Turns out Heraclitus was right. Like he said, fire is awesome, or something like that.
The Frankfurt School was a group of philosophers and social critics in Germany that rose to prominance after the War. They worked on Marxist and Hegelian thought, and along with Derrida and the "postmodernists" have been subject to various conspiracies that they were "destroying western civilization", often even being lumped together, even though they had little in common.
One thing Derrida in particular is accused of is making everything "subjective", the Frankfurt School might even get accused of this themselves, even though a lot of their work is directly opposed to this. They, in fact, pointed out the under modern capialism "reason" had taken on a meaning of technical reason, or subjective reason. "Rationality" was using your intellence to achieve your aims, rather than participating in a sort of broad Hegelian rationality, where we advance human thought in general. So a game theorist, for example, might point out that there are instances where everyone is behaving "rationally", but it culminates in an irrational result. For people like Marcuse, this kind of thing has lost the grander meaning of the term "rationality". Under Capitialism in America, everyone became isolated and encouraged to be "rational" by using their intelligence to succeed by making as much money as possible. People will even say stuff like that the Media is only behaving rationally by maximizing their profits by running clickbait articles to get the most traffic, rather than actually reporting serious news and informing the population. Well, this is a very odd sense of what rationality is, and would have been very foreign to how people like Kant and Hegel used the term. Reducing rationality to an instrumental and subject force creates a society where random, chaotic market forces of "rational" consumers drives the entire society, with no human rationality being applied to what we should be doing in the larger sense. So you have rationality itself responsible for the quite irrational actions of our society, such as consuming so much that we destroy the planet.
Rick Roderick has a good lecture series that is accessible on some of these thinkers, on YouTube.
One thing Derrida in particular is accused of is making everything "subjective", the Frankfurt School might even get accused of this themselves, even though a lot of their work is directly opposed to this. They, in fact, pointed out the under modern capialism "reason" had taken on a meaning of technical reason, or subjective reason. "Rationality" was using your intellence to achieve your aims, rather than participating in a sort of broad Hegelian rationality, where we advance human thought in general. So a game theorist, for example, might point out that there are instances where everyone is behaving "rationally", but it culminates in an irrational result. For people like Marcuse, this kind of thing has lost the grander meaning of the term "rationality". Under Capitialism in America, everyone became isolated and encouraged to be "rational" by using their intelligence to succeed by making as much money as possible. People will even say stuff like that the Media is only behaving rationally by maximizing their profits by running clickbait articles to get the most traffic, rather than actually reporting serious news and informing the population. Well, this is a very odd sense of what rationality is, and would have been very foreign to how people like Kant and Hegel used the term. Reducing rationality to an instrumental and subject force creates a society where random, chaotic market forces of "rational" consumers drives the entire society, with no human rationality being applied to what we should be doing in the larger sense. So you have rationality itself responsible for the quite irrational actions of our society, such as consuming so much that we destroy the planet.
Rick Roderick has a good lecture series that is accessible on some of these thinkers, on YouTube.
"This is a strawman of Ayn Rand. She would have paid Augustine a fair price for that bread before throwing it in the trash."
😁2
In moral philosophy, the three major branches of ethical theory are Utilitarianism, such as espoused by Henry Sidgwick, which says that moral actions relate to their consequences that they bring about; Virtue Ethics, as espoused by Elizabeth Anscombe says moral actions are those that have a certain intentionality of a virtueous person (that is to say the morality is internal, in a sense); and Deontology, as espoused by Immanual Kant, which says that moral actions are those that follow certain rules. Although not as popular among philosophers these days, a fourth type of moral theory is Divine Command Theory, as espoused by Saint Augustine, which says that moral actions are those that follow God's commands.
For a great many questions of practical morally, these three systems will agree, such as "should you give your extra food to a starving man." This would have a good consequence, be a virtuous intent, follow a good rule, and would be as God commands it. In fact, such moral values are so universal that it is hard to think of any philosophy, culture, or religion at any time who says that a rich man should walk by a starving poor man and not be obliged to give him bread.
That is, of course, except for Ayn Rand.
For a great many questions of practical morally, these three systems will agree, such as "should you give your extra food to a starving man." This would have a good consequence, be a virtuous intent, follow a good rule, and would be as God commands it. In fact, such moral values are so universal that it is hard to think of any philosophy, culture, or religion at any time who says that a rich man should walk by a starving poor man and not be obliged to give him bread.
That is, of course, except for Ayn Rand.
Like all the dialogue comics, the two characters don't represent any philosophers in particular, but merely discuss an idea.
Robert Nozick's concept of a "Utility Monster" was a thought experiment aiming to criticize Utilitarianism. He imagines a "monster" with a capacity for happiness so much greater than our own, that we would be morally obligated to sacrifice everything to give the monster pleasure, as that would result in the most overall happiness. Most people recoil from this conclusion, due to its apparent unfairness. Nozick uses this idea to argue against the redistribution of wealth, because it would be unjust. He favors a society based on free exchange only, where wealth is justified based on not how fairly it was distributed, but on how fairly it was acquired. So if someone becomes very wealthy through voluntary exchanges with other human beings, "redistributing" that wealth is effectively denying the ability for people to come to voluntary exchanges - denying their freedom. Even things like minimum wage laws he saw as restrictions on freedom, because after all if two people consent to the exchange, who is the government to say that they can't? Freedom, unlike total happiness, Nozick thought, could not be subject to a "Utility Monster" because your freedom does not take away from my freedom. The ability for people to make contracts isn't a finite resource that can be "sucked up".
However, Nozick's conception of freedom is based largely on contracts revolving around property rights. That is to say, freedom for Nozick is freedom to own and control not just your own personhood, but any property that you own. Property, like resources devoted to increasing "utility", is a finite resource that could theoretically be entirely owned by a single "Freedom Monster", or maybe "Justice Monster", but perhaps best named "Property Monster". Like the comic imagines, a monster that lived forever and bent its entire will to owning more and more land could, theoretically, through entirely voluntary transactions, own all of the land. If this situation arose, the monster would have infinite leverage in any negotiation that it entered into, because everyone on earth would starve unless they made a deal with the monster. From Nozick's point of view, because neither party was physically coerced, and the monster's property came from a history of free transactions; however the situation that it leads to seems to be one of a lack of freedom. The monster could make any rules it wanted, and everyone on earth would be more or less "freely" forced to obliged it. Most people would not describe this situation as one where humanity is more free.
Of course, if we find this situation abhorrent, we have to question why we do not find it abhorrent on a smaller scale. For example, millions of people are born without property today, and find themselves having to obey the rules set by their landlord or boss, and this obedience to property is described as "freedom", but structurally it is the same freedom enjoyed by people obeying the monster's arbitrary rules in order to live. The business owner or landlord can control others by having far greater leverage, not infinite leverage as the monster does, because they have to compete with other business owners or landlords, but far more leverage than the person with nothing. Worse, if we look at the situations in terms of class rather than individuals, the property owners as a class do have the infinite leverage of the monster, because they quite literally own everything. So far as they have common interests, they will naturally exploit that leverage to advance those interests with great ease, since the class with no property relies on the use of their property to survive. As to what a real freedom might look like, where one or more individuals couldn't use their massive leverage to exploit others in any manner they saw fit, well, that is as they say a question beyond the scope of this essay.
Robert Nozick's concept of a "Utility Monster" was a thought experiment aiming to criticize Utilitarianism. He imagines a "monster" with a capacity for happiness so much greater than our own, that we would be morally obligated to sacrifice everything to give the monster pleasure, as that would result in the most overall happiness. Most people recoil from this conclusion, due to its apparent unfairness. Nozick uses this idea to argue against the redistribution of wealth, because it would be unjust. He favors a society based on free exchange only, where wealth is justified based on not how fairly it was distributed, but on how fairly it was acquired. So if someone becomes very wealthy through voluntary exchanges with other human beings, "redistributing" that wealth is effectively denying the ability for people to come to voluntary exchanges - denying their freedom. Even things like minimum wage laws he saw as restrictions on freedom, because after all if two people consent to the exchange, who is the government to say that they can't? Freedom, unlike total happiness, Nozick thought, could not be subject to a "Utility Monster" because your freedom does not take away from my freedom. The ability for people to make contracts isn't a finite resource that can be "sucked up".
However, Nozick's conception of freedom is based largely on contracts revolving around property rights. That is to say, freedom for Nozick is freedom to own and control not just your own personhood, but any property that you own. Property, like resources devoted to increasing "utility", is a finite resource that could theoretically be entirely owned by a single "Freedom Monster", or maybe "Justice Monster", but perhaps best named "Property Monster". Like the comic imagines, a monster that lived forever and bent its entire will to owning more and more land could, theoretically, through entirely voluntary transactions, own all of the land. If this situation arose, the monster would have infinite leverage in any negotiation that it entered into, because everyone on earth would starve unless they made a deal with the monster. From Nozick's point of view, because neither party was physically coerced, and the monster's property came from a history of free transactions; however the situation that it leads to seems to be one of a lack of freedom. The monster could make any rules it wanted, and everyone on earth would be more or less "freely" forced to obliged it. Most people would not describe this situation as one where humanity is more free.
Of course, if we find this situation abhorrent, we have to question why we do not find it abhorrent on a smaller scale. For example, millions of people are born without property today, and find themselves having to obey the rules set by their landlord or boss, and this obedience to property is described as "freedom", but structurally it is the same freedom enjoyed by people obeying the monster's arbitrary rules in order to live. The business owner or landlord can control others by having far greater leverage, not infinite leverage as the monster does, because they have to compete with other business owners or landlords, but far more leverage than the person with nothing. Worse, if we look at the situations in terms of class rather than individuals, the property owners as a class do have the infinite leverage of the monster, because they quite literally own everything. So far as they have common interests, they will naturally exploit that leverage to advance those interests with great ease, since the class with no property relies on the use of their property to survive. As to what a real freedom might look like, where one or more individuals couldn't use their massive leverage to exploit others in any manner they saw fit, well, that is as they say a question beyond the scope of this essay.
Like all the dialogue comics, the two characters don't represent any philosophers in particular, but merely discuss an idea.
Robert Nozick's concept of a "Utility Monster" was a thought experiment aiming to criticize Utilitarianism. He imagines a "monster" with a capacity for happiness so much greater than our own, that we would be morally obligated to sacrifice everything to give the monster pleasure, as that would result in the most overall happiness. Most people recoil from this conclusion, due to its apparent unfairness. Nozick uses this idea to argue against the redistribution of wealth, because it would be unjust. He favors a society based on free exchange only, where wealth is justified based on not how fairly it was distributed, but on how fairly it was acquired. So if someone becomes very wealthy through voluntary exchanges with other human beings, "redistributing" that wealth is effectively denying the ability for people to come to voluntary exchanges - denying their freedom. Even things like minimum wage laws he saw as restrictions on freedom, because after all if two people consent to the exchange, who is the government to say that they can't? Freedom, unlike total happiness, Nozick thought, could not be subject to a "Utility Monster" because your freedom does not take away from my freedom. The ability for people to make contracts isn't a finite resource that can be "sucked up".
However, Nozick's conception of freedom is based largely on contracts revolving around property rights. That is to say, freedom for Nozick is freedom to own and control not just your own personhood, but any property that you own. Property, like resources devoted to increasing "utility", is a finite resource that could theoretically be entirely owned by a single "Freedom Monster", or maybe "Justice Monster", but perhaps best named "Property Monster". Like the comic imagines, a monster that lived forever and bent its entire will to owning more and more land could, theoretically, through entirely voluntary transactions, own all of the land. If this situation arose, the monster would have infinite leverage in any negotiation that it entered into, because everyone on earth would starve unless they made a deal with the monster. From Nozick's point of view, because neither party was physically coerced, and the monster's property came from a history of free transactions, the monster's ownership of all its property is just and free. However, the situation that it leads to seems to be one that severely lacks freedom. The monster could make any rules it wanted, and everyone on earth would be more or less "freely" forced to obliged it. Most people would not describe this situation as one where humanity is more free.
Of course, if we find this situation abhorrent, we have to question why we do not find it abhorrent on a smaller scale. For example, millions of people are born without property today, and find themselves having to obey the rules set by their landlord or boss, and this obedience to property is described as "freedom", but structurally it is the same freedom enjoyed by people obeying the monster's arbitrary rules in order to live. The business owner or landlord can control others by having far greater leverage, not infinite leverage as the monster does, because they have to compete with other business owners or landlords, but far more leverage than the person with nothing. Worse, if we look at the situations in terms of class rather than individuals, the property owners as a class do have the infinite leverage of the monster, because they quite literally own everything. So far as they have common interests, they will naturally exploit that leverage to advance those interests with great ease, since the class with no property relies on the use of their property to survive. As to what a real freedom might look like, where one or more individuals couldn't use their massive leverage to exploit others in any manner they saw fit, well, that is as they say a question beyond the scope of this essay.
Robert Nozick's concept of a "Utility Monster" was a thought experiment aiming to criticize Utilitarianism. He imagines a "monster" with a capacity for happiness so much greater than our own, that we would be morally obligated to sacrifice everything to give the monster pleasure, as that would result in the most overall happiness. Most people recoil from this conclusion, due to its apparent unfairness. Nozick uses this idea to argue against the redistribution of wealth, because it would be unjust. He favors a society based on free exchange only, where wealth is justified based on not how fairly it was distributed, but on how fairly it was acquired. So if someone becomes very wealthy through voluntary exchanges with other human beings, "redistributing" that wealth is effectively denying the ability for people to come to voluntary exchanges - denying their freedom. Even things like minimum wage laws he saw as restrictions on freedom, because after all if two people consent to the exchange, who is the government to say that they can't? Freedom, unlike total happiness, Nozick thought, could not be subject to a "Utility Monster" because your freedom does not take away from my freedom. The ability for people to make contracts isn't a finite resource that can be "sucked up".
However, Nozick's conception of freedom is based largely on contracts revolving around property rights. That is to say, freedom for Nozick is freedom to own and control not just your own personhood, but any property that you own. Property, like resources devoted to increasing "utility", is a finite resource that could theoretically be entirely owned by a single "Freedom Monster", or maybe "Justice Monster", but perhaps best named "Property Monster". Like the comic imagines, a monster that lived forever and bent its entire will to owning more and more land could, theoretically, through entirely voluntary transactions, own all of the land. If this situation arose, the monster would have infinite leverage in any negotiation that it entered into, because everyone on earth would starve unless they made a deal with the monster. From Nozick's point of view, because neither party was physically coerced, and the monster's property came from a history of free transactions, the monster's ownership of all its property is just and free. However, the situation that it leads to seems to be one that severely lacks freedom. The monster could make any rules it wanted, and everyone on earth would be more or less "freely" forced to obliged it. Most people would not describe this situation as one where humanity is more free.
Of course, if we find this situation abhorrent, we have to question why we do not find it abhorrent on a smaller scale. For example, millions of people are born without property today, and find themselves having to obey the rules set by their landlord or boss, and this obedience to property is described as "freedom", but structurally it is the same freedom enjoyed by people obeying the monster's arbitrary rules in order to live. The business owner or landlord can control others by having far greater leverage, not infinite leverage as the monster does, because they have to compete with other business owners or landlords, but far more leverage than the person with nothing. Worse, if we look at the situations in terms of class rather than individuals, the property owners as a class do have the infinite leverage of the monster, because they quite literally own everything. So far as they have common interests, they will naturally exploit that leverage to advance those interests with great ease, since the class with no property relies on the use of their property to survive. As to what a real freedom might look like, where one or more individuals couldn't use their massive leverage to exploit others in any manner they saw fit, well, that is as they say a question beyond the scope of this essay.