The greek thought of being, of what is, to be as intransitive verb--truth and falsehood. But now we say existence is a question of whether a class is empty or not; the question of why anything at all exists is disallowed; but therefore theism is disallowed?
The broad story of socinianism, from Erasmus to the enlightenment, doesnt interest me but does confuse and challenge me. My understanding of catholicism, in so far as I understand it at all, is pinned on the rejection of philosophy. Thus I have no handle on Thomas, or on the rehabilitation of Thomas in response to the reformation by the spanish thinkers--to eradicate Erasmus to replace him with Thomas? Within this dichotomy, it's hard for me to imagine the hope that reason and faith might converge, rather than damage each other. The English alternative TR describes, promoted by Grotius, seems built upon this hope. But More seems dubious, Bacon uses a deus ex machina. Pace Bacon, what's really damaging is science, Copernicus, Gallileo, on to Darwin. Is science to be separated from reason?
Consider the claims of reason against dogma in the area of education, up to a "natural" education that is no education at all, since any education is a falsification (man is born free yet everywhere in chains). Or that faith is authority, ie the authority of the teacher.
If Castellio is using God as always higher law, even to his religions, leading to separatism and on to antinomianism.
A poet without a unified culture is lost, his originality is just egotism. (I'm trying to fob off my failure on the culture.) He has no reason to write.
Liberalism begins in religious freedom, ie man. Everything else follows from that.
That what's upsetting to me about uppity christians is that they wont admit to the unified voice of my childhood. I meant this as a mea culpa, the msm just doesnt reflect their values. But then. They claim not to be a minority but the majority, to be American, in exclusion of me. I too miss Walter Cronkite. The question of who is really the majority, is not a question of democracy, but of avoiding it. It is the anti govt rhetoric of the right, and the strong identification with the president as the real govt--a president doesnt disagree with himself, like congress. What I had described as acting, in the public square, on principle, which may be religious or not, vs. pushing your religion into the square: if you are not defending your principles but your religion, you are not acting as an individual or citizen. Your loss is not a loss on a particular issue, but a usurpation, as if you had been denied a vote, disenfranchised, pushed out of the political process. Your identification with a group is parallel to the end of the democratic process. But the loss on the issue came first; the claim that your religion, qua religion, was excluded is a post facto justification. If I didnt win, it's not democracy, because I am the majority, by
definition. The distrust of the media is more than working the refs: for only in the media is there a reality. Without it, the fiction that I am the majority can survive. Disabling the media, ie via balance, allows the turning of democracy against itself.
Back to the harm principle. Someone will say that if no one has property no one has property to give. I've been vacillating between harm principle and the destruction of property claims. What if they are to be combined? There is a kind of communism within capitalism, from each to his ability to each to his need, which is actually a capitalism based solely on labor transactions, ie without land ownership--complete usufruct.
What is the relationship between Laffer supply side one for one of taxes and growth and the neo malthusian conviction that welfare uses workers to maintain non workers (NB the lieutenant gov of SC, Will on Katrina and D Brooks on Haiti, Himmelfarb on the two cultures, Murray on created poverty, Gilder's poverty as spur, Holbo's Donner Party conservatism re Frum, etc.)? Both assume a rigid for self for other dichotomy. Laffer assumes that economic activity is completely voluntary and that if I am not doing (mostly) for self I wont bother to do it. That for self for other is the decision point. But the other here isnt real; he makes no demand. There is only the incentive to more economic activity; I mean, economic activity is decided by the for self, not any systemic limits. The anti welfare argument makes the same assumption about economic self propulsion and perfection: anyone not working could be working (or would not have been produced if his parents were working).
What is the claim of the man upon the good samaritan? His humanity--that is the new thing, that is the call. Humanity is the call upon our-selves: is the other? Humanity is the emergence, visibility, of the for self for other choice. Humanity is the solvent of property. Or humanity is indifferent to property. The claim of the human is a claim against self, that I choose between self and other. It therefore subjugates property, but is not essentially about property. But I want to explain that it is the self other distinction that cuts into property, cuts us from our property, and puts property into play: makes poverty a harm. This shows itself as a subordination of property in the creation of the public, a reserve or social insurance fund, an artificial, deliberate, usufruct. The public is that which belongs to no one, and therefore to everyone.
Conservative reduction of society to enterprises, and thus allowing the failure of a family firm, even if it means death: the for self taken to obliterate the for other, which it actually presupposes. There is no for self until there is a for other. There is no capitalism (labor) unless there is humanity. The conservative suppression of the public is a suppression of democracy.
Are conservatives the ones who stand on principle? Why else would they be conservative? They see a principle that needs to be enforced. What is it? If it doesnt exist, that would explain the obstructionism of the party today. They had to fall back upon it, but it wasnt there. They can only say "no". And without committing themselves they can win back a majority and put into effect their crazy policies and then be voted out again and the process goes on.
Adiaphora entails a distinction between what is known and what is believed that is fatal to orthodoxy. It ultimately results in Kant. The idea of adiaphora is important because it signals that the toleration debates arose within christianity, ie because of the reformation. Only two christians could have adiaphora. They werent meant to excuse toleration for Jews. And note the charge of pharisee-ism can only be leveled within christianity; it reclaims Paul from the church. Paul is the beginning of the church, the impossibility that it has a beginning, that it begins in an act of interpretation? Is orthodoxy the bad faith of the church, that it knows it exists only in the failure of the final judgment? (Hardly any comfort for Jews in toleration being built upon the accusation that catholics were the new Jews. How much of the horror at Servetus was his toleration for Jews? As Europe develops, is there more and more focus on Jews as the enemy, rather than pagans--ie as christians become Romans?) The distinction between what is known and what is believed is the origin of science. And of the individual: that's what the individual is: the one who thinks differently. NB that orthodoxy falls with anthropocentrism. Cf. they they and atheism in Heidegger. It is the situation of Descartes and his demon. cf. Luther's "Here I stand," and compare with Castellio's you burn a man. Is it the result of the fold by which humanity comes to know itself, think of itself (it cant actually be "known")? You have to be educated, and know you might have been educated otherwise.
Chadwick notes that Jews were generally protected by law in the early centuries of xtianity. But that would be the remnant of Roman law?
Are Neuhaus et al arguing for what, as good catholics, they know to not be true: that toleration within christianity does not entail tolerance without, indeed dissolve the bands of law and faith until conscience covers atheism? Another way, that protestantism must devolve into separatism and antinominism? What is known and what is believed: believed means taken on faith, ie from another person. What disrupts that transmission is writing? Is it important that Erasmus was a bastard? The cult of friendship? The possibility of mail, ie alongside books, and no pun intended? And thus of travel.
The middle ages ends with the fear of an heretical pope, just as Europe escapes his grasp. When he is finally stripped of all political power, after the formation of Italy, a council grants him immunity from heresy? The pope is granted an implacable conscience?
Is Luther's submission to God over the church (over Christ) any different from Milton's use of him?
What is the political dimension of predestination--its 'purpose'? It freezes politics here and now, but they have to been felt before there would be a need to freeze them? For Luther indulgences are no different from works, both are efforts to bribe God. Luther is the absolute rejection of politics vs. the "liberals", the socinians: Erasmus etc.? NB that Erasmus was trying to enliven the faith, beyond dead ritual: that is in a way a charge of pharisee-ism.
Think backwards: that all power is ordained by God: that God is power (between men): what would it mean for there to not be power between men? Rule of law? (offices)--obviously self contradictory to them. Recall the pope's claim to be a servant of servants. Command, in two senses, is essential to belief in God: they are the same thing. To question authority is to question anthropocentrism. Paul awaits the judgment, which is imminent, but doesnt therefore see a need to reconcile obedience to the prince to obedience to God; that is, there is no political implication to Jesus because he is subsumed in the coming judgment, so the state can remain as is.
Adiaphora separates knowledge from faith, and so encourages works. Faith is 'known' by demonstration. Faith, separated from salvation, means predestination is impossible. Knowledge, freed from orthodoxy, becomes skepticism and science. Knowledge freed from orthodoxy is conscience. The division--contradictin--of the church is now the division within man? The church's balance between deferral and revolution, between orthodoxy and works, the neither/nor both/and of its temporal power, breaks apart into conscience vs. rebirth?
NB that when Castellio claims that a man is being burned the implication is that all belief is from men. That is the end of orthodoxy. Man is that separation of truth and belief, the possibility of universal deception. What is the connection to Erasmus's disdain for the they, for the folly of negotium? And cf. Machiavelli's confidence in fooling all of the people all of the time.
What is at stake is the church's basis in anti donatism. It is always powerful to assume God is on your side, though you have to have a side, the thought of having a side, ie conscience. The balance lost is anti donatism. In this context, Luther is true to his Augustine: he is more anti donatist than the church, but that could only be in rejection of Erasmus? Predestination trumps any donatism, and his pauline erastianism prevents the church itself from donatism.
Because of the long history of anti semitism we might tend to think of Nazism as merely the culmination of a tradition, but isn't a break, a fetishization of anti semitism? There are other faultlines in European culture, why that one? If anti semitism flourished in the wake of the reformation, so did witch hunting. And Germany was famously highly assimilated. And they had the slavs to demonize.
If you believe your country has been taken from you you dont believe in democracy. Ie you think your democracy was taken from you, but it cant be.
If the Republicans are sure the vote for Democrats in 08 was not for Democrat policies then they have to admit it was against Republican policies.
Would submission, as rejection of self confidence, be the same as belief?
Was Newman unable to condemn slavery because to do so would admit religious difference? Anti slavery depends on man, and man on toleration?
What if we got very abstract, forgot about property and voting, and asked "am I responsible for harm I did not cause?" That would be the fundamental question? If so, the answer is yes, because you make a choice not to provide help. A conservative might say this vitiates free will, both of the one taking responsibility for another's actions and of the victim. A bright conservative might argue that this is consequentialist, and the real issue is whether the law is obeyed, not what the consequences are. This is, as I understand it, Sklar's objection to Scarry. We side with Scarry. The implication of the harm principle, with its emphasis on harm, is that we cannot draw a line between acts that cause harm and the act of choosing against ending harm. We cannot draw a line between positive and negative. Im convinced that autonomy assumes or implies responsibility for the other. All I'm really saying is that the golden rule applies: the more I define myself by my independence of the other the closer I pull him to me.
Some context: I assume the political arises out of religious dissension; that any non religious law runs into the diremption; that natural right theories must be theistic (or crypto Kantian, viz Hittinger on Ferris and George). When is faith functional, vs. command? For Harris, eg, it's always functional, about fear of death. We make random distinctions between cults and religions, even within religions: Mormonism can be a religion, the fundamentalist encampments are not. So the American jihadi: because he is American we assume the religion is serving a psychological purpose. (If I call Mormonism a grift gotten out of hand, I'm still not disagreeing with Bloom's approval of it as uniquely American?)
Thesis: Islam is uniquely (?) vulnerable to fanaticism, because it eliminates mediation between man and God. And in so doing, eliminates inwardness, psychology, philosophy: orthopraxy, not orthodoxy. There is no Islamic culture, only the interaction of Islam with other cultures, in Spain, Persia, India. Or, from another perspective, if Diamond is right the nomadic Arabs were unable to settle in their environment, to create cities, and hence culture. The interaction with the first world, therefore, based in oil, is really on top of a bottomless difference. Think of men in robes walking around Dubai skyscrapers (mortgaged to the hilt). But also, is the relation of faith and sex sharper in Islam, does it offer an absolute erasure of the sexual (by the absolute segregation of women)? Is it significant that Gahan and Hammani are "converted" just out of puberty? Islam offers the absolute opposite of western liberalism (and its privacy): the opportunity for martyrdom. And in martyrdom the convergence of law and death. (Martyrdom by suicide belies the point?) Indifference to death is to be one with the will of God? Everything that worries me about evangelicalism seems to made explicit in Islam. An abstraction or totalization of religion, among a people living in the most inhospitable land. A religion well suited to conquest?
Is conspiracy theorizing due to 40 years of conservative attacks on reality (conspiracy replaces democracy, and human intent replaces science) or is it a remnant of theism? The silent majority, the (real) country within the country.
"Campus Conservatives": aggressively offending people's sensibilities upholds the universal, or/and pares the perversity posing as diversity. Probably significant that there is no argument, only performance.
Natural law is a way to give content to the thought of man, make him comprehensible and thus attach him to orthodoxy. It does respond to Lutheran misanthropy, but more to the thought of man that precedes Luther.
Adiaphora and the fundamentals flip places for the enlightenment. The fundamental becomes personal, and, because rooted only in--answerable only to--God, protected. Or rather, adiaphora pushes the fundamentals inward to disconnect them, to bifurcate orthodoxy into two levels. NB Elizabeth on windows into men's souls. The internal, conscience, becomes, by definition, immune to coercion. Cf Brazil. Immune to coercion presumes a separation of law and force: conscience is the emergence of this separation, the possibility of rationality as law, and the separation of law and execution or punishment, of the rule of law rather than of a man over men.
Does toleration for conscience underlie Locke's idea of consent, differently from Hobbes? Ie Hobbes does not discuss law, his sovereign is not by law, but superior to it, law is his means. His argument is Foucault's: the power of life is the power of death. To hold the social contract to lawfulness requires that conscience be identifiable with faith, ie not secular, not available to atheists? The alternative to lawful contract would be Kant through Rawls, as attempts to overcome the problem, or the idea of the gift and positive law theory as indifference to it. Neuhaus is thus consistent with Locke in arguing that a strain of democratic theory presumes faith.
Toleration for conscience underlies free will.
As conscience becomes God it becomes unamenable by force, by govt, and imperative. This is the paradox of democracy: the individual must assume he is right or wouldnt bother to vote, but could still be wrong, ie not in the majority.
The distinction between otium and negotium is mapped onto inside/outside, with a loss of the edge of paradox in More. Conscience is without power, in two senses; the place without power is nowhere. Surrendering power is folly. Truth is the absence of power, that which commands assent. But otium, for More and Erasmus, wasnt fiction (Sidney). And the power sphere is negotium was not eliminable. Where conscience is real power is not, where power is real conscience is not. The emergence of conscience thus implies or coincides with the reduction of negotium to negotiation in the economic sense, to contract (the overtaking of the political by contract theory?). Machiavelli refused this reduction, and looks amoral. (The use of mercenaries would be the ultimate commercialization?) As the liberty of the city is the liberty of its citizens, so the citizen is soldier. Erasmus despises war: does this rest on an expectation of class? Does it produce economics? Cf. the tolerant Ragusans, the Venetians, the Dutch: all the cultures West despises (as if death were always violence, and life only valuable set against it). Eg the Dutch preventing Stuyvesant from excluding Jews in NY.Was there discussion of the aristocracy lapsing from the warrior class to the property class? In Burke? We know the truism that a republic cant be too big; therefore larger states--not cities--fall into classes. Re the emergence of economics nb the passions and the interests. Also that conscience is the lever on society, as if outside of it, from which totalitarian projects can begin. The transformation of man, from within. The sanctity of conscience relegates govt to the consensual. Ie, the incompetence of govt in matters of conscience, that it can only falsify conscience, separates church and state (Bainton is unimpressed with Locke because he doesnt like separation, Zagorin likes Locke because he likes separation?) Govt can be by consent because it is powerless in religion? (Ie, not by right, more by default?)
Conscience is the 'ground' of right, from which govt is contracted, the un-natural state of nature? Indeed, for Locke, the 'end' of govt is preservation of 'property,' which includes life and liberty; the state of nature is not very natural at all, and govt is restricted by its 'ends'. But NB especially that heads of state are said to be in a state of nature; that war is to seek domination over another. Contra Machiavelli, but with Erasmus, political society is the opposite of war. [The premise of equality (I mean assumption, but that too has two meanings), that no man, qua man, can rule another man; the law before the law, the contract before the contract; that every man is his own executive in the state of nature; govt as means to end rather than end in itself (what is relation to man as end?).] Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Acton is repeating Augustine, but in the age of conscience?
NB that Machiavelli believes that power is superseded only through power. The northerners seek to find common ground, reason eg. Utopia, not war.
Understand Burke's revulsion at these contract theories, at political 'science,' at the presumption of 'explaining' ourselves to ourselves, alienating and objectifying ourselves; at the extraction of the political from all context and deduction of society from it.
Liberals believe in taking from those who dont need it and giving to those who do. That means big govt, but not strong govt. Conservatives believe in small govt, but strong govt: able to enact what laws it wants and executing them without exception.
Is free will identifiable with the thought of death? ie of my finitude? My disinterestedness is my awareness of my finitude. And evil with the denial of it?
I have been confused. An argument against property (proof that property is not) is not compatible with the idea of democracy as gift. And the gift with meta govt, universal suffrage, constitutionalism. Communism doesnt escape property; state ownership is still ownership; thus the similarities with feudalism, and indifference to conscience, the individual, politics. (cf. Pound vs. money, capitalism vs. class and nationality?) The only non property is the gift, which, again, I am going to identify with universal suffrage, the separation of the political from the law. But is anti slavery then a gift? If the golden rule is; the recognition of the other in the relinquishing of the third person law. Giving up the law is also giving up punishment (turn the other cheek). What's required is suspension of faith; that's where we start from, where the gift comes in--it is not a question of giving up a law of reason to which assent is possible, but of toleration, for which there can be no law. I am close to the claim that xtianity is itself a relgion of toleration, which I guess depends on a reading of render unto caesar; but I dont think this would be acceptable even to an anglican.
Neomalthusianism is elaborate(ly circular): draining resources from the productive for the unproductive is what retards economic growth; the economy would be self sustaining, except for this govt'l redistribution on behalf of its clients, this rent. And these people would be working, if not for the availabilty of this rent.
Isaiah is our proof text against the death penalty. (Even in a universal govt the difference would persist, still just be a govt of man, for man; not of the other animals, eg.?--and the separation of man is always question begging?) I'm thinking of Iran having a law against making war on God. Is death penalty, even when restricted to murder, about the lawfulness of all law rather than any one law?
Is Locke's free contractarianism the same thing as his ecumenical theism? And both are self contradictory? A theory of the origin of property is as much trouble as unorthodoxy. The self evidence of law for him is the same as the self evidence of god? Govt forms for more efficacious executive powers; the law is given (cf. Hobbes, there is no law; he can have contract theory because he doesnt claim any law for it). Is "man" another name for this self evidence, his presumptive transparency to himself? Thus the reification of "reason". Both God and law are untouched, presumed; there is no tension therefore in a consensual govt, because there is nothing to disagree about and nothing controversial for it to do.
Conservatism is fundamentally paternalism, and the political is any challenge to the rights of the father? We can see it in Locke and Burke, and Dickens. The emancipation of women is deeply disturbing; any crossing of the line between the clay and the maker is intolerable because it destroys the father. But post Darwin it is hard to defend patriarchy outside of a religious context. Neuman may have realized he was dissembling, but in any event the entirety of the conservative project is pushed into dishonesty by this problem. Is the family really in trouble if paternalism is? Is paternalism ingrained in the culture, or the opposite? To say that Father Knows Best is just to raise the question; the heartbreaking end of Fiddler; the urgency of the question in Boogie Nights and Magnolia. This is not Lakoff's pyschological argument: one can really believe that the family is in danger and thus everything else is in danger too. Yet except for some baptist declarations about male headmanship the right disguises this agenda as pro-family. As if there are no families on the left.
Obvious point via Diamond: if you are always looking for food and shelter you dont have time to make culture. There is nothing to hand down from generation to generation if there is no surplus from year to year.
Hell is other people means the persistence of anthropocentrism?
The rule of law, the separation of law and person, the accountability of the sovereign, these are all liberal problems. Conservative anthropocentrism doesnt distinguish command from law. Ie we create our own chicken egg problem of the authorization of the sovereign(ty).
There is no freedom in error and you can't consent to law. All (meta) govt is for the prevention of corruption by power? (So Locke wasnt wrong to focus on the executive.) For the conservative power is ineluctable because man is evil, fallen from the law; for liberals because we can never agree on the law? For conservatives polities fall into the dimension of religious unity; for liberals all political claims are ultimately universal (individualist): or, rather?, without specifically religious authority?
So liberal democracy is an effort to govern without dependence on religion and without power corrupting. Power is ineluctable: only religion could unify; and we dont claim to have overcome diremption: we 'vote' because we dont 'know'. The application of the bill of rights to the states opens a floodgate of individual vs. community conflicts; a federal govt dedicated to the individual over the community or family looks monolithic even if its power is in the name of the individual. The question of what prejudice (in Burke's sense?) is tolerable, or not the business of govt to correct--what, in Berlin's language, is natural--of what to grant to conservatism, because it has no bearing on the political question of tolerance and checks and balances, remains? And is not necessarily the constitutional question of whether there is a bar on regulation of sex (no) or on voluntary school prayer (no).
Originalist theories would claim to start over (Rousseau); to subject sovereignty to law; to identify govt authority with morality, to which it is itself subject; it doesnt exceed the law, as by controlling borders, it is not answerable only to God; to totalize society, by identifying the origin and by perfectionism: the closer the sovereign to law and the people to morality the less need there is of sovereign exception. The identity of law and morality denies evil (the necessity of command and punishment, the superiority of the sovereign to the law). Not subject to a human, humanity is transparent to itself; nothing can escape its dominion or correction; disagreement must be false consciousness, etc.
What makes Hobbes, and Machiavelli, seem sui generis in their contexts, hence modern, is their a-theism?
Tolerance creates man; man challenges property (inequality)? If you believe that man 'exists' you can believe that politics does not impinge economics, that there is something purely political, protected in and by "rights." Thus Waldron? The appeal of libertarianism is simply the obviousness of property as a stopping point. Property as the medium--and content--of consent. But does this hold if govt is not another person, ie king? Is property the border of consent or its conscience? Is consent required of the property holding class, or of all men? The more conditions parliament put on the king the closer they got to reform: the king was the site of the political.
If of all men, we have the idea of all men, and of mutual responsibility. It's not that property is de-based and un-founded, but that it is irrelevant, or, better, impotent, so that the golden rule applies. As if we found ourselves with this distribution of property? You are only more than your property if you can give it away? As if you were dead--turning the other cheek.
True autonomy is no possession, at least of land? Is non power? esp. over others? Think of dependence as giving you power; power as separate from law (responsibility, ie even if the dependence is not your fault). Power is not tolerable because conscience is opposite of power. Cf. the difference between non slavery as self ownership and no ownership.
If of all men, we are seeing power in a way that Machiavelli did, or could, a way that class obscured in the north? The modern day version of property qualification is the restriction of govt to maintaining a stable market, presuming the voluntarity of all participants, ie of everyone, blocks out religion (protects it?), even if true would simply evade the political.
Rainsborough's every man has a life = Castellio the heretic is a man?
The tea party seems to be saying the same things republicans have been saying for 40 years. When the party divided over appealing to independents and staying pure it produced the tea party. But if the tea party doesnt recognize itself in the GOP, it must be spiraling into impossible purity.
Per Skinner, the development of modern political thought is the development of the possibility of revolution. Think about that. The political only begins in the resistance to govt, in the definition or recognition of govt: that it is something that could be changed. Different from God, or God's command? No concept of the political, no concept of office?
Reading Southern on Abelard and Heloise, the reality of sexuality must have been so hightened by its rejection.
The "Arminian" / socinian pro anglicans had no reason to doubt that a rational religion was possible. The discrepancy of reason and faith would be revealed over time. They didnt foresee Darwin; would barely be aware of Gallileo?
Roy Porter's 'The Enlightment': "For one thing, ever since the American and French Revolutions, a programme of political goals has established itself definitively in the Western world. We all now believe in government of the people, by the people, for the people. We believe in universal suffrage. We believe that democracy safeguards liberty; we believe in parliament, in elections, in representative government, in the party system. For better or worse, these have become the sacred cows of Western 'democracy.'" [23-4] But do we believe?
Maybe fear isnt tool for undermining democracy, but the result of loss of faith in democracy, in man, retrenchment in religion (certainty). Islamism isnt problem because unmodern, but because an enemy. Against individuals, one chooses prejudice, tradition, family and religion, a purposeful life, being at home in the world (of our creator). That toleration asked too much, too much uncertainty, about gender, about death? Yet we dont surrender science, progress, the driving force of capitalism? Our very ability to destroy the world? Asking people to vote against their interest in favor of principle has a limit. We can see the conservative argument so clearly, against liberalism, not in defense of the given, ie we see the premises of liberalism, because the owl has flown? Is it just that I am old enough not to take liberalism for granted, to see the other side, or that I give too much ground in arguing for liberalism as a choice of worldview, a commitment, not an argument commanding assent by any rationality? How much of this retrenchment from democracy, from universalism, is related to a sense of American weakness, decline?
Cf. Locke on reasonable xtianity with Erasmus and Browne? The significance of friendship, from Browne to Falkland, and More and Erasmus before?
Without exploration would there have been "savages" and hence a study of man's emergence from savagery? And hence perfectionism?
Death penalty precludes any kind of perfectionism? Blanks out the human itself? Holds open the place of God, denies Isaiah, and denies the concept of a life; separates man from man, there is no rule of man, nor its absence, ie conscience.
Enlightenment opposition to superstition and prejudice means it must be a minority taste?
Greater transparency of man to man and power over himself is greater power for state, unto revolution and re-education, going back to savagery and doing it right; Burke and Foucault agree?
That know thyself would amount only to technology; the objectification of self/man. Only really knowledge in Hegel, as knowledge of spirit in history, by blanking out Darwin et al.