Showing posts with label faith_and_reason. Show all posts
Showing posts with label faith_and_reason. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
p. xi-xiii The Conservative Foundation of the Liberal Order, Mahoney
What are the three terms, and how do they related to Jaroslav Pelikan and Mr. Emerson in Room with a View? (hint: Bach's Mass in B Minor)
Thursday, September 15, 2011
p. 294 A New Birth of Freedom, Jaffa
How is the hierarchy of man's relationships to God and to other men fundamental to the idea that the "powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed"?
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Witness by Whittaker Chambers, from the foreward
The crisis of Communism exists to the degree in which it has failed to free the peoples that it rules from God...The crisis of the Western World exists to the degree in which it is indifferent to God.
pp. 125 A New Birth of Freedom, Jaffa
What did Churchill say about politicians that contradict themselves? Connect with Rieff and note the difference between Churchill's meaning and the political moderate.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
p. 95 A New Birth of Freedom, Jaffa
How did 19th c. technology corrupt/change the American notion of rights? Now, go back to p. 94 and consider Marx whose philosophy was based entirely upon technology. [Be sure to click on link below under "reciprocal relationship"]
Relevant passages:
Atheistic nihilism transforms the "bourgeois" and highly moral individualism of the American Revolution into something entirely different. That older individualism was based on the idea of unalienable rights endowed by man's Creator. Such rights were not unconditional. They were to be exercised only in accordance with the laws of nature and of nature's God, which were moral laws. Rights and duties were in a reciprocal relationship. But the nature revealed by modern science-the unconditional basis of the belief in Progress-was that of mindless matter, a source of power to be commanded, not a source of morality to be obeyed. From here on, "rights" would be understood as the unconditional empowerment of the individual to do as he pleased. Self-realization became the code word for the new morality. The human self, however, was no longer understood to be made in the image of God, since God was dead. Self-realization was in fact only the correlate of the new atheism. As there could no longer be any distinction between man and God, which distinction is as fundamental to the Declaration of Independence as to the Bible, there could be no distinction between base and noble desires. All desires were understood to be created equal, since all desires were seen as originating in that highest of all authorities, the self-creating self.
Harry Jaffa. A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War (Kindle Locations 1589-1597). Kindle Edition.
As these doctrines were filtered through the intellectual establishment of modem liberal regimes, of which Chief Justice Rehnquist is a typical representative, the emancipation from morality was itself seen as moral progress, and the opponents of that emancipation were seen as the reactionary enemies of both freedom and morality.
Harry Jaffa. A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War (Kindle Locations 1598-1600). Kindle Edition.
[Also consider the following from page 50:]
This moreover is the same compact that Madison, throughout his life, declared to be "the vital principle of free government." From this account we see that a free election, properly so called, can only decide questions for a people united by the terms of such a compact. No election, however free, can rightfully decide questions "beyond the legitimate reach of sovereignty, wherever vested or however viewed." Nor can even unanimous consent rightfully authorize what is inconsistent with the "great principles of right and wrong." But suppose differences of opinion arise as to whether policies or institutions are, or are not, beyond "the legitimate reach of sovereignty,"
Harry Jaffa. A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War (Kindle Locations 885-889). Kindle Edition.
[PERSONAL NOTE: the necessary question is what constitutes that limit? The Declaration of Indepenence drew that line with those things that belong to God. Here it is worth referring to R.L. Bruckberger's Image of America:
pp. 103-104
"To abolish divine right in politics--and this is where Congress got it right and Jefferson got it wrong--it is not enough merely to give the people full sovereignty. It must also be recognized that men's inalienable rights, upon which their sovereignty is based, is derived from God, Creator, Providence, and Judge. It is true that the people have rights, and that those rights are imprescriptible and inalienable; but not every right is theirs. THEY HAVE NO RIGHT TO DEIFY THEMSELVES. Since their rights derive from God, they can exercise them only according to God's will. In their very sovereignty the people are subject to God. Without religion even democracy is exposed to all the perils of tyranny. The American Declaration carefully avoided making a philosophical absolute of the people; it did not give the people precedence over God in the chain of succession; it maintained the traditional chain of succession and traced back men's imprescriptible rights to God, the source of all justice and all rights.
...In this chain of political sovereignty the people are always subject and at the same time always free and sovereign. They are subject to their own laws and to God's justice. They are free because they obey only their own laws. They are sovereign because their sovereignty is part of the sovereignty of God.
--Image of America pp. 103-104]
C.S. Lewis explains here why subjectivism about values is eternally incompatible with democracy.
Also consider page 39 here.
Relevant passages:
Atheistic nihilism transforms the "bourgeois" and highly moral individualism of the American Revolution into something entirely different. That older individualism was based on the idea of unalienable rights endowed by man's Creator. Such rights were not unconditional. They were to be exercised only in accordance with the laws of nature and of nature's God, which were moral laws. Rights and duties were in a reciprocal relationship. But the nature revealed by modern science-the unconditional basis of the belief in Progress-was that of mindless matter, a source of power to be commanded, not a source of morality to be obeyed. From here on, "rights" would be understood as the unconditional empowerment of the individual to do as he pleased. Self-realization became the code word for the new morality. The human self, however, was no longer understood to be made in the image of God, since God was dead. Self-realization was in fact only the correlate of the new atheism. As there could no longer be any distinction between man and God, which distinction is as fundamental to the Declaration of Independence as to the Bible, there could be no distinction between base and noble desires. All desires were understood to be created equal, since all desires were seen as originating in that highest of all authorities, the self-creating self.
Harry Jaffa. A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War (Kindle Locations 1589-1597). Kindle Edition.
As these doctrines were filtered through the intellectual establishment of modem liberal regimes, of which Chief Justice Rehnquist is a typical representative, the emancipation from morality was itself seen as moral progress, and the opponents of that emancipation were seen as the reactionary enemies of both freedom and morality.
Harry Jaffa. A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War (Kindle Locations 1598-1600). Kindle Edition.
[Also consider the following from page 50:]
This moreover is the same compact that Madison, throughout his life, declared to be "the vital principle of free government." From this account we see that a free election, properly so called, can only decide questions for a people united by the terms of such a compact. No election, however free, can rightfully decide questions "beyond the legitimate reach of sovereignty, wherever vested or however viewed." Nor can even unanimous consent rightfully authorize what is inconsistent with the "great principles of right and wrong." But suppose differences of opinion arise as to whether policies or institutions are, or are not, beyond "the legitimate reach of sovereignty,"
Harry Jaffa. A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War (Kindle Locations 885-889). Kindle Edition.
[PERSONAL NOTE: the necessary question is what constitutes that limit? The Declaration of Indepenence drew that line with those things that belong to God. Here it is worth referring to R.L. Bruckberger's Image of America:
pp. 103-104
"To abolish divine right in politics--and this is where Congress got it right and Jefferson got it wrong--it is not enough merely to give the people full sovereignty. It must also be recognized that men's inalienable rights, upon which their sovereignty is based, is derived from God, Creator, Providence, and Judge. It is true that the people have rights, and that those rights are imprescriptible and inalienable; but not every right is theirs. THEY HAVE NO RIGHT TO DEIFY THEMSELVES. Since their rights derive from God, they can exercise them only according to God's will. In their very sovereignty the people are subject to God. Without religion even democracy is exposed to all the perils of tyranny. The American Declaration carefully avoided making a philosophical absolute of the people; it did not give the people precedence over God in the chain of succession; it maintained the traditional chain of succession and traced back men's imprescriptible rights to God, the source of all justice and all rights.
...In this chain of political sovereignty the people are always subject and at the same time always free and sovereign. They are subject to their own laws and to God's justice. They are free because they obey only their own laws. They are sovereign because their sovereignty is part of the sovereignty of God.
--Image of America pp. 103-104]
C.S. Lewis explains here why subjectivism about values is eternally incompatible with democracy.
Also consider page 39 here.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
pp. 82-83 A New Birth of Freedom, Jaffa
How can Carl Becker argue that to ask whether natural rights is true or false is a meaningless question? And how does Jaffa answer Becker?
Relevant Passages: They were certain that from the abolitionists to the advocates of the positive good of slavery, those who asserted a ground of truth for their moral preferences were laboring under delusions. They therefore condemned, whether explicitly or implicitly, those politicians on either side of the Mason and Dixon Line who inflamed the uncompromisable moral passions of the electorate.
They were convinced that they knew, as Lincoln and his fellow citizens did not, that to ask whether slavery was right or wrong was to ask, in the words of Carl Becker, an "essentially meaningless question."
The answer is that in our time, truth has been disarmed by the opinion that reason is impotent to know what is just or unjust, right or wrong, true or false.
Relevant Passages: They were certain that from the abolitionists to the advocates of the positive good of slavery, those who asserted a ground of truth for their moral preferences were laboring under delusions. They therefore condemned, whether explicitly or implicitly, those politicians on either side of the Mason and Dixon Line who inflamed the uncompromisable moral passions of the electorate.
They were convinced that they knew, as Lincoln and his fellow citizens did not, that to ask whether slavery was right or wrong was to ask, in the words of Carl Becker, an "essentially meaningless question."
The answer is that in our time, truth has been disarmed by the opinion that reason is impotent to know what is just or unjust, right or wrong, true or false.
p. 77 A New Birth of Freedom, Jaffa
What is the difference between the old revisionists (circa 1920) who said the Civil War was unnecessary, and the new revisionists who are all modern-day abolitionists? And what is it that joins the modern-day revisionists with Justice Taney?
Relevant Passages: The earlier revisionists, whose hero was Stephen A. Douglas, thought that sensible statesmanship would always work for the subordination of moral questions to matters of interests, and consequently for the peaceful accommodation of conflicting interests. In this respect, they preserved something of the rationalist tradition they otherwise rejected.
Their successors, however, have substituted commitment for reasonableness (in any sense of that word) as the norm by which human actions are to he judged. Our latter-day writers, who generally detest Douglas, are by and large committed to the moral superiority of the antislavery cause. For them, the impotence of reason to decide moral questions does not mean, as the earlier revisionists concluded, that moral questions should be ignored, bypassed, or compromised. It means rather that a full-blooded and passionate commitment should he made to the position one regards as moral. Since reason cannot speak against their moral commitment, there is no reason for them to moderate their passionate feelings about slavery.
They have much in common with Chief Justice Roger Taney, who in the Dred Scott decision of 1857, declared that the Signers of the Declaration of Independence could not have regarded slavery as wrong, since they did not abolish it-ignoring the fact that, in any event, they had no power to abolish it! For such historians as these, the portrayal of a "racist" American Founding is a necessary preamble to the disavowal of any authority to the principles of the Revolution, notably those enshrined in the Declaration.
Relevant Passages: The earlier revisionists, whose hero was Stephen A. Douglas, thought that sensible statesmanship would always work for the subordination of moral questions to matters of interests, and consequently for the peaceful accommodation of conflicting interests. In this respect, they preserved something of the rationalist tradition they otherwise rejected.
Their successors, however, have substituted commitment for reasonableness (in any sense of that word) as the norm by which human actions are to he judged. Our latter-day writers, who generally detest Douglas, are by and large committed to the moral superiority of the antislavery cause. For them, the impotence of reason to decide moral questions does not mean, as the earlier revisionists concluded, that moral questions should be ignored, bypassed, or compromised. It means rather that a full-blooded and passionate commitment should he made to the position one regards as moral. Since reason cannot speak against their moral commitment, there is no reason for them to moderate their passionate feelings about slavery.
They have much in common with Chief Justice Roger Taney, who in the Dred Scott decision of 1857, declared that the Signers of the Declaration of Independence could not have regarded slavery as wrong, since they did not abolish it-ignoring the fact that, in any event, they had no power to abolish it! For such historians as these, the portrayal of a "racist" American Founding is a necessary preamble to the disavowal of any authority to the principles of the Revolution, notably those enshrined in the Declaration.
p. 75 A New Birth of Freedom, Jaffa
What is first necessary to be a revisionist and declare that the Civil War was unnecessary?
Relevant Passage: Revisionist historians thus approached the Civil War convinced a priori that they understood the questions facing the American people of that period better than Lincoln or any of his contemporaries. They were convinced that they knew, as Lincoln and his fellow citizens did not, that to ask whether slavery was right or wrong was to ask, in the words of Carl Becker, an "essentially meaningless question." And they concluded that to go to war over a difference of opinion that could not be settled by any rational means was essentially foolish.
Relevant Passage: Revisionist historians thus approached the Civil War convinced a priori that they understood the questions facing the American people of that period better than Lincoln or any of his contemporaries. They were convinced that they knew, as Lincoln and his fellow citizens did not, that to ask whether slavery was right or wrong was to ask, in the words of Carl Becker, an "essentially meaningless question." And they concluded that to go to war over a difference of opinion that could not be settled by any rational means was essentially foolish.
p. 74 A New Birth of Freedom, Jaffa
Why did Aristotle say there can be no such thing as political science? (Actually I'm not sure he directly "said" that.)
relevant Passage: Aristotle will prove by his analyses that no regime exists, either in speech or in deed, that deserves to be called best. Lacking such a model of excellence, there cannot be political science, properly so called. Aristotle, the son of a physician, believed that a genuine political science must be able to distinguish between political health and disease as much as medical science must be able to distinguish between bodily health and disease.
relevant Passage: Aristotle will prove by his analyses that no regime exists, either in speech or in deed, that deserves to be called best. Lacking such a model of excellence, there cannot be political science, properly so called. Aristotle, the son of a physician, believed that a genuine political science must be able to distinguish between political health and disease as much as medical science must be able to distinguish between bodily health and disease.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)