comment
A Return to Rationality
The more I dig into contemporary intellectual discourse the more I see that Hume was dead right that reason is and must always remain ‘the slave of the passions’. (As I said, Kant was more subtle, but the bottom line is the same.) Everywhere I look the same pattern turns up over and over again: [...]
Posted in 1 philosophy, topical Also tagged atheism, climate change, David Hume, ethics, Michael Behe, neo-Darwinism, philosophy Leave a comment
Irrationality in Science
It seems I will never cease to be astonished at the sheer irrationality of so many scientific discussions, often being carried out by such brilliant minds. It is pleasing to see someone making an honest effort to understand and think about science philosophically and test the limits of conventional thinking.
John Horgan and George Johnson
Posted in 1 philosophy Also tagged climate change, global warming, intelligent design, Michael Behe, peer review, philosophy, science Leave a comment
Seeing Red
[Reminder: The blog is going onto a light posting schedule to accommodate a busy weekend; the next instalment in the Mansfield Park essay should be posted around Tuesday next week.]
Why is Maria at Crooked Timber writing about a letter about a review of a Chris de Burgh concert I was asking myself. Indeed, why am [...]
Sapere aude!
Over at TPM, Craig Nelson, has written a paen to the enlightenment, To cry “Sapere aude!” once again, finishing with a lament on how scientifically illiterate our culture is.
There is, however, a dark side to this history, and it has nothing to do with Foucault. The entire Enlightenment revolution in thinking centred around one key [...]
Posted in 1 philosophy, topical Also tagged classical philosophy, David Hume, Enlightenment, ethics, Kant, reason, Romanticism, sentimentalism Leave a comment
Natural Selection, Faith and Reason
John Quiggan Quiggin has posted an article at CT, Sunstein Becked, wondering whether the GOP base are so irrational and beyond reason that Glen Beck’s plans to take out Cass Sunstein mightn’t be so bad an idea, Sunstein being ‘the most influential advocates of the view that the polarization of US politics is the result [...]
Posted in topical Also tagged atheism, controversy, evolution, intelligent design, Michael Behe, neo-Darwinism, physicalism 1 Comment
Mansfield Park: Method
This post is part of an essay on Mansfield Park, being posted in instalments.
Mansfield Park
Preface
Introduction
Method
Critiques
The Moral Law Within
Fanny and Edmund
The Crawfords
Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram
Mrs Norris
The Quiet Thing
Enlightenment
Kantian Deontology
King Lear
Romanticism
The Satirical Inheritance
Conclusion
Epilogue: Diminutive Greatness & Fanny Price
2. Method
As for Mansfield Park, the first work of the mature period, it quite matches Emma in point of [...]
Posted in 1 philosophy Also tagged Emma, Enlightenment, ethics, Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, philosophy, reason, Romanticism, sentimentalism Leave a comment
More Strange Madness
OK, this is the final post (I hope) on this. Robert Wright has posted a diavlog with George Johnson where he gives the complete background to the Behe-McWhorter controversy. For me there was a delightful irony of them moving on to discuss Intelligent Design as a crackpot conspiracy theory, and them trying to [...]
Posted in 1 philosophy Also tagged blogingheads.tv, controversy, evolution, intelligent design, Michael Behe Leave a comment
Our Strange Madness
In A strange madness Paul Krugman further reflects on the ‘craziness sweeping America’. Paul think the situation is if anything deteriorating, his 2004 criticism of the Bush administration being in some sense worthy of the passionate response they provoked, certainly relative to the current invective he (and Obama) are receiving for their reasoned and [...]
Posted in 1 philosophy, topical Also tagged blogingheads.tv, conservatism, controversy, Enlightenment, ethics, evolution, intelligent design, philosophy, progessives Leave a comment
The Invention of Autonomy
In my quest to define what I mean by moral philosophy I will, again, contrast it with something that it is not: The Invention of Autonomy, J.B. Schneewind’s great historical account of modern moral philosophy culminating in the moral philosophy of Kant. I will do this by way of commenting on some key passages from [...]
Posted in 1 philosophy Also tagged Christianity, David Hume, Enlightenment, ethics, Jane Austen, Kant, Mansfield Park, Romanticism, Rousseau, sentimentalism Leave a comment
The Summer of Hate
Paul Krugman reports on a very sad state of affairs.
A curious personal observation: I’m getting more crazy hate mail than I have in years, maybe since 2004. But this time the character of the hate mail has changed. [...]
It’s not too hard to understand. Presumably it’s coming from talk radio; I assume the ranters are [...]
Posted in topical Also tagged conservatism, culture wars, hate, Michael Behe, Paul Krugman, progessives Leave a comment
The Post-rational Civilization
In many of my posts now I have been stating that we live in an age of unreason, and that this was an innovation of the Enlightenment. Nearly all of the recent posts reflect this theme but these recent posts have been quite explicit:
The Great Evolution Debate
Appleyard on the Great American Health Debate
The Heart of [...]
Posted in 1 philosophy Also tagged conservatism, David Hume, Enlightenment, ethics, evolution, Kant, progessives, reason, Romanticism Leave a comment
Calvin and Servetus