Political Philosophy

In the fourth part of The Outline of Sanity, GK Chesterton deals with “Some Aspects of Machinery” in his usual ironic and witty way, making some solid points. I try to update his points and apply them to our current state of technology, noticing with Chesterton along the way that capitalist practices are not the most efficient or equitable way to go. Chesterton proffers his ideas on when to let go of technology and how the machinery we do want (or more accurately the fruits thereof) could be distributed. For more from me: https://lauriemjohnson.com/ https://politicalphilosophy.video.blog/ iTunes podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/political-philosophy-dr-laurie-m-johnson/id1473457784 Please fill out this form to be put on the email list for summer seminars:: https://forms.gle/WxikMpNx1M64GeTEA

In this podcast I cover the section of GK Chesterton’s book, The Outline of Sanity, that deals with agriculture. Chesterton does not agree that the industrialization of England was a good thing, and points out the flaws of massive urbanization. He defends the settled way of life as in some ways superior to the urban way of life. He also defends a mixed economy with some degree of socialism and a greater degree of private property, spread out by state edict.. For more from me: https://lauriemjohnson.com/ https://politicalphilosophy.video.blog/ iTunes podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/political-philosophy-dr-laurie-m-johnson/id1473457784 Please fill out this form to be put on the email list for summer seminars:: https://forms.gle/WxikMpNx1M64GeTEA

As a sequel to my series on Charles Taylor’s The Malaise of Modernity, I asked John Warner in to discuss Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s thoughts on the development of the modern self. Warner is an expert on Rousseau’s political thought. He is the author of Rousseau and the Problem of Human Relations (2018) and many articles on Rousseau. His most recent article deals with Rousseau on sincerity and self-deception. Charles Taylor’s book attempts to discern the original meaning of the concept of authenticity and invokes Rousseau as a source, arguing that along the way the concept of authenticity was corrupted into mere shallow narcissism. Warner’s views help us to understand to what extent Rousseau should be seen as contributing to the contemporary rendition of authenticity and how Rousseau can help shed light on the modern unsettled sense of self. Warner’s book: https://www.amazon.com/Rousseau-Problem-Human-Relations-Warner/dp/027107101X/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=John+Warner+rousseau&qid=1615604785&sr=8-1 His latest article: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342601314_’I_Know_Not_if_I_Delude_Myself’_Rousseau’s_Julie_and_the_Ambiguities_of_Self-Deception For more from me: https://lauriemjohnson.com/ https://politicalphilosophy.video.blog/ iTunes podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/political-philosophy-dr-laurie-m-johnson/id1473457784

Chesterton says of Christians “…if they had served their God as they have served their Pork King and their Petrol King, the success of our whole Distributive democracy would stare at the world like one of their flaming sky signs and scrape the sky like one of their crazy towers.” (p. 123, The Outline of Sanity) Part 2 of this book includes discussion of how Christians actually think about topics like capitalism, socialism, and Distributism, and how Chesterton wishes they’d think. Characters like the “old gentleman” and the “poor old clergyman” show how focusing on the favored target (socialism) or simply living in an imaginary world (the land of competitive capitalism) keep many such characters in a situation that amounts to giving up and rolling over. For more from me: https://lauriemjohnson.com/ https://politicalphilosophy.video.blog/ iTunes podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/political-philosophy-dr-laurie-m-johnson/id1473457784 Interested in possible Summer 2021 seminars, one-time sessions, or reading groups? Please fill out this form to be put on the email list: https://forms.gle/WxikMpNx1M64GeTEA

I delve deeper into GK Chesterton’s late work, The Outline of Sanity, as criticizes more deeply the prevailing capitalist free market imaginary and, more importantly, lays out what distributism would be like and the steps he proposes to get there. One of the strongest recommendation he gives is to break up monopolies and protect experimental uses of property from innovation-destroying competition. For more from me: https://lauriemjohnson.com/ https://politicalphilosophy.video.blog/ iTunes podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/political-philosophy-dr-laurie-m-johnson/id1473457784 Interested in possible Summer 2021 seminars, one-time sessions, or reading groups? Please fill out this form to be put on the email list: https://forms.gle/WxikMpNx1M64GeTEA

In Chapters 2 and 3 of GK Chesterton’s The Outline of Sanity (1926) we get perhaps one of the first identifications of and arguments against capitalist realism, the idea that we can do no better. He also anticipates some aspects of neoliberal capitalism which we are all too familiar with today, particularly the idea that workers must simply sacrifice for the greater good rather than hope to really get ahead and be happy themselves. Chesterton lays the groundwork for his proposal of a third way economy of Distributism. For more from me: https://lauriemjohnson.com/ https://politicalphilosophy.video.blog/ iTunes podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/political-philosophy-dr-laurie-m-johnson/id1473457784 Interested in possible Summer 2021 seminars, one-time sessions, or reading groups? Please fill out this form to be put on the email list: https://forms.gle/WxikMpNx1M64GeTEA

This video introduces you briefly to GK Chesterton and then discusses his definitions of Capitalism, Socialism and Distributism. I point out that Aristotle’s views on property in The Politics may be the origin of distributist thought, and give some background information that may help understand why Chesterton defines Capitalism and Communism as he does. Chesterton criticizes Capitalism for really being “Proletarianism” or a system of wage dependency. He criticizes Socialism for being dangerous because it places all resources and decisions into the hands of the state. Both of them concentrate property into a few hands, whereas Distributism calls for spreading property ownership more evenly. Spain’s Mondragon corporation is used as an example of contemporary distributism at work. For more from me: https://lauriemjohnson.com/ https://politicalphilosophy.video.blog/ iTunes podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/political-philosophy-dr-laurie-m-johnson/id1473457784 Interested in possible Summer 2021 seminars, one-time sessions, or reading groups? Please fill out this form to be put on the email list: https://forms.gle/WxikMpNx1M64GeTEA

Alex Blanchette’s Porkopolis is the source of this discussion among friends, including Bryant Macfarlane, Jakob Hanschu, and Spencer Hess. We are all reading Blanchette’s book about the US pork production industry. Our conversation ranges from the limits and costs of ever-increasing efficiency in production, to squeezing pennies out of runts, to the endless quest for the uniform (and therefore efficiently processed) pig and the impact this has on the workers involved. We segue into a conversation about the reality and value of universalization/homogenization in both production and societies. Thinkers discussed include Karl Marx, Jacques Ellul, Eugene McCarraher, and Adorno and Horkheimer. For more from me: https://lauriemjohnson.com/ https://politicalphilosophy.video.blog/ iTunes podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/political-philosophy-dr-laurie-m-johnson/id1473457784 Interested in possible Summer 2021 seminars, one-time sessions, or reading groups? Please fill out this form to be put on the email list: https://forms.gle/WxikMpNx1M64GeTEA

Alex Blanchette’s recent book Porkopolis shows how human and animal lives become intertwined in a relationship of dependency that distorts both natures. How should we understand this type of production? What does it do to the people involved every step of the way with animals who no longer feed, procreate, give birth or die without humans intimately involved? Blanchette explores these questions from the vantage point of someone who did many aspects of the work and talked openly with people involved in many steps of the process. Do we treat the people involved as interchangeable, expendable and dependent as the industrial pigs they tend? What does that say about the food system we’ve created and which most of us rely upon and benefit from? For more from me: https://lauriemjohnson.com/ https://politicalphilosophy.video.blog/ iTunes podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/political-philosophy-dr-laurie-m-johnson/id1473457784 Interested in possible Summer 2021 seminars, one-time sessions, or reading groups? Please fill out this form to be put on the email list: https://forms.gle/WxikMpNx1M64GeTEA

Alex Blanchette’s Porkopolis (2020, Duke University Press) has had more than the usual impact for a book that started out as a dissertation. Blanchette spent quite a bit of time embedding himself in the work of pork CAFO’s and processing facilities. As a result he has a book that goes beyond the usual animal or human welfare argument to expose the Taylorist/Fordist nature of pork production that yields cheap meat at the expense of dehumanizing workers and merging to the point of inextricability the manufactured pig and the manufacturing human. This video introduces who Blanchette is and some of the themes in the book. For more from me: https://lauriemjohnson.com/ https://politicalphilosophy.video.blog/ iTunes podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/political-philosophy-dr-laurie-m-johnson/id1473457784 Interested in possible Summer 2021 seminars, one-time sessions, or reading groups? Please fill out this form to be put on the email list: https://forms.gle/WxikMpNx1M64GeTEA