The Condition of Equality Today

JohnMH127@gmail.com

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . .

- Declaration of Independence   

A distinguished senior professor, in a class on Plato's Republic, spoke at length on the foolishness of egalitarianism. A student said, “You've just described equality of results. Don't you think the situation would be different in the case of equality of opportunity?”

The professor replied, “No, I don't think so.”

There is detectable within [Elaine Showalter’s] literary criticism a strong, unquestioned belief in the values...of traditional bourgeois humanism of a liberal-individualist kind.... Showalter in her own criticism takes no interest in the necessity of combating capitalism and fascism. Her insistence on the need for political art is limited to the struggle against sexism.... What feminists such as Showalter...fail to grasp is that the traditional humanism they represent is in effect part of patriarchal ideology. At its centre is the seamlessly unified self–either individual or collective–which is commonly called “Man.”

- Toril Moi, linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/9809/showalter.html

Book 8 of The Republic: “These and other kindred characteristics are proper to democracy, which is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.” - Plato

5. [Conservatives] feel affection for the proliferating intricacy of long-established social institutions and modes of life, as distinguished from the narrowing uniformity and deadening egalitarianism of radical systems. For the preservation of a healthy diversity in any civilization, there must survive orders and classes, differences in material condition, and many sorts of inequality. The only true forms of equality are equality at the Last Judgment and equality before a just court of law; all other attempts at leveling must lead, at best, to social stagnation.

 - Russell Kirk,  “Ten Conservative Principles” [Emphasis added]

“We are not egalitarians, and justice doesn’t require economic leveling.”

- Rod Dreher, 1/12/12 - www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/romney-the-42-million-man/

The preceding five selections represent criticisms of the liberal principle of human equality, two from what would probably be called the academic left, two from avowed conservatives, and one from Plato himself. Is there a creeping anti-egalitarianism?*

If it should be the case that not only the right but also the left have abandoned the Founders’ stirring declaration of human equality, what happens to a closely related principle, human rights? Ta-Nehisi Coates, an editor at The Atlantic, notes the connection between the rejection of equality and one of the greatest violations of human rights, slavery:

If black people were part of "man," and all "men" were created equal, how could one justify slavery? Well, one could completely ignore the discrepancy, which is exactly what a lot of Confederates did. But a more radical proposal, one I find interesting, is the assertion that Thomas Jefferson was quite wrong.

On the eve of War, Alexander Stephens, vice-president of the Confederacy explicitly dismissed [the] Jeffersonian view of slavery: ...

The prevailing ideas entertained by [Jefferson] and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically.

It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away.  ...

Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. …  Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2011/05/in-defense-of-slavery/239719/

It is not difficult to see why the Plato specialist, above, would critique equality. Plato did so, and that was very powerful with him. What would he do if he realized that the concept of human equality is the great principle upon which human rights and unalterable opposition to slavery stand?

As for the right, there seems to be, lurking beneath everything that today’s American conservatives say—the tropism toward “heroes,” the affluent bias toward an oligarchy of the obscenely rich—what Mark Lilla called “the aristocratic prejudice that ‘some are fit, and thus ought, to rule others.’” It is not difficult in this context to understand a rejection of “all men are created equal,” assuming that those who do so are able to deny the inconsistency between this and any posture of patriotic loyalty to the Founders.

The liberal Founding declared that all possess “unalienable rights.” Its three most famous words are “We the People.” When this is contrasted with phrases such as “group rights,” “oppressor groups,” or “Workers of the World, Unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains!” a profound difference is apparent. The liberal outlook posits no Other, no enemy, because it doesn’t need one to function. Liberalism is a philosophy of harmony, cooperation and altruism—of the phrase Washington used in his inaugural address: “The public good.”
 

Contrast the ending of the Communist Manifesto, above, which implies an enemy and issues a call to war; and contrast the “group” discourse which was bequeathed to the modern left which, to use the left’s own terms, “privileges” group members and “marginalizes” or “disenfranchises” those it excludes. Inequality—discriminatory inequality—is the modus operandi of the left.


(*) This is particularly curious in the case of patriotic conservatives. What does this imply about reverence for the moral values of the Founders?

This is the Son of Kings

                                                                   JohnMH127@gmail.com
The dramatic irony of Oedipus is that he doesn't know who he is. The reason receives somewhat less attention than expected: Oedipus' parents tried to have him murdered as a baby:

This is the Son of Kings

"Nor is that other point to be passed over, that the Sphinx was subdued by a lame man with club feet . . ."

- Sir Francis Bacon

It was night in Thebes and the cry of a newborn echoed in the halls of the king. He waited, as custom prescribed, for the midwife's announcement. But when she arrived, she stared boldly at him for awhile. Finally she said, "Somethin's wrong with 'is foot."

The king hastened to the royal bed, where he found the queen lying with her back to the naked infant. "Do what you have to do," she murmured.

"I'll have Shepherd take it to the Grove," he said.

It was not yet dawn when Shepherd arrived at the Grove of the Lost. Unseen predators coughed beyond the lamp as he laid the tiny bundle on the bloodstained rock.

The story would have ended there, but as Shepherd made to depart he heard the infant sobbing quietly, hopelessly to itself. He took the child forthwith to his parents' home in a mountain village.

"Take care," he told them. "This is the son of kings."

"What shall we call him?" his father asked. But just then Shepherd's mother, having unwrapped the child, exclaimed, "Oh, the poor baby, his poor foot's all swollen."

"Very well," his father decided, "we'll call him Haltfoot."

When he was become a man, Haltfoot set off for Thebes with his most trusted companions, for he would look upon the faces of his parents. As they entered a crossroads, with the towers of the city gleaming in the distance, a mounted nobleman ordered them to step aside. But Haltfoot, having recognized the king from his likeness on a coin, said "It is written, A commoner shall pass, and none shall deny him."

At this the king made to run him through with his spear. But Haltfoot, stepping aside, seized the spear as it passed and threw the king into the road.

"Take him home," he instructed his companions. "Let him know the village where a prince spent his youth."

Whereupon the king asked, "Who are you?"

"I am your son, whom you sent to the Grove."

In the cool of the evening Haltfoot passed through the gates of Thebes and found the restless queen pacing the byways of the market.

Dawn was brightening the eastern horizon when Haltfoot rose from the royal bed. But the queen detained him, asking "Why did old Shepherd start when he saw you last night?" Haltfoot instead replied, "Do you know where the king is?"

"He rides to the royal estates.

"You are very like him in form," she added. "Who are you?"

But Haltfoot commanded, "Look upon me."

Now it was full day, and an unpitying sun blazed on the cold stones.

"I too am of royal blood," said Haltfoot. "Look upon me and know who I am."

The queen stared wildly at him. "Say no more," she cried. "By the Merciless, say no more."

Intellectual Prudence

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Such gurus [Derrida, Foucault, Barthes et al.] are treasured, I suspect, less for their specific creeds than for the invigorating Nietzschean scorn they direct at intellectual prudence.*
        - Frederick C. Crews, Skeptical Engagements

What is intellectual prudence? That is, what writing and thinking deserves the respect and honor we accord to the intellectual treasure of humankind? Equally important, what does not meet intellectual standards?

In 1998 American physicist Alan Sokal and Belgian physicist Jean Bricmont published Fashionable Nonsense, an English adaptation of their French language Impostures Intellectuelles, which critiqued intellectualism gone awry. Their primary objection was to postmodern texts which incorporated examples and metaphors from contemporary science and mathematics that revealed ignorance of the material cited, rejection of scientific principles, or antirationalism and antiempiricism. “They display a profound indifference, if not a disdain, for facts and logic,” the authors wrote.

Sokal and Bricmont objected to the intellectual deficits of  “‘postmodernism’, an intellectual current characterized by … theoretical discourses disconnected to any empirical test, and by cognitive and cultural relativism that regards science as nothing more than a ‘narration,’ a ‘myth’ or social construction among many others.” Here is a beginning selection of the flaws they found in postmodernist intellectual writing:

1. [Failure to] evaluate the validity of a proposition on the basis of the facts and reasoning supporting it, without regard to the personal qualities or social status of its advocates or detractors. p. 188
2. Radical doubts concerning the viability of logic or the possibility of knowing the world through observation and/or experiment. p. 189
3. Ambiguity as subterfuge. … [Perhaps] these ambiguities are deliberate. … The radical interpretation can serve to attract relatively inexperienced listeners or readers; and if the absurdity of this version is exposed, the author can always defend himself by claiming to have been misunderstood, and retreat to the innocuous interpretation. p. 189
4. “Incredulity toward metanarratives.” … Lyotard p. 191
5. [Absence of] respect for the clarity and logical coherence of theories, and for the confrontation of theories with empirical evidence. p. 193
6. Radical cognitive relativism: … the claim that assertions of fact—be they traditional myths or modern scientific theories—can be considered true or false only “relative to a particular culture.” p. 194
7. [Archaeologist] Roger Anyon … was quoted as saying that “science is just one of many ways of knowing the world. … [The Zunis’ belief that they have always lived in the Americas is] just as valid as the archaeological viewpoint [they came to the Americas from Asia ten to twenty thousand years ago] of what prehistory is about.” … The two theories in question are mutually incompatible, so they cannot both be true. p. 195

Selection (1) describes reasoning by well-known fallacy. In this case it is the argumentum ad hominem, the fallacy deployed by Adolph Hitler when he dismissed known science—special relativity—as “Jewish science.”

Selection (2) is a rejection of the epistemology of science and liberalism, which considers honoring evidence and reason as irreplaceable components of honesty. It is part of the “hermeneutic of suspicion,” one of the attitudes which gave rise to postmodernism:

“My reply to the School of Suspicion is that its Romantic, individualistic model of the search for knowledge has been erroneous from the start.”

 - Frederick C. Crews, Skeptical Engagements

The double-mindedness of selection (3) speaks for itself.

Selection (4) undermines the glory of great intellectual thinking: the ability to inspire by illuminating principles and concepts which clarify what had lain in darkness.

Selection (5): Noam Chomsky, in “Why I Am Not a Postmodernist,” cited “gibberish,” truisms better expressed elsewhere, and falsehoods. This section describes a failure to meet the most elementary intellectual standards.

Selection (6) asserts validation by culture. If this could be true, one could say that the Final Solution was validated by the culture of the German community in 1942. To see what this would destroy, recall Lincoln's assertion that the Declaration's principle of equality and liberty is “an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times,” regardless of race, gender, class, religion or nationality.

Selection (7) documents base intellectual incompetence. Humankind cannot both have always existed in the Americas and have arrived within the last twenty thousand years.

Professor Patricia Roberts-Miller responded to the proposition, “much of the intellectual heritage does not meet the standards of the intellectual discipline” by saying, “I don't see THE intellectual discipline.”

The purpose of these posts is to further the appreciation of humankind's intellectual treasure. Immanuel Kant said that the one indispensable intellectual trait is “a good will,” because all the others can be subverted to non-intellectual ends. It helps to know that much of what is lauded as intellectual may be no such thing. One can pass over what is not worthy of critical inspection.

     .

when I was a starving writer I used to read the major writers in the

major magazines (in the library, of course) and it made me feel very bad because—being a student of the word and the way, I realized

that they were faking it: I could sense each false emotion, each utter pretense

- Charles Bukowski

 

(*) Frederick C. Crews Skeptical Engagements To “do theory” these days, as that expression is understood by department chairs who hope to load their ranks with a full panoply of “theorists,” is not to maintain a thesis against likely objections, but rather to strike attitudes that will identify one as a loyal follower of some figure—a Roland Barthes, a Jacques Derrida, a Michel Foucault, a Jacques Lacan, a Fredric Jameson—who has himself made unexamined claims about the nature of capitalism or patriarchy or Western civilization or the collective unconscious or the undecidability of knowledge. Such gurus are treasured, I suspect, less for their specific creeds than for the invigorating Nietzschean scorn they direct at intellectual prudence.