Not much more than Hilzoy did. The Randian distaste for Kant's moral views comes from his (widely misunderstood, I think) discussion of the value of acting from the motive of duty rather than from self-interest. (His famous example is of the shopkeeper who is honest because it makes good business sense.) Acting rightly from selfish reasons robs the action of moral worth even if it's still a right action. You can see why Rand would dislike this so much.
Now that I think about it, maybe there's something to Muir's complaint. Kant, after all, asks that we test our reasons for acting to see if they could be the reasons of every rational agent, and that we imagine ourselves as the lawgivers in a community in which every member is an end in itself. There's an emphasis on abstraction from particular identities, you might think, that leads to a kind of cosmopolitanism which, if you're Muir, manifests itself as a refusal to distinguish Us from Them on the part of the NYT. I think that's the best I can do by way of defense.
4: I always wonder what male and female characters look like when drawn by female comic book artists (particularly if they aren't explicitly "female comic book artists"). Or maybe they're just stuck with the conventions as they find them.
leads to a kind of cosmopolitanism which, if you're Muir, manifests itself as a refusal to distinguish Us from Them on the part of the NYT
In this attempted defense, you interpret his use of nihilism to mean the refusal to acknowledge that every single distinction I feel like drawing has moral weight, even if I have reason for drawing such a distinction other than allowing my opponents poopyheads, yes?
w/d, yeah. It's not exactly a spirited defense, but I was trying to connect a vaguely Kantian cosmopolitanism with Muir's "newspapers should love the USA more" and that's the best I could do. You have to kind of read "nihilism" and "relativism" as "bad but unspecific things that all decent people abhor."
Say, all my permissions options are grayed out in the control panel. Could somebody with greater powers than my own (Becks?) turn off the "send me an email every time someone comments" option for me?
I failed to write "no" prior to "reason". Also, my understanding is that the cartoons allude to a fight over a violation of the principle that no photographer employed by a U.S. paper should ever photograph a member of a militant group opposed to the U.S. Rather they should attack the person, while shouting a warning to any U.S. military personnel nearby and being shot to death.
Now that I think about it, maybe there's something to Muir's complaint. Kant, after all, asks that we test our reasons for acting to see if they could be the reasons of every rational agent, and that we imagine ourselves as the lawgivers in a community in which every member is an end in itself. There's an emphasis on abstraction from particular identities, you might think, that leads to a kind of cosmopolitanism which, if you're Muir, manifests itself as a refusal to distinguish Us from Them on the part of the NYT. I think that's the best I can do by way of defense.
And it's still a steaming pile of shit. Jeez, FL, there's being charitable and then there's... well, what's the opposite of a strawman? Attempting to make the opponent's view not insane when clearly the guy bombed intro to modern with a B+ at his overpriced school?
16 - I changed it to send the emails to me. Unfortunately, the way MT is set up for us, it has to send a comment notification to a valid email address or it throws a fit. Right now, I'm getting the emails for LB, Labs, Ben, Ogged, and myself. I might set up a dummy gmail account and route them all there someday but, for now, it's a pretty useful as a crude measure for detecting when the site's gone down. (Been away from my desk for 15 minutes and don't have 10 new emails? Unfogged must be down!)
The T&A in that strip drives me crazy. It's easy to overlook the fact that these are heavily plotted decisions, and at some point Muir sat down with ink and thought, "Now I will frame some ass."
As long as we're linking to right-wing idiocy, I'd be remiss not to point out the latest video entry from Atlas Shrugs. Be warned: at several points you may feel an overwhelming urge to shove sharpened pencils in your ears.
30: Obviously a subtle critique of the P.C. Left's shameful attempt to treat women, not like women, but like female persons (i.e., valuable for things other than sexual gratification).
First let me say, I think the comic is ridiculous too. But I'll speak up here, because I (actually) got lectured about Kant and nihilism from a very-conservative German-historian-family-member while standing on the (hot-as-hell, burned my feet) sand on the NC beach about two weeks ago. So... her complaint, if I understand it correctly (not being a philosopher myself) was that some aspect of Kantian ethics were nihilistic in the sense that they were also humanistic -- that they were, on some level, appeals to logic and humanity-as-an-end. She was arguing that, although Kant was no relativist, and very religious, that his ethics set the stage for all this later, modern, irreligious, relativist nonsense.
So I think she would have said that Kant's ethical philosophy was ultimately nihilist (in a religious sense), if not relativist. She definitely blamed Kant, in part, for the Decay of the Moral Fabric of Western Society, as far as I could tell. And she came to this on her own, not through Muir or Rand or some other (obvious) nut.
I'm not saying I agree... I spent the time while she was talking digging a hole to the cooler layer of sand, so that I still had toes left when the lecture was over. But there you go.
The point still stands that Muir is using words without understanding what words mean. Someone is not a nihilist because they believe that self-interested action is morally bankrupt.
27: Damn been busy today. I read and linked to Stanford on F H Jacobi last night at MY TPM; but somebody first mentioned Jacobi over at LGM.
Now that is here and at ObsWi, I may have to study it. Since I consider Kierkeggaard and Nietzsche the direct anti-Kants, accepting much of Kant's argument then rejecting some premises and postulates, this is of interest to me.
PS:Reading the Stanford article on Jacobi last night, which was a little tough, because like K & N, Jacobi wants to be see as not an irrationalist, there were definite ties to Schmitt & Strauss. Strauss did his doctorate on Jacobi. A commenter at MY's made fun of a review of an Agamben book, which was jargony, but damned if the skimming at Kotsko's didn't pay off a little.
Unless I'm misreading the sense of the word "bombed" here. I took it to mean miserable failure, as in "bombed at the box office," with the implication that a B+ ought to be considered a hopeless shortfall.
If on the other hand, "bombed" is taken to mean blasted away, implying that the fellow thinks well of himself for having gotten such a high grade and feels empowered to opine on philosophical issues, then I understand.
What Cala means, IDP, is that the guy gets a B+ in his intro to philosophy class and thinks this means he's awesomely smart and knows all about philosophy, but we know that at his overpriced rich-kid school the B+ means he actually bombed the class and only passed because of grade inflation.
Alfred North Whitehead also thought that Kant overstated the altruist aspect of morality, to the point that if somebody did the right thing because it made them happy to do the right thing, it didn't count as moral behavior. Only when someone does the right thing purely because it is the right thing, and for no other reason, does it count as moral behavior.
Marlene Dietrich said that Kant and Hemingway were the two men she most admired, and that she regretted not screwing Hemingway. (Kant was institutionalized in European HS education for decades, so everyone knew something about him.)
Adolph Eichmann said that killing Jews was very unpleasant for him, but he did it because of what he understood to be his Kantian Duty.
47:Re the Whitehead. We have two good words, ethics and morals, and we might as well make them useful by having them mean different things. Morals includes not wearing white shoes after labor day and ethics is the Categorical Imperative. I generally limit ethics to those rules and reasons that have a transcendental grounding, but since I am the only person in the world to do so, it is noy all that useful.
One down is truly tragic (and I'm there fairly early). Two down is yet another of those threads that prompts one to think, "What will be the fate of ObWi?" But it'll be fine.
Olmstead seems like a real addition to the site -- the kind of conservative who can be argued with without it getting too ugly. Bird I've never had much to say to or about.
To excuse Trevino, I don't think he was sniping at SH (God, what an awful post). I think he's just so caught up in the team sport of sniping across ideological lines that he didn't see anything wrong with using SH (given that they're on the same side) as a tool for making a snippy little point.
The reason I am not a pacifist is that I believe it would be justifiable for SH to shoot the rapist. This probably calls into other things about the rule of law, but fuck, fuck fuck, fuck, fuck.
Is there some chance that Chris Muir is a child? I don't mean this in the sense of calling him childish, I mean, that his comments in the Obsidian Wings thread make me suspect he may actually be a precocious kid, and I'm wondering if there is some counter-evidence.
Fuck, I was about to post this. The second one is worse, I think.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 1:06 PM
Don't let it stop you, Labs. that would be typically Unfoggedian taciturnity.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 1:10 PM
And since you have a passing interest in philosophy, you might actually have something of substance to say about it.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 1:11 PM
you might actually have something of substance to say about it.
Or you could point out that the guy in the strip is seriously overchicked.
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 1:14 PM
And apparantly a statue.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 1:18 PM
Not much more than Hilzoy did. The Randian distaste for Kant's moral views comes from his (widely misunderstood, I think) discussion of the value of acting from the motive of duty rather than from self-interest. (His famous example is of the shopkeeper who is honest because it makes good business sense.) Acting rightly from selfish reasons robs the action of moral worth even if it's still a right action. You can see why Rand would dislike this so much.
Now that I think about it, maybe there's something to Muir's complaint. Kant, after all, asks that we test our reasons for acting to see if they could be the reasons of every rational agent, and that we imagine ourselves as the lawgivers in a community in which every member is an end in itself. There's an emphasis on abstraction from particular identities, you might think, that leads to a kind of cosmopolitanism which, if you're Muir, manifests itself as a refusal to distinguish Us from Them on the part of the NYT. I think that's the best I can do by way of defense.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 1:19 PM
Or that Chris Muir's imaginative fantasies invovle right-wing philosophers who date hot chicks. Which obviously doesn't happen in real life.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 1:20 PM
4: I always wonder what male and female characters look like when drawn by female comic book artists (particularly if they aren't explicitly "female comic book artists"). Or maybe they're just stuck with the conventions as they find them.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 1:23 PM
leads to a kind of cosmopolitanism which, if you're Muir, manifests itself as a refusal to distinguish Us from Them on the part of the NYT
In this attempted defense, you interpret his use of nihilism to mean the refusal to acknowledge that every single distinction I feel like drawing has moral weight, even if I have reason for drawing such a distinction other than allowing my opponents poopyheads, yes?
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 1:23 PM
$100 says "schopenhauer" was thrown in because no one has read him but we've all heard about him because of Monty Python.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 1:25 PM
every member is an end
"is" s/b "in"
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 1:27 PM
8: Here are some cool examples.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 1:31 PM
w/d, yeah. It's not exactly a spirited defense, but I was trying to connect a vaguely Kantian cosmopolitanism with Muir's "newspapers should love the USA more" and that's the best I could do. You have to kind of read "nihilism" and "relativism" as "bad but unspecific things that all decent people abhor."
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 1:33 PM
Muir is obviously a graduate of the Frank Miller Gratuitous Butt Shot School of Illustration.
Chris Muir's imaginative fantasies invovle right-wing philosophers who date hot chicks
"Date" is too mild. I think you're supposed to imagine the right-wingle philosophers invovling the hot chicks.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 1:33 PM
I think I meant to type "invulvaing," actually.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 1:34 PM
Say, all my permissions options are grayed out in the control panel. Could somebody with greater powers than my own (Becks?) turn off the "send me an email every time someone comments" option for me?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 1:41 PM
I failed to write "no" prior to "reason". Also, my understanding is that the cartoons allude to a fight over a violation of the principle that no photographer employed by a U.S. paper should ever photograph a member of a militant group opposed to the U.S. Rather they should attack the person, while shouting a warning to any U.S. military personnel nearby and being shot to death.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 1:48 PM
12: Thanks. Now...I want lotto numbers.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 1:49 PM
Now that I think about it, maybe there's something to Muir's complaint. Kant, after all, asks that we test our reasons for acting to see if they could be the reasons of every rational agent, and that we imagine ourselves as the lawgivers in a community in which every member is an end in itself. There's an emphasis on abstraction from particular identities, you might think, that leads to a kind of cosmopolitanism which, if you're Muir, manifests itself as a refusal to distinguish Us from Them on the part of the NYT. I think that's the best I can do by way of defense.
And it's still a steaming pile of shit. Jeez, FL, there's being charitable and then there's... well, what's the opposite of a strawman? Attempting to make the opponent's view not insane when clearly the guy bombed intro to modern with a B+ at his overpriced school?
Gahhh.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 1:52 PM
What's more baffling to me is that the WingNet™ apparently finds Muir funny.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 1:56 PM
18: Use your birthday. Or, if you prefer, mine. But you'll have to trace my ip to find out what it is.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 1:57 PM
FL is right about what the randoids mean by "Kantian Nihillism".
Kant's key moral innovation was to strip self-interest of all honor. No matter whose interest, no matter by what standard it is judged, no matter what consequences follow from it, the fact that it is someone's self-interest damns it! So what? So Kant's ethics is a morality of evil, as is easily shown. To act from self-interest is to pursue some value, some good. To reject all self-interest is to reject all good, absolutely and in principle. When good is ruled out, what's left is evil. This is nihilism.
Posted by Joe O | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 1:59 PM
I love that "easily shown" proof.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 2:01 PM
16 - I changed it to send the emails to me. Unfortunately, the way MT is set up for us, it has to send a comment notification to a valid email address or it throws a fit. Right now, I'm getting the emails for LB, Labs, Ben, Ogged, and myself. I might set up a dummy gmail account and route them all there someday but, for now, it's a pretty useful as a crude measure for detecting when the site's gone down. (Been away from my desk for 15 minutes and don't have 10 new emails? Unfogged must be down!)
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 2:02 PM
you'll have to trace my ip
And that's not a euphemism. Also, thanks Becks.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 2:05 PM
$100 says "schopenhauer" was thrown in because no one has read him but we've all heard about him because of Monty Python.
I've heard about him because of Wodehouse, you effete snobs.
Posted by Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 2:17 PM
I love our commenters: they have brought up Jacobi ;)
Posted by hilzoy | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 2:26 PM
Expanding on problems in 9, I wrote "allowing my opponents poopyheads" and I meant "allowing me to call my opponent poopyheads".
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 2:28 PM
Emoticon. hilzoy is banned!
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 2:28 PM
The T&A in that strip drives me crazy. It's easy to overlook the fact that these are heavily plotted decisions, and at some point Muir sat down with ink and thought, "Now I will frame some ass."
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 2:38 PM
As long as we're linking to right-wing idiocy, I'd be remiss not to point out the latest video entry from Atlas Shrugs. Be warned: at several points you may feel an overwhelming urge to shove sharpened pencils in your ears.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 2:47 PM
28-29: Hilzoy, you're not in fact banned.
30: Obviously a subtle critique of the P.C. Left's shameful attempt to treat women, not like women, but like female persons (i.e., valuable for things other than sexual gratification).
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 2:49 PM
6 gets it half-right, I think.
First let me say, I think the comic is ridiculous too. But I'll speak up here, because I (actually) got lectured about Kant and nihilism from a very-conservative German-historian-family-member while standing on the (hot-as-hell, burned my feet) sand on the NC beach about two weeks ago. So... her complaint, if I understand it correctly (not being a philosopher myself) was that some aspect of Kantian ethics were nihilistic in the sense that they were also humanistic -- that they were, on some level, appeals to logic and humanity-as-an-end. She was arguing that, although Kant was no relativist, and very religious, that his ethics set the stage for all this later, modern, irreligious, relativist nonsense.
So I think she would have said that Kant's ethical philosophy was ultimately nihilist (in a religious sense), if not relativist. She definitely blamed Kant, in part, for the Decay of the Moral Fabric of Western Society, as far as I could tell. And she came to this on her own, not through Muir or Rand or some other (obvious) nut.
I'm not saying I agree... I spent the time while she was talking digging a hole to the cooler layer of sand, so that I still had toes left when the lecture was over. But there you go.
Posted by arthegall | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 2:50 PM
32: Bad form. We never preemptively acknowledge that. w/d is banned!
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 2:54 PM
The point still stands that Muir is using words without understanding what words mean. Someone is not a nihilist because they believe that self-interested action is morally bankrupt.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 2:55 PM
Arthegall believes in nothing.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 2:58 PM
At least it's an ethos.
Posted by arthegall | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 3:01 PM
Furthmore, Kant's whole "copernican revolution" idea, with the introduction of the subject, is probably anathema to the "A-is-A" objectivism creed.
Posted by Glenn | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 3:02 PM
27: Damn been busy today. I read and linked to Stanford on F H Jacobi last night at MY TPM; but somebody first mentioned Jacobi over at LGM.
Now that is here and at ObsWi, I may have to study it. Since I consider Kierkeggaard and Nietzsche the direct anti-Kants, accepting much of Kant's argument then rejecting some premises and postulates, this is of interest to me.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 3:33 PM
PS:Reading the Stanford article on Jacobi last night, which was a little tough, because like K & N, Jacobi wants to be see as not an irrationalist, there were definite ties to Schmitt & Strauss. Strauss did his doctorate on Jacobi. A commenter at MY's made fun of a review of an Agamben book, which was jargony, but damned if the skimming at Kotsko's didn't pay off a little.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 3:40 PM
clearly the guy bombed intro to modern with a B+ at his overpriced school?
Is the point grade inflation at overpriced, and presumably undemanding schools, or that B+ is contemptable to such as we?
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 3:56 PM
Yes. 'I made a B+ in an overpriced inflated intro course so I am t3h expert on Kant even though I'm making no sense.'
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 3:58 PM
Yes? you mean to both? I'll take the first but not the second.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 4:00 PM
Unless I'm misreading the sense of the word "bombed" here. I took it to mean miserable failure, as in "bombed at the box office," with the implication that a B+ ought to be considered a hopeless shortfall.
If on the other hand, "bombed" is taken to mean blasted away, implying that the fellow thinks well of himself for having gotten such a high grade and feels empowered to opine on philosophical issues, then I understand.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 4:38 PM
You're all just been brainwashed by John Locke's endless contempt for Judeo-Christian traditions.
Posted by Scott Lemieux | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 4:41 PM
What Cala means, IDP, is that the guy gets a B+ in his intro to philosophy class and thinks this means he's awesomely smart and knows all about philosophy, but we know that at his overpriced rich-kid school the B+ means he actually bombed the class and only passed because of grade inflation.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 4:46 PM
Alfred North Whitehead also thought that Kant overstated the altruist aspect of morality, to the point that if somebody did the right thing because it made them happy to do the right thing, it didn't count as moral behavior. Only when someone does the right thing purely because it is the right thing, and for no other reason, does it count as moral behavior.
Marlene Dietrich said that Kant and Hemingway were the two men she most admired, and that she regretted not screwing Hemingway. (Kant was institutionalized in European HS education for decades, so everyone knew something about him.)
Adolph Eichmann said that killing Jews was very unpleasant for him, but he did it because of what he understood to be his Kantian Duty.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 4:53 PM
47:Re the Whitehead. We have two good words, ethics and morals, and we might as well make them useful by having them mean different things. Morals includes not wearing white shoes after labor day and ethics is the Categorical Imperative. I generally limit ethics to those rules and reasons that have a transcendental grounding, but since I am the only person in the world to do so, it is noy all that useful.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 6:27 PM
Morals includes not wearing white shoes after labor day
I have never heard this word used in a way that would include this instance. "Mores" maybe.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 6:32 PM
Téo is the official calatranslator of calapropisms.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 6:44 PM
Calathankyou for the calahonor.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 6:51 PM
oh man, I just checked out the ObiWi post one down from the cartoon.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 6:56 PM
One down is truly tragic (and I'm there fairly early). Two down is yet another of those threads that prompts one to think, "What will be the fate of ObWi?" But it'll be fine.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 7:01 PM
Olmstead seems like a real addition to the site -- the kind of conservative who can be argued with without it getting too ugly. Bird I've never had much to say to or about.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 7:05 PM
Jeebus. I just read the post from SH. Horrific. And Trevino should have been strangled in his crib.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 7:10 PM
To excuse Trevino, I don't think he was sniping at SH (God, what an awful post). I think he's just so caught up in the team sport of sniping across ideological lines that he didn't see anything wrong with using SH (given that they're on the same side) as a tool for making a snippy little point.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 7:16 PM
The reason I am not a pacifist is that I believe it would be justifiable for SH to shoot the rapist. This probably calls into other things about the rule of law, but fuck, fuck fuck, fuck, fuck.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 7:19 PM
Yeah, Seb's post was horrible.
And John E.: Eichmann later took it back, and said that he knew he was violating the moral law. Iirc.
Posted by hilzoy | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 7:34 PM
55: after due process! after due process!
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 7:56 PM
Hilzoy, Eichman was just trying to save his ass. His earlier statement was definitive.
I hate people who make excuses for monsters like Kant.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 8:30 PM
Back on topic:
Mwa ha ha ha ha!!!
Posted by hilzoy | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 9:18 PM
That's wonderful.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 9:25 PM
for a nice change of web-comix pace, mnftiu has been updated.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 9:50 PM
Yay!
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07-20-06 9:56 PM
Is there some chance that Chris Muir is a child? I don't mean this in the sense of calling him childish, I mean, that his comments in the Obsidian Wings thread make me suspect he may actually be a precocious kid, and I'm wondering if there is some counter-evidence.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 07-21-06 1:00 PM
You Jacobi-curious folk, I think Isaiah Berlin writes on him, which would likely be more accessible (in more ways than one) than Jacobi.
Not that you didn't already know that or anything.
Posted by Anderson | Link to this comment | 07-21-06 3:28 PM