In calling attention to the persistence of early modes of behaviour we have to think why this should be particularly necessary in social and ideological connections. The answer lies in the complex nature of the process by which thinking advances. Although the development, the horizontal extension, of any ideology proceeds for the most part steadily,… read more »
NIAT: ‘A reduction in road accidents is a good thing’ might seem to be an absolute truth, but no. Organs for transplants grow increasingly scarce, and surgeons blame the declining number of traffic victims. (Observer 19 Sept). NIAT: ‘Nothing ought to be compulsory reading.’ (Alan Ryan TLS May 21, 9) NIAT: Physical quantities like energy… read more »
Interest in theory grows with ideological development. The expedient group hardly attempts to justify its behaviour, while towards the eidodynamic end of the range attention becomes focused on theory, even to the point where practical application drops out of sight. Anarchists tend to place high value upon concepts, logically unassailable, which do nothing to help… read more »
Neither rulers nor ruling classes impose the political structure; it grows from the ideological system, it is an attempt to provide formal expression for power-relations between the groups attached to the various major ideologies. Once this has been recognised, the development of democracy begins to appear in a different light. Commonly seen as according progressively… read more »
Sir, I think that all Stirner means is ‘That it is not a good thing to tell the truth all the time.’ I think Kant would agree with that. Yours etc. Isaac Barr Sir, I will accept your injunction not to discuss, for the time being, the issues raised so far in the debate on… read more »
A. C. Graham 1991 Unreason Within Reason: Essays on the Outskirts of Rationality Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company. 309 pages. Cloth 0-8126-9166-0 $59.95; Paper 0-8126-9167-9 $19.95. Reviewed by George Walford. Physical science, high technology, market capitalism and political democracy belong to a syndrome. Although now worldwide, it emerged spontaneously only in western Europe, arriving elsewhere… read more »
For a few years there it looked as though the ancient barriers were down at last. The permissive society had arrived. We still had to work, and war, unemployment and other old enemies were just over the horizon, but sex was free. A natural impulse long repressed, it had now burst out and the young,… read more »
‘Every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of society as great as he can. He generally neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. He intends only his own gain, and he is, in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to… read more »
The centralised state is not the only expression of the Domination ideology, just the most successful one so far. To the extent that it weakens, its competitors recover their freedom to act, and most of them do not seek peace and plenty for all; they pursue their own interests, and in doing so drag society… read more »
Thackeray had doubtless no intention of illustrating ideological theory, and for all we know he may have been unfair to Louis XIV, but his drawing does bring out the way in which ideological function (in this case that of domination) overrides personal qualities. from Ideological Commentary 59, February 1993.