Future Historians
I sometimes wonder if future historians will look back on the 20th Century as the time when mankind, shocked and confused by the industrial and scientific revolutions, spent all their free time trying to invent some philosophical excuse to escape their inescapable duties.
Socialism (and I mean both Communism and Nazism, which is, after all, just an abbreviation for the National Socialist Workers Party) is an attempt, at its root, to shove off onto the state personal responsibility for one’s upkeep and property ownership.
Nihilism is an attempt, root, trunk and branch, to shove off into the abyss all responsibility for thought and judgment.
Behaviorism is an attempt to shove off responsibility for free will.
Existentialism is an attempt to assert total responsibility for everything you do, with the scorpion sting in the tail that the existentialist also has to make up his own moral code, ergo he has no duties except the ones that suit his mood; which means he has no duties at all. One cannot make up a new moral code any more than one can invent a new primary color.
The only philosopher in the modern day who takes responsibilities seriously is Ayn Rand, and even she will allow her moral code only to cover cases of rational pursuit of one’s own enlightened self-interest, and the conduct fitting and becoming to man as an heroic rational animal. The duties she ignores are those that call for self-sacrifice, or which call for love with no expectation of return: duties known to soldiers as well as to parents.
Freudianism is a rationalization of a repressed desire to blame your parents and your upbringing for all your shortcomings. I suspect Freud was neurotic. He wanted to sleep with his mother.
(Just kidding: I actually think Freud was a very intelligent and very unscientific thinker, who fell into the trap of having One Unified Theory of Everything. He was inventing system of belief to be taken on faith, not a theory open to disproof by evidence. Whenever anyone has One Unified Theory of Everything, he dismisses criticism of the theory by means of ad Hominem. For example, Freud dealt with Jung’s criticism of Freudianism by asserting Jung was neurotic. Likewise Marx, who had a Unified Theory of Everything, dealt with criticism by saying economists were conditioned by their class interests and blind historical forces. Freud need not answer a neurotic, because one need not argue with a nut; Marx need not answer a robot.)
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
