/lit/ - Literature

>>14345073
>belief in political equality of individuals
Already wrong. Try again, son.

>◇ ∃p ≡ q{d~p} ∀m ⊢q∥~p ⊃ d p ⊧ ~p ∄ p
>∴ Matter is material.
>Ergo, mid-20th century market liberalism is objectively correct, as is every conception, ca. 1965 in Oxbridge, UK, of the ideas and culture of all past and future civilizations. Read John Rawls and John Locke every day. Ethics was solved by the Bloomsbury circle.

>>14345073
>people have the right to believe whatever they want so long as they are prepared to be confronted with the discursive consequences of those beliefs
*tips fedora*

>>14345073
Prepare for a lot of
>underage bait. You can't just let others exist in peace.
Followed by little to no actual argumentation

>>14345094
>>14345084
>>14345083
so I take it you have no idea how to articulate your antiliberal positions?

>>14345073
i despise liberalism. i will attempt to give some reasons:
>justifies capitalism
>views people as equals when they are not. i.e. equality of opportunity
>boils down all relations people have with each other to 'contracts', which is a very toxic way to think
>likewise has other values like consent and autonomy that justify selfish behavior
>relatedly, it rejects any capital g Good in favor of individual 'rights'
>atomistic individualism abstracts people from their relationships with others, resulting in a competitive and lonely enviornment

>>14345186
>stifles change due to an emphasis on pluralism

>>14345073
>all people in a state deserve the right to have their interests heard and represented
>the goal of society is to reduce injustice as much as possible
>the market economy is the most efficient and natural medium for practical problem solving
>If we were all to adopt a position of empathy, many injustices would dissolve, and therefore its best to act as though everyone were as empathetic as you
some would argue that the four propositions are contradictory, or at least antagonistic (number three especially)
>belief in political equality of individuals
>all people in a state deserve the right to have their interests heard and represented
>the goal of society is to reduce injustice as much as possible
some may also have problems with these propositions. as to why people hate it, i don't like psychologising, so i won't say anything. i can expand on these points if you want, but if you can clearly articulate (at least a portion) of liberalism as a political philosophy, i'm sure you know what i'm getting at.

>belief in political equality of individuals
No, I don't want to be ruled by people whose interests are diametrically opposed to mine, and I do not want insane people or violent or white-collar criminals to have political power over me.
>all people in a state deserve the right to have their interests heard and represented
No, if their interests are not compatible with ours, they should go make their own state instead.
>people shouldn't be discriminated against according to factors they cannot change
I'm fine with making mentally retarded people into airline pilots because it would be "unfair" to them to discriminate against them based on factors they can't change, but only if we pack the airplanes full of liberals.
>men and women have the same intellectual capabilities
This is literally, measurably untrue. It is a denial of observable reality.
>no one has the right to govern solely in virtue of their familial status
I'm not a staunch defender of monarchy, but rulers trying to ensure that their heirs inherit a prosperous and stable nation seems like a better deal than politicians going into government for a few years just to cash in on campaign donations and bribes while selling out their country to the highest bidder.
>the goal of society is to reduce injustice as much as possible
>the market economy is the most efficient and natural medium for practical problem solving
These contradict one another. Free market economies lead to parasitic entities like landlords and money-lenders who make money off of other people without doing work themselves.
>If we were all to adopt a position of empathy, many injustices would dissolve, and therefore its best to act as though everyone were as empathetic as you
That just leads to the most naive people being cannibalized. See e.g. Swedish women being raped en masse by the very same Somali immigrants whose lives are made possible by the Swedish welfare state, or European-Americans being turned into a minority in their own country and used as gun fodder in shitty wars for Israel by the very Jews to whom they grant all privileges of citizenship and whom they rescued from Hitler.
You can't have a high-trust, high-empathy society for long when you let in populations that do not reciprocate.

>>14345186
I don't see how this really addresses anything internal to liberalism. Maybe you can say a little more about your distaste for Capitalism, but it is the most successful economic structure in human history. People are equal in so far as they have rights not to be treated a certain way and are in a possible of entire metaphysical freedom. The claim about contract relationships seems strange and not endemic to liberalism. Liberals see other people as members of a community with similar goals for maximum freedom and respect. Capital g Good is the foundation of Liberalism and through maximizing the rights and fair treatment of individuals it achieves this end. This last point seems more to do the results of selfish and antiliberal people taking advantage of others who have less power than them
>>14345200
You are aware that you can live in a non-liberal state and be ruled by someone with diametrically opposed views? Anyway, this rebuttal is beside the point: all people have the same basic rights. I dont know how this can even be argued against. Your second point is also strange. What makes you think you will always be on the side of the state? Third point isn't an example of discrimination; a downright caricature of liberal common sense. Fourth point is empirically false. Monarchies promote stagnation and bend their subjects to their own whims and vanities. I also dont think the kind of politician you mention is a liberal. The free market isn't perfect, I'll acknowledge that, but we have to do the best we can with what we've got. The results speak for themselves as we live in the most materially comfortable era in human history. As to your last point, I do not think it is necessary to endorse open borers for the globe to be a liberal. I believe in organic and sane communities where trust and family are the bedrock.

>>14345186
OP BTFO

>>14345327
>it is the most successful economic structure in human history
This is, in a sense, begging the question. What does it mean for an economic system to be successful? But that question is ultimately part of the economic system, so all this statement really can mean is, "capitalism is the most capitalist economic system in human history." (In case this isn't clear, to a capitalist, a successful economic system is one that maximizes output, or if you like, one that focuses on material comfort. To imply that these goals are the objective standards of economic systems is begging the question.)
But ultimately you do point out where all the liberal ideals go to die, which is power dynamics. Capitalism is a heinous economic system because capital is power; capital is a positive feedback loop, because the power that capital gives someone helps them accumulate more capital. So little surprise that, in spite of dreams about competition awakening the human spirit, capitalism actually tends towards monopolization. And since rights aren't enforced by God, but by the State, privatizing the power dynamics amounts to making rights irrelevant. Which is the world we actually live in.

>>14345327
>Maybe you can say a little more about your distaste for Capitalism, but it is the most successful economic structure in human history.
i agree with >>14345496 in that 'successful' is vague enough that you're probably just begging the question. you'd have to specify what you mean by 'successful' because as you are probably aware there are many anti-capitalists, so it seems capitalism is not good at everything
my issues with capitalism are that it forces one to have a transactional attitude toward others, makes one subject to such transactional attitude (and i find this to be objectifying), causes human misery due to the scarcity of resources private property entails, makes exclusive that which should not be (i.e. private property), forces people to be competitive and view others as competition if they want to survive, causes power imbalances between people based on wealth, causes inequality which feels inherently wrong to many people, etc. etc. here watch jerry cohen summarize why he thinks capitalism is bad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJtSXkZQf0A
>People are equal in so far as they have rights not to be treated a certain way and are in a possible of entire metaphysical freedom.
the definition of 'freedom' liberalism gives is to narrow for me. i am more sympathetic to hegel's and marx's conceptions of freedom which give much more weight to positive freedom than liberalism does
and the fact that you have to specify the way in which people are equal shows they are not really equal. you've just chosen a certain metric by which people should be viewed as equal, in your eyes. but for example not everyone is equally wealthy. not everyone is equally able-bodied. not everyone is equally pscyhologically healthy. not everyone is equally charismatic. etc etc. human beings are not equal other than by the fact that they are human beings, and then this makes us wonder what happens to beings that aren't human (like animals) if we use that yardstick
>The claim about contract relationships seems strange and not endemic to liberalism.
liberalism has its origins in hobbes, locke, and rousseau, who all argued for political contractarianism. if you look at liberal moral philosophy they often talk in terms of 'owing' which is a relic of this fact. liberals tend to think anything that is consensual is permissible which is due to their contractarian commitments and their hostility toward metaphysical capital g Good. rawls is usually considered a political contractarian though he avoids many of the criticisms of the above three i mentioned
>Liberals see other people as members of a community with similar goals for maximum freedom and respect.
this might be true but anti-liberals tend to feel liberalism's atomistic individualism undermines community. marx and macintyre are philosophers to look at if you want to see criticisms from this lens

>>14345084
You ought to learn logical notation before you make fun of people who know how to read it, anon.

>>14345783
i suspect what liberals mean by 'community' is not enough and doesn't capture the richness of what anti-liberals want from a true community. liberalism tends to view society as simply the aggregate of atomized individuals. in contrast, you get thinkers like hegel (arguably still a liberal but definitely laid the groundwork for anti-liberal thought), marx, arguably rousseau, who put much more emphasis on interpersonal relationships and one's dependence on them being healthy
>Capital g Good is the foundation of Liberalism and through maximizing the rights and fair treatment of individuals it achieves this end.
this is false as far as i'm aware. my understanding is that liberalism is the political approach that prioritizes individual rights over the Good. this has its origins in hobbes' contractarianism since hobbes was skeptical of any metaphysical Good and wanted to ground society from an egoist perspective. if you want to get to non-contractarian liberals then kant specifically formulated his moral philosophy against 'greater good' thinking. in his case he was responding to utilitarianism but it can apply to anything that goes beyond the individual's rights. "never treat others as a mere means [to some Good end])
hostility toward the Good as the foundation of political life is why liberalism prides itself on pluralism and freedom of speech. it claims a certain agnosticism and neutrality
>This last point seems more to do the results of selfish and antiliberal people taking advantage of others who have less power than them
capitalism is full of people taking advantage of others from my perspective so i have a hard time buying this
but yes, liberals have a certain definition of what is impermissible which i find to be bullshit. they generally think respecting consent, autonomy, etc. is what is the right thing to do, but i find that this reverses what's really going on. because to me it seems that people who excuse themselves from doing what is capital g Good due to appeals to 'autonomy' or 'consent' are bad people.
for example if i say you have a moral duty to to not burn a piece of art you have in your possession, you can reply 'it's my right to do as i wish with my property.' this is permissible under liberalism
some more extreme forms of liberalism (libertarianism or libertarian-adjacent liberalism) will even apply this to things like charity and wealth redistribution. morally blaming someone for failing to give to charity despite being a billionaire would be not respecting their 'autonomy'
or if, say, i raise an objection to what someone is doing because it is sexually objectifying someone else (but the action is still consensual), they will cite the fact that it is consensual as justification for doing it. but this does not reply to my complaint about sexual objectification. and this is by design: it is because appealing to sexual objectification (or giving to the poor, or not burning a painting you have) is all referencing the Good