Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

Amusingly relevant: https://thehill.com/homenews/3915357-bible-ban-school-district-reviewing-the-religious-text-after-parents-request/amp/ LikeLike

I can hardly speak for Gaus, having read just the first 100 pages of Tyranny of the Ideal and none of Order of Public Reason. But my first thought is that he seems to assume the context of a contemporary Western democracy, so that the question of whole…

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. I guess I would add (with the benefit of a night’s sleep) that Hazony’s thesis is so all-out phony that counter-examples will be of limited use in responding to it (including mine, in the PAW letter). A better strategy is to …

In reply to Roderick T. Long. He regards Selden, Hume, Smith, Ferguson, Burke, and JS Mill as proto-nationalist conservatives, Mill on the basis of the defense of ethno-nationalism he gives at the end of On Representative Government. But Selden is the …

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. I wonder whether Hazony has a take on why such thinkers as Milton, Montesquieu, Diderot, Richard Cantillon, Destutt de Tracy, Jean-Baptiste Say, William Godwin, Wilhelm von Humboldt, James Mill, John Stuart Mill, Charles Duno…

So how does this apply to a real-world case — say, a society in which a large portion of the population (women, slaves, whatever) is excluded from a full enjoyment of rights, where such exclusion is justified by norms accepted by most members of …

By “human collective,” Hazony means any human association as such. He ascribes to Locke the view that we have no pre-contractual obligations whatsoever, then criticizes Locke for having an absurd view of human relations. He also does nothin…

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. “Locke means that the individual becomes a member of a human collective only because he has agreed to it, and has obligations toward such collectives only if he has accepted them” Only if by a “human collect…

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. A summary of Hazony’s overall strategy: (1) He simply ignores everything that Locke has to say about the distinction between parental and political power in both Treatises, as well as everything Locke has to say about t…