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)
It does sound like a very similar path, yes! I have Feser's The Last Superstition on the list. Great book. And I concur completely that the non-rational inhuman evil on display has been a major "jolt" to bring me out of atheism or deism.
Re: The Good, the Beautiful, the Real, The True -- I hadn't planned to organize the reading last in that order, but that is quite an interesting way to do so. I think I probably don't know enough about Aesthetics to carry that to fruition, sadly.
Ah it was not an ordinal list. These fields of knowledge are interlinked at the core. I don't even know which to start with for sure. I think the strongest base would be Epistemology (Truth/knowledge) then branching out, but that's probably bias. As for the Aesthetics, it is a rather withered branch of Philosophy though I know Rand dabbled in it.
No. Scruton is very fine, and Rand has her moments. The recent death of Sir Roger Scruton from cancer felt like a personal loss, though I never met the man. I have many of his works, and revisit them
A good starter - his collection of essays, "Confessions of a Heretic".
It could be said that the Last Superstition is the bogus claim that the "catholic" church is the only source of truth in the world or the beyond obnoxious claim (by Feser) that the grotesque "catholic" magisterium is binding on all people.
In one of his recent postings some benighted "catholics" including perhaps even Feser himself claimed that it was perfectly justifiable that "heretics" be executed - even in their tens and thousands if "necessary"
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.
Yes, that's essentially what I'm saying. The genetic/evolved element we might call "moral nutrition" while the cultural element we might call "moral taste". Just as both a Mediterranean diet and a Japanese diet are nutritious, we might judge that Stoicism and Taoism are both moralities that lead to a flourishing life.
I kind of like your nutrition analogy, too. I am not a deep scholar on such issues/ views, but you are the first person I have read who explicitly makes mention of that duality or dichotomy about morality. I suspect that neither of us are original in coming to this view, but many many people want to come down on one side or the other of the situation, rather than "share the wealth" on this topic. Given how transparently a single sided view fails logically, I am surprised more don't accept a dual focused approach.
Agreed. Like you, I have not encountered any professional philosophers or scholars who have taken this approach. I think it is, as you say, due to vested interests. E.g. most religious philosophers want to insist there is a one-size-fits-all morality given by God, most secular philosophers are postmodernists who want to insist there's no objective morality at all.
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"
It's worth dwelling a moment longer on your remark about "Catholic Tradition which to one degree or another presumed that humankind and Reality Itself was a Unity." I don't deny that Catholicism teaches such a unity; the doctrine of the hypostatic union is still mentioned at Mass when the creed is recited. The dogma has a proud wrinkle, though.
The triune god is supposed to be Reality Itself, or "Being Itself", as Hardon, SJ, stated it in his Modern Catholic Dictionary. This god, which is exclusively spirit, is also supposed to be the only necessary being. How then do we explain the merger of the substance of a particular human with the substance of the god? Surely this counts as a significant change to the god, but the god is supposed to be changeless insofar as its essential substance is concerned.
There's more of the faith still to unlearn here. Isn't it true, at least according to the Church, that the human Jesus is eternally unified with the triune god? If so, doesn't this mean that humanity has become a necessary type of being, one in addition to the alleged necessary being of the holy Trinity?
Ayn Rand's teachings have much more in common with Catholicism that you have yet to understand. Both are humanist, both are egoist (Ex. 3:14), both glorify willpower (as does egalitarian democracy), and both are preoccupied with the human body. Catholics are, in fact, so mezmerized by and passionate about the body that they developed a ritual of mystical cannibalism to celebrate the human body's supposed divinization.
Like other sects of Abrahamism, Catholics also preach a doctrine of bodily immortality, albeit after death and a reincarnation in the grave, not the womb. It's a teaching which can't gain traction easily among people who are not already egoists and sensualists. John Galt, though a crude sort of materialist, will become vulnerable to conversion as he passes into old age, assuming that he isn't killed first for the coup d'etat he organized so that he could get his hands on the electric companies' distribution networks.
"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?
Is it evil? Well my view of morality is the functional or teleological one. Morality answers "what am I to do if I am to live a good life". I believe our civilization gives me false answers to those questions, answers which cause me to lead a worse life, so I would say it leads us into evil.
But I've never wished that our society not exist, only that it become better.
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.)
It's what JD said - but it's also because I'm in part giving an authentic accounting of how my own thought developed. My general approach to learning is to read secondary sources first, then read primary sources to confirm that the secondary sources aren't misconstruing things.
I didn't wake up one day, read Nicomachean Ethics, and suddenly realize Rand was an Aristotelian. I read Nicomachean Ethics to confirm the suspicion that Rand was an Aristotelian that Macintyre put into my head.
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)
It does sound like a very similar path, yes! I have Feser's The Last Superstition on the list. Great book. And I concur completely that the non-rational inhuman evil on display has been a major "jolt" to bring me out of atheism or deism.
Re: The Good, the Beautiful, the Real, The True -- I hadn't planned to organize the reading last in that order, but that is quite an interesting way to do so. I think I probably don't know enough about Aesthetics to carry that to fruition, sadly.
Ah it was not an ordinal list. These fields of knowledge are interlinked at the core. I don't even know which to start with for sure. I think the strongest base would be Epistemology (Truth/knowledge) then branching out, but that's probably bias. As for the Aesthetics, it is a rather withered branch of Philosophy though I know Rand dabbled in it.
Right. As far as aesthetics, Rand and Roger Scruton are the only philosophers I've read. Rand's "Romantic Realism" was very influential on me, though.
Again there is zero resonance between the writings and aesthetics championed by Roger Scruton and Ayn Rand
No. Scruton is very fine, and Rand has her moments. The recent death of Sir Roger Scruton from cancer felt like a personal loss, though I never met the man. I have many of his works, and revisit them
A good starter - his collection of essays, "Confessions of a Heretic".
It could be said that the Last Superstition is the bogus claim that the "catholic" church is the only source of truth in the world or the beyond obnoxious claim (by Feser) that the grotesque "catholic" magisterium is binding on all people.
In one of his recent postings some benighted "catholics" including perhaps even Feser himself claimed that it was perfectly justifiable that "heretics" be executed - even in their tens and thousands if "necessary"
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
I am not familiar with these works, but will add them to my reading list!
Do. I would say they are exhilarating, and it's not often one can say that of any book!
"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.
Yes, that's essentially what I'm saying. The genetic/evolved element we might call "moral nutrition" while the cultural element we might call "moral taste". Just as both a Mediterranean diet and a Japanese diet are nutritious, we might judge that Stoicism and Taoism are both moralities that lead to a flourishing life.
I kind of like your nutrition analogy, too. I am not a deep scholar on such issues/ views, but you are the first person I have read who explicitly makes mention of that duality or dichotomy about morality. I suspect that neither of us are original in coming to this view, but many many people want to come down on one side or the other of the situation, rather than "share the wealth" on this topic. Given how transparently a single sided view fails logically, I am surprised more don't accept a dual focused approach.
Agreed. Like you, I have not encountered any professional philosophers or scholars who have taken this approach. I think it is, as you say, due to vested interests. E.g. most religious philosophers want to insist there is a one-size-fits-all morality given by God, most secular philosophers are postmodernists who want to insist there's no objective morality at all.
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.
Thanks, that's a good suggestion!
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"
It's worth dwelling a moment longer on your remark about "Catholic Tradition which to one degree or another presumed that humankind and Reality Itself was a Unity." I don't deny that Catholicism teaches such a unity; the doctrine of the hypostatic union is still mentioned at Mass when the creed is recited. The dogma has a proud wrinkle, though.
The triune god is supposed to be Reality Itself, or "Being Itself", as Hardon, SJ, stated it in his Modern Catholic Dictionary. This god, which is exclusively spirit, is also supposed to be the only necessary being. How then do we explain the merger of the substance of a particular human with the substance of the god? Surely this counts as a significant change to the god, but the god is supposed to be changeless insofar as its essential substance is concerned.
There's more of the faith still to unlearn here. Isn't it true, at least according to the Church, that the human Jesus is eternally unified with the triune god? If so, doesn't this mean that humanity has become a necessary type of being, one in addition to the alleged necessary being of the holy Trinity?
Ayn Rand's teachings have much more in common with Catholicism that you have yet to understand. Both are humanist, both are egoist (Ex. 3:14), both glorify willpower (as does egalitarian democracy), and both are preoccupied with the human body. Catholics are, in fact, so mezmerized by and passionate about the body that they developed a ritual of mystical cannibalism to celebrate the human body's supposed divinization.
Like other sects of Abrahamism, Catholics also preach a doctrine of bodily immortality, albeit after death and a reincarnation in the grave, not the womb. It's a teaching which can't gain traction easily among people who are not already egoists and sensualists. John Galt, though a crude sort of materialist, will become vulnerable to conversion as he passes into old age, assuming that he isn't killed first for the coup d'etat he organized so that he could get his hands on the electric companies' distribution networks.
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?
Is it evil? Well my view of morality is the functional or teleological one. Morality answers "what am I to do if I am to live a good life". I believe our civilization gives me false answers to those questions, answers which cause me to lead a worse life, so I would say it leads us into evil.
But I've never wished that our society not exist, only that it become better.
>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?
It's what JD said - but it's also because I'm in part giving an authentic accounting of how my own thought developed. My general approach to learning is to read secondary sources first, then read primary sources to confirm that the secondary sources aren't misconstruing things.
I didn't wake up one day, read Nicomachean Ethics, and suddenly realize Rand was an Aristotelian. I read Nicomachean Ethics to confirm the suspicion that Rand was an Aristotelian that Macintyre put into my head.
Because the newer material will be more easily digestible for moderns. We mustn't scare them away with bitter pills right away.
I just worry about distortion from today's "scholars".
I don't blame you, but watching Woe read himself from Randian to Aristotelian has been rather heartening.
I'm the weirdo that read Nichomachean Ethics and Polybius The Histories in Iraq.
I know that's not the usual way.
You did it right. The usual way is almost never the correct way.