Blog Archives - Page 19 of 22

Tom Wolfe and “The Kingdom of Speech”

Post author:William Gairdner
Post published:January 16, 2017
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Yesterday, I read Tom Wolfe’s 185-page book, The Kingdom of Speech (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2016). It’s a curious but apt title for such a book, implying, as becomes apparent by the end, that the human ability to…

Mill’s Limits on Liberty

Post author:William Gairdner
Post published:January 2, 2017
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This is the last blog-installment taken, slightly revised, from chapter Eight, “The Road to Hyperdemocracy,” in The Trouble With Democracy (Stoddart, 2001, and BPS Books, 208).…

Mill’s “Good” – Only a Personal Good

Post author:William Gairdner
Post published:December 30, 2016
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Only A Personal Good The central message sent by Mill to the modern democracies has been his insistence that we must be left free for “framing the plan of our life to suit our character” (1), and that “the only…

Mills Two Democracies

Post author:William Gairdner
Post published:December 28, 2016
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The Two Democracies This war between the two democracies is still under way. It had been the failure and – to most intellectuals of the time – the tremendous disappointment of the theory and practice of Rousseau’s collectivist freedom that…

Mill’s Religion of the Self

Post author:William Gairdner
Post published:December 22, 2016
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The New Religion Of The Self In an earlier chapter we discussed the two contrasting metaphors of the Mirror and the Lamp that stand for the vast cultural shift from the Classical/Christian to the Romantic ethos.[i] The metaphor of the…

Mill’s Sham Morality

Post author:William Gairdner
Post published:December 20, 2016
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Sham Morality: Mill’s Two Fibs and The New Golden Rule His assault began with the bold announcement that the object of his essay was “to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with…

Mill’s Contradictions – Only Apparent

Post author:William Gairdner
Post published:December 18, 2016
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Mill’s Contradictions – Only Apparent The conflict between wholes (organic society: Rousseau, Humboldt) and parts (individual freedom: Locke, Kant, Mill) continues throughout Mill’s On Liberty, and has generated considerable unresolvable controversy about what exactly Mill meant. No wonder. He was…

Exposing the “Harm Principle” of J. S. Mill

Post author:William Gairdner
Post published:December 15, 2016
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Trying something new. For the next ten days or so I will be posting a a series of connected installments taken from Chapter Eight, “The Road to Hyperdemocracy,” as published in my book The Trouble With Democracy (Stoddart, 2001, and…

Trump Or Clinton: Will It Be Personalities, Or Policies?

Post author:William Gairdner
Post published:November 26, 2016
Post category:Blog
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It will not be possible in November for Americans to elect a “good” President of high character. Both candidates are unlikeable and tainted with very shady, if not illegal behaviour; and both are cut-throat and tough as nails. If I…

A Quick Note on Global Warming

Post author:William Gairdner
Post published:November 18, 2016
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I just sent this brief note to a fellow who blames mankind for global warming, and asked him to refute all or any of it. No reply, as yet ……