Archives: May 2006
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Forth to the Firth!
[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]
I’ve been planning for ages to write about my Vegas and Prague trips/conferences, as well as to add some further thoughts on the French rioters (remember them?). I’ve even got a catchy title for the post: APEE, PCPE, and CPE.
Well, I’ve been way too busy to get to it, and on Thursday I leave for Edinburgh (ah, Scotland! land of Adam Smith, David Hume, Thomas Reid, Duns Scotus, and most importantly Bran Mak Morn!) so it’ll have to wait a little bit longer. Back in a week!
Posted May 23rd, 2006
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Subjective Value, Objective Good
[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]
A text version of my August 2005 talk “Economics and Its Ethical Assumptions” is now online. (Thanks to B. K. Marcus for editing it to make it a bit less transcript-y.)
In it I talk about the relation between subjectivism about economic value and objectivism about ethical value, and do my usual song-and-dance about fusing the Austrian and Athenian traditions.
The talk also serves as a useful preview of the sort of thing I’ll be talking about in my upcoming week-long Mises Institute seminar.
Posted May 19th, 2006
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Oh Say Can You See
I’ve previously described how to find the graves of Gustave de Molinari and Benjamin Constant in Paris’s Père Lachaise cemetery; see the map below on the left. I noted at that time that although I knew the grave of another great libertarian thinker, Jean-Baptiste Say, was nearby, I was unable to locate it on my last trip to Paris.
Now, between advice from Hervé de Quengo and coming across a more complete map, I can describe the location of Say’s grave more precisely. On the map below on the right, the lower green rectangle marks Constant’s grave; the upper green rectangle marks Say’s.
Well, go to the Constant/Molinari tombs. You then have to continue along the Chemin Masséna towards Chemin Suchet. You will find en passant the French tomb of the Maréchal Ney .... You will find yourself at a crossroads: Chemin Suchet, Chemin Jordan and Chemin Masséna.I hope to find it next time I’m in Paris.
Take the Chemin Masséna [judging from the map I think he means Chemin Suchet – RTL] and look at your left. You will first find the tomb of the Prince Murat. At 25 paces from the crossroads, you will see the huge Sépulture de Mme. D’Aumont, Duchesse de Mazarin. J.-B. Say is just behind: currently, you can see his name from the road.
Posted May 19th, 2006
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Name the Mystery Feminist
[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]
Who wrote the following passages?
1. If he loves you in the right way he’ll not stop you. You were just made for the stage, Anne, and if anyone interferes with your career now you’d never forgive him in after years – you’d always be thinking of what you might have achieved. ... Suppose you didn’t like the motion picture business and made him give up his theaters? He’d always brood about that and be unhappy. You’ll be unhappy if you can’t go ahead with your work, that you love.Read the answer.In either event an unhappy home will result, but if he keeps his beloved picture houses and you stay on the stage you’re both happy in your work, and that’s a longer stride toward mutual happiness than starting out on your married life with one of you harboring a regret that may easily grow into a chronic condition of discontent and unhappiness.
2. That is a question that should never arise between two people unselfishly in love with one another. The man would never make it necessary for her to choose – he would encourage her. ... After all, happiness is all that counts in life. There isn’t so much of it running around loose in the world that a man can afford to deny his wife the right to win it in any clean and decent way that she sees fit.
3. If you mean [I should stay] in the kitchen, then I can tell you that [no] woman with a nervous organization higher than a cow’s, is ever satisfied with that. Lots of us have to do it, but that does not mean that we like it and I’ll be darned if I’m going to peel potatoes and swat flies all the rest of my life when I have the brains and the chance to do something else .... I want to think for myself and use the brains the Lord gave me ... I want to rise above the mediocrity of a household drudge ....
4. You say that you love us. You say that you want homes and wives. All you love is your own selfish comforts and desires. ... Your idea of home is a breeding plant. ... Your ideas of marital happiness start and end with yourselves – and having babies. If you have what you want – everything your own way – why, then, marriage is a blessing. You want us to sit at home without an interest in the world that we can call our very own – and raise children. ... I intend to have children; but I do not intend to devote my body and soul and mind exclusively to the business of breeding.
Posted May 19th, 2006
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The Net of Time
[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]
In the latest (June ’06) issue of Liberty, in a review of Stephen Cox’s excellent Isabel Paterson biography, Bruce Ramsey writes:
Though Paterson penned novels, some of which Cox says are good, all have been out of print for more than half a century.I’ve read all eight of her published novels, and greatly enjoyed them. My copy of The Singing Season is autographed by Paterson herself:
To John FarrarBut it’s not quite true to say that her novels are all long out of print. As I’ve blogged previously, Paterson’s Never Ask the End was recently reissued by Kessinger Publishing. (Some of Kessinger’s reprints are shoddy disasters – see my Amazon review of their messed-up edition of Lysander Spooner’s Vices Are Not Crimes, for example – but this Paterson one is just fine.)
With the sincere regards
of a contributor to an
editor and the indescribable
sentiments of an author toward
a possible critic
From Isabel Paterson
Is it any good? Judge for yourself. Here’s an in my opinion beautiful excerpt in which the protagonist is contemplating the statues in the garden of my beloved Musée Cluny in Paris. (The garden, while still lovely, nowadays no longer contains these statues, but you can see photos here of how they once looked.)
Sitting on the steps of the side entrance, with her chin on her hand, she discovered why she had stopped here. In the long grass of the garden, fragments of medieval sculpture reposed tranquilly. Their granite features were blunted, all but effaced. It gave them a ghostly aspect, an infinite calm. It is the material substance that is ghostly, she thought. It wears thin, dissolving with time. Something more powerful and enduring wears it out ... The soul, having stooped to embrace mortality, is caught in the net of time. It strives to break through by the keen devices of the intellect, by the intensity of passion, the persuasion of tenderness, even the violence of anger; and falls back on silence at the last. But at parting it cries out, wait, one moment more and I could have told you ... oh, wait! What we desire is communication. ... Perhaps, some other where, we achieve it, by a persistence to which even granite must yield.
Posted May 18th, 2006
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Francis Tandy Rides Again
[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]
Francis Tandy’s 1896 book Voluntary Socialism is one of the classics of market anarchism. (Don’t be misled by the title; Tandy, a disciple of Benjamin Tucker, uses the term “socialism” in the sense employed by “free-market socialists” like Tucker, Stephen Pearl Andrews, and, today, Kevin Carson.) A good many political philosophers have probably seen Tandy’s name at some point, since Robert Nozick cites him early on in Anarchy, State, and Utopia, in a list of proponents of competing protection agencies; the others listed are Spooner, Tucker, Rothbard, Friedman, and the Tannehills. (Nozick appears unaware of the battlin’ Belgians Molinari and de Puydt.) Nevertheless, Tandy is far and away the most obscure name on the list, and his book is damnably hard to find; and apparently the Denver Public Library (where Tandy, a Denver resident, once worked) possesses one of the few existing copies but refuses to allow it be photocopied.
Happily, I managed to get my hands on the elusive 1979 Revisionist Press reprint version a couple of years ago, and I’ve just now posted the first five chapters on the Molinari site. (I had already posted the preface and introduction back in March ’04.)
The first four of these chapters set out the psychological, sociological, and ethical foundations of Tandy’s libertarianism. This section is rather a mixed bag from my point of view; Tandy’s theory of human action combines praxeological insight with psychologistic confusion, and his blend of Stirner and Spencer manages at times to look more like stereotypical “Social Darwinism” than does either Stirner or Spencer singly. Still, there’s plenty of good stuff here.
But what the book is best known for (well, to the extent that it’s known at all!) is its fifth chapter, which is devoted to an explanation and defense of the concept of competing protection agencies – in its day, one of the fullest discussions of the idea post-Molinari. It’s fascinating to see how many of the standard moves in market anarchist theory today are already in evidence in Tandy.
More chapters to follow! In the meantime, enjoy.
Posted May 16th, 2006
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