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Index for this page...
All The Following Items Were Posted On January 1, 2009 Democracy: The word "democracy" is misused both in academic and popular speech to name any form of government in which the many rather than the few have a voice in government. As thus used it is distinguished from oligarchy, and it is possible to say that democracy began in ancient Athens under the regime of Pericles. Philosophically speaking, the word "democracy" applies to a form of government that first appeared in the twentieth century. In the United States, that appearance is as late as 1964, when the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was adopted, abolishing the poll tax and creating truly universal suffrage. But still belonging to the future is the economic basis of democracy -- that other face of a truly democratic society which secures the right to a decent livelihood to which all citizens are entitled. This is the proper meaning of socialism. Only when all mature and normal citizens are economic haves as well as political haves, with some haves having more and some having less according to their contribution to the economy, will we have a working approximation to the ideal of a socialist democracy. This news will shock the many who think that the democratic ideal first made its appearance in ancient Greece. In his funeral oration, Pericles praises Athens for instituting democracy at a time when, in an Athenian population of 120,000, only 30,000 were citizens and the rest were disfranchised women, artisans, and slaves. In our twentieth-century understanding of political democracy, Athens was a constitutional oligarchy, not a democracy. Individuals make the same mistake when they think that in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Constitution of the United States was democratic rather than oligarchic. Lincoln insisted that a new nation "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" came into existence in 1776 with the Declaration of Independence, not with the Constitution of 1789, which allowed slavery. But he recognized that the Declaration expressed a hope for a future that in fact began to be fulfilled only in the twentieth century. There are four main forms of government: tyrannical despotism, benevolent despotism, constitutional oligarchy, and constitutional democracy. According to the principles of justice, it can be argued that only the last of these is the best form of government, because only it embodies all the principles of political justice. Tyrannical despotism is totally unjust, because the de facto rulers govern with no one's consent, with no one's participation, and for their own good rather than for the good of the governed. Benevolent despotism acknowledges that the good of the governed should prevail. The welfare and well-being of those subjected to benevolent despots is the end that government should serve. Nevertheless, that benevolence is curtailed by a despotism that denies the right of human beings to be governed with their consent, with a voice in their own government, and with all their natural rights secured. Constitutional oligarchies, varying from place to place and from time to time in the numbers of persons who are enfranchised as citizens, are more just than any despotism, tyrannical or benevolent, because at least some human beings have political liberty and the equality of citizenship. Such governments remain unjust to the extent that the rest of the population are governed as subjects or as slaves. When finally in the twentieth century truly universal suffrage was established, we saw at last a form of government that is demonstrably democratic and completely just. If any injustice remains for the future to abolish, it is the economic justice of the socialist ideal. Source: Adler's Philosophical Dictionary: 125 Key Terms for the Philosopher's Lexicon. Have you a copy of this book in your personal library? If not, consider getting one. Read Max Weismann's review of this book by Clicking Here.
Borden Parker Bowne (1847-1910), American philosopher of "Personalism" Bowne's influence was not merely confined to the theological world of his religious communion as a teacher of philosophy at Boston University. His philosophy was conspicuous for the combination of theism with an idealistic view which he termed "Personalism." He mainly discussed issues of philosophy which had a bearing on religion, ethics, and epistemology. To understand Bowne's philosophy, we must first of all remember that religious faith was the foundation of his beliefs. Early in his career, he described his own philosophy as "transcendental empiricism." Toward the end of his life, the significance of personality, whether human or Divine, was so impressed upon his judgment that he renamed his doctrine "Personalism" and published a book of this title (1908). This latter phase of Bowne's thought was concisely stated in the following paragraph:
Source: Personalism by Borden Parker Bowne. Read more about Borden Parker Bowne in The Radical Academy. Read an essay: The Moral Life, by Borden Parker Bowne.
SOME RECENT PHILOSOPHY BOOK REVIEWS ON THE WEB The Value of Victory in Pindar's Odes, by H. Boeke
FOR THE RECORD 1. Feds Training U.S. Military To Enforce Domestic Law, by James W. Harris The U.S. government is on the verge of enacting one of the Founding Father's nightmares: military enforcement of domestic law. It's being done -- of course -- in the name of defending the "homeland" against terrorism or other catastrophes. But like all government security programs, expansion is inevitable. >From the Washington Post: The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials. The long-planned shift in the Defense Department's role in homeland security was recently backed with funding and troop commitments after years of prodding by Congress and outside experts, defense analysts said. There are critics of the change, in the military and among civil liberties groups and libertarians who express concern that the new homeland emphasis threatens to strain the military and possibly undermine the Posse Comitatus Act, a 130-year-old federal law restricting the military's role in domestic law enforcement. But the Bush administration and some in Congress have pushed for a heightened homeland military role since the middle of this decade, saying the greatest domestic threat is terrorists exploiting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, dedicating 20,000 troops to domestic response -- a nearly sevenfold increase in five years -- "would have been extraordinary to the point of unbelievable," Paul McHale, assistant defense secretary for homeland defense, said in remarks last month at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But the realization that civilian authorities may be overwhelmed in a catastrophe prompted "a fundamental change in military culture," he said. .... The American Civil Liberties Union and the libertarian Cato Institute are troubled by what they consider an expansion of executive authority. Domestic emergency deployment may be "just the first example of a series of expansions in presidential and military authority," or even an increase in domestic surveillance, said Anna Christensen of the ACLU's National Security Project. And Cato Vice President Gene Healy warned of "a creeping militarization" of homeland security. "There's a notion that whenever there's an important problem, that the thing to do is to call in the boys in green," Healy said, "and that's at odds with our long-standing tradition of being wary of the use of standing armies to keep the peace." You can read more at the Washington Post link below. Source: Washington Post James W. Harris is the editor of Liberator Online, a publication of Advocates for Self-Government. His articles have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers, and he has been a Finalist for the Mencken Award, given by the Free Press Association for "Outstanding Journalism in Support of Liberty." 2. Brain Differences Between Rich And Poor Kids University of California, Berkeley, researchers have shown for the first time that the brains of low-income children function differently from the brains of high-income kids. In a study recently accepted for publication in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, scientists at UC Berkeley's Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute and the School of Public Health report that normal 9- and 10-year-olds differing only in socioeconomic status have detectable differences in the response of their prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that is critical for problem solving and creativity. Brain function was measured by means of an electroencephalograph (EEG) -- basically, a cap fitted with electrodes to measure electrical activity in the brain -- like that used to assess epilepsy, sleep disorders and brain tumors. "Kids from lower socioeconomic levels show brain physiology patterns similar to someone who actually had damage in the frontal lobe as an adult," said Robert Knight, director of the institute and a UC Berkeley professor of psychology. "We found that kids are more likely to have a low response if they have low socioeconomic status, though not everyone who is poor has low frontal lobe response." Previous studies have shown a possible link between frontal lobe function and behavioral differences in children from low and high socioeconomic levels, but according to cognitive psychologist Mark Kishiyama, first author of the new paper, "those studies were only indirect measures of brain function and could not disentangle the effects of intelligence, language proficiency and other factors that tend to be associated with low socioeconomic status. Our study is the first with direct measure of brain activity where there is no issue of task complexity." Co-author W. Thomas Boyce, UC Berkeley professor emeritus of public health who currently is the British Columbia Leadership Chair of Child Development at the University of British Columbia (UBC), is not surprised by the results. "We know kids growing up in resource-poor environments have more trouble with the kinds of behavioral control that the prefrontal cortex is involved in regulating. But the fact that we see functional differences in prefrontal cortex response in lower socioeconomic status kids is definitive." Boyce, a pediatrician and developmental psychobiologist, heads a joint UC Berkeley/UBC research program called WINKS -- Wellness in Kids -- that looks at how the disadvantages of growing up in low socioeconomic circumstances change children's basic neural development over the first several years of life. "This is a wake-up call," Knight said. "It's not just that these kids are poor and more likely to have health problems, but they might actually not be getting full brain development from the stressful and relatively impoverished environment associated with low socioeconomic status: fewer books, less reading, fewer games, fewer visits to museums." Kishiyama, Knight and Boyce suspect that the brain differences can be eliminated by proper training. They are collaborating with UC Berkeley neuroscientists who use games to improve the prefrontal cortex function, and thus the reasoning ability, of school-age children. "It's not a life sentence," Knight emphasized. "We think that with proper intervention and training, you could get improvement in both behavioral and physiological indices." Source: NewsMax Health Reports 3. "Don't Waste This Crisis," Greedy Politicians Say Politicians are lining up alongside well-connected mega-corporations to grab their share of bailout bucks and the New Deal-on-steroids spending orgy promised by Barack Obama. "A crisis is a terrible thing to waste," Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick recently told the Boston Globe. Certainly no one can accuse Governor Patrick of wasting this crisis. Patrick met with members of president-elect Barack Obama's team to argue for a $3.4 billion laundry list of "crisis" projects, including a new science building at Framingham State College, a parking garage facility in North Leominster, repairs to Boston's Charles River Dam, and hundreds of millions of dollars to make government buildings across Massachusetts more energy efficient. The Boston Globe notes that the phrase "a crisis is a terrible thing to waste" is "a catchphrase that is getting widespread use among Obama officials and governors during the transition." No one, alas, seems to think that "taxpayers' money" is a terrible thing to waste. Source: Boston Globe 4. Quote For The Month: "Bush Stops Illegal Immigration" "According to some statistics the government released yesterday, Mexican immigration to the United States has dropped 42 percent over the last two years. And you have to hand it to President Bush, he knew that the way to stop people from sneaking into the country, it's not to build a fence or a wall, it's to make this country very undesirable. Most illegal immigrants come here to make money, but now we don't have any money anymore. That's Number 43 for you, always thinking ahead." -- Jimmy Kimmel. Source: "Jimmy Kimmel Live," ABC, November 21, 2008.
COUNSELING CORNER: A Few Things You May Not Have Known . . . 1. The roundest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi. 2. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian . 3. She was only a whisky maker, but he loved her still. 4. A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class because it was a weapon of math disruption. 5. The butcher backed into the meat grinder and got a little behind in his work. 6. No matter how much you push the envelope, it'll still be stationery. 7. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering. 8. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart. 9. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie. 10. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana. 11. A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it. 12. Atheism is a non-prophet organization. 13. Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other, 'You stay here, I'll go on ahead.' 14. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me. 15. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: 'Keep off the Grass.' 16. A small boy swallowed some coins and was taken to a hospital. When his grandmother telephoned to ask how he was, a nurse said, 'No change yet.' 17. A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion. 18. It's not that the man did not know how to juggle, he just didn't have the balls to do it. 19. The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium, at large. 20. The man who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran. 21. A backward poet writes in-verse. 22. In democracy it's your vote that counts. In feudalism it's your count that votes. 23. When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion. 24. Don't join dangerous cults: instead, practice safe sects!
A LITTLE OF THIS & A LITTLE OF THAT A Little Wisdom: There are obviously two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live. -- James Truslow Adams. A Little Advice: You can't change the past, but you can ruin the present by worrying over the future. A Little Quip: All men make mistakes, but married men find out about them sooner. A Little Proverb: A conclusion is simply the place where you got tired of thinking. A Little Question: How do you tell when you run out of invisible ink? A Little Reflection: It's not true that married men live longer than single men. It only seems longer. A Little Admission: I married Miss Right. I just didn't know her first name was Always. A Little Observation: Americans are getting stronger. Twenty years ago, it took two people to carry ten dollars worth of groceries. Today, a five-year-old can do it. A Little Warning: If you live like there's no God... you'd better be right. A Little Definition: Handkerchief - Cold Storage. A Little Quote: "Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities." -- Mark Twain. A Little Put-Down: I'd insult you, but you're not bright enough to notice.
Some interesting & provocative articles on other websites: Meet a man whose ethics are out of this world: Whatever the future holds, Andy Miah will have thought about the rights and wrongs, Claire Smith discovers. It is not every academic that specialises in a subject as extraordinary as extraterrestrial ethics. But Andy Miah is no ordinary academic. Part futurologist, part philosopher, his work on the science of sport grew to encompass bioethics, medical law and now covers all aspects of the way technology impacts on human beings. How America's Greatest Libertarian Experiment failed, by Gene Messick: If you're like most Americans, you have no idea what a Libertarian is. A few remember that they notice a Libertarian Candidate occasionally on the Ballot when they go vote. So what is a Libertarian, and what do they want? One way to view them is this: Libertarians are to Government as Atheists are to Religion. Atheists want there to be no God. Libertarians want there to be no Government. Why it's not as simple as God vs the multiverse, by Amanda Gefter: What would you rather believe in, God or the multiverse? It sounds like an instance of cosmic apples and oranges, but increasingly we are being told it's a choice we must make. Take the dialogue earlier this year between Richard Dawkins and physicist Steven Weinberg in Austin, Texas. Discussing the fact that the universe appears fine-tuned for our existence, Weinberg told Dawkins: "If you discovered a really impressive fine-tuning... I think you'd really be left with only two explanations: a benevolent designer or a multiverse." Retooling a philosophy - The New Vocabulary of Liberalism, by Daniel Keyserling: After rereading "Philosophy and Politics," Bertrand Russell's fluent and insightful essay on the connection between the two subjects, I found myself much better-equipped to answer the question: What about the future of modern liberalism? Lord Russell wrote: "The essence of the Liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held: instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment." Of course Russell was writing about the 17th-century Liberalism of Locke and Rousseau, but in my opinion the quotation is just as helpful in foreseeing the future of liberalism with a lower-case 'l.' Why a Philosophy of the Natural Sciences is Needed, by Erwin Marquit: My answer to the question "Why is a philosophy of the natural sciences needed?" will take the form of several distinct components. Before enumerating them, I should point out that no separate Marxist philosophy of the natural sciences exists distinct from dialectical and historical materialism. Marxist philosophy of the natural sciences is the methodological application of dialectical and historical materialism to investigations in the various natural sciences.
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