John C. Wright's Journal

Allow me to propose that there is something more fundamental than psychology, more fundamental than philosophy, which underpins one’s thought. Something more fundamental than psychology or philosophy influences or determines which worldview, one adopts, and to which one adapts oneself.

This most fundamental of foundations is one’s selfhood and one’s sense of self. It defines the basic anthropology and cosmogony of one’s sense of what man is and what is man’s place in the cosmos.

It is the study of “himselfhood.”

I propose the term eautology (from the Greek εαυτός ) to refer to the study of man’s sense of self, sense of life, sense of the world.

Other terms, such as “meta-psychophilosophy”, would be awkward, and the term “anthropology,” outside of theological discussions, has taken on another meaning.

Why is such a term needed?

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Here is a topic which is always timely.

We are all weary hearing the claim that opposition to the widespread normalization of sodomy, pederasty, transvestitism, castration, is bigotry akin to fascism; and we are likewise weary of the claim that tolerance toward perversion will usher in the paradise of endless worldwide orgies, like some mad vision of hordes of houri from an Arabic afterlife.

Let me set out the basic conservative argument, so that we need hear no more extraneous comments about utopia or Nazi Germany or how liberating to women divorce and sexual perversion are, or how happy it makes virgins to fornicate.

All of that, true or false, is irrelevant to the basic argument.

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Sometime circa A.D. 2007, an unsolicited question was sent to me with the mildly ungrammatical title of WHAT ARE YOU OPTIMISTIC ABOUT? WHY? I did not recognize the man’s name, nor did he say for what publication, if any, he wished my response.

His somewhat leading question read:

As an activity, as a state of mind, science is fundamentally optimistic. Science figures out how things work and thus can make them work better. Much of the news is either good news or news that can be made good, thanks to ever deepening knowledge and ever more efficient and powerful tools and techniques. Science, on its frontiers, poses more and ever better questions, ever better put.

What are you optimistic about? Why? Surprise us!

Since this view of science, much less the scientific community, could not be further from the truth, I was at somewhat of a loss.

I wonder if the ever-better questions, ever-better put, now being asked by the ever more powerful tools and techniques of science now include “How Ungoodthink a Shirt was the First Scientist Who Landed a Probe on a Comet-head Wearing?”

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In his 1962 book  PROFILES OF THE FUTURE Arthur C. Clarke posits the dictum that Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

I answer is that Clarke’s Dictum is true only if the man who fails to make the distinction steadfastly ignores what distinguishes technology from magic in the first place, as Clarke, a crass materialist, blatantly does.

Because magic and science are as different as soul and body, as different as as word and meaning, as different as mechanism and aim, Clarke’s Dictum must be rejected as fallacious, if not risible.

As if saying any sufficiently advanced mannikin is indistinguishable from a man. The thing can be said only by someone who refuses to see what makes a man a man and not a mannikin.

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Part of an ongoing discussion:

Atheists routinely accuse Christians of blind faith, that is a faith not open to revision when contrary evidence arises: as when a cult member continues to believe every utterance of a prophet once proved false.

This is a human failing, and atheists are hardly immune.

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This is an except from an unfinished manuscript tentatively titled LETTERS FROM THE LAST DAYS. When, if ever, time or interest will permit me to return to his work is unknown. 

It is neither quite fiction nor nonfiction: the conceit here is that Time Travelers have arranged to allow my younger self, from AD 1984, to exchange letters with my older self, from AD 2042, on matters where the two do not agree.

These two letters given below concern libertarianism.

I offer it here as an oddity to amuse my beloved readers.

Letter XV — Anarchy Distinguished

14 July 1984

To My Self Yet To Come,

Libertarian theory can be distinguished from any sort of quasi-anarchism or any sort of anarchism. We are making the case here for limited government, not for no government.

Please note that the classical Enlightenment theory places the freedoms of speech, the press, assembly, and religion beyond the scope of government, as well as the private ownership of arms.

The simple reason for placing these things in the private sphere and beyond the reach of government is that the risk (of the state using the power to quell sedition to quell honest dissent) outweighs the rewards (of the state using the power to quell sedition to preserve an honest and lawful union from dissolving into anarchy).

Libertarianism is a more logically consistent version of the same philosophy, but which additionally places the regulation of labor, advertisement, and industry beyond the scope of government; as well as any private behavior, such as Sabbath-breaking, sex outside marriage, the use of intoxicating drugs or alcohol, gambling, prostitution, smoking tobacco, helmetless motorcycling, or in short, anything not breaking a contract, committing a fraud, trespassing on private land, or disturbing the peace.

The simple reason for placing these things in the private sphere and beyond the reach of government is that the risk (using the power to quell public disorder to quell honest but merely annoying private immorality) outweighs the rewards (using the power to quell public disorder to preserve an honest and lawful union).

The difference between classical Enlightenment theory and Libertarianism is one of degree, not of kind: it is the difference between Limited Government and Very Limited Government.

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