Please join us in Auerbach 320 or online this Wednesday, Sept. 11, from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m., for our next meeting of the Philosophy Club as Brian Skelly presents for discussion, Values Skepticism as a Rationale for Extremism in Politics: The Push to Limit Democratic Liberty.
Join the meeting virtually here.
We typically associate extremism with absolutism of some kind or other. Absolutism is a claim to certain, finite, comprehensive truth about some important matter, e.g. in religion, politics, or economic life. In contrast, we tend to associate skepticism—the epistemic opposite of absolutism —at worst with inaction or indecision. These inductive associations may have served us well in past; but the landscape has changed; particularly the political landscape. It is now the case, in a trend that began its development in the wake of World War II but only recently, has reached its full, unabashed bloom, that the anti-democratic movement in politics has its footing in a values-skepticism borrowed from mid-twentieth century economic liberalism, known better in the States as laissez-faire capitalism, a form of right-leaning libertarianism, whose main spokesperson, perhaps more now than at the time, has become the Austrian-British economist Friedrich Hayek.
His work not well-loved by the great economists of the latter half of the twentieth century, he attained his stature largely as a sort of informal “guru” figure for some of the main conservative political figures in the Anglo-American world, including Barry Goldwater, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush, from whence his influence became part of the bedrock of the widespread movement to achieve conservative results in political leadership by limiting the democratic process in various ways, including voter suppression, gerrymandering, and obstruction of government processes. Although it would be unreasonable to blame all such recent shenanigans on Hayek himself, it was he who most boldly laid out his vision of unlimited economic liberty at the expense of unlimited democratic liberty. His arguments at least make it clear that there is a blueprint being followed with an ideology behind it, as nefarious or misguided as that ideology may be. Its failure to be directly enunciated by its present practitioners only serves all the more to condemn them for lack of moral integrity in government service.
Since the understanding of this ideology is based on a fundamental embrace of values skepticism, our first step here must be to analyze and evaluate this underlying skepticism.
In the wake of World War II, it was clear that the Axis powers that had run havoc over the entire globe and so gravely threatened the future of our species had been driven by one common evil: Nationalism-based political absolutism that considered the state as the absolute value, seeing the individual as subservient and expendable. To many, it seemed clear then that to correct ourselves, we should move in the opposite direction: to exalt the individual and embrace individualism, while limiting the power of the state as much as was practical (full document).
Questions? Contact Brian Skelly at bskelly@hartford.edu or 413.273.2273.
An ongoing weekly tradition at the University since 2001, the University of Hartford Philosophy Club is a place where students, professors, and people from the community at large meet as peers. Sometimes presentations are given, followed by discussion. Other times, topics are hashed out by the whole group.
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