Plea Of the Day

Anti-Climacus:

But really, what bothers me more than anything else is the way modern philosophy, especially Locke, is discussed. One might be left with the impression that social planners have used the Second Treatise as a handbook in their ceaseless campaign to undermine traditional marriage, among other ills. Political theorists often complain about the habit of philosophers to quickly go from a text to a "position:" i.e. the move from "Locke" to a "Lockean" conception, which, though they vary only by two letters, are tremendously different things. They complain because it's poor intellectual history to assume that anyone who takes up a thinker has understood the nuances of their thought (or, goodness, read the text); almost everyone in the debate assumes Locke is Nozick's Locke, or one very similar; this is not unlike assuming that Plato is Popper's Plato--an interesting contribution in its own right, but a bad reading of the underlying text.

So this is a plea I launch into the blogosphere, certain to be ignored, but nevertheless requesting two things: when debating about the thought of some important, canonical political theorist, it would be immensely helpful to see the text--or at least have it cited--which is the source of the commentary being given. Second, someone has to be willing to play contrarian pretty consistently--just to keep things honest.

This is good advice and when FLG isn't too lazy and has texts readily available, which is frequently because much is already on the internet, FLG tries to quote the relevant texts. If you search Fear and Loathing in Georgetown for Locke or Plato the relevant text is almost always quoted. Oh, and you'll never catch FLG referring to thinkers he hasn't read.

But as a blogger FLG must protest that it would take much longer to find a copy of Locke's Scheme of Methods for the Employment of the Poor, then find a relevant passage, and then make an argument based on that passage that we should scrap welfare and institute a conscription-to-work program than to simply assert that Locke would be in favor of replacing welfare with military service.