Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'The Road to Serfdom' and 'Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy'

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5 ideas

25. Social Practice / A. Freedoms / 4. Free market
Hayek was a liberal, but mainly concerned with market freedom [Hayek, by Dunt]
     Full Idea: Hayek was a liberal (rather than a conservative), …but the individual liberty he cared about was not diversity or freedom of thought. It was freedom to operate in the market.
     From: report of F.A. Hayek (The Road to Serfdom [1944]) by Ian Dunt - How to be a Liberal 7
     A reaction: There seems to have been a drift from obsession with freedom to participate in the market, towards the less plausible idea that market forces can solve everything. I once met someone who was convinced the market could solve environmental problems.
Impeding the market is likely to lead to extensive state control [Hayek]
     Full Idea: Once the free working of the market is impeded beyond a certain degree, the planner will be forced to extend his controls until they become all comprehensive.
     From: F.A. Hayek (The Road to Serfdom [1944]), quoted by Ian Dunt - How to be a Liberal 7
     A reaction: Hayek was terrified of totalitarianism (quite reasonably), but fascism and communism don't seem to have arisen in the way he describes. I'm not clear why sensible intervention in the market should slide down into nightmare.
25. Social Practice / E. Policies / 5. Education / a. Aims of education
It is a mark of our having ethical values that we aim to reproduce them in our children [Williams,B]
     Full Idea: It is a mark of our having ethical values that we aim to reproduce them in our children.
     From: Bernard Williams (Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy [1985], Ch. 9)
     A reaction: Maybe beliefs imply education. A commitment to truth is an aspiration that others will agree, especially those over whom we have the greatest influence.
25. Social Practice / F. Life Issues / 3. Abortion
Most women see an early miscarriage and a late stillbirth as being very different in character [Williams,B]
     Full Idea: Few women see a spontaneous abortion or early miscarriage as the same thing as having a child who is stillborn or who dies very soon after birth.
     From: Bernard Williams (Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy [1985], Ch. 6)
     A reaction: This implies a theory about the nature of what is lost. Everyone sees the difference between potential and actual.
25. Social Practice / F. Life Issues / 6. Animal Rights
Speciesism isn't like racism, because the former implies a viewpoint which belongs to no one [Williams,B]
     Full Idea: Speciesism is falsely modelled on racism and sexism, which really are prejudices; ..our arguments have to be founded on the human point of view; they cannot be derived from a point of view that is no one's point of view at all.
     From: Bernard Williams (Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy [1985], Ch. 6)
     A reaction: This must be wrong. How else are we going to judge cruelty to animals as wrong? The 'point of view of the Universe' (Sidgwick) is not an empty concept.