Overheard at a local restaurant, from someone discussing the recent Auburn shootings: “And the worst thing of all is, I used to live in that apartment complex.”
Archive | 2012
Secular Growth
Destutt de Tracy, whom Jacob Levy has described as having “a plausible claim to being the first libertarian,” was a major influence on both Thomas Jefferson (who called his work “the most precious gift the present age has received”) and the Censeur group (Augustin Thierry praised him to the skies), and a contributor to the development of libertarian class theory. (Karl Marx for his part called Tracy a “fish-blooded bourgeois doctrinaire,” but you can’t please everybody.)
According to Leonard Liggio, in his introduction to Thierry’s Theory of Classical Liberal “Industrielisme”, Tracy was regarded by his contemporary Stendahl as being so far ahead of his time as to be more a thinker of the 20th century than of the 19th; Stendahl suggested (evidently in 1835) that Tracy might turn out to be the “philosopher of 1935.”
Considering what the world’s political and intellectual climate would actually turn out to be in 1935, the prediction now looks ironic and rather sad. But let’s see what we can do for 2035.
R.I.P. Elinor Ostrom
While she was no libertarian (and as keynote speaker at the 2011 APEE, took the opportunity to lecture the assembled libertarians on the importance of the state), her work on the ways in which coordination mechanisms and decentralised institutions can enable the poor to better their lot while bypassing the state is a vital contribution to libertarian thought. In many ways she was a left-wing Hayek.
Beach Blanket Being and Becoming
The Fall 2012 meeting of the Alabama Philosophical Society will be October 5-6 in Pensacola, Florida.
Papers can be submitted either to the regular program or to the undergraduate essay contest. Submission deadline: 7/27; hotel reservation deadline: 9/10. More details on the website.
Two Tales Terminating Tragically
More juvenilia: “The Tragic Affair of the Serpentine Bridge” (short story co-authored with my mother, 1973) and “Second Choice Pet” (essay, 1977).
Cordial and Sanguine, Part 34: Blood, Sweatshops, and Tears
My latest BHL piece: Why Libertarians Should Oppose Sweatshops.