My purpose in the following notes is two-fold.
First, I seek to describe a thread in political philosophy that epitomizes traditional Skeptical and Liberal views of theology, human nature and moral philosophy. The formulations presented here are Western in character but American in expression.
Second, I seek to describe the American concept of the nation-state--an institution whose success (or failure) is measured by the state's ability to deliver services and protections to its people. Among the securities that the nation-state provides are flexible moves against the utopian cult of world government and the corruptions and self-serving oligarchies that attended this cult. That is, the nation-state protects people from "corporate social organization," an aggregate of tribalism, technocracy, scientism, statism, authoritarianism, group-think, shame culture, and so on. These tendencies represent a nexus of sociological and psychological phenomena driven by various weaknesses in human nature. Education and family are the chief bulwarks of an effective defense.
Against the chance my thinking in these matters will be rejected by History (or, more immediately, by contemporary philosophers and school teachers), I offer the novels listed on the right of this page, where people will find literary amusements characterized by deep and refreshing moral subtexts, as well as a bit of humor.
Several months ago I made a slight-but-significant revision to the note titled "Sources for an American Idea of Revolution" where the reader will find, towards the end, a link leading to a dilation upon the theme of Milton and the uses of the "Synoptic Surview"--the literary exercise of Analytic Philosophy. The Synoptic Surview is a practice for the examination of grammar, epistemology, ethics and political philosophy. Herein lies the progression from Milton to Analytic Philosophy, as well as the path from Analytic Philosophy to Milton.
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| Galileo Receiving Milton by Annibale Gatti (1827-1909) |
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