From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Wed Jan 08 2003 - 22:16:22 GMT
Kevin, Platt, Jonathon,
I applaud you Kevin for being bold. Cross-reference this with what I
recently wrote to Platt on "cruelty" (in "Is Pirsig a liberal?") and
Kevin's narrative on how the Nazi would describe their situation is exactly
why there are no knock-down arguments against convinced, thorough, dogmatic
people. They share too few premises, too few beliefs that overlap with ours.
As an additional thought on Kevin's coming to the Rortyan affirmation of
the public/private split (which is as old as classical liberalism),
particularly for those who may not know what he's refering to, the
public/private split affirms that we need to have enough relevent beliefs
in common to be able to interact socially and to be able to have public
discourse (such as discussing good public policy). The point of the split,
and of why Kevin said, "Yet another argument for the keeping metaphysics
out of the public policy making and keeping it in the realm of private
self-actualization," is that all we need to make progress politically are
shared beliefs. It doesn't matter how we got to those beliefs, just that
we have them. So that's why Christians, atheistic metaphysicians,
Buddhists, and ironists can come together and agree that we should have a
"Clean Air Act" or "Civil Right Act." They all agree that those things are
good and it doesn't matter whether they got the sentiment from God, Reason,
meditation, or reading some good books. That's the essence of why Rorty
maintains that we need the public/private split. To save our freedom to
believe in God, Reason, the Nothingness, and good books while being able to
spend time haggling about good policy, rather then spending time on the
Senate floor arguing about philosophy or religion. Its a pratical split
meant to faciliate our desire for personal freedom and our desire to
alleviate the cruelty done to others.
Matt
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jan 08 2003 - 22:11:33 GMT