Date: Mon,  3 Nov 2003 00:15:11 -0500
Subject: BHA: Flourishing, Aristotle, etc.


Hi Mervyn, Tobin, all,

I apologize for the mostly tangential nature of my response, here.  I was
interested in your comment, Mervyn, when you said:

 I'm not of course invoking a 
> bourgeois individualistic attitude but rather the rich kind of 
> individuality presupposed by 'the free development of each as a 
> condition of the free development of all' which fully recognizes our 
> social interconnection but insists on the right (need) to freely 
> flourish providing it doesn't interfere with the free flourishing of 
> others. 

I've been reading some neo-Aristotelian political theorists this fall, as well
as some serious liberals.  This particular circle to which you implicitly refer
is ... well, it's THE one to square.  How to have something like what is
protected by the negative liberty/rights-language of liberalism (i.e., I get to
pick how I'm going to "freely flourish," provided it doesn't interfere with how
you want to freely flourish) combined with some meaningful form of
republicanism.  (I think that part of why it might not seem as hard to Marx is
because he really does assume the whithering away of the state.  Even so,
though, I don't think the problem goes away.  But this is a whole other
conversation ...)  

Anyway, I think that I want to say something like: theorizing that 'rich kind of
individuality' is really, really hard.  I know that you know this, but something
about how easily it rolls off of that sentence gave me pause.  There are all
sorts of questions to be asked.     

In what sense is flourishing a "right"?  "Rights" are weird things.  I don't
understand what they are, actually.  And if it's a right, where does it come
from?  And does it work, do we think, to simply change the infinitive verb
phrase from "to do what I want" to "to freely flourish," but retain the
structure of the liberal conception?  Etc.       

[Meanwhile, isn't Aristotle thought to have written beautiful dialogues?  As
they were lost, what we read are a mix of what is thought to be his lecture
notes and notes that students took.  Yes?  So he's maybe not as good of an
example as Plato of a writer whose rhetorical style is self-consciously
connected to their philosophical views!  And it's interesting about Adorno.  His
lectures on Kant are as sophisticated as it gets.  But, in sharp contrast to his
prose, they are utterly comprehensible to one who has sufficient philosophical
background.  Clear, but hard -- you can only read small amounts at a time,
because the analysis is so complex.  It's an interesting case, though, because
it's really and truly the ideas, there, that are difficult, and not the prose.]


Ruth


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