[lit-ideas] Re: Fw: Re: Re: Giving Thanksgiving
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2010 21:17:09 -0800
Omar wrote
Well, Jefferson certainly had a prolonged period of flirting with
the French Revolution, although he appears to have lost some of
the enthusiasm later. Admittedly I haven't got anything specific
on Locke and Hume, but the Postmodernists have linked pretty much
all of the Enlightenment thought to totalitarianism. (Not
necessarily rightly, but that wasn't the point.)
in reply to John McCreery, who wrote
I would add the authors of /The Federalist Papers/ (Alexander
Hamilton and James Madison), together with Locke and Hume, De
Tocqueville and Montesquieu, and, more recently Dewey, Rawls,
and Rorty. Quite interesting, isn't it, to exclude, if only by
neglect, the major theorists of liberal democracy from the
category "major thin
There's nothing in what I've read of Hume's philosophical works that
would suggest that he was in any way himself 'a totalitarian' or
attracted to totalitarian views. (I haven't read his histories.) One
might see (a false) analogy between his motto that reason ever is and
always ought to be the slave of the passions, and the appeal to brute
passions in LR's /Triumph of the Will/, which manages to bypass reason
altogether; but Hume was speaking, in a philosophical setting, mostly
about the way one arrives at moral judgments, when he spoke of passion's
power. He did not envision the villagers goose-stepping along the roads
outside Ninewells. He was no friend of monolithic explanations of human
nature: 'Once we see the "impossibility of explaining ultimate
principles," we can reject theories that pretend to provide them.'
[Introduction to the first /Treatise/.] He also had some very bad things
to say about the Koran.
Robert Paul
currently in residence at The Mutton Arms, Lost Motion, Nebraska
John
On Fri, Dec 3, 2010 at 1:42 PM, Veronica Caley
<molleo1@xxxxxxxxxxx
<http://us.mc395.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=molleo1@xxxxxxxxxxx>>
wrote:
Omar:Is there a major thinker that wasn't linked to
totalitarianism in some way or other ?
Thomas Jefferson. Even though he held slaves. He knew it
was wrong. But slave holding in those days wasn't in and
of itself totalitarian. A major thread through the
economic system.
Veronica Caley
Milford, MI
----- Original Message -----
*From:* Omar Kusturica
<http://us.mc395.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
*To:* lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<http://us.mc395.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
*Sent:* Thursday, December 02, 2010 9:58 PM
*Subject:* [lit-ideas] Re: Giving Thanksgiving
--- On *Thu, 12/2/10, Donal McEvoy
/<donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx
<http://us.mc395.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>>/*
wrote:
Glad of that second "Rousseau", rather than "he",
without which the second clause has another
possible meaning. If I were asked, I'd have to
check - and only this week unfortunately the local
library demanded back its copy of 'The Open
Society'. All I can say is, having returned volume
1 on 'Plato', it seems totalitarianism has a lot
of fathers.
Is there a major thinker that wasn't linked to
totalitarianism in some way or other ?
O.K.
--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
jlm@xxxxxxxxxxxx
<http://us.mc395.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=jlm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
http://www.wordworks.jp/
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