Tuesday, October 29, 2019

A comment on Godwin

Before I resume telling the ill-fated story of the free love advocates of the British enlightenment, I want to do something I don't often do and highlight a comment to my original post.

My first post sketched out the philosophy of William Godwin (1756-1836). I noted that Godwin's philososophy established a gulf between man's being in the world and the pursuit of a common good that was only uneasily bridged.

For Godwin, it was "natural" for man to follow the dictates of his own mind. In doing so, he would extend the sphere of knowledge and this would then improve moral standards - autonomous man would, via pure reason, choose to act selflessly and benevolently for the benefit of mankind as a whole.

This philosophy led Godwin to denounce marriage and the family as these placed controls over who we chose to establish relationships with. By the logic of Godwin's philosophy, to marry was to engage in an artificial, selfish and prejudiced act in which we treated others as property.

Godwin had not given up on a common good. He connected a radically individualistic mode of being (we act according to the dictates of our own mind without constraint) to a highly abstract common good (by acting so we come to choose, via pure reason, to act selflessly and benevolently for the good of our fellow man - i.e. for humankind).

A reader observed:
I am convinced that the "valid" realms of human pursuits are for liberals relegated to the individual or the global abstract, while the stations in between are dismissed or denounced.

With enough brainwashing, the individual can be convinced he is master of himself, and liberal elites (the brainwashers) can dictate universal values. It is family, community, church, ethnicity, etc., that represent a threat to this binary. They give people some measure of influence in managing their particular interests and connecting with others in meaningful ways. Liberals seem to believe, therefore, that those venues, in which their revolutionary ideas have little control or influence, must be made irrelevant or destroyed.

I have bolded the two thoughts that I think are particularly well put. I would only add to the first that the conceit of being a "master of oneself" might contribute to the liberals of today believing that they are anti-establishment free thinkers when in fact they are conforming to a state ideology that has been entrenched for generations.

As for the second observation, it rings true when you consider the rationalism of Enlightenment thinkers like Godwin. By rationalism I mean the belief that a society could be refounded (literally "re-formed") on the basis of rational principles formulated by intellectuals like Godwin himself.

If you have this mindset, you will instinctively dislike the "measure of influence" that institutions like the family give to ordinary people in "managing their particular interests and connecting with others in meaningful ways" because this then limits the "ground zero" approach to re-forming society along the "rational" and "unprejudiced" principles favoured by intellectuals.

In stark contrast, traditionalists instinctively admire the "little kingdom" aspect of family life, i.e. the way that family allows us to perform offices that express and fulfil our natures (even if they involve burdens) and, in so doing, create unique human communities based on very personal ties, loves and loyalties. Our instinct is that this is a better foundation on which to build the wider expressions of human community than any philosopher's abstract formula.

2 comments:

  1. Mark,

    I think you'd find this interesting, comments by the Malaysian Prime Minister on Australia

    https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2019/11/doctor-mahatir-describes-an-unrecognisable-australia/

    The responding blogger is a left-liberal trying and failing to come up with an Auster style "unprincipled exception" to allow his immigration-skeptical "national liberalism"

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    Replies
    1. Thank you, that's really interesting. It seems to be written by a white liberal who can see the writing on the wall, namely that Australia will within our lifetimes not be ruled by white liberals. He wants to cling to his white liberalism, which commits him to multiculturalism, but sees it ending badly. Hence this:

      I am a dedicated supporter of multiculturalism as it stands but I recognise that it hangs on the dominance of liberal European values.

      Taking this for granted is reckless beyond belief.


      The problem is, as you noted, that once liberal principles in support of multiculturalism are in place, it is then difficult to draw a principled line in the sand on which to put a stop to the process.

      He brings up social cohesion, house prices and labour standards, but it's clear that what really concerns him is the failure of the liberal project itself, as liberal principles doom white liberals to fade from political power.

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