Which Book Are You Reading Now? Volume XII
- Thread starter Flying Pig
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Currently reading Why Liberalism Failed, which is more of a polemic than an argument, but I think the claims are novel enough to warrant that. The author is just trying to 'get the idea out there.' In fact, I picked the book up because it was only one I could find that actually reflects my politics (although I don't think that 'classical education' is what's needed for repairing the damage done by liberalism).
Also, I read Foreigner by Cherryh. It's extremely detail-oriented, but somehow also addicting. Maybe I'm more of a setting guy than I thought.
Also, I read Foreigner by Cherryh. It's extremely detail-oriented, but somehow also addicting. Maybe I'm more of a setting guy than I thought.
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Does the author describes first what he thinks Liberalism is before demonstrating that "it" failed ?
If you think, after reading the whole book, it is interesting to start a thread on that failure, I am happy to join the discussion
My simplistic thoughts so far are that the original liberalism (from around the Enlightenment period) was a tremendous success !!!
The goal was to get rid of the hereditary privileges (aristocracy, absolute monarchy, divine right, etc)
And the new granular unit of society became the individual human citizen, that got innate privileges, a kind of innate divine/natural right (the cluster of and around human rights).
That original goal to get rid of hereditary privileges has been realised for 99% and those new natural rights for the individual human are plastered around in formal constitutions and declarations (and like the original religious principles ofc in a tensed relation with reality).
So that original Liberalism did not fail !
And from there, under that Liberalism banner, it branched out it many directions, from the very start, into many different flavors, in many countries differing.
International, anglospheric books and articles only covering a subset of those many branches, mostly giving little attention how Liberalism was picked up in the many European countries.
So that was the reason for my question: did the author describe the kind of liberalism that failed.
And BTW in the Yale University press the book was described with: "Of the three dominant ideologies of the twentieth century—fascism, communism, and liberalism—only the last remains".
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300223446/why-liberalism-failed
If that reflects the book.... not mentioning socialism and social-democracy...... ???
Makes me wondering and interested.
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If you think, after reading the whole book, it is interesting to start a thread on that failure, I am happy to join the discussion
My simplistic thoughts so far are that the original liberalism (from around the Enlightenment period) was a tremendous success !!!
The goal was to get rid of the hereditary privileges (aristocracy, absolute monarchy, divine right, etc)
And the new granular unit of society became the individual human citizen, that got innate privileges, a kind of innate divine/natural right (the cluster of and around human rights).
That original goal to get rid of hereditary privileges has been realised for 99% and those new natural rights for the individual human are plastered around in formal constitutions and declarations (and like the original religious principles ofc in a tensed relation with reality).
So that original Liberalism did not fail !
And from there, under that Liberalism banner, it branched out it many directions, from the very start, into many different flavors, in many countries differing.
International, anglospheric books and articles only covering a subset of those many branches, mostly giving little attention how Liberalism was picked up in the many European countries.
So that was the reason for my question: did the author describe the kind of liberalism that failed.
And BTW in the Yale University press the book was described with: "Of the three dominant ideologies of the twentieth century—fascism, communism, and liberalism—only the last remains".
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300223446/why-liberalism-failed
If that reflects the book.... not mentioning socialism and social-democracy...... ???
Makes me wondering and interested.
Liberalism didn't "fail". It was defeated politically. It's not a failure of an ideology that people who spent half a century trying to dismantle something eventually succeeded.
I once did read a SF short story, IIRC the Judas Fish, where fishing boats & nets were not needed becaused mutated and trained sardines took over the lead of big schools of sardines and swum into the fish factories ashore. The mutated judas sardines ofc taking an escape channel once entering the factory.
That makes the neo-liberals the Judas Liberals for me.
hobbsyoyo
Deity
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I don't know what Casey and Andy is. I knew he had his fans co-write (or edit, if we're generous) the Martian and I just assumed he stopped doing that for commercial reasons for Artemis. Given how much it stunk (I finished it the other night) I thought that was a safe assumption.
Casey and Andy is Andy Weir's well-written yet horrendously-drawn webcomic. Start from the first strip and pay attention to the writing. When you have free time, of course.
As a bit of an expert in the matter I can say that it'd be extremely hard to translate so I have to heartily recommend that you just read the original rather than any translations.
Well, it's how his creative process goes. The comic gets markedly better with time.
Hmmm, there used to be a comment on every strip but most of it got lost.
Anyway, as I said, the comic gets better with time and it's clear that it's a WIP. (Once you get to the arcs the writing gets better and he got a lot of feedback back in the day, even if the art style is still awful.)
I haven't read either The Martian nor Artemis so I couldn't say - perhaps he suffered from deadline fever when writing the latter?
Hmmm, there used to be a comment on every strip but most of it got lost.
Anyway, as I said, the comic gets better with time and it's clear that it's a WIP. (Once you get to the arcs the writing gets better and he got a lot of feedback back in the day, even if the art style is still awful.)
I haven't read either The Martian nor Artemis so I couldn't say - perhaps he suffered from deadline fever when writing the latter?
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
With a title like that? You don't say.
hobbsyoyo
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Oh ok. Yeah the comic didn't have any comments on it so I was confused as to what you meant.
The Martian was his breakout hit so he wrote it before he was a famous author. This meant he was able to write it and publish it online and get feedback and revise it all before any serious money changed hands or contracts were written. But for Artemis, I assumed he had a book deal specifically to write it so the publisher wasn't about to let him publish it chapter by chapter for free and get feedback on it as they would cut into their sales. So he just wrote it himself with conventional editorial help and it stunk as a direct consequence.
Something that was especially disappointing is he had so many opportunities to really dive deep into the technology behind the moon colony (like he did with the Martian) but he didn't. I guess that's because for this book he wrote it in first-person which doesn't lend itself as well to that kind of exposition but in any case it was sad you don't actually learn that much about the moon colony.
There was one scene that really struck me as agregious Mary Sue-ism. The main character has to open and close a bunch of valves to restore atmosphere in the colony and she just stares at a schematic for a few seconds and memorizes it completely. Then she goes outside and knows exactly which valves to open and close. Complicated schematics are highly abstracted from reality - you can't just memorize them in a few seconds. And if you just stare at the schematic and then go look at all the valves without the schematic you are not going to be able to translate that schematic onto what you are seeing with no trouble in less than a minute. It was ridiculous but that's kind of how the whole book went. She saw a problem and instantly was able to fix it because even though she's a fedex delivery woman she knows all the things.
At one point she casually explained how easily she understood her friend's orbital dynamics homework despite never taken advanced math or anything related to orbits. Like yeah, it only took Newton a decade to invent that and it takes years for grad students to master it but you got it in thirty minutes of browsing wikipedia.
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If you think, after reading the whole book, it is interesting to start a thread on that failure, I am happy to join the discussion
My simplistic thoughts so far are that the original liberalism (from around the Enlightenment period) was a tremendous success !!!
The goal was to get rid of the hereditary privileges (aristocracy, absolute monarchy, divine right, etc)
And the new granular unit of society became the individual human citizen, that got innate privileges, a kind of innate divine/natural right (the cluster of and around human rights).
Yeah, that's pretty much how Patrick Deneen (the author) defines it.
No, his argument is that it hasn't. Hereditary privilege continues on through informal means, and is harder to see or critique than aristocratic rights ever were.
Socialism is a broad enough term to be meaningless here, and social democracy would fall under liberalism here.
Deneen claims that it has completely and utterly won politically, and going by his (quite mainstream) definition of it, it's obvious that it has. So I have absolutely no idea what you think you're arguing here. Liberalism's 'failure' is, for him, its inability to produce a just or healthy society even though absolutely everyone supports it as the solution to their problems.
With a title like that? You don't say.
Chomsky's Failed States doesn't claim that the US is a third-world country.
Lexicus
Deity
This situation has partially been brought about by the right's appropriation of terms traditionally used to criticize the aristocracy, like "elitism", "entitlement", and so on.
Just or healthy as compared to what? Illiberal societies?
SS-18 ICBM
Oscillator
A Theory of Justice (1971 Belknap press edition) outlines John Rawls' idea of justice as fairness, which is composed of the liberty (basic rights and freedoms) and equality (fair equality of opportunity followed by the difference principle) principles. These principles are the ones that are chosen by individuals in the original position, a hypothetical scenario where they outline the social contract from behind the veil of ignorance. His ideas are then applied to institutions in the second part, and brought together with an account of the good in the final part.
While the theory is not developed fully in the book, I find that there are many useful ideas here. The difference principle permits inequalities only so long as they benefit the least advantaged representatives of society. The original position lays out good moral principles on how to treat another person. Most importantly, it lays out a convincing argument for the existence of natural rights. These rights (e.g. right to life) are independent of social conventions and are not easily sacrificed for other values.
A major theme in the book is the contrast of Rawl's contractarian approach with other moral frameworks, particularly utilitarianism. The former is argued to be better in terms of simplicity (putting the right before the good constrains moral calculations), stability (people feel they are not sacrificed just for utility maximization), and other attributes. I don't know how accurate his portrayal of these other frameworks are. Does utilitarianism truly disregard individual desires for social ones? Does Aristotle's perfectionism allow for greater advantages to the more moral at the cost of those who are not? I don't remember seeing that in his Ethics. Perhaps the only thing to conclude here is I have more reading to do.
While the theory is not developed fully in the book, I find that there are many useful ideas here. The difference principle permits inequalities only so long as they benefit the least advantaged representatives of society. The original position lays out good moral principles on how to treat another person. Most importantly, it lays out a convincing argument for the existence of natural rights. These rights (e.g. right to life) are independent of social conventions and are not easily sacrificed for other values.
A major theme in the book is the contrast of Rawl's contractarian approach with other moral frameworks, particularly utilitarianism. The former is argued to be better in terms of simplicity (putting the right before the good constrains moral calculations), stability (people feel they are not sacrificed just for utility maximization), and other attributes. I don't know how accurate his portrayal of these other frameworks are. Does utilitarianism truly disregard individual desires for social ones? Does Aristotle's perfectionism allow for greater advantages to the more moral at the cost of those who are not? I don't remember seeing that in his Ethics. Perhaps the only thing to conclude here is I have more reading to do.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
Yeah, but he just stole that title from the Propagandhi album.
Which right? Reagan right or Trump right? He doesn't have much love for the former.
Compared to anything that liberals claim (i.e. society grows rich if we respect property rights, abolishing sexual norms will liberate people). He's not pining for the old days, he's just saying that, for all of liberalism's historic benefits, it is no longer the answer to anyone's problem.
EDIT: Look, this review gives you a pretty good overview of the book. It's preferably to arguing completely in the dark, I think.
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Lexicus
Deity
There's no difference.
So liberalism falls short of its own ideals? Or it falls short of some ideal Utopian society that exists only in the mind of liberals? IMO the fair judge is against other actually-existing societies, not imaginary perfect ones.
EnglishEdward
Deity
Well I don't know what the book is like, but I found the name dropping review meaningless.
It doesn't even indicate which of the myriad interpretations of liberalism that Patrick J Deneen claimed has failed.
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