In order for a state to survive, the citizens must obey its laws. But why should people obey the laws of the state? Presumably, because being a citizen is better than not being a citizen. This is to say that there is something about being part of a human political community that is better than not being part of a human political community. Some of the benefits include safety, comfort, friendship, and happiness. All of these things seem easier to achieve in a political state where laws and restrictions are in place regulating how people behave.
So, if the state needs people to follow its laws in order to survive, and the survival of the state benefits those in the state, then it would seem to be in everyone's interest for the state to actively promote the following of its laws.
How is this done? The best way to do this, is to set up institutions that educate citizens in the correct way. By education, I do not mean the skills to read charts or solve math problems. I mean the formation of character traits and habits that produce good people. It is in everyone's best interest for society to train us in a way that actively promotes certain values. It is in society's best interest to promote virtue among its citizens.
The above is an outline of an argument. It needs to be filled in, and in no way stands on its own as anything other than a brief sketch. But the sketch seems plausible. If the goal or end of the state is to make us better people, then it would behoove the state to instill in us certain moral habits, as opposed to a love of freedom for freedom's sake, or a love of money above all else. This outline of an argument sketches one of the main tenets of conservatism as I see it: The goal of a society is to make us better people. More will be written about this in the future.
-Cato the Youngest
Monday, February 29, 2016
Tuesday, February 23, 2016
Pessimism and Moderation
Here is a quote from The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss: "Machiavelli believes with Marx that religion is the opium of the people. But unlike Marx, Machiavelli believes that the opium will always be necessary because of the unchanging nature of both men and the world. The world is characterized by scarcity, whereas human desires are limitless."
For the time being, I am not not interested in Strauss, Machiavelli, or Marx, but in the "unchanging nature of both men and the world." According to this quote the idea is that human desire is unlimited, while nature herself is unlimited. This is a fundamental disparity that cannot be changed.
As I mentioned in the last post, a utopian optimism is a feature of liberalism. Whether this is the case of the classical liberals, who thought that men could excel given freedom and the chance to pursue their own desires, or the progressive liberals, who see human nature as something that arises out of social conditioning or historical circumstances, the goal is a more peaceful society with happier people who have more of their desires met.
The conservative sees this as an unrealistic goal. If human nature is relatively stable, at least in the sense that people always, and by nature, want more than what they have, then no amount of social engineering will take away the universal hardships that we as humans face. This does not mean that no condition is better than any other. On the contrary, the conservative positively affirms that civilized society is better than anarchy. It is because of the value that society has for humans, that conservatives are wary of changing it. Civilization is more fragile than people realize. It takes constant work and upkeep from us, the citizens. By rushing headlong into the utopian future, we might be giving up what we already have, civilized society, for an imaginary chimera, the perfect society.
When facing a desire there are two ways to proceed. One can change the circumstances in order to sate the desire, or one can change the desire itself in order to no longer be pained by the lack of satisfaction. The conservative, the proponent of virtue ethics, will opt to moderate his desires. The modern liberals, the consequentialist and utopians, have opted to change the world. For the utopian to succeed, he must find a way to make nature more plentiful.
Moderation, one of the cardinal virtues of the Ancients, is one of the keys to being a happy and successful person. In fact, all of the virtues are fundamental to happiness. Instead of changing nature, or hoping for a brighter future, the virtuous person perfects his own nature, insofar as this is possible in life, in order to harmonize the demands of humanity and the bounties of nature.
-Cato the Youngest
For the time being, I am not not interested in Strauss, Machiavelli, or Marx, but in the "unchanging nature of both men and the world." According to this quote the idea is that human desire is unlimited, while nature herself is unlimited. This is a fundamental disparity that cannot be changed.
As I mentioned in the last post, a utopian optimism is a feature of liberalism. Whether this is the case of the classical liberals, who thought that men could excel given freedom and the chance to pursue their own desires, or the progressive liberals, who see human nature as something that arises out of social conditioning or historical circumstances, the goal is a more peaceful society with happier people who have more of their desires met.
The conservative sees this as an unrealistic goal. If human nature is relatively stable, at least in the sense that people always, and by nature, want more than what they have, then no amount of social engineering will take away the universal hardships that we as humans face. This does not mean that no condition is better than any other. On the contrary, the conservative positively affirms that civilized society is better than anarchy. It is because of the value that society has for humans, that conservatives are wary of changing it. Civilization is more fragile than people realize. It takes constant work and upkeep from us, the citizens. By rushing headlong into the utopian future, we might be giving up what we already have, civilized society, for an imaginary chimera, the perfect society.
When facing a desire there are two ways to proceed. One can change the circumstances in order to sate the desire, or one can change the desire itself in order to no longer be pained by the lack of satisfaction. The conservative, the proponent of virtue ethics, will opt to moderate his desires. The modern liberals, the consequentialist and utopians, have opted to change the world. For the utopian to succeed, he must find a way to make nature more plentiful.
Moderation, one of the cardinal virtues of the Ancients, is one of the keys to being a happy and successful person. In fact, all of the virtues are fundamental to happiness. Instead of changing nature, or hoping for a brighter future, the virtuous person perfects his own nature, insofar as this is possible in life, in order to harmonize the demands of humanity and the bounties of nature.
-Cato the Youngest
Sunday, February 21, 2016
Conservative Principles - Virtue Ethics
I begin today's post with a quote from Ross Douthat:
"Conservatism only really exists to say “no” to whatever liberalism asks for next, it fights nearly all its battles on its enemy’s terrain and rarely comes close to articulating a coherent set of values of its own. Liberalism has science and progress to pursue—and ultimately immortality, the real goal but also the one that rarely dares to speak its name—whereas conservatives have … well, a host of goals, most of them in tension with one another. Neoconservatives want to return us to the New Deal era; Claremont Instituters want to revive the spirit of the Founding; Jacksonians want to rescue American nationalism from the one-worlders and post-patriots; agrarians and Crunchy Cons pine for a lost Jeffersonian or Chestertonian arcadia. Some conservatives think that liberalism-the-political-philosophy can be saved from liberalism-the-Baconian-project and that modernity can be rescued from its utopian temptation; others join Alasdair MacIntyre in thinking that the hour is far too late for that, and we should withdraw into our homes and monasteries and prepare to guard the permanent things through a long Dark Age.
Liberals, on the other hand, dream the same dream and envision the same destination, even if they disagree on exactly how to get there. It’s the dream of Thomas Friedman as well as Karl Marx, as old as Babel and as young as the South Korean cloners. It whispered to us in Eden, and it whispers to us now: ye shall be as gods. And no conservative dream, in the 400 years from Francis Bacon until now, has proven strong enough to stand in its way."
If liberals are those who find truth in the words of the serpent from the garden of Eden, then conservatives are those who do not. From this point of view, the liberalism is an inherently optimistic philosophy. It preaches happiness, progress, and maybe someday, a utopia. Conservatives are those pessimists who think that despite our best efforts, human nature is basically static, and that our best bet is to look to what has worked in the past, assuming that it will basically continue to work in the future.
The majority of traditional societies have advocated what is today known as virtue ethics. Virtue ethics is a theory that posits the goal of ethical/moral life to be the perfection of the human being by acquiring certain habitual states known as virtues. Thus, the ethical goal, was the betterment of the individual on a deep level. In contrast, the dominant mode of thinking in modern society is consequentialist, where the only relevant factor in deciding whether an action is considered right or wrong, is the the consequence of the action. Thus, unlike virtue ethics, the goal of modern ethics is to make the world a better place. This is done most often by giving to charity, respecting people's rights, giving them freedoms to fulfill their desires and promoting pleasure/comfort through a variety of means. Where virtue ethics promotes the perfection of the human being within the confines of human nature, consequentialist ethics tries to promote the perfection of the current state of affairs/world/society.
It seems that the conservative, as he was described above, is bound to reject consequentialism. If one is committed to the idea that world cannot be made better in any significant way, or to phrase it more moderately, if one recognizes that society is too complicated to be planned out and changed according to a plan, then it would be very shortsighted to think that the purpose of ethics would be to change the world for the better. A much better approach would be to perfect ourselves, insofar as this possible in life, and be the best human beings we are capable of.
-Cato the Youngest
It seems that the conservative, as he was described above, is bound to reject consequentialism. If one is committed to the idea that world cannot be made better in any significant way, or to phrase it more moderately, if one recognizes that society is too complicated to be planned out and changed according to a plan, then it would be very shortsighted to think that the purpose of ethics would be to change the world for the better. A much better approach would be to perfect ourselves, insofar as this possible in life, and be the best human beings we are capable of.
-Cato the Youngest
Tuesday, February 16, 2016
Religious Fudamentalism
Religious fundamentalists are the third common type of conservative one finds in America. Religious fundamentalism began in the early 20th century when a number of different sects and synods of Christianity agreed that there were certain fundamental tenets of Christianity that could not be ignored or altered, as many of the more progressive and liberal churches had begun to do. Along with this belief in the fundamentals of Christianity came a new importance on a purely literal reading of the Bible.
The problem with Religious fundamentalists is that 1) typically their religion is shallow, 2) they willfully ignore evidence from non-theological sources (scientific and philosophical), and 3) many of them are very unprincipled in their beliefs. All three of these points need some elaborating.
1) Fundamentalist religion is typically shallow. The meaning of this is twofold. First, fundamentalist religion tends to be a reaction to a scientific criticism of religion. Scientists, starting in the 18th century, began attacking religion on the grounds that many of the stories in the Bible didn't make literal sense, or couldn't be scientifically verified. In this situation someone like a Thomist would respond first, by making the philosophical point that not all knowledge is scientific, which implies that just because something is not scientific does not mean it isn't true, and second, by making the theological point that the Bible is not to be taken entirely literally. In contrast to this, the fundamentalist typically accepts the critic's argument that Biblical story cannot be scientifically verified, and from that infers that science itself must be suspect! This response is different not just in degree, but in type from that of the Thomist, or any sophisticated advocate of religion.
The second way in which religious fundamentalists are shallow is that they never move beyond the fundamentals. Religions grow and adapt (which does not necessarily mean that they change dogmas or adapt to the fads of society) in part by accumulating an oral tradition. This includes commentaries on scripture, stories and legends of Saints, folk tales, traditions, and a host of other things that make a religion more rich and suited to being lived by its adherents. The fundamentalist abandons all of this in the sake of a religion Sola Scriptura (by scripture alone).
2) The fundamentalist willfully ignores evidence from non-theological sources. This fact makes religious fundamentalism inherently dubious (not to mention uninteresting) to those who do not share their faith. Faith they may have, but reasons, they do not. And without reasons of some sort, one is not inclined to engage with them or trust their ideas, because they declare from the outset that they intend to ignore whole disciplines that seem worth pursuing.
3) Many fundamentalists are unprincipled in their beliefs. What this means is that fundamentalists seem very passionate about a seemingly random collection of topics, yet oddly ignore others. For example, fundamentalists are very worried about issues such as gay marriage, abortion, and birth control, but oddly silent about other Biblically sanctioned topics like usury. It would be quite refreshing to hear a Republican moral-majority candidate rail against student loan providers and credit card companies for their sinful interest rates, but alas, this does not happen. There are many other examples that could be brought forth, but I do not think they are needed.
The relationship between religion and conservatism (let alone religion and philosophy) is a highly complex one. One idea that is extremely interesting is that religion is needed for a stable society. Civilization needs law and order and this is exactly what a robust religion offers. It offers it by giving the average person incentive to act like a mature human being, where the secular law fails to do so. This is the role that Leo Strauss claims religion played for the wise men of the ancient world. In this case, religion and politics would have mutual interests and stakes in society. This topic cannot be taken up here, but the ideas of Leo Strauss and religion will surely be taken up again, and hopefully soon.
-Cato the Youngest
The problem with Religious fundamentalists is that 1) typically their religion is shallow, 2) they willfully ignore evidence from non-theological sources (scientific and philosophical), and 3) many of them are very unprincipled in their beliefs. All three of these points need some elaborating.
1) Fundamentalist religion is typically shallow. The meaning of this is twofold. First, fundamentalist religion tends to be a reaction to a scientific criticism of religion. Scientists, starting in the 18th century, began attacking religion on the grounds that many of the stories in the Bible didn't make literal sense, or couldn't be scientifically verified. In this situation someone like a Thomist would respond first, by making the philosophical point that not all knowledge is scientific, which implies that just because something is not scientific does not mean it isn't true, and second, by making the theological point that the Bible is not to be taken entirely literally. In contrast to this, the fundamentalist typically accepts the critic's argument that Biblical story cannot be scientifically verified, and from that infers that science itself must be suspect! This response is different not just in degree, but in type from that of the Thomist, or any sophisticated advocate of religion.
The second way in which religious fundamentalists are shallow is that they never move beyond the fundamentals. Religions grow and adapt (which does not necessarily mean that they change dogmas or adapt to the fads of society) in part by accumulating an oral tradition. This includes commentaries on scripture, stories and legends of Saints, folk tales, traditions, and a host of other things that make a religion more rich and suited to being lived by its adherents. The fundamentalist abandons all of this in the sake of a religion Sola Scriptura (by scripture alone).
2) The fundamentalist willfully ignores evidence from non-theological sources. This fact makes religious fundamentalism inherently dubious (not to mention uninteresting) to those who do not share their faith. Faith they may have, but reasons, they do not. And without reasons of some sort, one is not inclined to engage with them or trust their ideas, because they declare from the outset that they intend to ignore whole disciplines that seem worth pursuing.
3) Many fundamentalists are unprincipled in their beliefs. What this means is that fundamentalists seem very passionate about a seemingly random collection of topics, yet oddly ignore others. For example, fundamentalists are very worried about issues such as gay marriage, abortion, and birth control, but oddly silent about other Biblically sanctioned topics like usury. It would be quite refreshing to hear a Republican moral-majority candidate rail against student loan providers and credit card companies for their sinful interest rates, but alas, this does not happen. There are many other examples that could be brought forth, but I do not think they are needed.
The relationship between religion and conservatism (let alone religion and philosophy) is a highly complex one. One idea that is extremely interesting is that religion is needed for a stable society. Civilization needs law and order and this is exactly what a robust religion offers. It offers it by giving the average person incentive to act like a mature human being, where the secular law fails to do so. This is the role that Leo Strauss claims religion played for the wise men of the ancient world. In this case, religion and politics would have mutual interests and stakes in society. This topic cannot be taken up here, but the ideas of Leo Strauss and religion will surely be taken up again, and hopefully soon.
-Cato the Youngest
Sunday, February 14, 2016
Big Business Conservatives
In the last post I addressed a typical critique of libertarianism from a more traditionally conservative point of view. Today I will be looking at big-business conservatives (BBC). The BBC sees economic expansion and increased wealth as goals worth pursuing above all others. Like freedom, the highest value for the libertarian, monetary/economic gain is not a bad thing, it is just not a goal to be sought after for its own sake.
The BBC is typically a materialist. By this I do not mean that BBCs hold the philosophical view called materialism, which states that matter is the only thing that exists. BBCs are materialists in the sense that they seek after material goods and pleasures. In particular, money is very good at securing power, which most people use to then secure material comforts for themselves (house, cars, sex, etc...)
One of the best and oldest arguments against this sort of view comes from Socrates in Plato's dialogue the Euthydemus. In that dialogue, Socrates argues that the only truly valuable thing is wisdom (to be broader, we can say wisdom or knowledge). According to Socrates other things typically taken to be good, are only good if we know how to use them properly. On a common sense level, this argument is implicitly accepted by almost everyone. For example, having a cook-book is only good if we can utilize it to make meals. So if it is written in latin, the cookbook is worthless because we do not have the appropriate knowledge to make use of it. Again, consider a gun as a home-defense tool. If one knows how to properly use a gun, it is helpful. If one does not have the appropriate knowledge or wisdom, the gun becomes downright dangerous, which is the opposite quality one wants in a home-defense tool.
Let's look at this same argument on a more philosophical level. Are money and freedom valuable things in themselves, as libertarians and BBCs tend to assert? Only if we know how to use them, says Socrates and the traditional conservative. Consider the freedom to get completely drunk everyday. In this case, freedom leads to something bad, because freedom is only a tool or a means to achieve one's real goal. In the absence of knowledge, freedom is at best neutral. The same can be said of money or economic expansion. Is economic growth a worthy goal in itself? Only if we think that material possessions and the comforts provided by material possessions are the proper goal of a human life. Without knowledge and wisdom regarding how to use money, it, like freedom, is at best neutral.
Typically the libertarian and the BBC offer a counter-argument. What is ultimately good is getting what you want. Freedom and money allow us to get what we as individuals want. But this argument still misses the point. Some of the things we want are bad. A thing is not good just because we want it. Anyone familiar with a drug addict realizes this. Socrates would again insist that in order for you to want the right things, you must have knowledge or wisdom concerning what is good and what is bad. This position is a preview of one of the main tenets of the traditional conservative, namely, that what is good is having certain kinds of knowledge or wisdom.
As we have seen, the criticism against libertarians and BBCs is centered around the idea that at their core positions like these assert the wrong values. The criticism we will see in the next post, leveled against the religious fundamentalist, is of a different nature. Hopefully, within the next few days, we will finish with this preliminary critique of contemporary conservative values, and look more at developing what the traditional conservative actually believes.
-Cato the Youngest
The BBC is typically a materialist. By this I do not mean that BBCs hold the philosophical view called materialism, which states that matter is the only thing that exists. BBCs are materialists in the sense that they seek after material goods and pleasures. In particular, money is very good at securing power, which most people use to then secure material comforts for themselves (house, cars, sex, etc...)
One of the best and oldest arguments against this sort of view comes from Socrates in Plato's dialogue the Euthydemus. In that dialogue, Socrates argues that the only truly valuable thing is wisdom (to be broader, we can say wisdom or knowledge). According to Socrates other things typically taken to be good, are only good if we know how to use them properly. On a common sense level, this argument is implicitly accepted by almost everyone. For example, having a cook-book is only good if we can utilize it to make meals. So if it is written in latin, the cookbook is worthless because we do not have the appropriate knowledge to make use of it. Again, consider a gun as a home-defense tool. If one knows how to properly use a gun, it is helpful. If one does not have the appropriate knowledge or wisdom, the gun becomes downright dangerous, which is the opposite quality one wants in a home-defense tool.
Let's look at this same argument on a more philosophical level. Are money and freedom valuable things in themselves, as libertarians and BBCs tend to assert? Only if we know how to use them, says Socrates and the traditional conservative. Consider the freedom to get completely drunk everyday. In this case, freedom leads to something bad, because freedom is only a tool or a means to achieve one's real goal. In the absence of knowledge, freedom is at best neutral. The same can be said of money or economic expansion. Is economic growth a worthy goal in itself? Only if we think that material possessions and the comforts provided by material possessions are the proper goal of a human life. Without knowledge and wisdom regarding how to use money, it, like freedom, is at best neutral.
Typically the libertarian and the BBC offer a counter-argument. What is ultimately good is getting what you want. Freedom and money allow us to get what we as individuals want. But this argument still misses the point. Some of the things we want are bad. A thing is not good just because we want it. Anyone familiar with a drug addict realizes this. Socrates would again insist that in order for you to want the right things, you must have knowledge or wisdom concerning what is good and what is bad. This position is a preview of one of the main tenets of the traditional conservative, namely, that what is good is having certain kinds of knowledge or wisdom.
As we have seen, the criticism against libertarians and BBCs is centered around the idea that at their core positions like these assert the wrong values. The criticism we will see in the next post, leveled against the religious fundamentalist, is of a different nature. Hopefully, within the next few days, we will finish with this preliminary critique of contemporary conservative values, and look more at developing what the traditional conservative actually believes.
-Cato the Youngest
Friday, February 12, 2016
Libertarianism
Because this is a blog dealing with philosophy and conservative politics, it seems appropriate for my first substantial post to be one that considers the relationship between philosophical values and conservative politics. This is no easy question to answer. It becomes particularly difficult with the realization that a host of people with seemingly nothing in common are all labeled politically conservative by virtue of their anti-liberalism. For example, Friedrich Nietzsche, a traditional catholic, Donald Trump, a racist skinhead, Plato, and a typical large-business owner are all called conservative, when it is hard to see what exactly unites them under this label.
In this and the following posts I am going to explore the values that seem to inspire the three types of conservatives most often found in contemporary America. This list is obviously not exhaustive, but I think it offers a pretty good insight into the values that the majority of self-proclaimed conservatives adhere to.
The Libertarian: The libertarian values freedom. Libertarians descend intellectually from the early Enlightenment-era liberals who argued that given the opportunity to pursue their own good, men would do so. The idea is that if everyone is rational, then we should let people use their rationality to pursue what seems good to them. Interference from outside forces such as religious mandates, governmental authorities, or traditional strictures would serve merely to put artificial bounds on the use of the universal rationality to which all people have access.
Modern libertarians often express their love of freedom as a human right or a fear of the powers of the government. The idea, though, is the same. Freedom is the goal, and the purpose of the government is to guard our rights. The philosopher Robert Nozick described this as the night-watchman state. The government is here to alert us of, and protect us from, threats, much like a night-watchman guards the walls of a castle. The government is not here to support any sort of culture, religion, morality, or lifestyle, other than that which is necessary for us to make use of our personal freedom.
For the more traditionally minded conservative, freedom is not a goal in itself. Freedom is, at best, a means to an end (the ed being an objectively good life), and at worst, an excuse for poor behavior peddled by vice-mongers, greedy capitalists, the idle, and the immature. Before I am dismissed as too reactionary, take note that I do not mean all freedom is bad or that freedom is not valuable. Freedom is merely a means to an end, and it seems that it is not a particularly good means.
The internet is a perfect example of this. The internet gives us unlimited freedom to pursue whatever we want: education, mastery of a skill, access to art, new means of fostering relationships, and so on. What do most people actually use the internet for? Posting pictures of their lunch to social media sites and watching pornography. Given freedom people tend to squander it. This is in part because of the social conditions of our society, which is saturated in PR, advertising, and psychological manipulation. But therein lies the problem. The freedom so beloved by the libertarian is the same freedom used by the oligarchs of our society to diminish the freedom of the average person.
Much more could be said about libertarianism, and probably will in the future, but for now let it suffice to say that the libertarian sees freedom as a goal, where the traditional conservative sees freedom as a means to an end. The exact nature of that end is something to which we will need to pay special attention.
-Cato the Youngest
In this and the following posts I am going to explore the values that seem to inspire the three types of conservatives most often found in contemporary America. This list is obviously not exhaustive, but I think it offers a pretty good insight into the values that the majority of self-proclaimed conservatives adhere to.
The Libertarian: The libertarian values freedom. Libertarians descend intellectually from the early Enlightenment-era liberals who argued that given the opportunity to pursue their own good, men would do so. The idea is that if everyone is rational, then we should let people use their rationality to pursue what seems good to them. Interference from outside forces such as religious mandates, governmental authorities, or traditional strictures would serve merely to put artificial bounds on the use of the universal rationality to which all people have access.
Modern libertarians often express their love of freedom as a human right or a fear of the powers of the government. The idea, though, is the same. Freedom is the goal, and the purpose of the government is to guard our rights. The philosopher Robert Nozick described this as the night-watchman state. The government is here to alert us of, and protect us from, threats, much like a night-watchman guards the walls of a castle. The government is not here to support any sort of culture, religion, morality, or lifestyle, other than that which is necessary for us to make use of our personal freedom.
For the more traditionally minded conservative, freedom is not a goal in itself. Freedom is, at best, a means to an end (the ed being an objectively good life), and at worst, an excuse for poor behavior peddled by vice-mongers, greedy capitalists, the idle, and the immature. Before I am dismissed as too reactionary, take note that I do not mean all freedom is bad or that freedom is not valuable. Freedom is merely a means to an end, and it seems that it is not a particularly good means.
The internet is a perfect example of this. The internet gives us unlimited freedom to pursue whatever we want: education, mastery of a skill, access to art, new means of fostering relationships, and so on. What do most people actually use the internet for? Posting pictures of their lunch to social media sites and watching pornography. Given freedom people tend to squander it. This is in part because of the social conditions of our society, which is saturated in PR, advertising, and psychological manipulation. But therein lies the problem. The freedom so beloved by the libertarian is the same freedom used by the oligarchs of our society to diminish the freedom of the average person.
Much more could be said about libertarianism, and probably will in the future, but for now let it suffice to say that the libertarian sees freedom as a goal, where the traditional conservative sees freedom as a means to an end. The exact nature of that end is something to which we will need to pay special attention.
-Cato the Youngest
Welcome!
The purpose of this blog will be to look at topics which meet at the intersection of philosophy and politics. In the order of human affairs, philosophy is undoubtedly a nobler discipline than politics, but politics--and political theory--offer a unique vantage point from which to engage in philosophy. The true philosopher seeks to understand the harmony and ordering of reality so that he may live well by recreating this order in his life and actions. In this light, political thought becomes a type of philosophical speculation. The political is a realm of life where man creates harmony and instantiates values on a large scale, which is similar to what the philosopher does on a small scale. Thus, like Plato's Republic, this blog offers a chance to do philosophy by thinking through political topics. Philosophy, of course, is the discipline that has every other discipline and phenomena as its subject matter, and political science has the organization of the entire of humanity's pubic life as its subject matter. So don't be surprised if from time to time this blog deals with topics that seems to fall outside the intersection of philosophy and politics.
The name of this blog refers to Cato the Younger, a Roman statesman in the time of the late Republic. Cato was at once a philosopher, in the Stoic tradition, and a politician. Not only did Cato's Stoicism influence his politics, it seems that the values which completely shaped the course of his life and political career were grounded in Stoic principles.
Cato was notoriously conservative (or obstinately stubborn, depending on your point of view). This blog will take an unabashedly conservative viewpoint. This space of the intellectual spectrum seems lacking in contemporary America, where conservatives are primarily one of three things: 1) Libertarians, 2) Businessmen, or 3) Religious fundamentalists. Anyone familiar with the broader conservative tradition will realize that this is an impoverished selection of choices. One of the goals of this blog will be to examine the principles behind a more traditional type of conservatism.
-Cato the Youngest
The name of this blog refers to Cato the Younger, a Roman statesman in the time of the late Republic. Cato was at once a philosopher, in the Stoic tradition, and a politician. Not only did Cato's Stoicism influence his politics, it seems that the values which completely shaped the course of his life and political career were grounded in Stoic principles.
Cato was notoriously conservative (or obstinately stubborn, depending on your point of view). This blog will take an unabashedly conservative viewpoint. This space of the intellectual spectrum seems lacking in contemporary America, where conservatives are primarily one of three things: 1) Libertarians, 2) Businessmen, or 3) Religious fundamentalists. Anyone familiar with the broader conservative tradition will realize that this is an impoverished selection of choices. One of the goals of this blog will be to examine the principles behind a more traditional type of conservatism.
-Cato the Youngest
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