mostly philosophy
The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty In last week’s post […]
Classic Liberal Thought by John Stuart Mill
Ibn Khaldun was a fourteenth century historiographer, sociologist, economist, and philosopher. Born in a turbulent time when the remnants of the Umayyad Caliphate in Iberia and North Africa were either collapsing or under extensive pressure internally and externally (corruption and European invasion and crusades), Ibn Khaldun set out to chronicle a sociology of the rise […]
Ibn Khaldun and the Crisis of Modernity
The media is not neutral or unbiased. It never has been. The formation of mass newspapers around the world were tied to political parties to promote respective agendas. As such, the media can be distinctively broken down into a three-tiers. The first, faute de mieux, is the mainstream media. The mainstream media is the basest […]
Understanding the Media in a Time of “Fake News”
In my previous post, I tried to clarify some of the misconceptions on philosophy in general by defining philosophy, concept (as the philosophical tool) and the difference between philosophy and psychology. To me, definitions are fundamental to understand and elaborate.
You can check my post here Misconceptions on philosophy I
Moving to more fun parts of the misconceptions, a distinction must be made with politics. The latter is responsible for creating some damages in the name of philosophy by imposing ideologies.
Ideology:
Ideology is a body of doctrine, myth, belief, etc., that guides an individual, social movement, institution, class, or large group with reference to some political and social plan, as that of fascism, along with the devices for putting it into operation. Ideology is always to be linked with politics in both large and strict sense, to religion and to society. It shapes up citizens political behaviour and way of thinking, alongside an economic plan to back it up.
An ideology is not solely the specialty of totalitarian States. Globalization for example is an ideology without being a totalitarian regime, although it has some facets of it as in forming the way of being and thinking.
The tricky part is that some ideologies, in there headlines and big titles, were in a way inspired by philosophy but with major twists. Here is the typical example of the perversion made to philosophy by politics.
Marxism, communism and Leninism:
Karl Marx had earned a bad reputation mainly because of Lenin. Let’s start by saying that Marx’ ultimate goal is the disappearance of the State, replaced by the communist society based on equality among people. He wanted this because he pointed out the exploitation of workers by the state through capitalism. So he aimed for a more liberal form of capitalism.
Lenin, who read Marx very well, did all the opposite. He implemented a gigantic State, the USSR, with a guided economy. Apart from the apparatchik or the members of the Soviet State apparatus, the rest of the people lived equally on less than average compared to the West.
Forever the name of Marx will be linked to the poorly applied communism which was spread on half of the planet. It must be noted that Marxism as in Marx’ works was never applied. The Marxist world is a utopia.
This is one example among many others were ideology and philosophy get confused. Same goes for Nazism and Nietzsche, Consumerism and the concept of freedom, the Cartesian definition of a man and nature’s exploitation and the list goes on.
Plato, in his book The Republic, criticized all political regimes. But mostly he feared the outcome of democracy as a tyranny.
Democracy, known as people’s government, is already biased in Plato’s book. Since they are deeply manipulated by sophists and politicians, their reign would necessarily include manipulation. Alongside this vicious nature of democracy, comes the principle of equality and freedom of opinions. This allows the competent and the incompetent to express themselves equally. This will create chaos later on in the democratic life.
The outcome of democracy would lead to tyranny as people’s choice to bring order back in society and politics.
For more details, please click the link below 👇
https://theconversation.com/why-tyranny-could-be-the-inevitable-outcome-of-democracy-126158
Un article à lire absolument pour ceux qui s’intéressent à une dialectique bien serrée entre Lénine et le Kantisme.
Insightful book about Anarchism and the importance of its serious consideration in politics today. In this essay, Noam Chomsky defines Anarchism as a skepticism about any type of authority which needs to be questioned constantly in order to justify its legitimacy. In other words, any authority that doesn’t justify its actions is not legitimate and therefore should be dismantled or replaced. This book is a wake up call to all people to question themselves first on their blind acceptance of their political structures the way they are. Second, it is a call to read Anarchist philosophers and to be inspired from their actions.
It is crucial to distinguish the American concepts of Anarchism and Liberalism from the European ones. Historically, in Europe, Anarchism is a political movement, spontaneous sometimes, that as aforementioned question authorities and fight for freedom and social justice. European Anarchism is synonymous to Liberalism. Whereas in U.S.A, Liberalism is ultra-conservative and capitalistic, which is the opposite of the original Anarchism. Moreover, the word “anarchy” as chaos was forged from the word “anarchism” by the opponents of the latter to point out its danger. Any authority is scared of Anarchism because Anarchism doesn’t believe in any system unless it is a voluntary organization based on the general will of its people.
To give more objectivity to his speech, Noam Chomsky analyzes some historical events, mainly the Spanish war and others, only to find that the real revolutionary people who wanted to change the world and make it a better place, were all anarchists.
This book is a great read. For the full review please check the link below:
