As someone who reads a lot of Neo Reactionary thought, it seems you have a very similar path to me. Raised Christian, fell away and returned in teen years, so never had a liberal phase. Rush baby in other words.
08 Global financial crisis lead me to Austrian economics and Libertarianism (so started with Ron Paul and read Rand later), college expanded my knowledge of philosophers of antiquity and the medieval period (stoicism, skeptics, epicureans, and of course Plato and Aristotle, then Christian era Augustine and Aquinas).
Arguing with atheists online led to reading various apologetics -> Edward Feser's The Last Superstition which argues that abandoning the philosophy of Aquinas and Aristotle was the greatest mistake of Western Civ. Feser's Five Proofs of the existence of God was also enlightening.
2020/2021 pushed me out of the Deist camp completely, due to non rational inhuman levels of evil on display.
As for virtue ethics in general, Ultima 4 really influenced me, as silly as that may sound. A mostly successful attempt at a game where winning was based upon being good (in human terms) not merely more powerful.
Sorry for the blog post, just amused that similar in background. I started After Virtue but got distracted.
I assume you will progress to the True (epistemology), the Real (metaphysics), and the Beautiful (aesthetics). Politics is only a subheader in Ethics to me (those parts related to the virtue of Justice and the rightful use of force within society)
Also - ESSENTIAL reading, Ian McGilchrist's magnum opus (in every sense of the word) "The Matter With Things", which I can't really describe, other than to say it is exhilarating to read. The Wikipedia entry is a pretty good summary of the huge expanse he covers, from subatomic physics to morals and ethics (and collapse of such in the Western world) to what makes "the sacred".
It's a worthy successor to his work "The Master and his Emissary" on how the left hemisphere of the cerebellum is taking over, and messing with "The Master", i.e. the right hemisphere.
this subject interests me greatly. I have not reall all your suggestions, but i will check into them. suggest karl popper , open society and it's enemies, the spell of plato, and marx and hegel editions.
Near the end of this essay, when you say "That series ultimately concludes that morality has both an objective and subjective element" is it fair to suggest that is essentially saying morality has both a genetic/evolved element and a cultural element, respectively? Not having delved anywhere nearly as deep into the philosophical sources as you have, I came to that view as a way to explain the "absolute" and "relative" versions of morality that various partisans are promoting.
looking forward to the next part(s). i still think you should write some prose-y textbooks (or pamphlets, if you have a problem with feeling pretentious calling them textbooks) based on this blog, with diagrams,, including the spicy posts, and with your recommended/reference reading in footnotes/appendices. i would love to pore over them with my children when they are ready to dive into attaining deeper understanding about these things and need a jumping off point....
do not hesitate to let me know if there's anything i can do to get you started on that front.
There is zero correlation between the rantings of Ayn Rand and the moral philosophy of Macintyre whose ethics etc were informed by and came out of the Catholic Tradition which to one degree or another presumed that humankind and Reality Itself was a Unity.
By contrast Rand's "god" was the "god" of the hard-edged machine or what is now referred to as The Cathedral by writers such as Paul Kingsnorth et al.
From another related perspective Rand's "philosophy" was/is an extreme manifestation of the spirit and simultaneously morality killing left brained paradigm described by Iain McGilchrist in his book The Master & His Emissary.
Left brained thinking inevitably reduces everything and everyone to hard-edged objects - stuff to be manipulated and made into "collateral damage"
"Like every prior civilization, transnational progressivism is wrong about virtually everything. Actually, it’s worse than that. It’s even more wrong than some prior civilizations."
That reads like a condemnation of our civilization as evil, that it ought not to exist at any time in any possible world. Is this an accurate summary of your judgement?
It probably won't make it on the list, but I loved Vendramini's "Them and Us" and am hoping to read his book on evolution. (I don't know if I accept the theory of evolution, but Them and Us certainly put forward an interesting thesis if I did accept it.)
As someone who reads a lot of Neo Reactionary thought, it seems you have a very similar path to me. Raised Christian, fell away and returned in teen years, so never had a liberal phase. Rush baby in other words.
08 Global financial crisis lead me to Austrian economics and Libertarianism (so started with Ron Paul and read Rand later), college expanded my knowledge of philosophers of antiquity and the medieval period (stoicism, skeptics, epicureans, and of course Plato and Aristotle, then Christian era Augustine and Aquinas).
Arguing with atheists online led to reading various apologetics -> Edward Feser's The Last Superstition which argues that abandoning the philosophy of Aquinas and Aristotle was the greatest mistake of Western Civ. Feser's Five Proofs of the existence of God was also enlightening.
2020/2021 pushed me out of the Deist camp completely, due to non rational inhuman levels of evil on display.
As for virtue ethics in general, Ultima 4 really influenced me, as silly as that may sound. A mostly successful attempt at a game where winning was based upon being good (in human terms) not merely more powerful.
Sorry for the blog post, just amused that similar in background. I started After Virtue but got distracted.
I assume you will progress to the True (epistemology), the Real (metaphysics), and the Beautiful (aesthetics). Politics is only a subheader in Ethics to me (those parts related to the virtue of Justice and the rightful use of force within society)
Ideas are peaceful. History is violent.
Also - ESSENTIAL reading, Ian McGilchrist's magnum opus (in every sense of the word) "The Matter With Things", which I can't really describe, other than to say it is exhilarating to read. The Wikipedia entry is a pretty good summary of the huge expanse he covers, from subatomic physics to morals and ethics (and collapse of such in the Western world) to what makes "the sacred".
It's a worthy successor to his work "The Master and his Emissary" on how the left hemisphere of the cerebellum is taking over, and messing with "The Master", i.e. the right hemisphere.
Both works should be on every thinker's bookshelf
"Next, we proceed to After Virtue, in which Macintyre shows why the modern conception of ethics is utterly broken"
Essential reading.
this subject interests me greatly. I have not reall all your suggestions, but i will check into them. suggest karl popper , open society and it's enemies, the spell of plato, and marx and hegel editions.
Near the end of this essay, when you say "That series ultimately concludes that morality has both an objective and subjective element" is it fair to suggest that is essentially saying morality has both a genetic/evolved element and a cultural element, respectively? Not having delved anywhere nearly as deep into the philosophical sources as you have, I came to that view as a way to explain the "absolute" and "relative" versions of morality that various partisans are promoting.
looking forward to the next part(s). i still think you should write some prose-y textbooks (or pamphlets, if you have a problem with feeling pretentious calling them textbooks) based on this blog, with diagrams,, including the spicy posts, and with your recommended/reference reading in footnotes/appendices. i would love to pore over them with my children when they are ready to dive into attaining deeper understanding about these things and need a jumping off point....
do not hesitate to let me know if there's anything i can do to get you started on that front.
There is zero correlation between the rantings of Ayn Rand and the moral philosophy of Macintyre whose ethics etc were informed by and came out of the Catholic Tradition which to one degree or another presumed that humankind and Reality Itself was a Unity.
By contrast Rand's "god" was the "god" of the hard-edged machine or what is now referred to as The Cathedral by writers such as Paul Kingsnorth et al.
From another related perspective Rand's "philosophy" was/is an extreme manifestation of the spirit and simultaneously morality killing left brained paradigm described by Iain McGilchrist in his book The Master & His Emissary.
Left brained thinking inevitably reduces everything and everyone to hard-edged objects - stuff to be manipulated and made into "collateral damage"
In your essay about the craziness, you wrote that
"Like every prior civilization, transnational progressivism is wrong about virtually everything. Actually, it’s worse than that. It’s even more wrong than some prior civilizations."
That reads like a condemnation of our civilization as evil, that it ought not to exist at any time in any possible world. Is this an accurate summary of your judgement?
>Sees Reading List.
>Officially endorsed by the Wonderful Sir Alex Macris, Mr Contemplator of Woe Himself
>Outline & Logic given on how to proceed with Reading Regimen.
Yes Sir! 🫡
It probably won't make it on the list, but I loved Vendramini's "Them and Us" and am hoping to read his book on evolution. (I don't know if I accept the theory of evolution, but Them and Us certainly put forward an interesting thesis if I did accept it.)
This seems backwards. Shouldn't the primary sources be, well, *the primary sources*? How are Aristotle and Plutarch supplementary?