RE: MD Making sense of it

From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Fri Jan 17 2003 - 23:24:51 GMT

  • Next message: Mari: "Re: MD Making sense of it"

    Kevin, Platt,

    Kevin said:
    I'll give credit to Matt for articulating the public/private split idea
    in a way that made it a very good solution to the problems I've had with
    the MOQ in the past.

    Matt:
    And I have to give credit to Rorty (particularly in Contingency, Irony, and
    Solidarity). The idea of making a practical public/private split is fairly
    old. It gained its current prominence in the Enlightenment. The people
    who began to articulate this way of protecting individual rights were such
    notables as: Daniel Defoe, Adam Smith, Bernard Mandeville, David Hume,
    Immanuel Kant, Benjamin Constant, Voltaire, Alexis de Tocqueville, John
    Stewart Mill and our Founding Fathers, particularly Madison and Jefferson
    ("the seperation of church and state"). The public/private split is built
    right into the fabric of the American consciousness. In our century,
    people like Friedrich Hayek, John Dewey, Isaiah Berlin, and Rorty. There
    are, of course, many others. Its sometimes called classical liberalism,
    sometimes the Enlightenment political project.

    The short genealogy is to help presuade people that the public/private
    split isn't some new idea. In most Western democracies, its built right
    into the way we think.

    Matt

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