tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post2953443721286378720..comments2023-11-22T01:14:54.298-08:00Comments on amor mundi: Philosophical Guns That Shoot Nothing But BlanksDale Carricohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-18162713008242428842011-04-02T00:41:07.657-07:002011-04-02T00:41:07.657-07:00Nietzsche's answer to the utilitarians, The Ge...Nietzsche's answer to the utilitarians, <i>The Genealogy of Morals</i>, was so darned good that by the time Foucault wrote it again under the title <i>Discipline and Punish</i> Hannah Arendt had already re-written it herself under the title <i>The Human Condition.</i> Given how large those three books loom in my imagination and given how much worth saving in utilitarianism was already taken up in that American strain of post-Emersonian thought, Jamesian-Deweyan-Rortyan pragmatism (and as Cornel West convincingly indicated Nietzsche himself and his heirs are well considered the European strain of post-Emersonian thought), I'll admit I don't find much allure in what passes for utilitarianism these days, especially given how many under its banner are playing out what honestly seem to me to be played out variations on what were already facile consequentialisms, positivisms, bioreductionist scientisms and so on. You'll forgive the sweeping character of that mapping exercise: the caveats, qualifications, ramifications would take a two-semester upper-division course in late modern philosophy and critical theory to tell aright.Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-21069915262600917892011-04-01T18:30:09.419-07:002011-04-01T18:30:09.419-07:00I read that to mean you are not interested in visi...I read that to mean you are not interested in visiting the zoo of utilities any time soon (I don't blame you--its a pretty shabby exhibition) much less discussing utility ecology.<br /><br />I can't say I'm not a little disappointed, because you seem like one who would be well-suited to approaching the general utility ecosystem from some local point of entry in a very pragmatic way--not just running around the meadows of the utilisphere chasing philosophical butterflies.<br /><br />I'm not one to worry over a field left fallow but for that pesky (if apocryphal) barb of Burke's: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing to improve general utility."<br /><br />PRPoor Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00780183195105651583noreply@blogger.com