On The Kindness Of Conservatism

The political forces which perform great acts of kindness are seldom forgiven by the intellectuals. The conservatives are categorized by the intellectuals as a barbaric, fascist, and racist force, but the condition of the poor and the minorities is far better in the nations with healthy conservative movements than in the liberal nations. No one can judge a political system but one who has himself experienced the political system—the best defense of conservatism is that the ordinary people, who have experienced it, like it. The intellectuals are the drummer boys of falsehoods—it’s safe to ignore their opinions.

On The Non-Eternality Of The Universe

If the universe is eternal, then there is no necessity for an ultimate mover or a creator demiurge because everything in the universe has always existed and is transforming and moving in accordance with the laws of physics. But the universe cannot be eternal because it does not contain any component part that does not undergo transformation. From common sense experience we know that all things which undergo transformation are either material or mental and have a beginning and an end. If everything in the universe is undergoing transformation, then the quality of eternality cannot be attributed to the universe as a whole. The universe must have a beginning, and if it has a beginning, then it’s logical to believe that there is a creator involved.

The Democratic Life of Socrates

There is a contradiction between the political views of Socrates and his way of life. In Plato’s Republic, he talks about five types of states: first, Aristocracy, or a state ruled by the best man or best men; second, timocracy, or a state ruled by men of honor and ambition; third, oligarchy, or a state ruled by the moneyed class; fourth, democracy, or a state ruled by free people; fifth, tyranny or a state ruled by a totally unjust man. In his hierarchy of different types of states, democracy is awarded a lowly fourth position, but in his own life, he shows a preference for the democratic state. Unlike Plato and Aristotle, he never ventures out of democratic Athens—his entire life is spent in the city-state. He eagerly fights for Athens in wars, and when an Athenian jury sentences him to death, he does not oppose the verdict. His pupils advise him to flee and save his life, but in deference to the Athenian laws, Socrates quietly accepts his fate.

On Metaphysical Propositions

Philosophy, unlike science, is never fully rational and cannot be founded on purely empirical evidence. Every philosophy assumes certain basic facts which cannot be proved or disproved on the basis of existing knowledge. These basic facts are mostly the metaphysical presuppositions (also known as axioms) which can be based on theological or atheistic rationalizations. Without such presuppositions or axioms, no philosophy is possible.

The Necessity Of Conservatism

The avalanche of highbrow books on liberty and free markets can be best understood as a sign that no one has gotten to the heart the matter, or that the truth about the matter is so ungainly or politically incorrect that no one wants to acknowledge it. Here’s the ungainly truth: liberty and free markets can be found only in the nations which are rooted in solid culture, positive sense of history, and religious morality, and where the politics is dominated by a conservative political movement. In other words, liberty and free markets are an outcome of the conservative way of life. If conservatism is lost, liberty and free markets will become extinct.

Nonsense Can Establish Sense

Nonsense is not always wasteful and destructive—the history of past 3000 years is replete with instances of sense being established through nonsense.

The cosmology of Homer and Hesiod was nonsense, but their legends played a seminal role in the evolution of Ancient Greek culture and philosophy. In their search for a method of turning base metals into gold, the alchemists of the Middle Ages discovered several important facts of chemistry. In 13th century, Thomas Aquinas wanted to prove the existence of god but his efforts led to the rise of Aristotelian philosophy in Europe. In the 17th century, the scientists trying to prove the phlogiston theory of combustion managed to discover oxygen. The quest for the mythical golden city of El Dorado inspired the Spaniards in the 16th century to undertake risky expeditions to South America. The quest for the mythical island of Terra Australis inspired the exploration of the Southern Hemisphere between the 15th and 18th centuries.

Human beings make their greatest achievements when they work for some purpose—it doesn’t matter whether the purpose is sensible or nonsensical. People often get inspired by nonsensical ideas to take great risks and make great sacrifices which lead to great achievements.

On The Dogma Of Individualism

When a philosophy movement takes individualism as its driving principle, it becomes the preacher of a new form of conformism which regards individualism as a dogma. Its followers are convinced that by conforming with the thinking of their movement’s philosophy and groupthink they are furnishing the ultimate proof of their individualism. No amount of evidence or arguments is sufficient to dispel their illusion of being individualists.

The Kantian Bridge Between the Enlightenment and Romanticism

Immanuel Kant is a transitional figure between the Enlightenment and German Romanticism. With his philosophy, he completed the Enlightenment, but he also served as an inspiration for the German Romantics, who undermined the Enlightenment by rejecting the rationalism and scientism of the Enlightenment philosophers.

In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant is aiming to investigate why reason, which is a success in science and mathematics, has brought skepticism and disagreements on the questions of metaphysics, religion, and ethics. He notes that reason is successful in science and mathematics because these subjects deal with things as they appear to us (realm of appearances), not the way they really are (things in “themselves” which exist in the noumenal realm inaccessible by our senses).

Science and mathematics study a world on which our mind imposes certain forms and categories to make sense experience possible. Metaphysics, on the other hand, is beyond the bounds of reason because it deals with the noumenal world of things as they really are. The notion of the noumenal realm of things in themselves is critical for Kant’s thought in metaphysics, ethics, and religion and it inspired the German Romantic movement which was counter-Enlightenment.

Good Times are Bad Teachers

Prosperity, peace, and liberty are lousy teachers. They delude the citizens into believing that the good times will last forever and that the progress of their nation is guaranteed by a law of nature—they lead to moral decadence by creating artificial luxuries and inequalities. Progress is never guaranteed and there is no direction to history.

The Age of Reason is a Myth

Reason may enable us to make advances in science, but the dawning of an “age of reason” is not good for a nation. In the area of philosophy and politics, reason tends to breed skeptical, critical, nihilistic, and purely individualistic thinking which foments alienation, decadence, and disorder. When people march under the banner of reason, they lose their sense of traditional values, and their society is ripped apart by unrest and civil war. A rational pursuit of liberty, equality, fraternity often leads to the rise of slavery, inequalities, class conflicts—and a new barbarism. A stable society is founded on customs and mores—the forces of illusion and irrationality have as important role to play in it as the principles of rationality.

On Human Nature And Culture

You cannot break human nature through political coercion. Human nature is largely dependent on culture, which is a product of centuries of intellectual, religious, and materialistic endeavors. It may bend when political coercion is applied, but as soon as the political coercion is removed, human nature will, like a spring, revert back to its original shape. However, human nature can be broken by attacking and transforming culture. That is why the philosophies and political movements that want to promote a different type of human beings despise the existing culture—their politics centers on erasing the old culture to make space for a new one.

On The Metaphysics Of God

Our language imposes certain logical limits to what we can think or say. Whether you are a theist or atheist, you cannot use language to express your belief or disbelief of god—at least meaningfully you can’t. When you talk about god, you are using natural means to describe an entity that transcends nature; you are using expression to describe an entity that is inexpressible; you are using conscious means to describe an entity that transcends consciousness or unconsciousness. You know in advance that you cannot succeed in describing or denying god, no one can. You can’t describe or deny an infinite entity with finite number of words. The demand for proof of god’s existence is beyond the bounds of logic.

On Nietzsche’s Theistic Hopes

Nietzsche said, “God is dead,” but he was not an atheist. Hegel, a deeply pious man, had used the “God is dead” phrase to describe a situation in which consciousness senses that there is no hope and feels profoundly unhappy. For Nietzsche too, the death of god is unrelated to the god of religions, though he does not accept the Hegelian notion that unhappiness is humankind’s fate.

According to Nietzsche, the idea of “God’s eye view” is dead. There is no single view of the world, there is no single truth, and there is no divine plan for mankind. A privileged perspective from philosophy, religion, and metaphysics is no longer available. He attacks the idea of morality that is valid for everyone everywhere. He insists on a multiplicity of perspectives, noting that values are relative to a time, a place, and a set of circumstances and customs.

Humanity has to construct its own destiny by creating its own values. People will define who they are and what they can be. Thus Nietzsche’s idea that “God is dead” does not deny theism; it gives rise to new theistic hopes of creative values made by humans themselves.

On Philosophical Battles

A philosophical position developed by a set of sensible men may collapse when another set of equally sensible men refute it. There is not a single major philosopher in history whose ideas have not been refuted several times—greater the philosopher, more multifarious and intense are the refutations. To establish a philosophical position, the philosopher or his followers and sympathizers have to defend their position again and again with ever increasing vigor. The side that engages in more vigorous argumentation usually wins the philosophical debate irrespective of whether their ideas are based on rational and moral considerations.

Disagreements With Ayn Rand’s Philosophy

I disagree with every sentence that Ayn Rand has written in her philosophy of objectivism which is a utopian movement with a naive view of the world. It never entered Rand’s mind to draw a line between her literature and philosophy. Being a fiction writer of the romantic school, she didn’t look at the strict reality in face; she didn’t conduct a serious study of past philosophers; she didn’t try to master the philosophical method; for her philosophy was a work of romantic fiction that she would write by relying on her own imagination. Her philosophy is an attempt at imposing a fictional model on reality—everything should obey the rules of her fictional vision. If a philosopher’s legacy is judged by the conduct of her followers, then Rand’s devotees present a disturbing picture. Weaned on her utopian rhetoric, they revere her as a goddess—they see objectivism as a copernican revolution in philosophy, in that it admits no debt to the philosophies of the past. But their objectivism is scholasticism without the charm of dogma. An exaggerated respect for Rand as a philosopher is the mark of not only poor knowledge of the problems of philosophy but also lack of wisdom.

On Truth and Incertitude

All philosophies aim to find the truth, but what is truth is itself a philosophical question. Before a philosopher begins his search for the truth, he must commit himself to a theory of the truth. There is one thing that a philosopher must not lose sight of: incertitude. Incertitude is not the same thing as skepticism; it denotes the realization that it’s not possible to find the answer to the fundamental questions of philosophy and that the quest for certainty is futile and can have adverse consequences in ethics and politics.

Individualism and Nationhood

Man has two political aspects—first, man as an individual; second, man as the member of a political community. In a good political community, the individualism of most citizens will move in tandem with their sense of belonging to the nation. A symbiotic relationship between man’s individualism and man’s nationhood is the fundamental requirement for a stable political community. The philosophies which preach the notion of a rift between individualism and nationhood are the breeders of alienation, nihilism, and immorality. Such philosophies are not at all conducive for good life and must be rejected.

On Man’s Idealism and Materialism

If idealism is right, there is no difference between man and an omnipotent god. If materialism is right, there is no difference between man and a mindless animal. Man is man because he exists in the narrow stretch in which idealism and materialism intersect.

On Four Types of Rules

The rules of science are discovered; the rules of philosophy are devised; the rules of religion are divined; the rules of politics are developed.

On The Philosophical Bulls In The China Shop

The 20th century was the age of philosophy movements. It saw the rise of a number of movements which were founded by intellectuals who had too much confidence in their own abilities. They were convinced that they were the raging bulls of philosophy—that they would demolish the china shop of all the dominant philosophies and make people accept a new worldview. But in the arena, there is a matador for every bull and likewise is the situation in the field of philosophy. The philosophical bulls were quickly cut down to size by the matadors of philosophy and every philosophy movement founded in the 20th century was ripped apart (became irrelevant). Philosophy needs wisdom; it needs knowledge of history and human psychology; it needs sympathetic attitude—it’s not a sport for bullheaded people.

On Dreaming The Philosophical Truth

In the philosopher’s dream the philosopher is refuting his own philosophy, and when he wakes up he finds that he is convinced by the refutations that he offered while he was dreaming. He realizes that the philosophy that he has thus far been preaching to his followers is full of flaws. The irony is that it is in his sleep, while he is dreaming, that he awakes.

Barbarism Versus Civilization

The nihilists and barbarians can in no time destroy a civilization which has been developed from several centuries of intellectual, political, and cultural efforts. An act of creation is an arduous undertaking which can go on for several centuries, but the act of destruction is something that can be accomplished in a few days of thoughtless mayhem. The pace at which nihilism and barbarianism devastate is much faster than the pace at which civilization creates.

Achievements Are Not Natural

To be born free is meaningless; to become free is an achievement. That man has natural rights is meaningless; that he has created nations in which rights are possible is an achievement.

The Truth About The Enlightenment

Thanks to the wrongful categorizing of the 18th century as the Enlightenment — an incredibly jejune and meaningless term, which has, however, entirely dominated our historical thinking —we have failed to perceive not only the truth about this century’s intellectualism and politics but also the contributions of the great minds who came before the 18th century. I agree with the view of the Enlightenment that philosopher Yoram Hazony presents in this PagerU video. I have been expressing similar opinions on the Enlightenment in my posts.

The Platitudes On Good & Evil

It’s not necessary that good will triumph over evil—in the political space, the taste for good is a luxury and a disability. It’s not necessary that truth will make us free—truth can give rise to a new forms of scholasticism and slavery. It’s not necessary that knowledge and good life go together—ignorant people often enjoy a higher quality of life than those with knowledge. It’s not necessary that technology can cure the frailty of human nature—technology may fulfill our material wants but it can have a negative impact on our spiritual nature. It’s not necessary that progress and peace move in tandem—the quest for progress can lead to mass murders and wars. Man quests for stability and rationality but life without illusions and irrationality is impossible.

The Rootlessness Of Liberalism

Modern liberalism is the doctrine for rootless barbarians. I define a barbarian as a man who feels no curiosity about the sources of his forms of life and civilization. A positive sense of history is necessary for self-determination — being determined by rational considerations of culture. History is never dead and gone; a civilized man senses history as a tool for identifying who his progenitors were, how they lived, what they believed, what they achieved, and where they failed. All civilizations are created on the adamantine foundations of culture and history.

On The Conflict Between Philosophy And Reason

Good philosophy is not an expression of reason. The great philosophers of the past have often flouted the rules of philosophical method and acted against reason. Many aspects of a man’s mind play a role in the development of good philosophy, these include faith, history, prejudices related to cultural, racial, religious, and political issues—and also reason. Reason is a success in science and mathematics, but in philosophy too much reliance on reason can sow seeds of dogmatism, skepticism, and discord, and lead to an inferior quality of work. By using reason, it is not possible to find the answers to the fundamental questions regarding god, soul, free will, and ethics.

A Definite Proof of God’s Existence

Once upon a time there was a man who passionately desired for a definite proof of god’s existence or nonexistence. He took an atheist and a theist up a hill and threw them both down. As the theist fell, he cried, “There is a god.” As the atheist fell, he cried, “There is no god.” The theist survived the fall but the atheist didn’t, and thus the man had a definite proof of the existence of god. This short story elucidates the fact that it is beyond the bounds of possibility to prove or disprove the existence of god.

The Inefficacy of Libertarianism

The man who becomes a libertarian because he is inspired by the idea of liberty and free markets is like an alcoholic who tries to quench his thirst for alcohol by gazing at the labels in the bottles stacked on the shelves of a liquor shop. All that libertarianism can give you is the label (or the abstract theory) of liberty and free markets—this movement is not capable of persuading people to accept its ideas.

A nation is not an abstraction. People are not the creatures of ideology. Politics is not an abstract theory; it’s the domain of practical knowledge and skill. A movement which lacks practical knowledge and skill cannot have a direct impact on politics. The liberty and free markets that we have in some parts of the world today is not due to libertarian styled ideological movements—our modern way of life is the outcome of a confluence of cultural, historical, geographical, geo-political, religious, philosophical, economic, militaristic, and chance related factors. People with conservative, romanticist, and religious mindsets have played a major role in the rise of our world.

The wholly abstract and ideological presentation of the libertarians is, to some extent, responsible for the general decline in the appeal of the ideas of liberty and free markets.

On Winter’s Reading Binge

To detoxify my mind from the clutter of information, analysis, and chatter, I kept away from cable TV, all print newspapers and magazines, video streaming services, and Internet during the last 20 days (December 19, 2019 to January 7, 2020). While I held on to my mobile device, I didn’t use it to browse social media, news sites, or to send emails. I used this period to read the following books:

1. The Roots of Romanticism, by Isaiah Berlin
2. New Science, by Giambattista Vico
3. The Decline of the West (Volume I), by Oswald Spengler
4. In the Shadow of the Sword, by Tom Holland
5. Classical Indian Metaphysics, by Stephen H. Phillips
6. Free Will, Agency, and Selfhood in Indian Philosophy, Edited by Matthew R. Dasti and Edwin F. Bryant
7. The Collected Essays of Bimal Krishan Matilal (Volume 1), Edited by Jonardon Ganeri

These books (especially the first four) have enabled me to solidify my view of the relation between culture and politics. Culture, and not ideology, is the fountainhead of a good society. The 20th century movements—communism, socialism, liberalism, and libertarianism—have failed because they are too ideological and utopian; what they lack is cultural roots. Every culture has its own possibilities of self-expression; the good political and economic ideas get implemented in nations whose culture is ripe for accepting such innovations. A political community (nation) is culture unadulterated.

Joseph Conrad On The Unexamined Life

Socrates assumed that an examined life is a good life, but Joseph Conrad rejects this idea. He believed that an unexamined life is better because it has authenticity. When a friend suggested in a letter that Singleton, the character in Conrad’s novel The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus', would have been more convincing if he was educated, Conrad sent a reply in which he questions the idea that the world is more intelligible to an educated person. Here’s an excerpt from Conrad’s letter:

You say: ‘Singleton with an education’ ... But first of all – what education? If it is the knowledge of how to live my man essentially possessed it. He was in perfect accord with his life. If by education you mean scientific knowledge then the question arises – what knowledge, how much of it – in what direction? Is it to stop at plane trigonometry or at conic sections? Or is he to study Platonism or Pyrrhonism or the philosophy of the gentle Emerson? Or do you mean the kind of knowledge that would enable him to scheme, and lie, and intrigue his way to the forefront of a crowd no better than himself? Would you seriously, of malice prepense cultivate in that unconscious man the power to think? Then he would become conscious – and much smaller – and very unhappy. Now he is simple and great like an elemental force. Nothing can touch him but the curse of decay – the eternal decree that will extinguish the sun, the stars one by one, and in another instant shall spread a frozen darkness over the whole universe. Nothing else can touch him – he does not think. 

Would you seriously wish to tell such a man: ‘Know thyself.’ Understand thou art nothing, less than a shadow, more insignificant than a drop of water in the ocean, more fleeting than the illusion of a dream. Would you? 

This letter, which is cited in Cedric Watts introductory book on Conrad, A Preface To Conrad, can be seen as Conrad’s rejection of rationalism in ethics. Singleton may not have the education but he is versed in the ways of the world because of his experiences at the sea with his sea mates.

On The Limitations Of Philosophy

The man who looks at philosophy for solutions is either a charlatan or an imbecile or an idealist. A solution is precisely the thing that philosophy is not equipped to provide. To find solutions, you need some kind of practical experience. The solutions for life’s fundamental problems are found by the men of action—the politicians, scientists, professionals, businessmen, artists, and the laboring classes—and never by the philosophers.

The task of philosophy is to elucidate and generalize the solutions which the men of action have discovered. Those who yearn for philosophical solutions are often tempted to undertake the disastrous course of trying to make reality fit into their philosophical theory. The 20th century, in particular, has given an insight into the awful devastation that men armed with a philosophical doctrine and having negligible experience can unleash.

On The Contradictions In Human Values

Isaiah Berlin’s key teaching is that it’s not possible to create a society in which all human values have been achieved. Human values often contradict each other—for instance, justice is not compatible with mercy; pursuit of truth cannot be reconciled with happiness or the idea of total freedom; if you have peace, then you may lack in excitement; if you have knowledge, then you may lack blissful ignorance. What Berlin says about Turgenev in his essay, “Fathers and Children: Turgenev and The Liberal Predicament,” (Chapter 6; Russian Thinkers by Isaiah Berlin), can he said about him as well:

“Civilization, humane culture, meant more to the Russians, latecomers to Hegel’s feast of the spirit, than to the blasé natives of the West. Turgenev clung to it more passionately, was more conscious of its precariousness, than even his friends Flaubert or Renan. But unlike them, he discerned behind the philistine bourgeoisie a far more furious opponent—the young iconoclasts bent on the total annihilation of his world in the certainty that a new and more just world would emerge. He understood the best among these Robespierres, as Tolstoy, or even Dostoevsky, did not. He rejected their methods, he thought their goals naive and grotesque, but his hand would not rise against them if this meant giving aid and comfort to the generals and the bureaucrats. He offered no clear way out: only gradualism and education, only reason. Chekhov once said that a writer’s business was not to provide solutions, only to describe a situation so truthfully, do such justice to all sides of the question, that the reader could no longer evade it. The doubts Turgenev raised have not been stilled. The dilemma of morally sensitive, honest, and intellectually responsible men at times of acute polarization of opinion has, since his time, grown world-wide. The predicament of what, for him, was only the ‘educated section’ of a country then scarcely regarded as fully European, has come to be that of men in every class of society in our day. He recognized this predicament in its very beginnings and described it with incomparable sharpness of vision, poetry, and truth.”

Conservatism, Progressivism, Libertarianism

Conservatism is a movement of traditionalistic institutions and people who fondly look back at the good old days—they aspire for a future that does not stray too far from the golden past. Progressivism (liberalism and leftism) is a movement of nihilistic intellectuals and demagogic community organizers who, being alienated from their society, look at the past with anger and contempt. Libertarianism is a movement of idealistic dreamers for whom the past and present are mere stepping stones on the road to a global utopia of free markets and liberty where humanity will live happily ever after (like in the fairytales). A positive sense of history is of importance for conservatism; a negative sense of history is of importance for progressivism; and for libertarianism, history is a journey on the road to a free market fairyland.

Pinker’s Pollyannish Philosophy and Its Perfidious Politics

When I read Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now, I could not find anything remotely scholarly in it. His sermons on the virtues of the Age of Enlightenment will make no sense to anyone who knows something about the history of the Enlightenment. His attempt to link all the progress of the modern times to the ideas developed during the Age of Enlightenment creates the impression of a shoddy replay of whiggish historiography, which no one, except the most gullible, would believe. His view is totally one-sided; he does not look at the problems created by the Enlightenment and modernity.

I find Jessica Riskin's essay, "Pinker’s Pollyannish Philosophy and Its Perfidious Politics," interesting. She notes that she was tangled in a “knot of Orwellian contradictions” by Pinker’s feeble arguments, his misrepresentation of past philosophers, and misinterpretation of data. Riskin writes, "Pinker is no intellectual historian, so perhaps it should not be surprising that he overlooks a key Enlightenment debate. I’m referring to the long and vigorous debate over the power, foundation, and limits of rational inquiry, perhaps the core example of Enlightenment self-directed skepticism."

Barbarianism Versus Civilization

The rich nations act on the assumption that barbarianism has no real power over human beings. They fail to recognize the appeal of barbarianism—they don’t give enough attention to the cultural pride, sense of historical injustice, lust for unearned riches, and the total rejection of modernity that motivates such cultures. Barbarianism has had a deadly impact on the history of civilization. In the conflicts between civilization and barbarianism, the barbarians may lose in the short term, but, if they are passionate about their way of life and have a sizable territory under their control, they win in the long term. You see this kind of outcome in the many civilizational conflicts of last 2500 years. The Persian, Indus Valley, Greek, Roman, and British empires were ripped apart by the people that they regarded as barbarians.

Ugliness and The Power of Money

Karl Marx defines ugliness as a characteristic that may have a negative impact on a person’s lifestyle only when he is lacking in money. Here’s an excerpt from his essay, “The Power of Money,” (Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844):

“I am ugly, but I can buy for myself the most beautiful of women. Therefore I am not ugly, for the effect of ugliness–its deterrent power–is nullified by money. I, according to my individual characteristics, am lame, but money furnishes me with twenty-four feet. Therefore I am not lame. I am bad, dishonest, unscrupulous, stupid; but money is honored, and hence its possessor. Money is the supreme good, therefore its possessor is good. Money, besides, saves me the trouble of being dishonest: I am therefore presumed honest. I am brainless, but money is the real brain of all things and how then should its possessor be brainless? Besides, he can buy clever people for himself, and is he who has power over the clever not more clever than the clever? Do not I, who thanks to money am capable of all that the human heart longs for, possess all human capacities? Does not my money, therefore, transform all my incapacities into their contrary?”

I think Marx is wrong on this. It’s not necessary that a man with money will buy beautiful women or clever people—he can buy those who are ugly and stupid. Money does not give you the talent to identify beauty and cleverness.

On The Pitfalls Of Innovation

Our faith in innovation is misplaced. An examination of the history of last 2500 years shows that the advanced nations are often destroyed by their own innovations because they cannot prevent their innovations from falling into the hands of their enemies. The ancient Greeks made significant advances in philosophy, politics, military strategy, and technology, but the Romans created a powerful republic by learning from the Greeks, and eventually the Romans obliterated the Greek civilization. The Romans in turn were destroyed by the barbarians who became powerful by mastering all the Roman innovations. The British Empire on which, it was said, the sun never set, was destroyed when most of their colonies empowered themselves by mastering the British art of politics and economics. Today the American empire is under seize as the innovations that the Americans made in the last 250 years have been mastered by their rival nations. America’s enemies are using American technology to defeat America.

The Atheistic Religion of Environmentalism

The behavior of the atheists supports the view that the need for religion and god is hardwired in human beings. The atheists have a theological view of atheism; they have always been passionately engaged in bringing salvation to all through politics and science.

When their idea of salvation through politics died with the communist disasters of the 20th century, the atheists faced the risk of being driven out of politics. To protect their political relevance they turned their eschatological hope on other issues—one of them being environmentalism, which for the atheists, is a scientific means for bringing salvation to all.

Love for environment is there in the theists too, but the theist environmentalists are less dangerous. Their heaven is an afterlife phenomena and they accept that human beings are indelibly flawed—the theists are not using environmentalism (or communism) as a blueprint for building an earthly heaven.

Being convinced that man is a perfect being, there is nothing that the atheists won’t do to achieve their political goals. Their environmentalist project can be as deadly as their communist project.

On The Limitations Of Free Market System

A free market system can facilitate the rise of large business houses and make it easier for the people to find better employment and procure goods and services at competitive prices, but it cannot make us more wise, rational, peaceful, or civilized. A nation with a free market system can be as unreasonable and nihilistic as a nation with backward economy. No power can coerce the big business houses which thrive under a free market system to use their economic power for moral purposes. The problem is that no one knows what purposes are moral. The free markets will solve a few economic problems, but they may give birth to a range of political and cultural problems which may prove intractable. To ensure that the free markets operate within the framework of a nation’s culture a healthy political system is necessary.

The Myth of Universal Human Nature

The idea that there is a trait called universal human nature is a myth which was first propagated during the Age of Enlightenment by intellectuals who dreamed of unifying mankind under a global political and moral system. But a global political system is a utopian project which can never be achieved. Human beings have always been deeply divided on lines of race, religion, nationality, geography, and language. Universal nature is one thing that the human beings don’t have. Since there is no universal nature, there can be no universal moral law or universal form of government. Different groups of people have always had different moral beliefs and forms of government and that will continue to be the case for as long as humanity lasts on this planet.

Stability Versus Liberty

It’s naive to conceive a political theory that is not based on human nature. The primary political requirement of human beings is not liberty—it’s stability. Hobbes understood that people want their government to protect their life, property, and way of life. The passion for liberty is the hallmark of the type of intellectuals who are idealistic and have a utopian view of the world. Most people are convinced that the responsibility for maintaining the stability of the political, social, and economic system belongs to the government. In case there is a conflict between liberty and stability, people may tolerate a loss of their liberty, but they will never tolerate instability.

Tucker Carson: On The Threat From Private Sector

Tucker Carson says, “the main threat to people living their lives the way they see fit is no longer the federal government, but the private sector.” I agree with him. I think it is wrong to see the big corporations of the world as symbols of free society. These corporations have weaponized their business practices for driving the progressive agenda forward. They are not content with making profits by selling their products and services, they lust for political power. Tucker makes a reference to Oreo: “Even cookie companies like Oreo are now pushing advertising that asks kids to 'name their pronoun'—aiming transgender propaganda at children. This is a corporation, pushing the idea that biology is obsolete and that the gender binary is no longer operative. The libertarian response to this would be 'Start your own Oreo company!'”

The Three Aspects of a Nation

The political existence of a nation rests on three fundamental aspects: first, the center of political power; second, the mode of exercise of political power; third, the culture that makes people feel that they are a part of a society. When the correlation between these three aspects is judicious and free of contradictions, the nation can be a land of happiness, stability, and prosperity. In a democratic or republican country, the political activity should be aimed at keeping the three aspects in consonance, but it’s generally the conservative political forces which seek to achieve that aim. The progressive and liberal forces thrive when there is a discord between the three aspects; their politics is motivated by utopian dreams which cannot be achieved unless there is chaos, instability, and unhappiness in society.

Immanuel Kant: On The Proof of God’s Existence

In the Critique of Pure Reason, in the chapter entitled, “The Idealism of Pure Reason,” (Chapter 3), Immanuel Kant presents his analysis of the traditional arguments for the existence of god. He divides the traditional arguments into three categories: the cosmological, the ontological, and the physico-theological.

The arguments that precede from some contingent fact of the world and from a question about the nature of a thing or process are seen by Kant as the cosmological arguments. This type of argument entails that a contingent fact can be true only if a series of causes commence with a first cause or unmoved mover—an example of the “first cause” argument is the one postulated by Thomas Aquinas and a few other Aristotelian scholars. The second type of argument, the ontological, tries to free itself from the contingent premises by taking the view that the proof of god’s existence is subsumed in the concept of god. In the third type of argument, the physico-theological, Kant includes all arguments that proceed from the idea of “design”—some good in nature is identified and the argument is made that the perfection is by itself a proof of god.

Kant notes that the argument from design (the physico-theological) is the clearest and in line with human reason. He says that this argument encourages a study of nature and it deserves to be mentioned with respect. However, he dedicates three of the seven sections in Chapter 3 to showing the impossibility of the cosmological, ontological, and physico-theological arguments.

On Culture and Economics

A nation’s culture and economy have a symbiotic relationship—they tend to move in the same direction. When the culture moves in the rightward direction, economy too takes a right turn (the government takes measures to liberalize the economy); when culture lurches towards the left, the economy does the same and becomes more regulated and inefficient. The periods of high economic growth in most nations are also the periods great cultural awakening, and the periods of economic downfall are usually the periods when there is decline in the peoples sense of culture and rise in nihilistic tendencies. A nation with weak culture can never attain economic success. While it is possible for a nation with strong culture to be economically backward, a strong culture is a necessary condition for a strong economic performance.

Nyāya Theory: On Enquiry

One of the six philosophical schools of Hinduism, Nyāya became established between 6th century BCE and 2nd century BCE. The foundational text of this school, the Nyāya Sūtras, was composed in this period by Akṣapāda Gautama whose exact dates are not certain. It is possible that several scholars may have made contributions to the Nyāya Sūtras. One of the achievements of the Nyāya school is that they developed a method based on specific rules of reasoning through which certain knowledge of a particular object of enquiry can be achieved.

According to the Nyāya school, an enquiry can be undertaken only if there are some doubts about the nature of what is being enquired into. This means that there is no point in enquiring about something for which certain knowledge is already available. Therefore, what is being enquired into has to be something about which there is lack of understanding. The availability of some kind of observational data on the basis of which the enquiry will be conducted is another important consideration that the enquirer has to consider. The insistence on observational data shows that the Nyāya school gave importance to the empirical world.

The enquirer has to ensure that there is possibility of attaining certain knowledge at the end of the enquiry. If certain knowledge is impossible, then conducting an enquiry is a futile exercise. However, doubt and the possibility of certain knowledge are not the only criteria on the basis of which an enquiry can be undertaken. Gautama insists that an enquiry should not be undertaken for flimsy reasons—there has to be a valid purpose to justify the exercise. He notes that an enquiry is meant to contribute to the highest good—some scholars have interpreted this to mean that the purpose of enquiry is to attain moksha or freedom from the cycle of brith and rebirth.

On The Amorality Of Libertarianism

Only those political outcomes that are achievable can be judged morally. A political outcome that is not achievable cannot be moral or immoral—it’s amoral. I see libertarianism as an amoral philosophy because the view of free society and free markets that the libertarians preach is too utopian and disingenuous to be achievable. The libertarians are mostly visionaries, they are aware of their own saintliness, and like all visionary saints, they are focused on the sublimity of their own vision—they have contempt for the opinions and concerns of the masses, and they don’t care about the political, social, and economic realities. They are obsessed with making free society and free markets the foundation of politics, but they have failed to make an impression in the last 100 years. Since the 1970s, libertarianism has been on the decline and it has now gone out of fashion.

On The Pitfalls of Freedom of Speech

Michael Oakeshott points out in his essay, “The Political Economy of Freedom,” that the concept of freedom of speech has been distorted to such an extent that it is now revealing itself to be a menace to freedom. Here’s the relevant passage from his essay:

"The major part of mankind has nothing to say; the lives of most men do not revolve round a felt necessity to speak. And it may be supposed that this extraordinary emphasis upon freedom of speech is the work of the small vocal section of our society and, in part, represents a legitimate self-interest. Nor is it an interest incapable of abuse; when it is extended to the indiscriminate right to take and publish photographs, to picket and enter private houses and cajole or blackmail defenseless people to display their emptiness in foolish utterances, and to publish innuendos in respect of those who refuse to speak, it begins to reveal itself as a menace to freedom. For most men, to be deprived of the right of voluntary association or of private property would be a far greater and more deeply felt loss of liberty than to be deprived of the right to speak freely… under the influence of misguided journalists and cunning tyrants, we are too ready to believe that so long as our freedom to speak is not impaired we have lost nothing of importance - which is not so. However secure may be a man's right to speak his thoughts, he may find what is to him a much more important freedom curtailed when his house is sold over his head by a public authority, or when he is deprived of the enjoyment of his leasehold because his landlord has sold out to a development company, or when his membership of a trade union is compulsory and debars him from an employment he would otherwise take."

I think Oakeshott has made a valid point. The powerful cabal of politicians, bureaucrats, journalists, and activists has been quite successful in weaponizing the concept of freedom of speech to go after their ideological and political enemies. Instead of making people safe, this draconian version of freedom of speech is making them unsafe.

Multiculturalism and the Abolishment of Nationhood

It’s not possible for a nation to include within itself every type of culture. This is because the cultural space in man’s mind is not unlimited—it is not possible for human beings to empathize with all the possible ways of life. A nation is essentially a closed society; it is founded on certain moral, political, and cultural principles; it encompasses a certain view of history and human progress. There are close to 200 nations on this planet for an important reason—the people in each nation want to exclude some ways of life that they think are uncongenial to their values, their notions of the past, and their aspirations from the future. The people in a nation, if they want stability, have to assimilate with the dominant culture. When the multiculturalists assert that they want people of diverse cultures to live with a sense of brotherhood, they are making a political case for a world without nations, a utopian world ruled by a single totalitarian regime.

Herder and the Enlightenment

In his essay, “Herder and the Enlightenment,” Isaiah Berlin hammers new nails in the Enlightenment’s coffin by suggesting that the Enlightenment was a conformist, elitist, idealistic, and monolithic project, which contained the seeds that would one day germinate into totalitarian movements, while the counter-Enlightenment of thinkers like Johann Gottfried Herder was essentially pluralistic and hence conducive for the rise of free societies. In section 9 of his essay, Berlin asks two questions: “What is the best life for men?” and “What is the most perfect society?” A few paragraphs later, Berlin makes the following comment: “If Herder’s notion of the equal validity of incommensurable cultures is accepted, the concepts of an ideal State of or an ideal man become incoherent. This is a far more radical denial of the foundations of traditional Western morality than any that Hume ever uttered.” I am convinced by Berlin’s view that the Counter-Enlightenment, and not the Enlightenment, was the epitome of the spirit of enlightenment.

Peer Pressure and Academic Philosophy

Peer pressure, and not any consideration related to ideological, racial, political, ethical, economic, and historical issues, is the great influencer of academic philosophy. Most academic philosophers, it seems, are easily influenced by the members of their own peer group. This is the inference that you have when you read their essays and books; they seem to show an unnecessary amount of deference to the philosophers of their own peer group.

The mother of all philosophical peer groups is the club of leftist and liberal academic philosophers—they exercise such brute power over academic philosophy that they seem to dictate the philosophical agenda of much of the academic community. Even the libertarians and conservatives are coerced into toeing the line taken by the leftist and liberal club. There is much more diversity of opinion and wisdom in the masses than in the academic philosophers.