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Free Thinking : The nation

From the UK, philosopher Jonathan Rée

All entries in this category: Progress

  1. Good news / bad news

    • Jonathan Rée
    • 25 Oct 06, 07:58 PM

    What I said about people who are more receptive to bad news than good was far too simple, as several of you have pointed out. And the suggestion that people who think of themselves as progressive in their politics are more likely to be optimistic than people who think of themselves as conservative was too crude as well.

    Matt has a good point (if I follow him) when he suggests that it might be the other way round. Conservatives think that we should be content with the way things are (‘don’t knock it: it’s all we’ve got and it could be an awful lot worse’), whereas progressives think the current state of affairs is intolerable (‘things can only get better’). So who is the pessimist at this table?

    What was missing from my earlier discussion was any reference to the element of comparison. Those with a taste for cliché may remind us that politics is the art of the possible, but we need to remember that it is also an art of comparison. Politics, you might say, is always comparative politics: to think politically is to put two different situations (two real, two imagined, or one of each) onto the scales of political justice: Athens or Sparta, Paris or Geneva, Canterbury or Rome, Socialism or Barbarism, Washington or Moscow.

    And in the politics of the last two centuries (that is to say, since the invention of the concepts of ‘left’ and ‘right’) political comparisons have always involved a reference to time: they have been comparisons, essentially, of the present with the past and of the present with the future.

    The classic right-wing conservative can then be defined as someone who will always welcome good news about the past because it heightens foreboding at any changes that may lie in the future. And the classic leftist progressive will welcome bad news about the ‘old immoral world’ (as Robert Owen called it), because it dramatises the contrast with the good news to come.

    Let us stay with a classical leftist for a while.

    Continue reading "Good news / bad news"

  1. No news is good news

    • Jonathan Rée
    • 19 Oct 06, 06:18 PM

    Many thanks for some very pertinent comments about my last post. You're right: I was indeed overlooking the fact that optimism and pessimism involve our practical involvement with the world as well as our theoretical appraisal of it. (From the point of view of practice, you might say, the optimist tends to be reckless, while the pessimist is generally risk-averse.)

    But for the time being let’s stick to pessimism as a theoretical attitude. It is, I think you would agree, pretty prevalent in our times. In politics in particular, people tend to be more receptive to bad news than good. In fact if you took what people say seriously, you would have to conclude that they think everything in society has been going from bad to worse for at least a century, if not since history began.

    But we know it’s not true. In Britain in the last century, for instance, there has been a vast expansion of literacy, and of intellectual attainment in general, and mutual tolerance, and stunning improvements in health and longevity; but who wants to talk about that when they could spin a story about a failing school, sectarian violence, or deaths from hospital-acquired infections?

    But why are we so unreceptive to good news?

    Continue reading "No news is good news"

  1. True respect

    • Jonathan Rée
    • 1 Sep 06, 08:55 AM

    Lots of people seem to like my idea of a democracy of mutual respect, but they’re not sure that such a thing can ever exist. On the internet perhaps, or specifically here in blogland?

    But first we need to agree about the meaning of respect.

    One commenter has got shirty with me because I pointed out that, as far as I could see, he had made a logical mistake. (He thought that being able to change your mind was the same as being unable not to change your mind – as if being able to fall asleep were the same as not being able to stay awake.) He took offence, and now he alleges that I have failed to practice the kind of respect that I preach.

    Continue reading "True respect"

  1. One Cheer for Democracy

    • Jonathan Rée
    • 29 Aug 06, 01:02 PM

    ‘What is democracy?’ says jesting Esther – and I think I may have an answer.

    In any case it’s nice to do a cyber-handshake with my fellow freethinker, and I hope I can cheer her up a bit, while leaving some of the commenters on Open Minds and Empty Heads climbing the lamp posts in Logic Lane.

    The idea of democracy is as old as western philosophy, and on the whole very few people have had a good word to say for it. But I think I have a notion of democracy that may recommend itself to Esther Wilson and others.

    I think I can dicriminate four different meanings of the term.

    Continue reading "One Cheer for Democracy"

  1. A Tale of Two Revolutions

    • Jonathan Rée
    • 18 Aug 06, 03:51 PM

    The other day when I was reading in the fabulous ‘special collections’ library here in Williamstown, Massachusetts, I overheard the chief librarian – a very distinguished and knowledgeable man– welcoming someone to the building. (‘How are you? Good to see you again. Please come along in…’) I imagined from the way he was talking that the visitor must be the College president or some big-shot professor, but not at all: it was the electrician come to change some light bulbs.
    That’s one of the things I like about the US: the almost complete lack of snobbiness. I know that there are obscene inequalities and massive social injustices. But on the whole people can expect to be treated with respect, and nearly everyone manages to be polite without being obsequious or deferential. And that strikes me as an important cultural and political achievement, with roots in America’s past.

    Continue reading "A Tale of Two Revolutions"

  1. Freedom, truth and progress

    • Jonathan Rée
    • 8 Aug 06, 01:19 AM

    I’ve been losing sleep the past few weeks, not just from the tropical weather here in Massachusetts, but because of a couple of stories about censorship and freedom of speech that have been buzzing around and refusing to settle down.
    The one that’s made most noise over here () is about an American called Kevin Barrett, who propagates the view that the attacks on America on 11 September 2001 were carried out not by militant Islamists but by agents of George Bush. He is a part-time teacher of Islam at the University of Wisconsin, and when the authorities there threatened to suspend his contract the American free-speech industry leapt to his defence.
    The other story is about an Iranian called , a wonderful, multi-lingual, multi-cultural philosopher who returned to his native country a few years ago, was arrested on 27 April, and as far as I know has not been heard from since. (He was by the jounralist Danny Postel.) Why on earth is there not a bit more fuss about Ramin Jahanbegloo? World powers, especially the US, have tried to bring Iran to heel by calling the regime evil and spreading rumours about post-diplomatic sanctions; how about a bit of effort to support the opposition instead, starting with Ramin Jahanbegloo?
    But as I’ve said before, you can’t talk much about freedom without bringing in politics and patriotism and national rivalries too.

    Continue reading "Freedom, truth and progress"

  1. What does progress mean?

    • Jonathan Rée
    • 31 Jul 06, 06:12 PM

    For centuries, people have been using discussions about freedom and progress as excuses for offloading their opinions about different countries and the wonders or horrors of their political systems: freedom and progress in India, in Iran, in the Soviet Union, or Britain, or France -- but more than anything else, freedom and progress in the USA.

    Continue reading "What does progress mean?"

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