To be sure, every revolutionary movement has been led by the disinterested, who were motivated by compassion or by a passion for justice, and this, of course, is also true for Marx and Lenin. But Marx, as we know, had quite effectively tabooed these “emotions”—if today the establishment dismisses moral arguments as “emotionalism” it is much closer to Marxist ideology than the rebels—and had solved the problem of “disinterested” leaders with the notion of their being the vanguard of mankind, embodying the ultimate interest of human history.
Because of the undeniable relevance of these self-chosen properties to our appearance and role in the world, modern philosophy, starting with Hegel, has succumbed to the strange illusion that man, in distinction from other things, has created himself. Obviously, self-presentation and the sheer thereness of existence are not the same.
Because British conservatives avoided the dead ends and calamities of the nineteenth-century right in France and Germany, it is tempting to treat conservatism in Britain as a historic exception, perhaps a type all its own.
Rist says, “All human activities without any exceptions whatever involve some degree of assent. A totally non-voluntary act is an impossibility” (Stoic Philosophy, p.42). Seneca, for example, says “impulse never exists without the mind’s assent” (De Ira II.4 [Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, vol. 1, p. 419]). But one might wonder about the phrase “all human activities without any exceptions.”
The idea that biological properties and the structure of organisms arise from lower-level entities, but are novel and irreducible to the particulars from which the whole has emerged, became an increasingly significant theme in biology and in philosophy of biology by the late twentieth century. Arguments of emergence and complexity became important, too, in organizational management and systems theory, in which Polanyi’s work found new applications by the 1990s. [From the forward by Mary Jo Nye.]
You’re not obligated to win. You’re obligated to keep trying to do the best you can every day.
– Marian Wright Edelman
From @HeatherCoxRichardson quoting and writing about President Joe Biden:
Democracy is under assault around the world, he said. “We are in the midst of a fundamental debate about the future and direction of our world. We’re at an inflection point between those who argue that, given all the challenges we face — from the fourth industrial revolution to a global pandemic — that autocracy is the best way forward, they argue, and those who understand that democracy is essential — essential to meeting those challenges.”
“… [D]emocracy will and must prevail. We must demonstrate that democracies can still deliver for our people in this changed world. That, in my view, is our galvanizing mission.”
. . . .
In his speech, Biden emphasized not just the importance of democracy, but also how much work it is to keep it. “Democracy doesn’t happen by accident,” he said. “We have to defend it, fight for it, strengthen it, renew it. We have to prove that our model isn’t a relic of our history; it’s the single best way to revitalize the promise of our future.”
He did indeed sound like FDR when he concluded: “if we work together with our democratic partners, with strength and confidence, I know that we’ll meet every challenge and outpace every challenger.”
. . . .
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