"Edwina Taborsky" <tabor...@primus.ca>
wrote:
Terry - please see my comments below:
1] I don't think my understanding of fascism is a 'small minority conception'. I won't take a Wikipedia definition as legitimate and refer you to such works as Robert Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism; Roger Eatwell: Fascism: A History. Of course, there's Mussolini's definition. See also Popper's long definition and analysis in his books: The Open Society and Its Enemies.
. All of them focus on the definition of fascism as a collective ideology [which is what makes it 'left' rather than 'right' - for the 'right' ideology promotes the individual while the left promotes the collective'. ]. The point about fascism, with its rejection of individual reason and freedom, is its focus on the organic nation [of which you are just an inherent member] as a determinant of the future. This also puts it firmly in the area of 'historicism' with that notion of a determined future utopia. Its rejection of individual reason and freedom and its focus on a 'higher authority as embedded in the State' puts it within the ideology of the collective.[See Plato's Republic; an outline of fascism - so, it's hardly a modern ideology!!!]. The fact that it is commonly opposed to communism is superficial - for both reject the individual reason and freedom; both are utopian and focused on an a priori 'future goal of perfection'. Both function within, if I may compare: the emotionalism of Firstness and the pure intellectualism of pure Thirdness. Totally alienated from the realities of Secondness - and the 'lesser' Thirdness.
2] I agree - fascism [and communism] reject and deny the famed Social Contract. Since they reject the individual, then, of course, they are not interested in any contractual participation of these individuals in their own governance.
3] I don't see that capitalism is toxic. In fact, I see that capitalism, which means that economic production is in the control of private and free individuals - rather than the State or an aristocracy - has moved more people out of poverty than any economic system in the world. And note - that capitalism doesn't emerge from fascism!
4] I also don't understand your term of 'fascist capitalism'. You haven't explained it.
5 I have no idea what you mean by 'alt-right fascist pseudo-Christianity and fascist capitalism.'. Capitalism, in my definition, can't be fascist [or communist] since its operation is focused around the individual, while that of fascism and communism rejects individual freedoms and economic decision-making. I refer you to Fernand Braudel's magnificent histories of the development of the market economy in the 15th-17th centuries in Europe. See also Milton Friedman's work [eg, Free to Choose]. And F. Hayek's famed 'The Road to Serfdom]
A data source for exploring which nations operate within individual freedoms, is to examine the number of inventions, patents, new enterprises in each nation. The USA is the strongest in these fields.
6] Democracy is a messy system - as many have attested, for aligning the freedom of the individual [Firstness and Secondness] with the restraints of the collective habits-Rules [Government] is always contentious - but- to have only ONE of these three universes/categories in operation is disastrous. All three have to interact. Furthermore, to reject historicism, or an a priori destiny and leave the future open - is emotionally difficult for it involves risk - and most of us prefer security, even under a 'gentle tyrant' rather than risk. So democracy has to be always an active process, one which we cherish and support - and where we reject any hints or efforts to remove these freedoms.
Edwina
Edwina
On Sat 04/07/20 12:27 PM , Terry L Rankin rankin.te...@hotmail.com sent:
From: Edwina Taborsky
Sent: Saturday, July 4, 2020 9:01 AM
To: tabor...@primus.ca; 'Peirce-L' ; g...@gnusystems.ca; Terry L Rankin
Subject: Re: RE: RE: [PEIRCE-L] The Pragmatic Trivium
ET> Based on your outline - I'm not sure that you and I are in agreement on all points.
Apparently I was mistaken to suppose we were.
ET> I'm not sure what 'fascist capitalism' means. Fascism is a 'leftist' ideology, promoting the collective vs the individual. Capitalism is an economic ideology, based around the economic enterprises of the private individual.
That’s a pretty small minority conception of ‘fascism’ – actually, from Wikipedia, the more common and widely acknowledged conception is that it’s “a form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism [1][2] characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, as well as strong regimentation of society and of the economy[3] which came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe.[4] The first fascist movements emerged in Italy during World War I, before spreading to other European countries.[4] Opposed to liberalism, Marxism, and anarchism, fascism is placed on the far right within the traditional left–right spectrum.[4][5] [6]” [emphasis added]
ET> What I rejected in James was, as you point out, a totalitarian process, based on his idea of 'the perfect state' - an idea which Popper outlines as found in the ideology of 'historicism'. Historicism is a view based around an innate destiny of a natural [or God-given] destiny of mankind/or a special group - and the path towards some kind of ultimate utopian perfection. Whether found in Plato, or Hegel or Marx - or Mussolini or Hitler or the UN - it relies on an ideology based, as I see it, in the emotional vacuity of a bond between Firstness and Thirdness. That is - it's removed from pragmatic reality. And it is inevitably disastrous.
Here, you seem to align James more closely to the common understanding of fascism as given in Wikipedia and quoted above … and, IMHO, rightly so. I struggle with the idea that ideologies (be they religious, philosophical, political, social, scientific, cultural, or whatever) are “removed from practical reality,” however. I find it difficult to reconcile that with the pragmatic maxim Peirce expressed, for example. For me, fascism is the abrogation of the very idea of any form of social contract, which is how and why it is inherently a totalitarian ideology that, as you say, is inevitably disastrous. Indeed, fascism is the tyrannous ground from which the toxic fruits of rapacious unfettered capitalism inevitably spring in abundance. Hence my view that fascist capitalism is the black heart of the global regime running the world today.
ET> I prefer Popper's 'piecemeal' bricolage which is based around the individual. I think the US Declaration of Independence, which is one of the greatest documents in history, to be an excellent example of this view. The individual is, of course, an entity grounded in Secondness [as well as 1ns and 3ns] - but all three interact and constantly confront each other with their data and perimeters.
On paper, The US DofI indeed is a magnificent manifesto. In practice, especially 244 years later, however, it’s an irrelevant relic – an anachronism – relative to the truth and reality of USAmerica in the 21st century. Along with the Constitution and its Bill of Rights (also a magnificent document), the US DofI is a symbolic cornerstone of our civil religion and its pseudo-patriotic mythology. Together with the red-white-and-blue iconically symbolic US flag and emblematic Eagle, they’ve been completely expunged from social, economic, cultural, and political truth and reality in the US, displaced by the tyranny of alt-right fascist pseudo-Christianity and fascist capitalism. Meanwhile a bitterly divided citizenry stumbles around in the semiotic dissonance of still clinging to the USAmerican mythology and its civil religion, which blocks all discernment of truth and reality, both individually and collectively, with temperamental allergy to rational bricolage being just another pandemic in the world, most virulent and morbid in USAmerica.
My apologies for reading into your post to the list what apparently wasn’t there.
One Peace,
Terry
On Fri 03/07/20 11:48 PM , Terry L Rankin rankin.te...@hotmail.com sent:Edwina & list,
It seems you and I are in agreement to at least some extent, Edwina, on common Peircean and Popperian grounds.
In my Peircean philosophy of science and theistic view, James’ and Dewey’s co-opting and corruption of Peirce’s pragmat(ic)ism facilitated the hybridization of anti- and post-Peircean utilitarian pragmatism with the neopositivist scientism imported from Europe’s Vienna Circle between the Great War and WWII. The subsequent ascent of USAmerican fascist capitalism through the Cold War era to become the contemporary domestic police state and global neoliberalism ruling the world today under its new (World Economic Forum) “Great Reset” from “state (fascist) capitalism” through “shareholder (fascist) capitalism” to its latest (as of January this year at Davos) “ stakeholder (fascist) capitalism” is, I suggest, exactly the seed of totalitarianism you sense in James, spread now a century later like a genetically engineered toxic kudzu to destroy the planet and most of the life on it in what’s widely acknowledged to be the anthropogenic 6th mass extinction level event on Earth (‘MELEE#6’). The demon seed that spawned the fascist capitalist Fourth Reich we’re in today is that neopositivist scientism fertilizing the pragmatism ovum of utilitarianism to destroy the world and the lifeforms it sustains, including us.
Peirce was an existentialist good-faith road not taken at a crossroads that now turns out to have been a fatal mistake. Taking the other path, what James, Dewey, Carnap, Neurath, and others unleashed instead is the worst-faith tyranny of global fascist capitalism to carry the day and humanity’s future into that MELEE#6 truth and reality, the signs of which have just begun to appear in common experience. COVID-19 may in fact be the first death scything in the onrushing bad night into which most of us will go anything but gently before the end of the century if not much sooner. With that ‘perfect society’ delusion as the future agenda, small wonder Harvard all but buried ‘the American Aristotle’ in ignominious penury during his life and beyond his death. That strikes me as an alluring Occam reduction despite the improbability of the elitist power and wealth conspiracism it would require.
To the extent that we are in fact aligned on at least some elements of Peirce and Popper in light of the contemporary states of nature, union, and the world at large we’re in today, Edwina, I appreciate the corroboration, however limited it may be. You surely know Peirce far better than I, so wherever you may doubt or dispute my views as stated in this message, please share your thoughts further so I may sharpen my own. Thanks!
Still in One Peace,
Terry
From: Edwina Taborsky
Sent: Friday, July 3, 2020 3:45 PM
To: 'Peirce-L' ; g...@gnusystems.ca
Subject: Re: RE: [PEIRCE-L] The Pragmatic Trivium
I personally find the comments by Henry James the elder rather ..I'm not sure of the word. Not merely naïve but possibly alarming.
I consider that the agenda to develop a 'perfect society' has always been a basis for totalitarian subjugation - whether it be the socialism of fascism or communism; whether it be an isolate cult or an ideology.
Such an agenda, in my view, ignores that we are material, finite entities, and as such in a mode of Secondness, which is a mode of 'brute interaction' - and diversity rather than homogeneity. Furthermore, we cannot ignore that there is no such thing as 'perfection' - whatever that means. Instead, I prefer the 'bricolage' of Karl Popper, his rejection of 'historicism' [vs a theistic interpretation, ie by recognizing God as the author of the play performed on the historical stage" [The Open Society and Its Enemies, p8]. AND the open evolution of both Popper and Peirce, where, with the reality of both Firstness and Secondness and Thirdness - there is no such thing as 'perfect'.
Edwina
On Fri 03/07/20 1:39 PM , g...@gnusystems.ca sent:Gary R, list,
I just came across a piece of the reverse side of Turning Signs that strikes me as relevant to the “ways in which Peirce's philosophical trivium might help inform the aesthetics, ethics, and critical thinking of the world as it emerges from the coronavirus pandemic” — and relevant in a way that I don’t think has been discussed in this thread before. It’s only a 3-to-5 minute read: http://www.gnusystems.ca/TS/snc.htm%23x14&data="">" target="_blank"> http://www.gnusystems.ca/TS/snc.htm%23x14&data="">" target="_blank"> http://www.gnusystems.ca/TS/snc.htm#x14 .
Gary f.
From: Gary Richmond <gary.richm...@gmail.com>
Sent: 13-Jun-20 16:04List,
In a recent op-ed piece titled "The End of College as We Knew It" ( https://tinyurl.com/ybha8mhb), Frank Bruni reflects on something I've been informally discussing with friends and colleagues now for years; namely, that "A society without a grounding in ethics, self-reflection, empathy and beauty is one that has lost its way” (Brian Rosenberg, recently president of Macalester College). It seems to me that this has happened in the United States.
It has long seemed to me that America today has largely abandoned what might be called the normative trivium of aesthetics, ethics, and logic -- Peirce's three Normative Sciences, not the classical trivium (for which see Sister Miriam Joseph's 2002 book, The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric) that he generalized to serve as the three branches of Logic as Semeiotic.
This philosophical trivium points to the possible application of Peirce's three Normative Sciences -- not their theoretical forms, but rather their ordinary and potentially pragmatic guises as they appear in life practice, including reflection and action upon what is beautiful in art and nature, what is ethical in our behavior in the world, and how we can apply 'critical commonsenseism' in our quotidian lives. Bruni writes: " We need writers, philosophers, historians. They’ll be the ones to chart the social, cultural and political challenges of this pandemic -- and of all the other dynamics that have pushed the United States so harrowingly close to the edge. In terms of restoring faith in the American project and reseeding common ground, they’re beyond essential. "
Bruni's op-ed reflection came in part in response to a recent article by Rosenberg in The Chronicle of Higher Education ; see "How Should Colleges Prepare for a Post-Pandemic World" ( https://www.chronicle.com/article/How-Should-Colleges-Prepare/248507). Rosenberg writes: “If one were to invent a crisis uniquely and diabolically designed to undermine the foundations of traditional colleges and universities, it might look very much like the current global pandemic.” In a similar vein, Professor Andrew Belbanco, president of the Teagle Foundation which gives as its purpose promoting the liberal arts, writes: “This is not only a public health crisis and an economic crisis, though Lord knows it’s both of those. It’s also a values crisis. It raises all kinds of deep human questions: What are our responsibilities to other people? Does representative democracy work? How do we get to a place where something like bipartisanship could emerge again?”
Commenting on the economic divide of the American university, Bruni notes that "the already pronounced divide between richly endowed, largely residential schools and more socioeconomically diverse ones that depend on public funding grows wider as state and local governments face unprecedented financial distress. A shrinking minority of students get a boutique college experience. Then there’s everybody else." Gail Mellow, former president of LaGuardia College of the City University of New York (where I taught for decades before my retirement) is quoted as saying, “We always knew that America was moving more and more toward very different groups of people," to which Bruni adds, "that movement is only accelerating."
Confronting all this will undoubtedly be one of the great challenges that America -- and for that matter, the world -- will have in the years and decades to come. The question I pose is: Can Peirce's version of pragmatism (or pragmaticism) -- which he also calls 'critical commonsenseism' -- creatively contribute to these enormous challenges? And, if so, how? And are there ways in which Peirce's philosophical trivium might help inform the aesthetics, ethics, and critical thinking of the world as it emerges from the coronavirus pandemic? If so, how?
[Note: I have Bcc'd this post to several former members of this forum, a few members who rarely if ever post but who have stayed in contact with me offlist, and a few friends and colleagues who have not been members but who may have an interest in this topic. Those who are not current members of the forum may send your thoughts on the topic off-list to me letting me know if I have your permission to post them.]
Best,
Gary
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