How Social Justice Killed Individual Virtue ｜ Guest： Athenian Stranger ｜ 10⧸2⧸24
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 5 minutes
Words per Minute
165.81857
Summary
On this episode of The Blaze, host Glenn Beck sits down with writer and philosopher Aaron Strasser to discuss his new book, "Sovereignty." They talk about the concept of sovereignty, and why it has changed so radically over time.
Transcript
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I've got a great stream with a great guest that I think you're really going to enjoy.
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So I was reading one of my favorite thinkers, Bertrand de Juvenal, his book on sovereignty.
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And he brought up an issue that I found really fascinating.
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Something that I never thought very deeply about, but something that is very important for our modern lives.
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He pointed out that the ancients understood justice as an individual trait, a virtue to be cultivated, the way that a man understood and interacted properly with the people in his community.
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But in the modern conception, justice is something very different.
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It's something, it's a system that we implement.
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It's an aspect that a society takes on once it's properly configured itself.
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And I think this has lent itself to an understanding of social justice that now comes to dominate pretty much every part of the Western world.
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So I wanted to dive deeper into this concept and get a better grasp of what the ancients would have had to say about it and why it has changed so radically over time.
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He's a great writer, sub-stacker, often is addressing philosophical topics on places like Twitter.
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And thanks so much for having me on because this is a particular topic that is something that I have essentially been obsessed with for nothing less than like a decade.
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So I think the danger you're going to have with having me on about this is trying to shut me up so that you can get a word in here and there.
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Well, that's exactly the right kind of problem to have.
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And I didn't know that that is something that you had dove deep on.
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But it seems like I've chosen exactly the right person to have the conversation with.
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All right, so let's get down to the topic itself.
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I'm going to open this up by just reading the passage because, one, I find DeJuvenal to be an excellent writer,
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and, two, I'm just not going to be able to go ahead and cut this down in any other way, distill it in any better way.
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So I'm just going to read what DeJuvenal has written here.
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It's one of the most fascinating books on political theory I've ever read and can't recommend it highly enough.
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But I'm about halfway through Sovereignty, and it's very good.
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Maybe not quite as revolutionary in its totality as On Power, but a book that is well worth your time.
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And in his chapter on justice, he has a passage here where he says,
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Thus justice is conceived as a human attitude of mind, which habit strengthens, a virtue.
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When people talk about justice today, they no longer mean this virtue of the soul, but a state of things.
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The word no longer conveys to mind a certain human attribute, but a certain configuration of society.
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It is no longer applied to certain personal attributes of mind, but envisages certain collective arrangements.
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Whereas it used to be thought that social relationships are improved by justice in men,
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it is now thought, contrary-wise, that the installation in institutions of a stage of things called just promotes the improvement of men.
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This reversal is in the fashion of thought today, which makes morality the creature of circumstance.
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We see then that justice today is not a habit of mind, which each of us can acquire in proportion to his virtue,
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Rather, it is an organization of arrangement of things.
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For this reason, the first part of the classical definition, which links justice with human beings,
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is no longer found a place in modern preoccupations, which links justice with society.
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People no longer say with Aristotle that justice is the moral attitude of just men,
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or that the jurist that is a certain exercise of the will,
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but for these talk of an intimate quality of the soul.
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Justice now recommended is a quality not of a man and of a man's actions,
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but of a certain configuration of things in social geometry, no matter what means it is brought about.
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Justice is now something which exists independently of just men.
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So, Stranger, this is something that, like I said, really struck me.
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It's, you know, you have this intuition, but until you see something like this fleshed out,
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you may not completely look at the totality of that problem.
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And I just want, you know, obviously we're going to go deep into this,
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but I would just want to get your kind of surface level thoughts on that passage,
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on the shift he describes between the understanding of justice as a individual virtue cultivated
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as opposed to something that is basically socially engineered by creating the proper institutions.
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Yeah, so for your listeners, what was just said was a lot.
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And what I would suggest for everyone's consideration is that what he's pointing to there
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is a distinction between pre-moderns and modernity,
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which is to say the radical transformation that takes place at the level of politics
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it's really predicated upon a new understanding of science itself, right?
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So modernity, modern science, the enlightenment,
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all of these things are different sides to the same coin.
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The issue is also, last time you had me on, we talked about Strauss and Machiavelli.
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This is something that, this is a theme that Strauss himself makes very prominent.
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And I've seen critiques, for instance, of where people say so-called Straussians
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challenge you not to talk about ancients and moderns, impossible.
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But this is, I would simply say that that's not a theme of Strauss.
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In the 18th century, there was the so-called quarrel between the,
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off as a literary issue and unfolds into the philosophical issue that we understand it is today.
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the classical statement of what justice is and what he's talking about there,
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is what we find in Aristotle's Nicomachean ethics.
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the Nicomachean ethics is usually what everyone means when they say Aristotle's ethics.
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And what he does there is he provides an account of moral virtues and then also an account of intellectual virtues
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and then has a long discussion about friendship and then how all of this comes together with relationship to law
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erite, it's the Greek word, it just means excellence.
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I like to call it Aristotle's logos of happiness because he's,
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all of us do things with the belief that there's some good involved for us.
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then let's contemplate the word he uses is theorize.
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because it would seem to be the case that happiness and virtue go hand to hand.
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the most important of which is going to be justice,
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And the reason it is the most important is B is because what he's going to claim
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is that to have the virtue of justice of necessity means that you have all of the other virtues.
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And another sort of classical statement of this is coming from Plato's Republic where Plato's era.
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Plato's Socrates finally comes out and gives a sort of definition of justice is saying that it's minding one's own business,
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the philosopher King is the only person who's allowed to mind everyone's business while everyone else is minding their own business.
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But Aristotle gives this account of what justice is and what we need to understand about justice
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and why it's also so important is because when you think about the nature of our soul,
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I don't mean any kind of metaphysical sense or something like that.
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It's just the Greek word psuche for soul just means the source of life.
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The reason it's so important to us is it would seem to be the case that we as human beings have just a very few basic elementary reactions,
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And one of those is what he refers to as thumos.
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And a good way to translate that is righteous indignation.
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It's going to turn out that this passion of the soul is in many ways,
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you need to have people who have a sense of righteous indignation at what is not thought to be good.
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So we're already in the realm of the soul when we're talking about justice with the pre-moderns and especially,
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And so the whole point of contemplating the virtues,
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that Aristotle is getting at is that in some way,
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it's going to turn out that if we know what they,
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if it's true knowledge is going to be bound up with action.
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So it's not this kind of theorist cell sort of thing where people just have book knowledge and then they're degenerates.
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And the reason it's going to issue an action is because to truly know something means you found a,
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what he says that is for the sake of the beautiful.
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And it's going to turn out the argument there is that knowledge of these things is more beautiful,
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which is to say more pleasant than the other pleasures we receive from the passion of the soul that don't distinguish us from the animals,
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which is to say what other people would think of as hedonism.
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So that's going to be sort of the framework there.
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Then you have to understand that this has changed so radically now because that was the purpose of law for the pre-moderns,
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was that law itself was to be the yoke of educating one's passions towards these virtues.
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it turns out that it's very difficult to legislate morality.
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So that's when we get to this new understanding of law
00:17:06.120
which people might understand that or something.
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with the rise of what we know of as classical liberalism,
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But ultimately what this is going to come to with the enlightenment is that it's all predicated on the fact of the so-called social contract theorists like Hobbes,
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And what they say is that no one can agree on what is the greatest good,
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so let's lower the bar and we can all at least agree on what is bad.
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And it's from there that we build up classical liberalism in the sense of allowing for that privacy of conscious,
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And so that's going to have a profound effect on the definition of what justice is,
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the changing of its definitions or something is this understanding of what is fair or what is right.
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And so another way to think of the transition that's,
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that takes place as we move from a tradition of natural law to a tradition of just natural right.
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And then we had sort of Pandora's boxes opened.
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And this is not to say natural right in the sense of the classics,
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but a new understanding of natural right in the moderns of what you were allowed to do,
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It's the sort of rights based theories of justice.
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where people are saying that basically anything is a right.
00:19:14.240
humanitarianism itself is nothing but granting rights to being simply by virtue of a human.
00:19:31.940
but we do have to break it into bite-sized chunks so that we can help people move along with us.
00:19:49.860
the subdual of your own passions towards this good.
00:19:54.460
These are all things that I think a lot of people,
00:19:58.440
receive some level of probably moral education through religious or other means would recognize even in the modern era.
00:20:05.880
But I think they would understand these as the domain of,
00:20:12.340
And then they understand justice as something different,
00:20:15.920
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00:20:26.400
And I want to dive deeper into the way that not is that just a shift in the individual mentality,
00:20:36.420
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00:20:39.680
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00:20:42.740
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So, as you were saying, Athenia, there's a big shift as we move into modernity,
00:22:46.880
as we see the rise of what a lot of people call classical liberalism,
00:22:50.500
the social contract fears that you were talking about there.
00:22:57.320
and I'm glad you brought the issue of scale into this,
00:23:04.700
In a Greek city-state, your society is small enough.
00:23:16.720
because you have a society that is so closely knit,
00:23:20.180
so organic in a way that you simply lose as you continue to add a large amount of people.
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And so there's a lot of reasons that we reach kind of this turning point
00:23:34.040
But one of the reasons is that you have multiple peoples that have to regularly interact,
00:23:40.480
oftentimes now under the auspices of one state.
00:23:44.300
And so they have different traditions, different heritages,
00:23:52.140
And so rather than trying to hash out all of the existential questions
00:23:56.360
that are hiding inside, you know, addressing that issue of what is the good,
00:24:01.860
what is the highest value, how should hierarchies be ordered.
00:24:05.020
Instead, you can go to this common denominator of what is the bad.
00:24:11.480
What is the minimum operative morality that will allow us to kind of work together?
00:24:18.100
And so we see this very radical shift from a well-defined and understood
00:24:24.560
and more organic understanding of justice to something that has to scale.
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And because it has to scale, it has to be radically homogenized.
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And that means we get kind of a lowest common denominator
00:24:36.080
and a shift in the idea of rights, you know, into the idea of rights.
00:24:41.560
And this being kind of the central organizing principle or duty of government in many ways.
00:24:46.840
Right. So, so another way to say this is that our word cosmopolitanism
00:24:54.180
is just a kind of fancy way of, it's a euphemism to speak of a kind of universal relativism,
00:25:06.260
But the, the problem of scale or size is so important that in, in why people don't understand it
00:25:16.880
is because when you're talking about tradition and returning to the tradition that people feel
00:25:24.200
we have deviated from, the issue of scale has to be taken into consideration.
00:25:29.460
Because if the conditions that allowed for that tradition to even be possible are no longer there,
00:25:39.200
Now, the, the turn that we're speaking of to this larger thing,
00:25:44.420
just for me to sort of break it down into a kind of soundbite for the, for the listeners to follow
00:25:49.500
is where things stand today with regard to justice.
00:25:59.220
I don't know if he's still around, but he, he was the most influential in at least arguing this point
00:26:06.320
Richard Rorty is sort of the American philosopher of nihilism, and he's going to make the claim
00:26:15.580
that mind itself, in other words, that part of the soul and premodernity that, that issues in logos
00:26:24.980
as opposed to the passions is itself a construction.
00:26:31.260
I mean, we've, we've, we construct it, uh, and that's that, that word there construction
00:26:37.700
is really the key word to understanding, uh, so very, very much of all of this, uh, because
00:26:44.380
it's so bound up with, uh, the significance of what we think of as modern science for the
00:26:58.140
So that's where things stand now is that, you know, everything's just a construction,
00:27:04.860
That's another way to say that is we're in the realm of modern or post-modern nominalism.
00:27:12.800
Could you stop there and design, uh, define nominalism real quickly for people who may not
00:27:18.300
Uh, so nominalism means that things exist in name only, right?
00:27:23.540
And so we just kind of give names to things, uh, and then define them.
00:27:30.180
And the definitions are as arbitrary as the fact that we've given them names.
00:27:35.240
Uh, so it's sort of captured well with, uh, Alistair McIntyre's title of his very popular
00:27:46.460
In other words, uh, what, what, what, whose justice are we talking about?
00:27:50.840
No one agrees, or how can we find a way back to agreeing or something like that?
00:27:54.880
Uh, and there's a number of ways to, to consider how we've gotten here.
00:28:00.420
But I think that Rousseau is probably the one who does the best job of at least explaining
00:28:05.240
it in a way that is more understandable than someone like Hobbes or Locke.
00:28:11.000
Uh, and it all, what Rousseau says is that the basis, the founding act of any society, uh,
00:28:21.060
Uh, and this is what we refer to as the social contract, the social compact.
00:28:26.000
Now with Rousseau, I'm going to be very, I'm going to generalize this very quickly and it's
00:28:31.280
going to be provocative, but I want it to be because that tends to be what gets people
00:28:38.380
Rousseau is going to say, he's going to define this social compact in a way that invokes what
00:28:43.780
he calls the general will and what he says that the general will is, uh, and just, it's
00:28:52.160
easy enough just to sort of read the definition.
00:28:53.920
He says, he says, each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme
00:29:03.600
And in a body, in other words, as a unity, we receive each member as an indivisible part
00:29:12.140
So there we've moved from the kind of individuality, I guess we could say of the pre-moderns of the
00:29:18.220
individual cultivation of the soul, uh, to these unities of large collections of people.
00:29:24.520
Now, the most important thing there is that what he's talking about is that there, the, the
00:29:31.160
structuring of the soul itself, which is this virtue we call justice towards excellence,
00:29:39.820
It's like, it's dependent upon this sort of just general will.
00:29:45.620
It's just, we can think of this, the climate of ideas.
00:29:49.020
Now, what's going to happen is that that's going to be such a powerful critique of the
00:29:55.900
The fact that that general will is not grounded in something like what, what is it grounded
00:30:01.160
Uh, that it's going to be caught who's really going to respond to this.
00:30:06.960
And the way he does that is with the categorical imperative, uh, which is to say, only do that,
00:30:12.920
which you would do under every circumstance, right?
00:30:18.020
Now, I know this sounds like a lot of philosophy, but the reason this is important is what we
00:30:22.560
have going on here in this transition that changes the whole notion of justice and how it
00:30:28.760
can become so corrupted is that we go from this notion of the general will to Kant's notion
00:30:35.960
And what comes from that is nothing less than Nietzsche's will to power, uh, at issue in
00:30:44.420
all of this, this radical transformation is this notion of what we refer to as the will.
00:30:49.540
Uh, and it slowly begins to unfold, uh, from anything that's principled, uh, into this nihilism
00:31:02.540
Uh, and this is where one ends, one could say, I'm not necessarily making the case, but it gets
00:31:11.200
I think that this is why it is that someone like Martin Heidegger, uh, can have this notion
00:31:17.840
In other words, you just, you have to, you simply choose, uh, what you're going to do
00:31:22.500
at any given moment in time, uh, radical decisionism and just go with it.
00:31:29.220
Uh, and that's in many respects, that's, that's, again, that's where we are.
00:31:35.140
The notion of justice today, the concept of justice today, uh, as much as you always hear
00:31:41.500
people shouting down Nietzsche, it really is a kind of just will to power.
00:31:44.900
Uh, that's what all these various claims of rights are.
00:31:48.500
So when politicians say it is a right, uh, that you can do, you know, this, and then they
00:31:53.860
attach like this insane thing that you're like, that's what, how is that a right?
00:31:58.200
Uh, but it's just an, it just is an issue of power.
00:32:02.240
And that's, I think that goes back to originally what you had mentioned with, uh, with the author
00:32:11.440
So that's how justice and power end up, uh, showing itself most extremely in our condition
00:32:20.020
Uh, and why it's so very important for people to take it very seriously, uh, to understand
00:32:25.640
these things, uh, because how are you going to reign these things in if you don't even
00:32:29.120
know what their, uh, ultimate consequences are, or at least can be right underneath the
00:32:34.780
So in, in, I think it's interesting to explore the way that this develops along two lines,
00:32:41.100
because of course you, you know, you, as you said, you brought a lot of philosophy there,
00:32:45.340
Because that's exactly what I brought you on to do.
00:32:47.540
And I think that's, uh, critical, you know, to understand the, you know, the, uh, line
00:32:52.200
of succession there that is bringing us to this moment where you have, in many ways, simply
00:32:56.880
a will, uh, to power that is enforcing, uh, these understandings, uh, kind of detached from
00:33:04.160
any idea of a transcendent, uh, good that would, or, or an idea that even, uh, a particular
00:33:10.860
understanding of communal good would, would be informing these things.
00:33:14.860
I think it's interesting that you have two, you have, again, kind of two simultaneous tracks
00:33:19.720
here that, that are, uh, that are interacting with this.
00:33:26.860
You, you need, uh, control of a, of a large body of people.
00:33:31.960
You need to create a level of uniformity across them.
00:33:35.440
Maybe that's because of just the, you know, needs of material production.
00:33:40.020
Maybe that's because, uh, you know, the, the unification of at least a base level of,
00:33:45.340
uh, of moral understanding is necessary for sovereignty to cohere.
00:33:49.860
But on top of this, you know, since you brought up Alistair McIntyre in after virtue, he discusses,
00:33:56.720
uh, you know, he takes a lot, a bit, a lot of swipes at Max Weber, uh, and points to the
00:34:02.960
fact that kind of this Weberian understanding of the world created a scenario where again, we
00:34:09.420
kind of just pushed aside all of these, uh, irreconcilable existential questions about the
00:34:17.100
meaning of the good and, and the ultimate truth and created this cult of utility and this cult of
00:34:23.580
utility is, is really focused on the institutions, which are also a, a critical part of scaling society.
00:34:30.540
Uh, so as society needs to, to scale, we start inventing these, uh, you know, uh, basically
00:34:36.780
ideological and philosophical, uh, reasons for why it's okay or necessary even, or morally, uh, demanded
00:34:46.060
And so Weber believes in the, in the vesting of power inside these institutions.
00:34:50.920
And this is where we get the rise of managerialism, you know, mass bureaucracies create this.
00:34:56.400
And so you have the simultaneous need, uh, to scale society and to invest in this morality
00:35:03.120
that is manipulatable and, you know, creatable by, uh, by these institutions.
00:35:08.640
And that's why I think it's great about the, the, the juvenile, uh, passage there as it talks about
00:35:13.440
the implementation, implementation of social geometry, justice, again, no longer being something that
00:35:19.440
the individual culture cultivates in a Aristotelian understanding, but instead is something that
00:35:25.360
society engineers through, uh, the creation of the institutions that had already needed to scale
00:35:30.960
and operate when it comes to economics and these other things.
00:35:33.600
So these institutions are no longer just economically necessary, materially necessary.
00:35:38.080
They're also morally necessary because they are the source of justice.
00:35:41.520
They are the way in which justice is manufactured by society.
00:35:49.600
Now, um, something that's very important there that's going on that, uh, McIntyre is well aware
00:35:54.640
of is that, and this is something that most people don't realize.
00:35:59.280
Uh, so, so Weber is essentially the founder, we could say of modern sociology.
00:36:06.240
Now there's other people such as Durkheim and such, but still Weber has the, the,
00:36:13.280
Weber was himself extremely influenced by Nietzsche.
00:36:16.720
Weber is going to be the one who introduces the word value instead of virtue, uh, because it's easier
00:36:25.760
to speak of values if it turns out that there's no grounding to this other thing that we call us
00:36:33.680
In other words, what Weber is doing is he is institutionalizing.
00:36:37.040
He's a, to make, uh, possible analysis of society, uh, in terms of things that always
00:36:46.400
change, uh, this kind of radical flux of things.
00:36:50.880
Uh, and if justice, of course, is what defines the political community and it's changing, uh,
00:36:56.320
then we have to speak of, and if justice is a virtue, then we should no longer speak of justice
00:37:02.560
And so that's why you always hear politicians say, that's not my value.
00:37:09.680
Are we going to be serious and talk about virtue here?
00:37:11.360
Uh, but, but that's, that's something that's very crucial.
00:37:15.440
And one thing that I would add there too, is that Nietzsche himself was aware of this, uh,
00:37:21.440
and Nietzsche, it's, it's with Nietzsche that so very much of this issue of justice becomes
00:37:30.080
something that people just don't want to talk about anymore, uh, because Nietzsche does such
00:37:34.720
a good job of just blowing it out of the water.
00:37:39.920
And again, this goes back to the title of, uh, one of the, of one of the more important
00:37:44.480
titles of the author you're mentioning in human all to human.
00:37:48.560
He flatly has an entire aphorism devoted to this is that, uh, it's a question of power,
00:37:54.800
Uh, he says, he says, whenever justice shows its head, uh, it turns out that it's nothing
00:38:03.520
Uh, and he says, and we recognize this ugly thing, uh, as mercy, uh, in other words, what
00:38:11.600
Nietzsche is saying is that justice understood that way shows itself as fairness, right?
00:38:19.440
And so that's why Nietzsche himself of all of the things that Nietzsche criticizes, the
00:38:25.200
one that he has the most contempt and hatred for a few people realize this is socialism.
00:38:34.160
I mean, you just have to, sometimes you just have to sit down and read what he has to say
00:38:42.080
Where's the best place to find that, by the way, for people who might be looking for it.
00:38:45.920
Um, I would say probably there's a number of places, but in particular, so, so just to give
00:38:52.080
your, your readers an account here, uh, it's going to be human all to human, uh, and roughly look around
00:39:04.240
Uh, and then you'll also want to take a look, uh, at what's appended to that text, at least
00:39:10.160
in the Cambridge version of it, of the wanderer and his shadow and take a look at aphorism 22,
00:39:16.960
uh, where you talk, it's entitled the principle of equilibrium.
00:39:20.480
Uh, and going back to the first one, it's called a question of power, not justice.
00:39:24.000
And he is just railing against socialism, uh, because he said, he said what he's claiming
00:39:30.720
there is that the, the creation of the so-called last man, uh, which is the man who doesn't
00:39:38.720
And if you don't understand greatness, how can you possibly understand virtue?
00:39:42.320
The creation of the last or the, the, the political manifestation of the last man, the
00:39:46.800
person who doesn't recognize greatness and refuses to, uh, is exactly the political issue
00:39:52.640
of socialism, the, the sharing equally of things, uh, and it's just hilarious.
00:39:59.920
But that's going to, and they now also take a look at, uh, genealogy and morality.
00:40:05.200
Uh, it's going to be the second part of genealogy and morality.
00:40:08.640
It's composed of three essays, uh, the second essay, uh, and take a look at section eight.
00:40:26.480
So it's eight and 10 now in section 10, this is where he, he says just, just the amazing
00:40:31.760
Uh, what he says is, uh, the justice that began with, uh, every, everything can be paid off.
00:40:39.760
He says ends by looking the other way and letting the one unable to pay go free.
00:40:46.160
He says, and it ends like every good thing on earth by canceling itself.
00:40:57.680
Uh, so think about that whenever you hear about this canceling of student loans and things like
00:41:03.040
that, uh, but that, that's sort of what's going on there.
00:41:06.320
Uh, it's only with John Rawls, uh, that we begin to see so-called respectable community
00:41:14.080
Uh, it's, it, it has turned into this unfortunate discussion of, uh, fairness and rights and things
00:41:21.520
like that, uh, as opposed to this very, very powerful virtue of the soul and the soul's longing,
00:41:32.640
Um, but anyway, I've talked too much, uh, shut me up and bring some stuff.
00:41:36.720
No, I think that's an interesting turn actually, because Rawls in many ways, you know, the,
00:41:42.800
the thing I heard in university was, uh, a modern philosophy is a footnote to Rawls in the same way that,
00:41:47.840
uh, you know, other philosophy was a footnote to Plato.
00:41:50.880
I, I, you know, a lot of people disagree with that understandably, but you know, a lot of people assume
00:41:56.160
that they, they go into that, uh, that understanding that everyone is just kind of, uh, responding to
00:42:02.160
So it's probably worth, if we're going to talk about justice, talk about the, the most significant,
00:42:06.560
uh, tome probably referenced in it and kind of the modern academy.
00:42:10.080
So what, what is the shift in the Rawlsian understanding of justice?
00:42:14.400
How does that fit into our, our understanding of this, uh, you know, the possibly the institutionalization
00:42:20.560
of justice or, or this modern shift in understanding?
00:42:26.400
So, um, so full disclosure is I, I have such distaste for Rawls
00:42:34.160
that, that you just don't want to ask me about him because I go off into a rant about how he has,
00:42:40.160
sort of, it is, it, it, it, Rawls represents America's
00:42:44.720
great attempt to just truly destroy an understanding of justice. Uh, and the reason
00:42:50.560
that you heard that professor say that about Rawls is because the argument that Rawls makes effectively,
00:42:56.880
uh, is the motto under which the political left has been marching forever. Uh, is that a kind of
00:43:04.080
fairness for everyone, right? No one getting ahead, uh, keeping everyone at the same sort of
00:43:10.320
really just a kind of tapioca, uh, understanding of mass society or something like that. Uh, but,
00:43:17.280
but I mean, look, to be fair, uh, because there are, I mean, I mean, what I always like to tell
00:43:22.800
people is that you have to earn the right to blow up someone else's thought. And the way you earn the
00:43:27.840
right to do that is by reading it and understanding it and trying to take it seriously. Uh, unfortunately,
00:43:32.560
I'm just not the person that you want to ask about that because I just can't stand Rawls so much.
00:43:38.000
Uh, but, but that's going along the lines to think of it this way. Another way to think of it is this
00:43:43.280
way. The way that Aristotle defines justice is he brings mathematics into it, which is, which is in
00:43:49.760
itself noteworthy. And there's a kind of arithmetical versus geometrical, uh, allotting of justice. Uh,
00:43:59.280
the kind of the, the arithmetical one is, is that you give back exactly equally what has been taken
00:44:06.240
away. Uh, and then there's the, the distributive, uh, aspect of justice, which is to say more should
00:44:13.440
be given to people who by their own excellence simply deserve more. Uh, in other words, what
00:44:20.240
Aristotle has his finger on the pulse of there is the natural hierarchies, natural hierarchies of men.
00:44:28.480
Some people are just more virtuous than others. Uh, now this is going to be something that Rawls
00:44:34.400
just cannot abide. Uh, and many people cannot abide this. They just don't want to believe,
00:44:39.520
right? In other words, they, and, and, and they'll always use euphemisms and say, look,
00:44:44.240
I'm not saying that, you know, we can't have this. I'm just saying everyone should be allowed an equal
00:44:48.400
opportunity at it. Uh, well, that's all. And so, so that's the always noticed that when, when you hear
00:44:55.200
that, when you hear a politician say that, or someone say that no right away that they were about to be
00:45:00.560
doing some lexicological gymnastics, uh, to try to convince you that they're, uh, either communism
00:45:07.120
or socialism is actually a good thing. It's funny how equal, funny how equal equality of opportunity
00:45:13.600
always seems to turn into equality of outcome, even though the conservative movement in the United
00:45:19.200
States, the political right, uh, at least in the mainstream is dedicated to this, uh, you know,
00:45:24.400
delineation between those two as if they're drastically unconnected. Um, you know, no,
00:45:29.840
we're for the, uh, the opportunity, but not the outcome. And yet somehow, every time someone mentions
00:45:34.880
the opportunity, we seem to inevitably drift towards the equality of outcome.
00:45:39.680
Yeah. I mean, look, it is the exact same thing, uh, that we see with the discussion of abortion.
00:45:47.120
Abortion started off as, I mean, people should remember if they still can, uh, rare and in very
00:45:53.600
extreme circumstances. Well, that's gone overboard now because now, uh, it's the single litmus test
00:46:00.480
for who should be elected president, uh, is if they allow for the rights of something like this.
00:46:06.320
So that's how these things change and they change very quickly. Right. But they'll always
00:46:10.800
want to use these sort of extreme cases to really, uh,
00:46:16.720
pick at people's passions, uh, to get them motivated when what they have in mind generally
00:46:21.920
is something much, much broader and something that most people would not really want to agree
00:46:26.800
with. Uh, so there's always that, that lowering of the bar of standards or something.
00:46:31.760
So, you know, we talked about this, this crisis of scale and the shift in modernity, uh, many critics
00:46:41.120
of liberalism McIntyre, as we pointed out, uh, repeatedly included have, have said that basically
00:46:47.520
liberalism abandoned this question of justice. Ultimately, uh, that it is, it has given up on,
00:46:53.760
on truly, uh, trying to rationally understand, uh, the good, uh, and instead has just invested itself
00:47:01.840
in efficiency and managerialism and these other options. But there are those that had, that have
00:47:07.280
attempted to repair this, uh, uh, obviously this is a huge question and the answer might just simply
00:47:12.480
be, we, we don't know, or, you know, not there, haven't figured it out, but do you see any promising,
00:47:18.640
uh, avenues, uh, for kind of, uh, modern philosophy of pointing towards the ability to, uh, recapture or,
00:47:27.760
or re-understand this, this, uh, concept of the, of justice in a way that is, uh, important and
00:47:34.160
meaningful and, and grounded in something or, you know, that, that, uh, can, can bind us together.
00:47:39.040
If maybe, maybe even not in the larger communities, but once again, and perhaps smaller ones.
00:47:44.160
Yeah. I mean, I, on, on this point, I don't like to be a so-called black pillar because, um,
00:47:51.360
the thing about us as human beings is the longings in our souls are always going to be there.
00:47:56.320
It's just that very often because of, for whatever historical circumstances or such,
00:48:01.360
uh, they just get redirected towards other things. And so for instance, when, when people no longer
00:48:07.360
believe in God, uh, but they still want to do good in the world and they turn, most of these people
00:48:12.480
become zealous, uh, politicians or something like that. Right. Uh, so it always is going to redirect
00:48:17.520
itself. So what I would say is that the, the most promising answer of how to solve this, uh, involves
00:48:24.240
education, uh, in particularly, uh, elementary and secondary education, because that's where you form
00:48:32.080
the souls of young men the most. Um, and that's, that's going to be one part of it. Uh, and then the
00:48:39.440
other part of it, which is extremely important, which we're, which really constitutes about the largest
00:48:44.800
issue. I would hope, uh, for everyone going into this political, uh, election, this presidential election.
00:48:51.600
Now is the question of citizenship, uh, citizenship used to be something that one strived for. Uh,
00:48:59.040
you, you, you wanted to earn it, uh, but we've abandoned any concept, any, any serious concept
00:49:04.480
of citizenship. And the thing to understand about citizenship is it represents that you are on the
00:49:10.480
same page with everyone else in the country on this topic of what is just right. What, what,
00:49:18.160
what is our way, right? In other words, this is what we do. Uh, we don't really necessarily give a
00:49:23.840
argument or a logos. We could say for it is what we believe, uh, that's, what's going to unite. That's
00:49:29.520
what separates us from other people. Uh, and that's why people want to be a part of that people. Uh,
00:49:35.520
so, so that's what I would say is that a, a serious attempt at education reform with that
00:49:41.600
understanding of the consequences. When you don't address these things, uh, could possibly
00:49:48.480
write the ship or the ship of state, uh, something to that effect.
00:49:52.960
Yeah. I think that's a really critical point when it comes to the, the need to re-inject a moral and
00:49:59.200
spiritual dimension to citizenship. You know, today, uh, yeah, everything, it's, it's just illegal.
00:50:05.360
It's a piece of paper. It's a process that you go through. It's a procedure, you know, in, in our,
00:50:10.240
in our very modern and technocratic managerial understanding. Uh, but this is nothing like, uh,
00:50:16.960
what, what citizenship was throughout history where that, that understanding of belonging is something
00:50:22.400
that is, is absolutely critical. And especially when you're, you're trying to use the democratic
00:50:27.360
mechanism, which we've, you know, could go on for a very long time. And I have about the problems
00:50:32.240
of that, but when you, we, you know, the, the very idea of that is founded on the value of,
00:50:38.240
of citizenship and it's, it's, it's moral and spiritual dimensions and it not simply being
00:50:43.680
a process or a piece of paper. So I think that that's a really important thing to hit on, especially
00:50:48.240
as you point out that, uh, you know, elections going on in places like the United States
00:50:52.480
are all, but going to, uh, define, uh, what's left of citizenship at this point, uh, the debate over it
00:50:58.480
and mass immigration and vote, you know, voting and the, you know, the legitimacy of elections,
00:51:04.160
all, all of this is, is deeply connected and very important for, for people to recognize.
00:51:08.960
Uh, we're coming up in an hour. Oh, sorry. Go ahead.
00:51:11.280
Oh, no, I was just going to say, let me add just one last thing to really tie sort of the beginning
00:51:15.520
and the ending of this, uh, together. Uh, the issue of citizenship is so crucial with regard to the
00:51:21.120
point of justice, uh, for Aristotle, for instance, that Aristotle flatly says, uh, the man without a city,
00:51:28.480
is either a beast or a God. That's how important citizenship was. This is going to be something
00:51:34.800
that Nietzsche himself agrees with Aristotle on because Nietzsche is going to say, uh, Aristotle left
00:51:41.920
out the only other alternative, which is to say, he's a man without a city is a beast or a God, or as he
00:51:48.400
says, a philosopher. So fundamentally he's in agreement there. He's just making room for philosophers.
00:51:53.920
So even the nihilist of today, uh, understood that citizenship was absolutely crucial. Uh, and that
00:52:01.520
comes back around to this issue of, of justice as a virtue and what all that entails. Uh, so anyway.
00:52:07.280
Well, I know that we probably didn't come even close to touching everything you prepared. Is there
00:52:12.640
any other critical points that you think we should, we should make sure we get in before we move over to the
00:52:17.600
questions of the people? No, I, I, I wrote out notes that are, we didn't touch on it because it would
00:52:28.720
have your audience, their eyes would have glossed over and been like, oh my God, this guy's a nerd.
00:52:33.440
Uh, but, but suffi, suffice it to say it all involves this issue of the role of construction,
00:52:39.440
uh, in modern science that is so deeply connected with, uh, the modern political project of liberalism
00:52:49.280
as such. Uh, and, and so it relates the issue of what is science itself and technology, uh, to this
00:52:57.120
question of justice, but I'll, I'll spare everyone that, uh, that's probably something I'll, I'll do on my
00:53:01.680
own. Uh, but, uh, but I'll send you to the notes so you can take a look at it. You'll, you'll enjoy them.
00:53:06.640
Yeah. Maybe we'll be able to turn that into another, uh, another episode here, uh, for people to enjoy.
00:53:13.280
All right. Well, we're going to move over to the questions of the people, but before we do,
00:53:17.120
Athene Stranger, where should people find all of your great work?
00:53:21.600
Yes. So, so the, the place, if, if people enjoy sort of listening to me ramble on about philosophy,
00:53:27.200
uh, the best place to go is, uh, on my website, AthensCorner.com. Uh, and it's where I just have,
00:53:34.000
I'm putting together many, many, uh, lectures basically, uh, on philosophy and stuff. Uh,
00:53:40.000
other than that, uh, you can find me on Twitter. Uh, and I always record the spaces that I do on
00:53:45.760
Twitter. So you can just sort of search my timeline and see the various things I've talked about. It's
00:53:49.840
always with regard to the great books, uh, and how it is that those are still relevant and indeed
00:53:55.680
invaluable, uh, for us today. So. Evan M. Uh, says, uh, do you agree with Yarvin's thesis that the idea
00:54:04.960
of social justice arrived from the Puritans 400 years ago? Uh, so a couple of people have, you know,
00:54:11.280
made this, this kind of genealogy of, uh, of social justice or of progressive, uh, wokeness. Uh, and,
00:54:19.840
you know, Steve Saylor, I think has agreed with this a few others. I'll say this. Uh, I think that
00:54:25.280
there is most certainly a line of thought that you can follow here, that there, there's a strain of
00:54:31.680
this. That is true. However, a lot of people look at this and then say, oh, well then the problem
00:54:37.760
is Protestantism or the problem is Christianity. And there, the problem is, you know, whatever.
00:54:42.480
And, and if we had just gotten rid of that, if we just didn't have that,
00:54:45.760
then we wouldn't have ended up in this place. And I'm a big believer, uh, that, that Oswald
00:54:50.640
Spangler was right. And that at the end of every civilization, you see kind of an atheistic mirror
00:54:56.400
of the animating metaphysical spirit that, that drove a civilization. And so, yes, the, you know,
00:55:03.040
what we're seeing now is a Christian heresy. It is specifically, uh, related to a strain of
00:55:08.720
Protestantism. That's true, but only because that is the, yeah. And that was the animating spirit of the
00:55:14.720
civilization that we're in now. If there was a different animating spirit, we would have pursued
00:55:20.240
a different version, a different type of this. And so there is a particular flavor tied to the
00:55:25.200
history, uh, and roots of the culture that is kind of spread this globally. And so you can see that kind
00:55:32.080
of causal linkage there, but I don't think this is due to any particular weakness in Christianity or
00:55:37.600
Protestantism, that these are some, uh, specifically guilty parties in here, uniquely guilty parties.
00:55:43.680
But instead that this is part of an overall process in which, you know, that civilizations
00:55:49.120
go through. And so the fact that it's marked in this particular character by its Christian roots
00:55:54.560
is really only indicative of the fact that it, you know, that that is the dominant
00:55:59.200
civilizational paradigm that is across the globe in many ways.
00:56:04.800
Yeah. Can I just add something real quick to that?
00:56:07.120
Yeah. Yeah. So I'm, I'm familiar with these arguments. Um, and I will just simply, and I've
00:56:13.920
done entire recordings on these because I, I, I disagree with the, the, the thesis so much.
00:56:20.160
Uh, but I mean, in a very specific way though, is that it doesn't understand the, the genuine root
00:56:27.760
of the issue. Uh, what people are effectively saying is that the reformation, uh, is what has brought
00:56:35.840
about, uh, this world that we live in today of this liberalism and such, uh, the problem there.
00:56:43.040
And it is so fundamental that it, I would argue refutes the thesis itself is that they wholly
00:56:50.880
dismiss the role of the Renaissance. It's anyone who's been, anyone who studied history,
00:56:58.240
even at the undergraduate level knows that courses in history on the Renaissance or the Reformation,
00:57:04.000
that they call them the Ren Ref because Renaissance first, then Reformation.
00:57:09.520
The Renaissance is what led to this. And so then you have to ask yourself, well, all right,
00:57:13.040
then what was the Renaissance and what is its relationship to Christianity? And that's where
00:57:17.280
things become far more interesting, uh, much more interesting than trying to, uh, attach wrongly.
00:57:24.080
Uh, I would argue Christianity to this phenomena of wokeness and such like that. So what's the,
00:57:30.320
what's like the title of the talk or one that you would point people to if they wanted to
00:57:35.280
better understand your explanation? Yeah, I, I, uh, I feel so strongly about this that I, I put on
00:57:42.800
Apple podcast and Spotify, uh, under just go to Athens corner on, on those apps. Uh, and the episode
00:57:50.320
you'll want to listen to, I put the whole thing on there for free is called, uh, something to the
00:57:55.200
effect of Christianity and philosophy, uh, or modernity Christianity and philosophy. Part one,
00:58:01.600
I haven't gotten around to part two yet, but that's, that's the real issue. There is the,
00:58:06.400
this is how it is that on the one hand you have Christianity and how it is on the other hand,
00:58:11.520
you have philosophy and how these things have come together. And most especially how that leads to
00:58:18.400
this thing that we call modernity, right? What is modernity? And there are a number of various theories,
00:58:24.560
schools of thought about how modernity arose. Uh, and I address all of those, uh, and I weigh the
00:58:31.760
pros and the cons of them, but I go specifically into the primary texts to look at, uh, and understand
00:58:37.920
these things, uh, beginning with, for instance, Augustine, uh, and then how it is that the Bible
00:58:43.760
itself is supposed to be, uh, interpreted, uh, within the realm of philosophy, uh, according to Augustine
00:58:50.160
himself, uh, and it addresses very much of these in part two, that's coming out is going to be with,
00:58:55.120
uh, Thomas, uh, but I've had to go back and it's taken so long. Cause I forgot to,
00:58:59.120
you also have to address the issue of natural law, uh, which means you have to talk about Cicero,
00:59:03.760
uh, and some stuff on Plato and Aristotle. So that's subsequent.
00:59:07.280
Excellent. I'll definitely make sure to check that one out. Uh, tiny stupid demon says,
00:59:12.000
I'm just here to give a big shout out to Nelson, the philosophy dog, please give
00:59:16.080
treats, uh, scritches and pats as appropriate. Yeah. I need some kind of, uh, companion,
00:59:21.600
some kind of mascot for our philosophy work here. He also says, uh, now please explain to Oren that
00:59:26.640
his favorite heavy metal bands need to be banned by the state because their music is neither Frigian
00:59:31.840
nor Dorian in mode and violating all of the best, uh, restrictions on, uh, on, uh, music there.
00:59:40.000
Now, let me point out why that's so funny because he's, he's one of my favorite, uh,
00:59:44.720
mutuals and kind of reply guys, the Frigian and the Dorian modes of music are very, very important
00:59:51.440
to Plato, uh, in the platonic dialogues because they're what shaped citizenship, the kind of the,
00:59:59.360
the, the education in music. So he's making a, he's making a very high brow and hilarious joke.
01:00:04.800
Right. Is it, is it Aristotle or Plato that talks about the flute versus the, the horn and like the,
01:00:12.080
the flute is the, is the elevated instrument of the, of the Spartans because they need to,
01:00:18.640
you know, the margin kind of this stoic, uh, manner as where, you know, the, some,
01:00:23.360
some of the less disciplined forces will rely on, on the brass instruments.
01:00:28.640
Uh, you, you, you, you've stumped me on that one. I know more about the flute. Uh, not so,
01:00:33.680
I'm not so sure about the horn. Uh, the, the flute is also especially associated with
01:00:38.240
Alcibiades because he refused to learn it because he didn't think it was manly.
01:00:43.920
I'm relatively sure it's Aristotle and I'm going to hold onto the fact that I knew an
01:00:47.760
Aristotle passage that you didn't. That's, that's going to be my win for today.
01:00:56.080
Uh, glow in the dark says, uh, morality without conviction or power will be broken down.
01:01:01.040
Power without morality does not last long. Virtue blesses society. Vice curses society.
01:01:08.240
Uh, he also says a talk, uh, on the end of history and the last man.
01:01:16.720
And finally we have, uh, justice is to get what you deserve, whether to be good or bad.
01:01:23.360
Many want to argue the semantics of who deserves what, but this veto means nothing. Yeah. It's a
01:01:29.440
sentiment that, uh, was that good? I think in, in many ways by a lot of the references that were
01:01:34.400
brought up here and then, yeah, that's ultimately the question of justice. And the question of
01:01:39.600
justice ultimately is, uh, you know, on the one hand who gets what they deserve. And then on the
01:01:46.000
second hand, what does it mean to say what they deserve? Uh, that's why all this talk today of
01:01:50.880
pay their fair share, right. It's nonsense. It's just empty nonsense. Uh, but whatever. Sorry.
01:01:57.840
And then finally, uh, finally, tiny Rick says, if reality is subjective to the individual,
01:02:04.480
then countless individual realities become the underlying objective reality. Relatism defeats itself.
01:02:15.200
Well, I mean, uh, essentially what the claim comes down to and it's correct as far as logic goes, uh,
01:02:22.400
because, uh, the claim that there is no truth is itself a claim that requires a truth value.
01:02:29.200
Right. Uh, and so if there's no truth, then it's sort of like the Cretan paradox, right? Uh,
01:02:35.600
the following statement is a lie, right? So something like that. Right. So it produces a logical
01:02:42.240
problem. Uh, I'm always cautious though. I always like to be, uh, very blunt about this with people.
01:02:48.480
Um, don't expect too much of logic or reason in politics because to do so would be to expect too
01:02:55.920
much. I mean, that, that itself is unreasonable, uh, because man believes most of his beliefs,
01:03:02.320
not out of reason. Man is mostly not logical. Uh, we act on our passions and that's why, for instance,
01:03:08.400
what I'd mentioned about Aristotle and the importance of his understanding of virtue,
01:03:12.960
is that the soul, uh, the authoritative elements of the soul, uh, is to be fused with the longings and
01:03:20.400
the passions of, of the soul. Uh, and so that's, that, that will get you much further than trying
01:03:25.360
to do this kind of hyper logical, uh, uh, discussions about the way the world should be.
01:03:30.240
Yeah. I also would encourage people to be careful when it comes to relativism. Um, while total relativism
01:03:38.400
is, I agree, uh, a failure. Um, sometimes people, uh, then take this to mean that there are no cultural
01:03:48.080
distinctions, no particularities that are, uh, are relative or, or, or that are, um, uh, valid.
01:03:56.400
And that ultimately, you know, there, there's just the, you know, that any deviation from in any minor
01:04:02.400
way from, uh, their strict and universal understanding, uh, is therefore an implication
01:04:09.120
I think that is, uh, also a failure of logic in the other direction.
01:04:14.800
All right, guys, we're going to go ahead and wrap this one up, but as always,
01:04:19.120
it is great talking to you. Appreciate everybody stopping by. You should of course be checking out,
01:04:24.720
uh, Athenian strangers work. I'm going to go listen to, uh, the podcast he was just talking
01:04:29.760
about when I'm done here, uh, because I'd like to hear his arguments. If it's your first time on this
01:04:34.800
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01:04:38.960
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01:04:51.680
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01:04:56.800
Thank you everybody for watching. And as always, I will talk to you next time.