tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612793.post4293660910051095320..comments2024-03-27T23:59:49.801+00:00Comments on Stoat: The Trials of the StateWilliam M. Connolleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05836299130680534926noreply@blogger.comBlogger18125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612793.post-47344450989864890952020-03-25T10:18:47.705+00:002020-03-25T10:18:47.705+00:00Aha.
> he is sometimes so subtle he confuses m...Aha.<br /><br />> he is sometimes so subtle he confuses me and, I suspect, himself<br /><br />I'm dubious about offering this as an excuse. To have something useful to say it has to be comprehensible. Offering words with an unclear meaning is likely unhelpful, *unless* your insights are so perceptive that it is worth the plebs picking over your words for any shred of enlightenment they can find. As my prior post suggests, I prefer a different interpretation less creditable to BL, which I won't repeat here. I certainly don't see anything from him that deserves any reputation for brilliance or uncommon insight. But you're welcome to point be at something of his to change my mind.William M. Connolleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05836299130680534926noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612793.post-58169449942129802302020-03-24T21:07:02.117+00:002020-03-24T21:07:02.117+00:00Sorry, that last post by 'Unknown' should ...Sorry, that last post by 'Unknown' should have been me.Christopher Blanchardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612793.post-66471396421069415362020-03-23T21:54:25.255+00:002020-03-23T21:54:25.255+00:00The Climate Wars refered to Latour talking about &...The Climate Wars refered to Latour talking about "different world views": That is what I said ('different magisteria' was Stephen Jay Gould's version of the same rubbish), and I disagree with it very strongly. but I ought to add a qualification, which is that Latour opens himself up to parody, which isn't always fair - he is genuinely trying to do new things, and he is sometimes so subtle he confuses me and, I suspect, himself. Because of that I have to read his most recent book for myself before I can be confident about my intial hostile reaction.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15881825657769617700noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612793.post-82496650584916453532020-03-21T19:51:27.142+00:002020-03-21T19:51:27.142+00:00I think you're missing the points: (1) If the ...I think you're missing the points: (1) If the HR law is indep of democratic choice and control, it is nonetheless created by something / somebody; simply ceding it from the democratic sphere does not make that somebody all-wise; (2) law that does not have popular support is dangerous.William M. Connolleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05836299130680534926noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612793.post-3097552578838003512020-03-20T22:34:19.894+00:002020-03-20T22:34:19.894+00:00"the public concern that HR law is independen..."the public concern that HR law is independent of democratic choice"<br /><br />Hmmm the issue is that humanity doesn't have a proud history of treating each other well... With or without Democracy. <br /><br />So it should be independent... <br /><br />Nathanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12139055978545659341noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612793.post-24690884572048370722020-03-16T17:29:23.662+00:002020-03-16T17:29:23.662+00:00"Wainwright and Mann [no relation - WMC] argu..."Wainwright and Mann [no relation - WMC] argue that rapid climate change will transform global political economy and our world s basic political arrangements, leading toward a capitalist planetary sovereignty. Alternative futures must be constructed in the face of these transformations." Um. What does that even mean? That there will be one global sov due to GW? Why would that be so?William M. Connolleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05836299130680534926noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612793.post-66426634919685021982020-03-16T17:20:41.647+00:002020-03-16T17:20:41.647+00:00The last time latour spoke hereabouts, he was giv...The last time latour spoke hereabouts, he was giving two cheers for Climate Leviathan, and dividing the various combatants in the climate wars into separate planetary camps, each with a different world view and truth systems , turning the political categories of Climate Leviathan [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Climate-Leviathan-Political-Theory-Planetary/dp/1786634295] into a variation on the theme of of 'men are from Mars, women are from Venus THE CLIMATE WARShttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02578106673226403151noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612793.post-27304062881280289602020-03-16T14:50:39.179+00:002020-03-16T14:50:39.179+00:00Thankyou. The meaning of this stuff gets profoundl...Thankyou. The meaning of this stuff gets profoundly emotional. More another time.Christopher Blanchardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612793.post-24807958253466785252020-03-16T13:57:31.564+00:002020-03-16T13:57:31.564+00:00Thankyou.Thankyou.Christopher Blanchardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612793.post-30972504917355457162020-03-16T10:18:58.504+00:002020-03-16T10:18:58.504+00:00> Bruno Latour
Ah, Bruno Latour.
> notions...> Bruno Latour<br /><br />Ah, <a href="http://mustelid.blogspot.com/2018/03/is-bruno-latour-useless-ponce.html" rel="nofollow">Bruno Latour</a>.<br /><br />> notions like ‘a right to life’, really don’t stand up<br /><br />I'm happy with that; in my framework, it's near meaningless. The state creates and enforces laws prohibiting murder, but that doesn't give you a right to life, and more than the prohibition on laws about religion gives you any religious rights.<br />William M. Connolleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05836299130680534926noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612793.post-43636904968655830072020-03-15T13:35:10.552+00:002020-03-15T13:35:10.552+00:00A morning thought as well, which is that some of t...A morning thought as well, which is that some of this disagreement is like nature/nurture debates. There is no either/or about it. Rights, and so on, are not simply natural (your preference) or made (which is mine). They have to be some of both, so the questions are 'how much', 'when', 'where', 'how', and so on, and whether a particular way of seeing things is more useful, either analytically or practically. I am inclined to prefer mine as a strong starting point because, for example, it helps resolve your doubts about Sumption's approach. Seeing politics and law as parts of an evolved organic whole, sustained by continous debate and action - different in detail, but of essentially the same kind, does, it seems to me, clarify things a great deal.Christopher Blanchardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612793.post-19211475651503858542020-03-15T00:32:40.611+00:002020-03-15T00:32:40.611+00:00Hmm. I don’t believe my way of seeing things, that...Hmm. I don’t believe my way of seeing things, that rights are created rather than discovered, is particularly eccentric, although I’m happy to acknowledge it is relatively unusual. I suspect, in the way many eccentrics do, that the more usual ways of seeing things are a general ‘bedazzlement’ (to adopt your word). First off, mine does have some reasonable academic support. One of the things I was doing was paraphrasing Bruno Latour, to the same effect. Not sure how much weight you might give that - for my part I think ‘We have never been modern’, is one of the best books I have read this decade, but other work, where he seems to accept separate ‘magisteria', as all being in some way valid, seems to me to be quite wrong.<br /><br />Besides, I worked this out myself, so never mind Latour, out of a heterogeneous mix of history reading, science and its sociology, politics and anthropology. The key is the anthropology. Societies differ. My point about killing for honour was not that some such notion isn’t nearly universal - it obviously is - but that the content, and the rights and duties which go with it are very varied, and many of them work well, but notions like ‘a right to life’, really don’t stand up to any kind of comparative ethnography. The differences are not just detail because the legitimate responses to honour breaches cut across our current notions of rights (in every sense). That’s one basic right which won’t stand up to inspection. There are plenty of others. Just one example - relevant, although it is formally about duty and entitlement, which is the ‘incest taboo’. One or other version of the taboo is usual, so much so that an earlier generation of anthropologists sometimes claimed it is a universal part of human nature (Levi Strauss is about the end of that, and a little bit equivocal). But it isn’t, in fact, universal - like Cleopatra, for example, and maybe Trumpist Tennessee. So that is another of these human universals out the window.<br /><br />I think that bit is easy - rights and all the rest do vary, and ours is just a local token. I can’t see in that how we can re-interpret other people’s behaviour as if it had an underlying logic which just happens to be our kind of rights, and I fear, and hope I’m wrong, that that is what you are doing. That would seem to treat all these thousands of different cultures as if they were all populated by some kind of idiot, which won’t do. I had better say, in case you misunderstand me, that this version of moral relativism is not about my acquiescently accepting such stuff as suttee or slavery. To put it crudely, there is no absolute reason my way (and I think yours) is better than some other, but if I have to fight for my way, then, though I hate the thought, I will do so.<br /><br />But underneath all this is a question, which is ‘how do these rights, and the duties and responsibilities which are their counterparts, come about?’ My partial answer is that they are the product of social processes; they have a history; they have evolved, physically first, and in our working communities. That is the sense in which I used the word ‘invented’, and I used the word ‘politics’ in a broad sense, to try to encapsulate those social processes.<br /><br />Your bit about fuzzy boundaries is right enough: I wasn’t clear. I am very well aware of the differences. My definition of ‘political’ has more to do with my old feminist friends’ war cry of ‘the personal is political’. I would be happy with other language.<br />Christopher Blanchardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612793.post-26194039348278872092020-03-13T21:51:07.595+00:002020-03-13T21:51:07.595+00:00I think your argument for rights being invented is...I think your argument for rights being invented is dubious. The right to recompense for slights to honour is near-universal; the exact form of that recompense differs; but that is a matter of detail, not fundamental.<br /><br />I disagree that pol and jidicial action cannot be split. One can indeed make the argument that everything is interconnected in this world of ours and that everything bleeds into everything else; but that is just a truism. It is both practically possible to meaningfully draw fuzzy boundaries between them, and theoretically valuable in the analysis.<br /><br />I also think "they are both mechanisms for doing that invention [of rights]" is a strange way to view either law or politics.<br />William M. Connolleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05836299130680534926noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612793.post-77127877648339202342020-03-13T01:46:24.244+00:002020-03-13T01:46:24.244+00:00And, by the way, I think Sumption's history of...And, by the way, I think Sumption's history of the Hundred Years War is brilliant, but his Reith lecture argument, while also brilliant, is quite wrong - say again, law and politics are not separate.Christopher Blanchardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612793.post-48068301165538091882020-03-13T01:39:41.106+00:002020-03-13T01:39:41.106+00:00There is a fundamental problem here, in two parts....There is a fundamental problem here, in two parts. First is that rights are not 'natural'. It would be wrong to say they are just invented because other complex animals like wolf packs and cattle herds have systems of entitlements: rights, responsibilities, duties and so on, and our capacities have evolved in similar ways, but the content of those entitlement systems, inside human nature, is enormously variable, so - inside very wide limits, rights are invented. If you doubt that think how many fully functioning human societies have the right to kill, in a duel or otherwise, for slights to honour. And second, following on; splitting politics and judicial action, as though they are different things, doesn't make sense to me because they are both mechanisms for doing that invention. I forget who said it, but rights are created by and inside political processes (and only survive because they never stop), so judicial action is just a (slower) part of the same process. This is a sort of anarchist logic - no authority, legal or social, has any kind of absolute sway - it is all down to the social/political processes which sustains their legitimacy.Christopher Blanchardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612793.post-20426754543986825202020-03-10T12:16:23.307+00:002020-03-10T12:16:23.307+00:00Don't mean it's wrong.Don't mean it's wrong.Samnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612793.post-17792563527865243062020-03-10T09:26:31.119+00:002020-03-10T09:26:31.119+00:00This, of course, is what they want you to think.This, of course, is what they want you to think.William M. Connolleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05836299130680534926noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7612793.post-65463458978262948992020-03-09T17:02:57.686+00:002020-03-09T17:02:57.686+00:00Literally any attempt at direct democracy would pr...Literally any attempt at direct democracy would probably end up being an unimtigated disaster, because for questions any more complex than "beef or chicken" (and sometimes even that) majority rule collapses into an incoherent mess because of condorcet.<br /><br />Also the idea, even if only very broad strokes, of putting voting anywhere *near* the internet is quite utterly barking, computer security being what it is and all.Samnoreply@blogger.com