So I still think Casino Royale is the best of the Craig Bonds, and the best single Bond movie ever, even though the last part tailed off for me some and was a bit lame here and there. Don't hate QoS, but agree it was a bit of a letdown overall, even though I liked the set-pieces more than Sr. Cervantes did. Will have to see if SKYFALL grows on me, may give it a quick second look while I still can on the PPV rental.
Best part was the credit sequence. Overall, the film struck me as more visually arresting than dynamic, so a little disappointing for a contemporary action film. Least favorite moment was the execution of the Macau babe. All she gets is a throwaway line, "waste of good Scotch," and a shot of her doubled-over and dead. The line was excusable since it set up a Bond escape move, but the treatment overall seemed gratuitously heartless. As often with these storylines, you wonder where the arch-villain finds so many proficient and disciplined killers willing to die for him. Others have asked whether the plot made any or enough sense at all.
I figgered you just felt like encouraging Mr. P, in the interest of further productive disagreement, and I don't mind at all being stimulated to think things through, express myself more clearly, and provide back-up evidence. My sadness was about being misunderstood. I don't expect "everyone" to get along, but I do think that those like you all taking the time to think things through can find a kind of zone of non-conflict. I don't want to wipe out Mr. P's ideal radically free city-state, but I don't want to see it come only at the expense of other worthy alternatives, or not come about at all in any good form because based on unrealistic or self-contradictory precepts.
Right, so much of the classical interrogation, renewed and, according to some, uniquely advanced by the American Founders, is a judicious comparison of the alternatives given the vulnerabilities of each main form of government. Strauss argues that among the alternatives for mass societies, the liberal democratic form comes closest to what the classical thinkers recommended, but he says that in full cognizance of the fact that the mass liberal democratic regime falls short both of the classical ideal and of the modern ideal. Hegel believed he had successfully described the best and final form for modern nation-states, but arguably failed to account for or simply could not foresee the dynamic, disruptive as well as organizing synergies of applied natural science or technology, free market economics, and the settlement of North America. We're still within the era of geometrical rates of change, for instance of population, with reason to wonder whether a necessary new phase of relative stability will come hard or easy. After or in the process of a Great Stabilization or new and truer "end of history," the Hegelian model viewed broadly begins to make more sense, as Francis Fukuyama has lately been saying, just not in so many words.
How do you get "for granted" out of any of that? I think if you reflect on it you'll see that I've provided the basis for the most resilient and durable defense of the realm available. True, it requires a certain modesty about what one might dare to claim on its behalf, but going any further does make you decisively vulnerable to the very strong criticisms that our friends Messrs. Psycho and Miller have every right to make. Whatever's truly great or excellent or not to be taken "for granted" hardly needs advertisement in a micro-blog's comment thread or anywhere else. A truly conservative disposition is one that would take solemn pride in continuity all the way down to the ancient roots rather than in some illusory and transitory innovation.
Here are a couple things you might not be sensitive to: 1) Slaughter is a sort of C-list celebrity professor, frequent expert invited on CNN, MacNeil-Lehrer type shows; 2) she holds a distinguished chair at Princeton, where she's Prof of Politics and Int'l Affairs; 3) she's a strong liberal internationalist, meaning she can frequently be found arguing in favor of US military intervention on behalf of struggling or embattled democratic or possibly democratic forces in places like Libya or Syria.
So it's embarrassing, or ought to be embarrassing, for a bigtime professor of politics to make a statement that tends to vulgar American "exceptionalism" (we're #1, USA USA USA), that a first year philosophy student wouldn't make. But it's typical of the "Second Cave" that we're so far detached from the basics of our own tradition that our best and brightest run around speaking nonsense and getting it published in our best and brightest magazines. Does it matter? I think that having a narrow understanding of history and the ancient origins of our ideas encourages a narrow approach to others and a fetishization of "the new," as though we're the ones who figured out everything, that all was darkness before us just as all is darkness without us. I would have expected you of all people to appreciate this problem as a problem. That's why I'm now so very sad and thinking that a Bond movie might be my only hope.
OK, I've re-written the passage in the post so that I don't think anyone who is playing fair could miss the point, though I still wonder how many people missed it the first time. I will soon go drown my sorrows and salve my frustrations with dinner and SKYFALL.
What is unclear about this statement, immediately following the presentation of hers:
Whether or not this answer is or merely seems “trite,” it qualifies or ought to qualify as embarrassingly illiterate despite its obvious good intentions and superficial thoughtfulness. Put simply – it feels almost cruel or anyway impolite to say so – human equality as a rationale for political action, for the founding or reform of states as well as for revolutions and wars against existing states, is a main theme of Aristotle’s Politics, and it was a theme for Aristotle not because he was prophesying political developments that would have to wait 2,000 years, but because a politics of human equality was already widespread, well-tested, and fairly comprehensively theorized in his time.
I then give other examples. Here, I'll split it into a few sentences.
Put simply – it feels almost cruel or anyway impolite to say so – human equality as a rationale for political action, for the founding or reform of states as well as for revolutions and wars against existing states, had been around for more than 2,000 years if not for much, much longer, but at least for that long as a matter of political philosophy. It is a main theme of Aristotle’s Politics, and it was a theme for Aristotle not because he was prophesying political developments that would have to wait 2,000 years, but because a politics of human equality was already widespread, well-tested, and fairly comprehensively theorized in his time.
You sure you're the only one who didn't understand? She claimed that the Founders were the first, and that 4 July 1776 was the day of days that most changed the course of history, as supposedly the "first" assertion of "human equality" as a political rationale, ever. It's absurd.
For example - just one of potentially very many, since Mr. Aristotle examines the question of human equality and orders founded upon it from many different perspectives. (Was going to quote a few examples, but I was a little bit lazy, and anyone who looks into the matter at all knows that Slaughter was as wrong as she could be.)
The Politics, Book VI, Ch 2:
The basis of a democratic state is liberty; which, according to the common opinion of men, can only be enjoyed in such a state; this they affirm to be the great end of every democracy. One principle of liberty is for all to rule and be ruled in turn, and indeed democratic justice is the application of numerical not proportionate equality; whence it follows that the majority must be supreme, and that whatever the majority approve must be the end and the just. Every citizen, it is said, must have equality, and therefore in a democracy the poor have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme. This, then, is one note of liberty which all democrats affirm to be the principle of their state. Another is that a man should live as he likes. This, they say, is the privilege of a freeman, since, on the other hand, not to live as a man likes is the mark of a slave. This is the second characteristic of democracy, whence has arisen the claim of men to be ruled by none, if possible, or, if this is impossible, to rule and be ruled in turns; and so it contributes to the freedom based upon equality.
As a philosopher, Mr. A. could not help but consider that the notion of equality favored by democrats was problematic. In that passage he refers to "numerical" vs. "proportionate" equality. Put in economic terms, what's "equal" to a wealthy person is that everyone's role in the state be "fairly" proportioned according to wealth. Put in terms of human virtue, proportionate equality would mean that the most excellent individuals should have more influence than the wicked or slavish - their influence should be proportionate to their virtue, to the good they bring to the common life. So, for someone who believes that the ideal state would be one ordered toward excellence, raw numerical equality is unfair.
Put this way, the notions may seem obscure or alien to us modern democrats, until you consider that favoring the "best person" for a political office is an aristocratic, not a democratic orientation. We are all or almost all complete aristocrats when it comes to that. The democratic orientation would say, as was the case in more radical democracies, that office-holders should be selected randomly, or even that overly eminent or charismatic people might have to be precluded from holding office or even banished because of the threat that their influence posed to democratic "numerical" equality. In a radical democracy, the wealthy are not just encouraged to share, but our forced to divest themselves of their wealth. We don't do that, and the Founders weren't interested in that at all - even setting aside their little slavery problem. "Leveling" of that sort has never been widely popular, which brings you to the central contradictions of democracy: How does democratism handle the multitude's democratically or even consensually arrived-at decisions for a non-democratic way of handling things. Alternatively, if democracy needs to be more or less permanently protected against such democratic un-democracy, who decides where the limits are, and on which matters, and how is such restraint democratic? This is a main problem that Mr. P's radical democratism will encounter or already encounters. Sooner or later and in more ways than one, the people vote themselves out of office, or have already pre-emptively abdicated.
So, if you're philosophically minded and impartial, you look at these facts and especially the undefinability of the pure ideal, and start over with consideration of the good you're trying to achieve and what's the best you can do with the real human material on hand at whatever relevant level.
Dude - you missed the fact that she missed the fact that the Founders weren't first on the scene at all with an order based on human equality. Not even close, not by a couple millennia, and, look, it just doesn't do to wish away a disagreement or pretend a higher understanding when maybe you just don't understand at all.
Wasn't interested enough to re-subscribe, didn't get the sense it was as well-loved by the fans as previously, only ever watched the previous season finale all the way through.
Of course, you "take him out" if that's the only way to stop him. To make the hypothesis discussable, you need to construct the scenario, because who knows what when and how is all.
A good monarch or aristocracy would make good decisions, decisions that contribute to the flourishing or excellence of all. A bad democracy might make bad decisions that happened to have broad support. So someone who doesn't place a special value on the form of government would have reason to support the former, if attainable, over the latter.
The mixed system that we have introduces aristocratic aspirations that rely on always arguably oligarchical or un-democratic structures. The people who don't care in the abstract very much about what kind of system governs them are still human beings with other interests and potentials. They would be better served by a good oligarchy (or aristocracy) than a bad democracy, and a radical democracy may prevent them and almost everyone other than the radical democrats from realizing aspirations that require higher level organization - those could include positive aspirations for trade, travel, education, experience beyond the range of a "city-state," or could include a desire not to be overwhelmed by others.
That is apt, and I believe was one central "exhibit" in Critchley's case against Zizek or Zizekism. I'd have to double check. It's hard to be sure because there is so much Zizek out there: Could be the particular passage or another like it.
Because, like Zizek, Critchley identifies with the Left and is attracted to variously radicalisms, he feels obligated to take Zizek on on this turf. They both are trying to align their different kinds of "interest": They find radical or would be radical oppositional politics intellectually interesting; their real professional and personal interests are tied up with visions of the radical or what Voegelin would call gnosticism; and they also seem to want to define a wider, practical-political interest for their students, colleagues, fellow national or world citizens.
What is the point of our being interested in radicalism? Does there have to be a "point"? If there doesn't have to be one, then Leftism and revolutionism are hard to distinguish from a hobby or an aesthetic preference or any other meaningless, consumable diversion. Zizekism begins to seem like an incredibly long-winded intervention against the initial inclinations and extended assumptions of those attracted to his subject matters. As long as you're reading Zizek, you're simply inactive rather than pseudo-active. Critchley wants to preserve a possibility of Left-revolutionary activity that isn't merely pseudo even if its course and consequences are difficult to spell out or define, that still respects and can offer something in relation to the real suffering and aspirations of the victims somehow evacuated from Zizek's intellectual world.
Social contract is a theory of government, but not a "deal we made." For Rousseau, there was no true democracy above the level of the ancient polis. How larger society could be governed equitably or relatively equitably and at least practically was a problem he struggled with in different ways, without, according to some Rousseauists, ever being fully satisifed with his conclusions.
I'm not one of those people who thinks that the Founders and Framers magically got everything right despite the almost inconceivable differences between the US and the world of 2013 and 18th Century America, but I'm also not one of those people who assumes they hadn't thought many seemingly brand new problems through, or that the numerous experiments in self-governance they witnessed did not serve them well, and or that many of the conclusions they've reached, or that they took from previous thinkers going back to ancient times, weren't useful conclusions that scale up to mass societies and novel contexts quite well. I don't think they or we were or are idealists or made a promise of purity rather than pragmatism to the idealists among us. They created and we generally continue to support or tolerate a mixed system partly on the basis of some pessimistic assessments of human nature in the mass as they observed it, and a general sense that politics and government are often an unpleasant, tedious, and frustrating, but still necessary business.
So I keep on returning to my question on the sources of your fundamental beliefs and expectations, the ones that you claim the current national political system frustrates in some radical way, because I'm curious why it matters to you or why you think it should matter to anyone else. If it's not a matter of practical effect, implying some reasonable set of comparisons between alternative concrete proposals, what's being harmed? What difference does it make whether it conforms to some possibly unrealistic or unrealizable abstract ideal? I readily acknowledge that people are often harmed, but how does that differentiate this system from any other known system? The system is far from perfect in its functioning or its results, but on what basis do you assume that a "stateless" state or any other alternative is either available or would actually be more desirable if it were available? If you can't demonstrate attainability or practical superiority, why is it of moral or any other significance whether the national government is more or less representative of the people in one way as opposed to another, or not at all? Is it more important that it represents their moral values, or that it duplicates their opinions on this, that, or the other set of issues, or that the people in public office happen to "look like them"? What about people who don't care, or whose aspirations and values would be equally or much better embodied in an aristocracy or a monarchy or one-party state than in a decentralized radically democratic or anarchic system?
I have other questions, but I'll leave it at that. In short, if you're not a radical democrat, why do you care if the system isn't radically democratic? If you are a radical democrat, why should I agree with you?
So I still think Casino Royale is the best of the Craig Bonds, and the best single Bond movie ever, even though the last part tailed off for me some and was a bit lame here and there. Don't hate QoS, but agree it was a bit of a letdown overall, even though I liked the set-pieces more than Sr. Cervantes did. Will have to see if SKYFALL grows on me, may give it a quick second look while I still can on the PPV rental.
Best part was the credit sequence. Overall, the film struck me as more visually arresting than dynamic, so a little disappointing for a contemporary action film. Least favorite moment was the execution of the Macau babe. All she gets is a throwaway line, "waste of good Scotch," and a shot of her doubled-over and dead. The line was excusable since it set up a Bond escape move, but the treatment overall seemed gratuitously heartless. As often with these storylines, you wonder where the arch-villain finds so many proficient and disciplined killers willing to die for him. Others have asked whether the plot made any or enough sense at all.
I figgered you just felt like encouraging Mr. P, in the interest of further productive disagreement, and I don't mind at all being stimulated to think things through, express myself more clearly, and provide back-up evidence. My sadness was about being misunderstood. I don't expect "everyone" to get along, but I do think that those like you all taking the time to think things through can find a kind of zone of non-conflict. I don't want to wipe out Mr. P's ideal radically free city-state, but I don't want to see it come only at the expense of other worthy alternatives, or not come about at all in any good form because based on unrealistic or self-contradictory precepts.
Right, so much of the classical interrogation, renewed and, according to some, uniquely advanced by the American Founders, is a judicious comparison of the alternatives given the vulnerabilities of each main form of government. Strauss argues that among the alternatives for mass societies, the liberal democratic form comes closest to what the classical thinkers recommended, but he says that in full cognizance of the fact that the mass liberal democratic regime falls short both of the classical ideal and of the modern ideal. Hegel believed he had successfully described the best and final form for modern nation-states, but arguably failed to account for or simply could not foresee the dynamic, disruptive as well as organizing synergies of applied natural science or technology, free market economics, and the settlement of North America. We're still within the era of geometrical rates of change, for instance of population, with reason to wonder whether a necessary new phase of relative stability will come hard or easy. After or in the process of a Great Stabilization or new and truer "end of history," the Hegelian model viewed broadly begins to make more sense, as Francis Fukuyama has lately been saying, just not in so many words.
How do you get "for granted" out of any of that? I think if you reflect on it you'll see that I've provided the basis for the most resilient and durable defense of the realm available. True, it requires a certain modesty about what one might dare to claim on its behalf, but going any further does make you decisively vulnerable to the very strong criticisms that our friends Messrs. Psycho and Miller have every right to make. Whatever's truly great or excellent or not to be taken "for granted" hardly needs advertisement in a micro-blog's comment thread or anywhere else. A truly conservative disposition is one that would take solemn pride in continuity all the way down to the ancient roots rather than in some illusory and transitory innovation.
Here are a couple things you might not be sensitive to: 1) Slaughter is a sort of C-list celebrity professor, frequent expert invited on CNN, MacNeil-Lehrer type shows; 2) she holds a distinguished chair at Princeton, where she's Prof of Politics and Int'l Affairs; 3) she's a strong liberal internationalist, meaning she can frequently be found arguing in favor of US military intervention on behalf of struggling or embattled democratic or possibly democratic forces in places like Libya or Syria.
So it's embarrassing, or ought to be embarrassing, for a bigtime professor of politics to make a statement that tends to vulgar American "exceptionalism" (we're #1, USA USA USA), that a first year philosophy student wouldn't make. But it's typical of the "Second Cave" that we're so far detached from the basics of our own tradition that our best and brightest run around speaking nonsense and getting it published in our best and brightest magazines. Does it matter? I think that having a narrow understanding of history and the ancient origins of our ideas encourages a narrow approach to others and a fetishization of "the new," as though we're the ones who figured out everything, that all was darkness before us just as all is darkness without us. I would have expected you of all people to appreciate this problem as a problem. That's why I'm now so very sad and thinking that a Bond movie might be my only hope.
OK, I've re-written the passage in the post so that I don't think anyone who is playing fair could miss the point, though I still wonder how many people missed it the first time. I will soon go drown my sorrows and salve my frustrations with dinner and SKYFALL.
What is unclear about this statement, immediately following the presentation of hers:
I then give other examples. Here, I'll split it into a few sentences.
You sure you're the only one who didn't understand? She claimed that the Founders were the first, and that 4 July 1776 was the day of days that most changed the course of history, as supposedly the "first" assertion of "human equality" as a political rationale, ever. It's absurd.
For example - just one of potentially very many, since Mr. Aristotle examines the question of human equality and orders founded upon it from many different perspectives. (Was going to quote a few examples, but I was a little bit lazy, and anyone who looks into the matter at all knows that Slaughter was as wrong as she could be.)
The Politics, Book VI, Ch 2:
As a philosopher, Mr. A. could not help but consider that the notion of equality favored by democrats was problematic. In that passage he refers to "numerical" vs. "proportionate" equality. Put in economic terms, what's "equal" to a wealthy person is that everyone's role in the state be "fairly" proportioned according to wealth. Put in terms of human virtue, proportionate equality would mean that the most excellent individuals should have more influence than the wicked or slavish - their influence should be proportionate to their virtue, to the good they bring to the common life. So, for someone who believes that the ideal state would be one ordered toward excellence, raw numerical equality is unfair.
Put this way, the notions may seem obscure or alien to us modern democrats, until you consider that favoring the "best person" for a political office is an aristocratic, not a democratic orientation. We are all or almost all complete aristocrats when it comes to that. The democratic orientation would say, as was the case in more radical democracies, that office-holders should be selected randomly, or even that overly eminent or charismatic people might have to be precluded from holding office or even banished because of the threat that their influence posed to democratic "numerical" equality. In a radical democracy, the wealthy are not just encouraged to share, but our forced to divest themselves of their wealth. We don't do that, and the Founders weren't interested in that at all - even setting aside their little slavery problem. "Leveling" of that sort has never been widely popular, which brings you to the central contradictions of democracy: How does democratism handle the multitude's democratically or even consensually arrived-at decisions for a non-democratic way of handling things. Alternatively, if democracy needs to be more or less permanently protected against such democratic un-democracy, who decides where the limits are, and on which matters, and how is such restraint democratic? This is a main problem that Mr. P's radical democratism will encounter or already encounters. Sooner or later and in more ways than one, the people vote themselves out of office, or have already pre-emptively abdicated.
So, if you're philosophically minded and impartial, you look at these facts and especially the undefinability of the pure ideal, and start over with consideration of the good you're trying to achieve and what's the best you can do with the real human material on hand at whatever relevant level.
Dude - you missed the fact that she missed the fact that the Founders weren't first on the scene at all with an order based on human equality. Not even close, not by a couple millennia, and, look, it just doesn't do to wish away a disagreement or pretend a higher understanding when maybe you just don't understand at all.
Wasn't interested enough to re-subscribe, didn't get the sense it was as well-loved by the fans as previously, only ever watched the previous season finale all the way through.
Of course, you "take him out" if that's the only way to stop him. To make the hypothesis discussable, you need to construct the scenario, because who knows what when and how is all.
A good monarch or aristocracy would make good decisions, decisions that contribute to the flourishing or excellence of all. A bad democracy might make bad decisions that happened to have broad support. So someone who doesn't place a special value on the form of government would have reason to support the former, if attainable, over the latter.
The mixed system that we have introduces aristocratic aspirations that rely on always arguably oligarchical or un-democratic structures. The people who don't care in the abstract very much about what kind of system governs them are still human beings with other interests and potentials. They would be better served by a good oligarchy (or aristocracy) than a bad democracy, and a radical democracy may prevent them and almost everyone other than the radical democrats from realizing aspirations that require higher level organization - those could include positive aspirations for trade, travel, education, experience beyond the range of a "city-state," or could include a desire not to be overwhelmed by others.
That is apt, and I believe was one central "exhibit" in Critchley's case against Zizek or Zizekism. I'd have to double check. It's hard to be sure because there is so much Zizek out there: Could be the particular passage or another like it.
Because, like Zizek, Critchley identifies with the Left and is attracted to variously radicalisms, he feels obligated to take Zizek on on this turf. They both are trying to align their different kinds of "interest": They find radical or would be radical oppositional politics intellectually interesting; their real professional and personal interests are tied up with visions of the radical or what Voegelin would call gnosticism; and they also seem to want to define a wider, practical-political interest for their students, colleagues, fellow national or world citizens.
What is the point of our being interested in radicalism? Does there have to be a "point"? If there doesn't have to be one, then Leftism and revolutionism are hard to distinguish from a hobby or an aesthetic preference or any other meaningless, consumable diversion. Zizekism begins to seem like an incredibly long-winded intervention against the initial inclinations and extended assumptions of those attracted to his subject matters. As long as you're reading Zizek, you're simply inactive rather than pseudo-active. Critchley wants to preserve a possibility of Left-revolutionary activity that isn't merely pseudo even if its course and consequences are difficult to spell out or define, that still respects and can offer something in relation to the real suffering and aspirations of the victims somehow evacuated from Zizek's intellectual world.
Social contract is a theory of government, but not a "deal we made." For Rousseau, there was no true democracy above the level of the ancient polis. How larger society could be governed equitably or relatively equitably and at least practically was a problem he struggled with in different ways, without, according to some Rousseauists, ever being fully satisifed with his conclusions.
I'm not one of those people who thinks that the Founders and Framers magically got everything right despite the almost inconceivable differences between the US and the world of 2013 and 18th Century America, but I'm also not one of those people who assumes they hadn't thought many seemingly brand new problems through, or that the numerous experiments in self-governance they witnessed did not serve them well, and or that many of the conclusions they've reached, or that they took from previous thinkers going back to ancient times, weren't useful conclusions that scale up to mass societies and novel contexts quite well. I don't think they or we were or are idealists or made a promise of purity rather than pragmatism to the idealists among us. They created and we generally continue to support or tolerate a mixed system partly on the basis of some pessimistic assessments of human nature in the mass as they observed it, and a general sense that politics and government are often an unpleasant, tedious, and frustrating, but still necessary business.
So I keep on returning to my question on the sources of your fundamental beliefs and expectations, the ones that you claim the current national political system frustrates in some radical way, because I'm curious why it matters to you or why you think it should matter to anyone else. If it's not a matter of practical effect, implying some reasonable set of comparisons between alternative concrete proposals, what's being harmed? What difference does it make whether it conforms to some possibly unrealistic or unrealizable abstract ideal? I readily acknowledge that people are often harmed, but how does that differentiate this system from any other known system? The system is far from perfect in its functioning or its results, but on what basis do you assume that a "stateless" state or any other alternative is either available or would actually be more desirable if it were available? If you can't demonstrate attainability or practical superiority, why is it of moral or any other significance whether the national government is more or less representative of the people in one way as opposed to another, or not at all? Is it more important that it represents their moral values, or that it duplicates their opinions on this, that, or the other set of issues, or that the people in public office happen to "look like them"? What about people who don't care, or whose aspirations and values would be equally or much better embodied in an aristocracy or a monarchy or one-party state than in a decentralized radically democratic or anarchic system?
I have other questions, but I'll leave it at that. In short, if you're not a radical democrat, why do you care if the system isn't radically democratic? If you are a radical democrat, why should I agree with you?