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A couple of passages from The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Things are otherwise with those who are higher up. They, led by science, want to establish themselves in truth and justice with their minds alone, but now without Christ, as formerly, and they have already proclaimed that crime does not exist, that sin does not exist. And they are right in their way, for if one has not God, then what crime can there be?
If God does not exist, there is no highest good, no thing above man and outside of man that man can aim for. There is nothing to prevent man from developing his own rules – Nietzsche’s Übermensch comes to mind. We have been living under the tyranny of this Übermensch for a few centuries now. We see today this phase is coming to and end, one way or another, rationally or irrationally.
And no one bothered to reproach them anymore, no one put in a good word, which was positively strange, as the Elder’s devoted followers were after all in the majority within the cloister; but it seemed that on this occasion the Lord Himself had permitted the minority temporarily to gain the upper hand.
The Elder died, and his body began to give off a terrible smell. This was taken as a sign by some that he was not acceptable to God, so a few started badmouthing the Elder.
As can be seen in this passage, a loud and forceful minority can shame or quiet a majority – just as can be seen in our society.
I struggled against this notion for a long time in my thin-libertarian days. I would say something like, "yes, traditional Western morality does come from God, but it can be discovered through the efforts of disciplined reason." But the more I told myself that the more I became unconvinced. It is only the fundamentals of morality that can be discovered objectively by way of reason (property, non-aggression, etc.). And experience debating people online has disabused me of this notion almost entirely.
ReplyDeleteWhether we are talking about Rand's Objectivism or Molyneux's UPB, it is just not convincing. And especially with the former group, I nearly always end up on bad terms with them because of their support of abortion or some foreign policy blunder. Molyneux's people I think I tended to get along with apart from maybe the issue of Israel. Whatever happened to Molyneux?