Subj : Everyone's Philosopher
To   : LEE LOFASO
From : Frank Masingill
Date : Fri Jul 20 2001 05:55 am

 > What gives people freedom is the ability to make choices.  Ideologies
 > restrict those choices, thereby reducing people's freedom. Since one
 > cannot make a good choice if there is no bad choice available, it is
 > not possible for one to do good.  We would therefore become victims of
 > a nanny state, not having the need or desire to think for ourselves.

 > Not that all ideologies are bad or evil.  But there are inherent dangers
 > that must be understood whenever one looks to ideology as the basis of
 > one's thought.  And it is through the use of philosophy that enables
 > one to understand what those dangers are, which makes philosophy the
 > far more valuable tool.

    It is seldom, in the realm of Fidonet that one encounters such ready 
understanding and appreciaton for the strong link between "modernity" and 
ideology as you have demonstrated in your post.  I must observe, however, that 
I detect a degree of inconsistency between the conclusion in your final two 
paragraphs in that I could not concede that ideology can be intellectually 
desirable under any circumstances.  I suspect that the reason for this is that 
you see the possibility of "good" dogma and "bad" dogma so it may be, in your 
eyes, a matter of semantics.   I feel the necessity of defending philosophy 
against ALL metastatic thought or closure into any unchanging (unscientific) or 
unchallengeable framework because that is how I would have to define dogma.   
With that once small caveat, I must say that I think we view the misfortune of 
modern ideology in virtually the same way.

    The resistance against the spirit of man as displayed in the ancient 
Hellenic gnosticism was followed by a millenial movement leading to the Marxian 
and Comtean dreaming of perfection in this world, so attractive to the 
alienated of both the ancient past and modernity you have correctly described 
as ushering in the 20th century ideologues like Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini and 
Hitler and their counterparts in the eastern world as it fell under the dream.

    We did, indeed, have such nonsensical phraseology even in the western 
democracies as "freedom from fear and want" and the like.   Philosophy is not 
allowed very much leeway in modernity, yet, a healthy respect for science even 
a restored social science freed of the felt need for proceeding ONLY under the 
rules of empirical science is certainly still alive and very much alive and may 
grow beyond our expectations in the 21st century.   We will, I hope, continue 
to repudiate those ideologues so entent upon hauling the salvation and 
perfection suitable only to the experienced beyond into THIS world of imperfect 
man living in the tension between the human and the divine and realizing that 
to be his home.

Frank

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 * Origin: Frank's House (1:396/45.12)

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