Free Thinking : The nation
From the UK, philosopher Jonathan Rée
All entries in this category: Truth and enlightenment
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Good news / bad news
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.
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The curious history of freethinking
My minders at the 成人论坛 would like me to make my posts a bit snappier and whackier – a bit more bloglike in short. I shall do my best, but I'm afraid I may not succeed. After all they have also tagged me as ‘philosopher’, which implies taking care to look at everything in the round. And that takes time. If it’s not the way things work in the blogosphere, then something will have to give.
That is why I have been insisting on the difference between holding an opinion and thinking things through. Comments on this distinction are still coming in (very interesting too), and I shall return to it, as incisively as possible, in a later post.But first I need to discharge an old promise by explaining a little of the history ‘freethinking’, and the part Bishop Berkeley played in its downfall. If I’m right, the story points to a paradox in the idea of freethinking – a paradox that has not lost its capacity to trip people up.
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Freedom truth and thinking
The only thing that’s indisputable about the idea of freedom is that it’s always in dispute.
And the same applies to freethinking too. It’s a word with a lot of history: in the eighteenth century, certain dissident protestants liked to refer to themselves as ‘free-thinkers’ – but they were roundly rebuked and ridiculed, and not without reason. They flattered themselves absurdly, according to their critics. (There was a very funny satire on them by Bishop Berkeley, for instance: he thought that their confidence that they represented freethinking only proved that they knew nothing either about freedom or about thinking.) But I had better rein in this historical hobbyhorse, or at least save it for a later outing. The essantial point remains: you do not prove that you are free by saying or thinking that you are.
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True respect
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.
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One Cheer for Democracy
‘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.
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Open minds and empty heads
Some people found it hard to take, but when I said that ‘the worst thing that can happen to a person is losing the ability to change their mind’ I really meant it. I know we are expected to admire people who, as we say, ‘stick to their principles’, but what does that really mean? The description may cover all-time heroes like Socrates or Nelson Mandela, but surely it applies equally well to Hitler or Pol Pot? We do not really admire people for sticking up for their principles when those principles strike us as mistaken and odious; instead we despise them for not having the courage to change their minds.
And what are ‘principles’ anyway?
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Philosophy and the art of self-transformation
Activists in the blogosphere seem to divide into two groups: those hoping to change themselves through the encounter with new ideas, and those looking for opportunities to to ride their old hobby horses at the drop of a hat, without bothering to attend to what other people are saying; and we seem to have our share of both here on Freethinkinguk.
Continue reading "Philosophy and the art of self-transformation"
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A Tale of Two Revolutions
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.
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Will the truth save us?
I can see the appeal of all those slogans about freedom and human rights and ‘telling truth to power’ and ‘the truth will set you free’, even when they are circulated by people who hide behind weird cyber-identities. It seems to me that any political slogan that deserves to be taken seriously ought to be discussible, which means that you can see how some reasonable person might disagree with it. But I can't see much in this stuff about freedom and truth except empty moral tautologies – the practical equivalents of ‘a rose is a rose is a rose’. Who could possibly dissent from them? And in that case, why should anyone bother to assert them. And also: who gains by reiterating them?
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