Canada breathes a sigh of relief as Venezuela becomes the 51st state

 
     Source: The Guardian
     

Of the corruption of the Moral Sentiments: Adam Smith & Plato

This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to establish and maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.  That wealth and greatness are often regarded with the respect and admiration which are due only to wisdom and virtue; and that the contempt, of which vice and folly are the only proper objects, is often most unjustly bestowed upon poverty and weakness, has been the complaint of moralists in all ages.[1]

Adam Smith, The Theory of the Moral Sentiments (1759)

 

Then comes the moment, my dear Glaucon, when everything is at stake.  And that is why it should be our first care to abandon all other forms of knowledge, and seek and study that which will show us how to perceive and find the man who will give us the knowledge and the ability to tell a good life from a bad one and always choose the better course so far as we can; we must reckon up all that we have said in this discussion of ours, weighing the arguments together and apart to find out how they affect the good life, and see what effects, good or ill, good looks have when accompanied by poverty or wealth or by some different disposition of character, and what again are the effects of the various blends of birth and rank, strength and weakness, cleverness and stupidity, and all other qualities inborn or acquired.  If we take all this into account and remember how the soul is constituted, we can choose between the worse life and the better, calling the one that leads us to become more unjust the worse, and the one that leads us to become more just the better.  Everything else we can let go, for we have seen that this is the best choice both for living and dead.  This belief we must resist with an iron grip when we enter the other world, so that we may be unmoved there by the temptation of wealth or other evils, and avoid falling into the life of a tyrant or other evil-doer and perpetrating unbearable evil and suffering worse, but may rather know how to choose the middle-course, and avoid so far as we can, in this life and the next, the extremes on either hand.  For this is the surest way to the highest human happiness.[2] 

Plato, The Republic (circa 375 BC)

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[1] Adam Smith, The Theory of the Moral Sentiments, ed. by Ryan Patrick Hanley (New York: Penguin, 2009), pp. 73-74 [Part I, Section I, Chapter III].

[2] Plato, The Republic, tr. and intro. by Desmond Lee, 2^nd ed. (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1974), pp. 452-453 [Book X: 618c-619b] 

Burke: On a partnership between generations

Society is indeed a contract.  Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure – but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties.  It is to be looked on with other reverence; because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature.  It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection.  As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are yet to be born.[1]

Edmund Burke, Reflections of the Revolution in France (1790)

 

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[1] Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France in Two Classics of the French Revolution (New York: Anchor, 1989), p. 110. 

An uncomfortable relationship: why Evangelicals support Israel

Israel’s Unbelief

What then shall we say?  That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; but Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness, has not attained it.  Why not?  Because they pursued it not in faith but as it were by works.  They stumbled over the “stumbling stone.”  As it is written:

“See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes men to stumble
and a rock that makes them fall,
And the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame.”

Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayers to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved.  For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge.  Since they did not know the righteousness that comes from God, and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.  Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.

…

All Israel Will Be Saved

I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of Gentiles has come in.  And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written.

“The deliverer will come from Zion;
he will turn godlessness away from Jacob,
And this is my covenant with them
when I take away their sins.”

As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies on your account; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, for God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable.  Just as you were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, so that they too have become disobedient in order that they may now receive mercy as a result of God’s mercy to you.  For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that they may have mercy on them all.

The Bible, Romans 9-11[1]

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[1] The Bible, New International Version (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2001), pp. 627-629.

Kant: The crooked timber of humanity

This problem is at the same time the most difficult and the latest to be solved by the human species.  The difficulty which the mere idea of this problem lays before our eyes is this: the human being is an animal which, when it lives among other species, has need of a master.  For he certainly misuses his freedom in regard to others of his kind; and although a rational creature he wishes a law that sets limits to the freedom of all, his selfish animal inclination still misleads him into excepting himself from it where he may.  Thus he needs a master, who breaks his stubborn will and necessitates him to obey a universally valid will with which everyone can be free.  But where will he get his master?  Nowhere else but from the human species.  But this master is exactly as much an animal who has need of a master.  Try as he may, therefore, there is no seeing how he can procure a supreme power for public right that is itself just, whether he seeks it in a single person or in a society of many who are selected for it.  For every one of them will always misuse his freedom when he has no one to exercise authority over him in accordance with the laws.  The highest supreme authority, however, ought to be just in itself and yet a human being.  This problem is therefore the most difficult of all; indeed, its perfect solution is even impossible: out of such crooked wood as the human being is made, nothing straight can be fabricated.  Only the approximation to this idea is laid upon us by nature.[1]

Kant “Idea for a universal history” (1784)

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[1] Immanuel Kant, “Idea for a universal history with a cosmopolitan aim” in Anthropology, History, and Education, tr. Allen W. Wood, eds. Günter Zöller and Robert B. Louden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 113.  See the Sixth Proposition.

Bloody Sands: Mass killings in El Fasher visible from space

 
     Source: Al Jazeera

It appears that the United Arab Emirates is interested in Sudan's gold.  So, it offers material support to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan's civil war.  It also appears that the UAE is too rich, or too powerful, to pressure.  So, slaughter by the RSF at El Fasher was tolerated, and killings continue.  In other words, the silence of the West is gold to Abu Dhabi. 

Turn the volume up: Trump envies Mamdani

… in the case of an inferiority, we still desire a greater distance, in order to augment still more the idea of oneself.  When this distance diminishes the comparison is less to our advantage; and consequently gives us less pleasure, and is even disagreeable.  Hence arises that species of envy, which men feel, when they perceive their inferiors approaching or overtaking them in the pursuits of glory or happiness.  In this envy we may see the effects of comparison twice repeated.  A man, who compares himself to his inferior, receives a pleasure from the comparison:  And when the inferiority decreases by the elevation of the inferior, what shou’d only have been a decrease of pleasure, becomes a real pain, by a new comparison with its preceding condition.[1]

David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40)

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[1] David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Ernest C. Mossner (London: Penguin, 1969), p. 425.