M Jak Millosc Odcinki

The politics of faith and politics of skepticism

not long ago Eduardo wrote a brilliant article with which I feel fully identified. One immensely enjoy reading the clarity with which exposes many ideas that flit through my head and which could give a reason why the title of this blog. Oakeshott in his day spoke of the politics of faith and politics of skepticism. Eduardo succeeds in fully to characterize:

"Although Francis Bacon was laughing at those who denied the" obvious truth "that the sun and stars revolved around the earth, but we could not consider a dogmatist in the strong sense, since we have entitled to assume that the British philosopher would have rectified his absolutism, with respect to the "evidence" geocentric, if he had presented sufficient evidence favorable to heliocentrism. Instead, dogmatic theology itself may be considered a clear case of strong dogmatism. None " evidence "or reasoning will deter the dogmatic theologian ever that God is a unity of three persons, Father, Son and Spirit holy, and that the child is consubstantial with the father, as hard as any critical deter the dogmatic Marxist Diamat that the second law of thermodynamics is not a standard "bourgeois", or that the laws of history not lead inexorably to a socialist society. (...)

skeptical attitude, which is the best provision against absolutism and "oracular philosophy" (to put it in the manner of Popper), is not identical to moral nihilism or strong epistemological skepticism , which denies any kind of truth to the scientific program. By contrast, healthy skepticism is only the logical subject that any educated person should keep as much about the extraordinary claims as dogmatic thinking, not critical.

The political translation of this attitude seems to some version of pragmatism, if not confused with postmodern version (Anything goes!). Political pragmatism is a 100% critical thought suspect because of the excesses of theoretism or the "politics of the book, Oakeshott mode. Pragmatic political stance is not driven by the pursuit of the summum bonum, but by prudent flight summum malum. Beware of human perfectibility, and instead says imperfectability of human beings without this implying a complete rejection of social or political progress. (...)

In short, a pragmatic spirit to achieve both dreams no perfect democracy or some other kind of political regime eternal patterns back, but try before anything else prevent despotism, tyranny and criminal disorder. Karl Popper proposed, in this sense, maintaining a "piecemeal social engineering" as opposed to another "utopian social engineering." Nothing in this pragmatism is incompatible with liberalism, at least in the sense that he gave at the time Jean Francois Revel:

"When I say that liberalism has never been one to say that ideology is not a theory based on concepts prior to any experience, not a dogma or independent invariable course of things or the outcome of the action. "

in The Great Masquerade.

Updated: I posted an almost identical version of this article in my blog liberalismo.org -contains some reference to maximalist liberal movement linked to the Instituto Juan de Mariana, and has sparked debate. Van over 40 comments. Plus, here.