Philosophy in America Ia

It says something about my education that one of the most influential (at least in America) philosophers of the twentieth century was somebody I never heard of. Alisa Rosenbaum was a Russian Jewish emigre who came to America, became a successful screenwriter and novelist, and eventually the favorite philosopher of the right wing nutbaggery. She is in the news a bit these days because Anne C. Heller has written a new biography and is flogging it on some of the better book venues.

Except for a short excerpt or two, I haven't read any of her stuff, but that little was enough to provoke a visceral dislike. She wrote novels of ideas, which is to say novels where characters give long ideological lectures. Perhaps the most famous is here. The frank worship of Mammon has made her popular with the greedy ever since, despite some flaws of logical coherence and disdain for history. By positioning herself in direct opposition to 1 Timothy 6:9-10 - choosing the role of anti-Christ in the most direct way possible, she proclaims a radically anti-Christian ethic, but one well suited to certain investment bankers.

Never mind that her arguments hardly stand up to casual scrutiny.

Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes.

Of course if you recall enough history to know that the generator was created by the thought of those who never made any money from it, Francisco's logic looks a bit tenuous.

In the time of Jesus as well as our own, though, much of the time money flows to rentiers of various types - often those who persuade the government to grant them some sort of charter to extract money from everybody else.

Ayn Rand - that's what she changed her name to when she went Hollywood - was clever, but there doesn't appear to be much room for such subtleties in her monomania. Some inventors do profit handsomely, of course, and big chunks of wealth sometimes flow to the creators.

(Links to Francisco's money speech and 1 Timothy via Alex Tabarrok).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anti-Libertarian: re-post

The most pointed critique of social security and liberalism in general is the libertarian critique. The problem with libertarians, for a liberal, is that we have too much in common. We both believe in individual rights, tolerance of individual differences, and dislike government prescription of religion. The basic difference, it seems to me, is the different answers we give to Cain's (with thanks to the Captain - my original version had the corpse asking the question!) famous question: "Am I my brother's keeper?" That's not really my basic bitch against the libertarians though. My real complaint is the same as my complaint against most religion - its premise is a fraud. For those who can't stand to wait for the punchline, I believe that trying to implement libertarian principles leads to tyranny or social disintegration. Demonstrating that takes some historical (and pre-historical) context. For all but the last 15,000 or so of the 100,000 years the human spec
Read more

Uneasy Lies The Head

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown ........... Shakespeare Henry IV, Part II. So it is with us and our slightly distant primate cousins , so it seems. A 9-year study of wild baboons in Kenya by Princeton University and the Institute of Primate Research may turn conventional assumptions of alphas males upside down. The study found that alpha males have high testosterone levels, which allows them to dominate other baboons, get access to more food, and attract better mates. This is expected. Surprisingly, though, the alpha males also have high levels of stress hormone glucocorticoid, which scientists measured from their feces samples. In fact, the stress of alpha baboons was on par with low-ranking baboons. The convention wisdom is that access to food and females provides life security and thus less stress for dominant males. Conversely, weak males who are constantly threatened by starvation and physical violence from stronger males are thought to be more stressed. The st
Read more

We Call it Soccer

The US played its best, and maybe only good game of World Cup, but lost thanks to brilliant goalkeeping by the Swedish keeper and the bizarre method soccer uses to settle ties when three US stars could not put the ball on frame from the 12 yard spot.  At the end it came down to a blocked shot that spun in by maybe a couple of centimeters. Well, that's football - too much like life.   Which brings me to a modest proposal.  Replace the thirty minute overtimes with as many 7-player 15 minute periods as needed to settle it.  Scoring should be much easier with fewer players.
Read more