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Full Idea
If you think human beings are wicked, you turn to an authoritarian conception of politics, the Hobbesian-Machiavellian-Straussian lie.
Clarification
'Strauss' is Leo Strauss
Gist of Idea
Belief that humans are wicked leads to authoritarian politics
Source
Simon Critchley (Impossible Objects: interviews [2012], 3)
Book Ref
Critchley,Simon: 'Impossible Objects: interviews' [Politty 2012], p.51
A Reaction
Right-wingers also tend to believe in free will, so they can blame and punish. Good people are more inspired by a great leader than bad people are? (Later, Critchley says authoritarians usually believe in original sin).
| 20446 | Philosophy begins in disappointment, notably in religion and politics [Critchley] |
| 20449 | Science gives us an excessively theoretical view of life [Critchley] |
| 20448 | Phenomenology uncovers and redescribes the pre-theoretical layer of life [Critchley] |
| 20447 | The problems is not justifying ethics, but motivating it. Why should a self seek its good? [Critchley] |
| 20450 | The state, law, bureaucracy and capital are limitations on life, so I prefer federalist anarchism [Critchley] |
| 20451 | Belief that humans are wicked leads to authoritarian politics [Critchley] |
| 20452 | Anarchism used to be libertarian (especially for sexuality), but now concerns responsibility [Critchley] |
| 20454 | Wallace Stevens is the greatest philosophical poet of the twentieth century in English [Critchley] |
| 20455 | Philosophy really got started as the rival mode of discourse to tragedy [Critchley] |
| 20456 | Interesting art is always organised around ethical demands [Critchley] |