Philosopher Barry Smith has argued in several places (see “The Question of Apriorism,” for an example), contra the Austrian economists, that the action axiom is not irrefutable. He points out that an alien could deny that human beings act. I think that he is correct here if the action axiom is defined as the fact that human beings act. But even so, any attempt by a human being to refute the action axiom would still be self-defeating. In any case, I would argue (as I believe notable Austrian economists have) that the action axiom is universalizable to all volitional beings, in which case a denial by an alien that human beings act would hinge upon an empirical-contingent claim, viz. the denial that human beings are volitional beings. The truth of the action axiom is thus never in question, and it remains irrefutable.
I comment briefly over at the Mises Economics blog on the correlation between Rand’s theory of the agent-relative nature of values and the Austrian theory of subjective value, and on value-neutrality in economic science. Also, I wholeheartedly agree with Sheldon Richman’s comment immediately following mine.
Neil Parille has written an article on “Ayn Rand and Apriorism” over at SOLO HQ (that’s Sense of Life Objectivists Headquarters). And, as it is a subject that I myself am very much interested in and currently working on, I have commented with my own insights into the issue.
Outgoing NASA chief Sean O’Keefe has thrown in his hat as a contender for the recently vacated Chancellorship of my alma mater, Louisiana State University. Fortune help us. The last thing LSU needs, if it is to improve its national standing among Research One universities, is the head of that supremely incompetent and inefficient bureaucracy, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, to take the reins. His resume is actually seen by the PTB as alluring.
“I am very impressed with what he has accomplished,” said Stewart Slack of Shreveport, chairman of the board that governs the LSU system. “His experience at the national level will help us.”
Wow… I’m at a loss for words.
The government is on insensitivity patrol! In a 5-2 LA Supreme Court decision, a Lousiana judge in New Orleans was suspended without pay for 6 months recently. Why, you might ask? Because his Halloween costume was “racially insensitive.” He will lose more than $50,000 in pay and has been ordered by the court to take a sociology course “which will assist him in achieving a greater understanding of racial sensitivity.” “The Supreme Court sent a strong message that the court won’t tolerate racist acts by judges,” said Jerome Boykin, head of the Terrebonne Parish branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
And why is the judge being embarrassed and punished? For “crime” of wearing blackface paint, handcuffs, and a jail jumpsuit to a Halloween party. His wife dressed as a policewoman. The costumes, said the reprimanded judge Ellender, were intended only as a joke that he was her prisoner.
See here and here for the story.
This incident is a trajesty of justice. Even if the judge wore his costume for racist reasons, and there isn’t evidence that he did, it isn’t the government’s (much less the court’s) business to be punishing people for it. The only thing that might be considered as giving the LA Supreme Court the power and right to do so is that Ellender is a state judge. I hope the LA courts will not attempt to enforce similar decisions on those who are not employees of the government. But what is the likelihood of that?
This just in: Good news! Roderick Long will be taking over the editorship of the Journal of Libertarian Studies. Congratulations and best wishes to him. I look forward to reading JLS under his guidance. Read the official announcement.
Tibor Machan has also been to a Philadelphia Society meeting. (See my reflections on the meeting I attended.) I think there were a lot more neocons there when I attended than when he did. In fact, he writes of one of the first neocons, Irving Kristol, presenting a novel idea to traditional conservatives: we need a war once in a while to promote national unity and loyalty among the American people, especially the young. Imagine that! Such a Hegelian notion!
I’ve written on Hegel’s notions of the State and war for one of my classes; here are some excerpts:
Hegel conceived of the state as a sovereign individual. States, being sovereign, will quite naturally come into conflict with each other and go to war. Hegel doesn’t merely see war as a necessary evil, however. Indeed, like Randolph Bourne, he sees war as the health of the State. Only, unlike Bourne, he is not concerned with the State growing in such power and centralization that it breaks the bounds of constitutional limits. Hegel sees war as a good thing. States are an ethical unity and go to war to protect that unity, not merely from other States but from internal forces. The State recognizes that the enforced unity brought about by war is needed to preserve itself from its own internal contradictions (or in Hegel’s mind, the stresses of civil society). “[W]ar is a “‘moment’ in the ethical life of the state.”[1. Steven B. Smith, “Hegel’s Views on War, the State, and International Relations,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 77 (1983), p. 627.] In war, individual citizens are educated in the ethical Idea when they submerge and lose their individuality in the universal, in the common will pursuing the State’s goal of self-preservation.
States seemingly paradoxically have equally legitimate sets of conflicting rights and therefore have no rights against each other. Why States have no rights against each other when individuals do is not entirely clear. (Are rights are a purely political construction for Hegel?) Hegel imports the Hobbesian notion of states being in a state of nature vis-Ã -vis each other. In Hegel’s philosophy of history, States (which are good) are paradoxically founded by evil actions and the tyrants who found them are considered “great” men due to their place in the rational process of history. Good is created through evil. Likewise, the question of right in wars between States is decided by world history; the outcome itself is history’s judgment. “[W]ar makes them unequal so that they can be unified, and this happens when one gives way to the other.”[2. Hegel, quoted in ibid., p. 630.]
For Hegel history is a rational process with the end of actualizing absolute freedom for humanity. The State is the embodiment of the ethical Idea, of absolute freedom, for its citizens. It stands to reason, following Hegel’s obsession with the Idea, the synthesis of concrete and universal, that the State that most embodies the ethical Idea vis-Ã -vis other States is superior. World history is the final arbiter in this matter, but world history is progressive and rational. This implies a growing rationality as history marches forward. Hegel thought that modern warfare with modern weapons would be more humane than previously. Though history has proven him wrong by the sheer inhumanity of modern total war, for Hegel history must lead to the “complete and total rationalization of human kind” and thus “to the homogenization or unification of humanity characterized by an increased agreement over all the fundamental aims of life. The triumph of reason will mean the elimination of the grounds of all war and conflict because there will be nothing left to fight about. It will represent the final triumph of bourgeois civil society with its pacific and commercial interests over the political state which seeks preeminence in struggle and combat. In the final analysis Hegel’s idea of an end of history undercuts his insistence on the necessity of war.”[3. Ibid., p. 631.]
The State, then, would seem to be a “moment” in the rational historical process leading to the triumph of reason in absolute freedom for man. Is this where Hegel intends to go? I am not sure. Such a future may entail the emergence of a World-State, as Hegel’s philosophy of history would seem to necessitate. Alternatively, in light of Hegel’s claim that a State is no more an actual State without other States than an individual is an actual “person without rapport with other persons[,]” perhaps such a future will resemble a kind of Kantian international order of liberal republican States.[4. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, trans. T.M. Knox, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 212.]
Some neocons have some strikingly Hegelian notions about the family, civil society, the State, and war; Kristol’s notion that we need a good war once in a while, in particular.
What ever happened to Jefferson’s “Every generation needs a new revolution”?
(Thanks to Chris Matthew Sciabarra for the link to Tibor Machan’s article.)
I’ve managed to get myself into a debate with a dogmatic Objectivist on the nature of US foreign policy and the merits of another dogmatic Objectivist’s characterization of it. See here.