tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post2837910640028205618..comments2024-03-28T02:54:46.537-04:00Comments on The TOF Spot: Summum ius, summa iniuriaTheOFloinnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14756711106266484327noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-16040552148452765182013-06-19T22:49:14.183-04:002013-06-19T22:49:14.183-04:00Beware of people with good intentions.Beware of people with good intentions.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-48394400751743278562013-06-17T12:53:28.025-04:002013-06-17T12:53:28.025-04:00TOF is announcing a new political movement: conser...TOF is announcing a new political movement: conservative liberalism. It insists that programs ostensibly intended to help the less fortunate actually do so. How radical! TheOFloinnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14756711106266484327noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-80238421526978233912013-06-17T11:45:15.381-04:002013-06-17T11:45:15.381-04:00I see a lot of this kind of thinking in my own Cat...I see a lot of this kind of thinking in my own Catholic circles. Quite a bit of the idea of what public charity is seems totally tainted with pathological altruism, as described here. "What would Jesus do?" is perceived as an unanswerable retort to any attempt to debate any item dealing with welfare or charity spending by the government. What the results of those policies ACTUALLY are don't seem to matter to too many people. They just want to help, so don't be a big evil meanie and talk about terrible anti-Christian things like 'how exactly is the government to pay for this, aside from maxing out more credit cards?'meunkehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07992422745584460360noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-73754600830922833682013-06-15T22:24:00.533-04:002013-06-15T22:24:00.533-04:00It's worth noting that "altruism" or...It's worth noting that "altruism" originally meant something very much like "pathological altruism." I edited a biography of Auguste Comte, who coined the word, and it quoted him as saying that Jesus's moral teaching was bad because Jesus said "love your neighbor as yourself," meaning that he <i>accepted</i> that people loved themselves and even used that love as a standard; the right attitude, Comte said, was to love your neighbor and have no love for yourself—only a stern devotion to duty.<br /><br />It didn't take long for that harsh concept to be softened; in fact John Stuart Mill, who knew and admired Comte, wrote in a discussion of his views that altruism obviously couldn't mean that, but must mean good will to others—the kind of thing Adam Smith wrote about in <i>The Theory of the Moral Sentiments,</i> I suppose. And English speakers have tended to follow Mill's lead.<br /><br />(Though I do have to say that strictly logical utilitarianism, where my interests are to count equally with everyone else's for me, may be mathematically very different from altruism, but in practice seems quite close to it; if my good has a weight of around 0.000000000143, for any human purposes it might as well be zero.)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com