The Dogged Philosopher

June 6, 2010

Concerning Nations

Filed under: Branch, Politics, Postmodern Philosophy — Tags: absurd, culture, identity, nation, personhood, property, state — Joseph @ 3:49 pm

Logan: It strikes me as odd the concept of nations.

Gregio: What is so odd about nations?

Logan: I can accept the necessity of the state, if only to keep the roads paved and commerce running. But the nation seems so odd.

Gregio: What do you mean by nation, are they not the same?

Logan: Well, no. The state in the institutional governance of the people. It sets rules, policies and backs them with the threat of violence. But the nation is different, its a group of people who willingly identify themselves as banded together by common ancestry and culture. They are, in essence, a tribe, and such an idea I find rather archaic. When the state and the people align we have the nation-state, but this isn’t necessarily so, the state could govern many nations, or the nation could spread out beyond the boundaries of just one state.

Gregio: So the people want community, what is so wrong with that?

Logan: It seems to be a source of much strife in the world. Wars seem to be caused more over arguments concerning the dead than present wrongs. There is a difference between merely associating with a community and knowing that you choose to associate and believing that that association is the bedrock of your identity — that it is necessary for your being rather than a free choice. If people merely want community than they can take up the role of community, perform the actions of a community member, but is it not better that they know they are performing less they become too involved in that community and perceive threats to the community as a threat to themselves? That they are a part of the group is an accidental, not a necessary property of the individual. They may at any time choose a new community and so long as they know this they may be safe.

Gregio: And what of the patriot who loves the state?

Logan: Such is a fool as the state has no love for him. No, the state exists and he participates because it is convenient to do so, not because the state is necessary. If the state were to disappear one day and be replaced by another state he should judge the new state by its convenience not by his love of the prior state.

Gregio: And claims of prior ancestry?

Logan: Hold no grounds. The claim that you wronged my grandfather, has no effect on me. The notion that ancestry may make any claim to the present is absurd. Best that we observe history from a distance, as removed observer knowing that its participants are now long dead and possessing no relations to ourselves. If Zeus wrongs the Greeks on the fields of Troy than let us say only that and not that Zeus wronged us qua as we are Greek.

Comments (0)

April 30, 2010

On Killing Babies, Part 4

Filed under: Branch, Ethics, Modern Philosophy, Politics, Postmodern Philosophy — Tags: absurd, being, dialog, identity, knight of faith, nietzsche, non sequitur, personhood, property, the human animal, the state — Joseph @ 6:39 am

Fritz and Logan continue their discussion on eugenics. This is part 2, so of course scroll down to part one to understand the context. The same disclaimer applies. Discussion on reproduction always begins to touch on the topic of personhood, a loaded philosophical and is a difficult topic to approach with an open mind as many find even broaching the topic in the postmodern age insulting. So, take what follows with a grain of salt, we are discussing killing babies after all.

***

Logan: You have some major definitional tasks necessary for this proposition. I know several people who aren’t willing to become a person — dependent, uneducated. Are they property?

Fitz: They are human and qua it is uncertain that they are a person we must grant them they could be.

Logan: Does anyone know the mind of an infant or a dog? How do we know that they cannot be a person?

Fitz: They cannot be a person because they cannot will. I would say will requires a few things. First, a recognition that “I” exist separate from “them,” that is, a recognition that now exists. Second, a recognition that some potential future can come into being. Third, the strength to bring that future into being.

Logan: The Buddhists would flip at those definitions. Certainly babies have wants, desires. Studies suggest babies have an intuitive sense of “I” and “other,” and strive towards something.

Fitz: Hold on one moment, you run ahead. We are building this out of German thinking, so let it remain there. A baby may cry out for sustenance, but it cannot take that sustenance. Sustenance must be given. Thus, it has no strength, no power, and so by the nature of their existence they cannot be a person.

Logan: I require insulin manufactured by others to live. Is that a lack of strength?

Fitz: This is incorrect. You may very well construct some apparatus to manufacture insulin for you. That you have not done this is no indication that you are not a person: that the manufacturer of insulin holds any power over you.

Logan: Permit me to look at the necessary end of your argument. Such a society would deem that it has the right to eliminate anything it sees as remotely dangerous. Meaning it would forge the Leviathan, preventing any person from ever existing as the individual forfeits our will to the god state.

Fitz: non sequitur.

Logan: Curve ball. Let me explain. Your state-sanctioned euthanasia program demands that people sacrifice their own interests (maintaining however many children they like) in the interests of a community. That people in this community would be powerless to manifest their will to have more children. Thus, before the state the human is never a person. You render us all property.

Fitz: This is correct, and wrong at the same time. In so far as we relate to the state we are property. That is, the state always has power over humans. But the state has no rights, only powers that are available for use against humans. To say the state has rights as a person has rights would be nonsense. The person, supercedes the authority of the state on the basis of his independence from the state.

Logan: Neither, in your scenario, does the human have rights, because the state uses its power to suppress them. The solution than is anarchy.

Fitz: Overcome the state and you’re a person.

Logan: In this scenario, there has never been a person.

Fitz: Perhaps, or merely that like Kierkegaard’s Knight of Faith it is impossible that we can tell the human animal mimicking a person and a human who has truly overcome their animal-ness to become a person. Hence, the neccessity that we treat all humans as persons even though most are certainly not.

Logan: And no free will enters the debate. We have pretty much opened every question in western philosophy.

Fitz: And all because I wanted to kill babies.

Comments (0)

April 26, 2010

On Killing Babies, Part 3

Filed under: Other — Tags: absurd, being, brave new world, culture, dialog, euthanasia, identity, personhood, plato, potentially, teleos — Joseph @ 10:44 pm

Fritz and Logan continue their discussion on eugenics. This is part 2, so of course scroll down to part one to understand the context.

The same disclaimer applies. Discussion on reproduction always begins to touch on the topic of personhood, a loaded philosophical and is a difficult topic to approach with an open mind as many find even broaching the topic in the postmodern age insulting. So, take what follows with a grain of salt, we are discussing killing babies after all.

***

Logan: I dislike power. Certainly, people below a certain level of intelligence and decency should not reproduce.

Fitz: I wouldn’t say that. As Plato points out there is a role in society for all kinds of people. Some are born to rule, others to serve. Its a problem of sifting through them and correctly assigning them roles. A society consisting only of bright humans would become destructive and bored if forced to do manual labor. Yet, we could very well breed a human who has no more will than to do such meaningless tasks. A human with no will who we might set to a simple task, who would delight in doing that task over and over with no existential wonderment.

Logan: I’m talking about preventing children with major genetic issues. In regards to intelligence, foolish people could reproduce, but only if their foolishness isn’t of the sort that would seriously scar their children. But what you propose would be a major form of eugenics akin to Brave New World. I cringe at that power.

Fitz: As do I, since we’ve no way to differentiate between humans and persons with will, it would be impossible to know if we ever succeeded at breeding will out of a human. This is why we give rights to all humans, because they potentially could be a person. So let’s say we cast aside the eugenics problem and select children randomly for extermination.

Logan: Very well, let’s set that aside. If we return to your main point we are now talking about the distinction between a person and property. I can see that by your definition of a person you mean a human who can survive independently.

Fitz: Yes, and qua a baby cannot survive independently, it is the property of the mother or the state.

Logan: So “able to exist independently” is your definition for personhood? That means there are very few people alive today. The moment you depend on someone else for shelter or food you are no longer a person.

Fitz: It is a teleos. The human lives to become a community unto itself. The human is in a state of becoming a person. We respect the adult human as potentially a person. Since at any point in the present they may actually be a person. A child, however, can never be a person and so we have no need to honor it by treating it as such.

Logan: Do any of us live completely independently? Would anyone want to? In the case of infants, they are in the same state as the human. After all, the infant is overcoming its infant-ness to become an adult and a person as well.

Fitz: Than perhaps I should amend my definition, or perhaps delves into the nuances of becoming. The human is becoming-by-will whereas the infant is overcoming its infant-ness not by its own will but only by the motion of time. It has no choosing in the matter, no will. In this regard the infant is like a dog. It exists and is just being, but it has no control over choosing the nature of its being.

Logan: But, in time, the child has the potential to become an adult and thus potentially a person.

Fitz: You confuse potential. I speak of something that might be in the present. The human potentially is a person, but knowing if he is escapes us. The child potentially could become a person. This is an important distinction since anything potentially could become a person. A dog. A rock. A computer. These things all have the potential to become, but we may easily observe that they are not now a person and so deserve none of the respects due a person.

Comments (0)

April 19, 2010

On Killing Babies Part 2

Filed under: Ethics, Modern Philosophy, Politics, Postmodern Philosophy — Tags: absurd, dialog, eugenics, euthenasia, identity, personhood, potential, property — Joseph @ 11:01 pm

Fritz and Logan continue their discussion on eugenics. This is part 2, so of course scroll down to part one to understand the context.

***

Fitz: Let me break down the points of my argument and see if I can get you to agree with me.

Logan: Okay.

Fitz: First. The right to reproduce is a natural right, that is it is occurring in a state of nature. Without some forced intervention the inseminated female will produce offspring. Certainly, we say she has the right to halt this biological occurrence in her body, but it would be a violation of her rights as a potential person to force the termination of the pregnancy. Yet, once the child is born it becomes a separate, yet dependent, entity from the mother. She possesses the child as one would possess a dog. If anything, the child is worse than the dog, since the dog has the potential to survive independent of the mother but the child, by its very nature, cannot survive independent of the mother. She owns it even more so than she owns the dog. So long as this is true the child has no natural rights qua the child lacks the strength to will those rights. It is in this period that we can euthanize the child much as we would euthanize an unwanted puppy. People certainly are sad when puppies are euthanized, but most would concur upon the logic of euthanizing them, why not than babies?

Logan: Well, it is the forced euthanasia that is problematic. After all, a woman in a state of nature can produce twenty children and protect the hell out of all of them. A woman in a state of nature is also free to expose an infant on a cliff. I would say the precedent would give the state a terrifying host of new powers.

Fitz: Yet we already permit the state to interfere in the use of our property. The state says we may not own livestock within the city limits. That certain breeds of dogs are limited, and the keeping of exotic pets restricted.

Comments (0)

April 16, 2010

On Killing Babies Part 1

Filed under: Branch, Era, Ethics, Modern Philosophy, Politics, Postmodern Philosophy — Tags: absurd, culture, dialog, euthanasia, human animal, identity, natural rights, nietzsche, personhood, reproductive rights — Joseph @ 1:27 am

Before I begin this dialog, a disclaimer. Discussion on reproduction always begins to touch on the topic of personhood, a loaded philosophical question considering the number of atrocities committed when the state falls into one discourse or another that emphasizes a particular set of people as persons while labeling another set as animals. It is thus a difficult topic to approach with an open mind as many find even broaching the topic in the postmodern age insulting. So, take what follows with a grain of salt, we are discussing killing babies after all.

***

Fitz: The question is this, do we have a natural right to reproduce? That is, do we have the right to produce offspring indefinitely regardless of the resources they consume, the capacity of the earth or the living conditions?

Logan: That sounds like a fun topic. I suspect that human overpopulation will be resolved much like deer overpopulation: disease, starvation, perhaps war. The question at hand is, I suppose, can one group prevent another from reproducing or ought we form regulations for the population at large. What is your take?

Fitz: The scenario you describe: disease, starvation, and war is unpleasing. Such a state of living would be far from human flourishing, and war has a tendency to destroy what I find aesthetically pleasing. I would say that we have the natural right to reproduce. A person is born with the capacity to produce children, to do so independently and without the aid of society in this case it is as natural as speech or life. You can breed as many children as you want. However, you do not have the right to keep as many children as you want. The state limits our ownership of property and in this same way the state is justified in limiting the amount of children we may possess. A human is, after all, an animal and it will naturally breed to fill its habitat. With no restrictions it would breed persistently until the increase in population creates genocide to relieve the environmental stress.

Logan: And what would the state do with the excess children?

Fitz: They would have to be humanely disposed of — choose a selection of the litter, and euthanize the rest.

Logan: That’s monstrous. Forced sterilization would probably get more support than a policy of killing babies.

Fitz: That is only because humans as a group tend to be sentimental and rather illogical. It would be far more monstrous to violate the rights of a person than to kill a child.

Logan: Nothing would be more terrifying than a group that would dispense with all feeling in favor of the best solution to all problems. I suspect that half the population would quickly be liquidated with nary a batted eyelash if we followed your logic. Is a child not a person?

Comments (0)

Older Posts »