/lit/ - Literature

>>12812648
?????
Please elaborate more.

Idk

They have to believe liberalism. They absolutely cannot go on without the beliefs that all distinctions between humans are shallow, capitalist-democratic technocracy is the way forward, and that we are in fact moving forward at breakneck speed.

>>12812679
>self-inconsistencies
In the original position (OP), subjects must operate from "a moral point of view," yet denies those subjects access to their "conceptions of the good." The obvious aim of morality is to act in accordance with "the good" — different moral theories prescribe different conceptions of the good, to be sure, but every "moral point of view" must have some good in mind. Rawls' definition of "good" (as being "the system of ends which it is rational for one to pursue") is a straight-up abuse of language. Only such an egoistic ethical view would define "the good" as wholly aligned with one's self-interest. On the flip side, only such an Enlightenment view of morality would define "the good" as being dictated by reason.

That's one problem with Rawls: even though he seemingly allows a plurality of moral theories (e.g. he expects different religions to be practiced), he sneaks Enlightenment liberalism through the back door as the implied universal moral doctrine. Further still, it is unclear how people can operate from "a moral point of view" in the OP if they don't even know what religion they will follow, as religion often dictates moral perspective.

>vicious circularity
According to Rawls, justice is what rational people decide in the OP. Yet these people retain "a sense of justice" while in the OP (even without conceptions of the good!). Rawls thus assumes that people have an innate sense of justice, that innate justice must be universal and self-same, and that this justice could only be manifest with innate principles of justice (else we are using "justice" under two different definitions). If such principles of justice are innate (not innately formalized, but innately guiding just actions), we should just adopt a natural law theory like Aquinas'.

>tl;dr I think the real issue is when people try to separate ethics (or "value theory"/whatever nonsense terms philosophers use today) from metaphysics. Rawls smuggles in a metric ton of implied Enlightenment metaphysics to do his heavy lifting while retaining a facade of neutrality on the issue.

>>12812800
>>tl;dr I think the real issue is when people try to separate ethics (or "value theory"/whatever nonsense terms philosophers use today) from metaphysics. Rawls smuggles in a metric ton of implied Enlightenment metaphysics to do his heavy lifting while retaining a facade of neutrality on the issue.
who are you quoting?

Dude veil of ignorance :DDDD

>hey guys guess what I just discovered through pure reason and logic that 20th century liberal society is actually perfect! who would’ve guessed!

>>12812806
Inverse greentext formatting.

>>12812829
>Inverse greentext formatting

>>12812648
Because the actual decision makers in American society arranged for a bunch of people who think like Rawls to hold positions in the Philosophy department at Harvard, as Rawls is effectively a minister preaching modern liberalism.

>>12812861
When confronted with shit like Rawlsianism, it's almost impossible to disagree with Moldbug.

>>12812882
It goes much farther than Rawls, of course.

>>12812810
Is this gondola

Why is it that all the most famous American philosophers are boring """"""""political philosophers"""""""" nobody else in the world cares about, when they also have some of the most interesting and original thinkers of the 20th and 21st century within the various schools of postanalytic philosophy? Why are they not as promoted?

>>12813179
>when they also have some of the most interesting and original thinkers of the 20th and 21st century within the various schools of postanalytic philosophy?
Who

>Why are they not as promoted?
Because they don't produce marketing materials for the USG in the way that Rawls, for example, does. You don't think the informal ruling class in the US has no say in which intellectuals become popular, do you?

Veil of ignorance is still a pretty good litmus test for checking to see if a law conforms to general kantian or liberal principles.

Rawls is relevant within the school of social contract theory. Not really outside it.

>>12812861
I wonder why they choose liberalism. What sort of person would like fewer restraints of morality, religion, law, culture, propriety, honor, family, friendship, etc.

Hmmm

>>12813190
>usg
?

>>12813201
The US Government. As in the actual government, the people who direct the formal government with money, not the President or Congress.

>>12813217
This explains why Foucault has such a central place in modern scholarship.

>>12813217
You mean state bureaucrats? Like the ones every civilization relies on?

Or are you trying to refer to the donor class in the trickiest way ever?

>>12813237
Take a seat anon. I have a long story to tell you. Every part of it is true

>>12813227
Chomsky is still the most cited intelectual on the US government's payroll.

>>12813246
more like david yikes from me

>>12813252
Clearly a clever scheme by the deep state to have a Marxist-Anarcho-Syndicalist who constantly critiques the way truth is manipulated centre stage

>>12813268
>infinite scab labor is fine ahaha don't be a bigot
>no, you don't need that pesky constitution or these guns
>focus on this foreign war across the globe instead!
A very convenient opponent

Nozick's response is a fucking meme that nobody actually takes seriously after a nanosecond of critical thinking. Rawls is goat

>>12813227
Yes, but maybe not in the way you think. Thinkers like Foucault, let's call them "left postmodernists", often reduce society to a collection of power relations and call for increased resistance to Power at the margins of society. The genius of this is that it actually reinforces the power structure that the ruling class is trying to realize, namely, a "flattening" of society and dissolution of intermediary institutions between the State and the individual, and extreme centralization. Power calls for a decentralized revolution among marginalized, against "Oppressive" power structures, by putting people like Foucault into positions of prominence and getting us to think in a Foucauldian manner. Power petitions itself for an expansion. Isn't it clever?

>>12813237
Some donors and intelligence agencies. Not all donors are "in".

>>12813252
>an anarchist funded by the government
wtf are you talking about?

>>12813280
Liberalism is gay and you're gay if you like it

>>12813282
>there is such a thing as left postmodernism
>Foucault was a big government centralist
The things I learn on this board. How many moves ahead have these mysterious shadow rulers planned?

>>12813280
>Liberalism? Never been much of a fan.

>>12812648
the dumbest thing about this dude is the charts he has in his books. such a fucking anglo trying to force maths in ethics

>>12813280
>It's true, I'm not a liberal by any means. How could you tell, anon?

>>12813280
>Liberalism? Never saw the appeal to be honest.

>>12813280
yikes

>>12813280
>Me, a liberal? Haha, you are a funny one, anon. But we need to work on that starting strength. Spot me on bench press and then we'll pick up some girls later.

>>12813280
>Rawls? Haven't heard of him. He look ill, whoever he is.

>>12813311
>>12813320
>>12813328
>>12813341
>>12813359
Nozick looks like as much of a loser as rawls desu

>>12813295
Chomsky's bosses? He's been in the MIT his whole carreer, an private org bankrolled by the government (66% of all research grants), specifically the Pentagon and MITRE corporation in Chomsky's case.

A lot of MIT alumni are quickly absorbed into the military-industrial complex or go on to found Fortune 500 companies.

>>12813310
I'm assuming the following:

1. The left is the elite within society.
2. The left (the Center) expands its power through mobilization of the Margins through universalizing/leveling movements.

Insofar as someone like Foucault is on the side of such a leveling and counts himself among the marginalized, he can be firmly considered to be of the Left. Foucault doesn't need to be a government centralist, if I recall correctly he ended up as some kind of anarcho-liberal after dabbling in the French Communist Party, didn't he? What matters is that he seems to find himself having the same enemies as the liberal elite do.

>>12813385
LOL I thought Chomsky hated the Gov't

>>12813402
If Noam Chomsky is such a threat to the elite, why does he still have a job?

>>12813397
>The left is the elite within society.
This expands the meaning of 'left' and 'elite' to be basically meaningless. Are all left wingers part of the elite, or are all members of the elite actually left wing? Student Marxists are part of the elite? Blue collar trade unionists? All CEOs and military generals are actually left wing and believe in abolishing private property?

>>12813427
All part the plan
You might have naively assumed the world was just flawed humans blundering along making decisions as best they could, yet the affairs of man are actually being scrupulously directed by minds immeasurably superior to your own

>>12812648
that kind progressive humanist liberal internationalism was already the status quo of Western institutions. He just painted a philosophical veneer on it, so they embraced it.

>>12813464
Here is how it works (at least in the West):

Liberal elites want to expand their power. The janissaries/lumpens are riled up (academic leftists, minorities, etc.) and provided with institutional and financial support. The Left thinks that they're really going to abolish private property or establish true Equality or whatever this time. Once the elite's desired goals have been achieved, the funding is cut off and they're left to self-critique over what went wrong this time. This plays out every 50 +/- 10 years or so in the US, woke movements have a fairly regular schedule.

So,
>Are all left wingers part of the elite, or are all members of the elite actually left wing?
The real elite can only be considered left-wing, the students and minorities are their clients.
>All CEOs and military generals are actually left wing and believe in abolishing private property?
All CEOs and generals aren't part of the elite. The actual elite number maybe in the hundreds. It's probably easiest to identify membership in this group through the institutions and social clubs they belong to as that's where the decisions are made.

Any attempt to build human rights from something that isn't Kantianism will probaly fail. Kantianism is the perfect basis of human rights

>>12813518
This is completely nebulous. Just gussied up anti-semitic tropes, you may as well be David Icke.

>>12813469
This.

The reptoids' grand designs span thousands of years. The elites don't actually age, only their skinsuits do. When they retire a skinsuit they dress a new one and adopt a new human identity. Specially important reptoids are granted the privilege of multiple identities.

The real Romanovs were in Germany all along paying Lenin (he wasn't jewish enough to have a rank above field agent) to do away with their patsies who took the blame for those wars that they MEANT to lose, like the USA meant to lose the Vietnam war.

It's all detailed in my 5000 page manifesto. If you are interested in reading it, you'll know when it's out there.

>>12813375
First off, it takes some outstanding cope to equate the physical attractiveness of Nozick to the sickly cast of Rawls. Search images of Nozick and you'll find a picture of George Clooney as a "celebrity lookalike." Second, Nozick actually wrote serious and influential works in epistemology and metaphysics — unlike Rawls, who just repeated the same idea ad infinitum/nauseam.

>>12813550
>Just gussied up anti-semitic tropes
the people in question are mostly British...

>>12813427
Ultimately capitalist liberalism depends on critique. It's probably the most unique and interesting element it has as a system.

>>12813201
this post is anti-Semitic

>>12813464
>This expands the meaning of 'left' and 'elite' to be basically meaningless. Are all left wingers part of the elite, or are all members of the elite actually left wing? Student Marxists are part of the elite? Blue collar trade unionists? All CEOs and military generals are actually left wing and believe in abolishing private property?
The left in the US is a very diverse coalition consisting of everything from left liberals to revolutionary communists and anarchists. They certainly are in control of our most important institutions (our most prestigious universities). This has allowed them to to shift the attitudes of the educated workforce to the left and bring nearly every business in a growing industry leftward. Because these people have generally accrued greater amounts of wealth and because their wealth is so heavily concentrated most businesses have shifted to specifically market to them.

The elite are also a heterogeneous group, but the right among them have declined in both numbers and influence.

>>12812800
What's bad about using reason to determine what's good?

>>12813917
It’s important to keep in mind that the ruling coalition you mentioned also embraces many republicans. “Conservatives” who desire unlimited scab labor, unlimited corporate welfare and would actually prefer the democrats to any real change.

>>12812800
>Only such an egoistic ethical view would define "the good" as wholly aligned with one's self-interest.

Plato btfo'd forever

>>12813940
There's nothing wrong with an individual using his or her reason to determine the good (or the object of their morality). For instance, Plato and Aristotle derived a virtue-based ethics with eudaimonia as its aim from reason. Aquinas codified Catholicism using reason. Kant divined the categorical imperative from pure (!) reason. Bentham and Mill used reason to establish utilitarianism. Rawls apparently discovered his two principles of justice via reason.

Do you see the issue? Rawls, and the Enlightenment figures before him, presupposed a universal Reason that would reveal the mysteries of ethics and political morality to us. Yet how could Kant, Mill, and Rawls — all partaking from the same Reason — end up with such wildly different theories? The problem with Mill, Bentham and Rawls is that they have no metaphysical grounding for their God of Reason (say what you will about Kant, at least he's thorough). Rather, they just help themselves to an unearned metaphysical framework that needs an argument.

Furthermore, it is not clear that morality should in fact be reasonable (e.g. self-consistent). Kant has an impressive metaphysic of morals, but to abide by it would either require inhuman cruelty or else a kingdom of angelic figures. Iris Murdoch grounds her morality in Platonic Eros, and so can escape the absurd universality of reason-based ethics (consequentialism and deontology both have glaring flaws, if you take a step back). Aristotelian virtue ethics is making a big comeback for a reason.

>>12814130
Fuck, you got me. "Aligned" was a poor choice of words; I meant "identified." Plato escapes egotism because "the Good" is both enjoyable and teleologically good for everyone. Martha Nussbaum (wrongly) argues that Plato is a rampant egotist.

Bumps

>>12814172
"Egotism" and "egoism" don't mean the same thing.

our society doesnt look like whats described by rawls though

it's liberal, yes, but neither the difference principle nor equality of opportunity apply, so i dont think its fair to criticize them based on the obvious failures of neoliberalism. a society with the difference principle and equality of opportunity would probably look more similar to some form of socialism

>>12813375
no u

>>12812648
because he pushed for positive rights and people nowadays want free shit without doing nothing