So is a site like SSR which is trying to reconcile a republican doctrine to policy, and doing so in the public space (ie anyone can comment and critique it), is that a union of thought and action? Or does it require that members/readers of SSR start populating public power structures for it be action?

Where does action begin and thought end?

Cameron,
My take would be that political philosophy is implicit in a site such as SRR. You suggest this by the word republican--that, to me, refers to a particular political tradition.

I would argue that it is a different one to your rights based/social contract liberalism that is based on Locke---but that is another story involving the interpretation of the tradition of political philosophy.

As to your question 'Where does action begin and thought end?' I would say that they are interwined not separate. Working in the Senate I could see that the politics on a particular issue, and the shaping of this policy pathway rather than that one, involved philosophical assumptions.

Often there are big confusions in the self-understanding of the philosophy involved, or the philposophical tradition the politicians were working within. A recent example in the new Senate is the first speech by the new Liberal Senator from Victoria, Michael Ronaldson. He says that he is working within the liberal tradition, but it conservatism that comes out of his mouth in his Senate speech. These kind of politicians are trashing the very liberal tradition they say they hold dear.

I will have a look at what Hannah Arendt means by 'action' in political life when I have a moment.It's complex as it involves a thinking against the Aristotlean tradition she works within.

Gary, I am not up to the Action chapter yet. IIRC she called "Action" the activities that humankind undergoes in a social setting, with the inevitable politics that go with it. I think she is trying to work out, or define, why we do "stuff".

I would also argue that Lockean rights are consistent with republicanism. Australian republicanism carries a romanticism for American republicanism. I consider the American Republic the triumph of the enlightenment (and the end of it). I also believe James Madison remains the world's pre-eminent republican politician. The US Republic is a Madisonian Republic. Australian republicans would ignore that wisdom at their own peril.

Australian Republicanism has been a voracious philospy drawing from the best of each political philsophy that has risen. From Whigs, to Chartists, to, from SSR's example, modern sortition/crowd-wisdom methods. It has been as fixated on improving democratic processes as it is liberalism or republicanism. Australian Republicanism includes being a democrat and a liberalist.

Gary

I have posted something on Arendt's early Zionism writings on Long Sunday at Long Sunday I thought you might find it relavent to your discussion here.

Cameron,
As you know I have a lot of unease with the language of rights that many use so easily these days.

The traditional liberal thinkers proposed philosophical principles from which the legitimacy of a liberal political order could be derived. They presupposed a foundationalist view of political justification as they held that the liberal political order was in need of philosophical support. So they sought to anchor the legitimacy of the liberal regime in philosophical premises. Thus Locke appeals to divinely conferred rights as the foundation of a liberal polity; Kant appeals to the very idea of rational agency as the groundwork of the liberal state; and Mill's liberalism rests on the Greatest Happiness Principle. The point of identifying these kind of theoretical foundations for liberal politics was to devise an unshakable foundation for liberal politics.

I find the language of rights murky as it frequently covers up a lot of difficulties. Martha Nussbaum states this better than myself. She does so in the form of questions:

Rights have been understood in many different ways, and difficult theoretical questions are frequently obscured by the use of rights language, which can give the illusion of agreement where there is deep philosophical disagreement. People differ about what the basis of a rights claim is: rationality, sentience and mere life have all had their defenders. They differ, too, about whether rights are prepolitical or artifacts of laws and institutions. (Kant held the latter view, although the dominant human rights tradition has held the former.) They differ about whether rights belong only to individual persons, or also to groups. They differ about whether rights are to be regarded as side-constraints on goal-promoting action, or rather as one part of the social goal that is being promoted. They differ, again, about the relationship between rights and duties: if A has a right to S, then does this mean that there is always someone who has a duty to provide S, and how shall we decide who that someone is? They differ, finally, about what rights are to be understood as rights to. Are human rights primarily rights to be treated in certain ways? Rights to a certain level of achieved well-being? Rights to resources with which one may pursue one's life plan? Rights to certain opportunities and capacities with which one may make choices about one's life plan?

My unease lessens if foundations are dumped, rights are seen to be artifacts of laws and institutions rather than natural and abstract, and rights are based on capabilities rather than pure reason.

That is a big break with the Lockean tradition though.

Gary, Locke calls God/Divine the natural component of natural rights. On sites such as redstate.org it is not uncommon to read someone comment that your rights are granted/given to you by god. I am an atheist, so obviously I dont see Locke's idea of natural as being valid, or relevant.

I believe rights as natural because it is humanities natural passion to oppose tyranny. Meaning tyranny against themselves in terms of their property or person. As a result it is irrational for an individual to enter into any government/judicial structure that is tyrannous. The individual gains no advantage from it. They may as well be wild, and in a free for all in nature. What I call rights are predispostions for entering a government system where the government has a monopoly on violence.

Cameron,
As you once reminded me, one of the basic commitments of liberalism is the principle that the consent of those subject to any proposed political order is a necessary condition for the political legitimacy of that order.

Consequently liberal thinkers of the past aimed for a theory that could in principle command the assent of all persons subject to the liberal state. Social contract theory is one such account of how liberalism can command the assent of all citizens. It was widely held that although citizens may never reach a consensus concerning the good life, they may nevertheless be brought to agree upon a set of principles that could establish the general public framework within which each may pursue his private ends. The idea was that if political first principles could be derived independently of a theory of the good, questions of the good could be relegated to the private realm, and liberal theory focused upon the theory of the right.

You forgot to add that in the social contract tradition individuals come together to make a contract for mutual advantage. Mutual advantage is about wealth and property. Hence limited government is required to give lots of space for individual self-interest.

How you get ethics out of that--a just or caring society---is not clear to me. It strikes me that your Lockean society is indifferent to the well being of those with physical and mental disability. It is an uncaring and unjust society.

Gary, Not so much mutual advantage, but because having a central government to handle judicial concerns is a lower energy state for the individual, rather than the high energy state of constantly defending their person and property from the arbitrary will of others. Bit like Gibbs Free Energy equated to political structures.

As to compassion, it is only when individuals are secure in their person, property and political rights can they be compassionate toward others. An arbitrary society, is a selfish one.

I think it is important to differentiate between the intrinsic and the emergant. Something the federal government is incapable of doing. Culture, society and community are emergant properties from groups of individuals who are secure in their rights. Their rights are intrinsic, as an individual naturally opposes tyranny against them.

The emergant properties which can develop are just. I have absolutely no problem with a society, secure in their rights, and of significant wealth, deciding that there is a level of eduication noone should be denied, that there is a level of access to health that noone should be denied and that there is a level of poverty noone should fall below.

But they are emergant properties, not intrinsic, so they arent permanent. An individuals desire to secure their political rights are, and is inherently selfish, but compassion comes through emergant values, not intrinisc demands.

Cameron,
there is a lot of revisonism of the Lockean social contract tradition in your account.

On my understanding, a philosophical ground for liberal politics that aspires to win the assent of citizens who may be divided in their visions of the good, must appeal to some fundamental fact about human beings; to some commonality underlying the differences among individuals.

Traditionally the idea of a universal human nature was employed to this end. Locke's was based on self interest,instrumental reason and nature as a resource to be exploited by human beings . Hence the social contract is consented to because it is mutually advantageous for all individuals.

In contrast Kant argued that as it is in the very nature of a human being to be an autonomous agent, one can devise a theory of the right citing only the conditions necessary for autonomous agency.

Jefferson held that all individuals are created equal and that this fundamental equality can serve as a basis for a politics based on right.

The claim is that an adequate philosophical foundation for liberalism based on the universal facts about human beings will serve not only to legitimize the liberal state, but to demonstrate the illegitimacy of non-liberal regimes. In this way, the traditional liberal theorists aspired to produce a universally valid political philosophy which would show that of all possible regimes, only a liberal regime is legitimate.

So the traditional theories address not merely some local population of liberal citizens, but ultimately all human beings as such. This is the universalist aspiration of liberal theory.

Gary, I dont hold with the social contract of mutual benefit. Complex systems tend to self-dampen so they can maintain an equilibrium which has the lowest energy input for maximum output. Society is a complex system, and will fall to an equilibrium that represent the lowest energy to self-dampen.

While individuals are the primary effect in a social system of maximum liberty, in one that includes government, energy, in the form of coercion, money, legislation, violence can be used to force the complex system to realign at a higher energy level where the new equilibrium is maintained at great cost.

There is a dance, a walk, a system that emerges through one of complex, multiple, and constant interaction that ends up defining the group of individuals beyond their individual one-to-one interactions alone.

Cameron,
me thinks that you earlier self-identification as a classic Lockean liberal is misleading.

Your last two entries--all that talk about emergence and complex systems---indicate that you have much more in common with Hayek than Locke.

Is that right?

It is Hayek who talks in terms of decentralised character of knowledge and decision making of market capitalism, market coordination, market economies enlargening spheres of freedom for more and more people, problems created by bureaucratic organizations etc etc.

Gary, I suspect the problem is that I am Cameron Riley and am self-trained. I am largely ignorant of much philosophy and philosophers, so am coming, and developing, these conclusions from my own beliefs and experiences.

As I learn about new people I should read up on, I buy their books/writings and see how it pertains to my own beliefs.

Hayek is now on my list.

I work in software, and have worked in Statistical Process Control (SPC) in the past. After working in such systems, you get a respect for the emergant properties and self-dampening capabilities of complex systems.

I enjoy you stretching my beliefs and pushing me to explain myself, as well as opening up new directions that I need to pursue and become more knowledgable in.

Cameron,
yeah you just need to find the right political economic philosopher, and then use their texts to give you the concepts and conceptual linkages that enable you to develop your thoughts more clearly. You do not need to work your way through the western philosophical tradition. That is for academics.

I do not think that it is Locke or Hannah Arendt. It is more Hayek on the way that self-organizing markets work. He has a good toolbox on that stuff, developed in opposition to the central planning of socialist economies and an intellectual confrontation with Marxism.

That tool box on the workings of market economy is where I would poke around. He is not that good on politics

A Hayekian journal