Speaker 1: If you want to get the show early and ad free,
head on over to the peak Kinyonas show dot com.
There you can choose from where you wish to support me.
Now listen very carefully. I've had some people ask me
about this, even though I think on the last ad
I stated it pretty clearly. If you want an RSS feed,
you're going to have to subscribe yourself Stack or through Patreon.
You can also subscribe on my website which is right there,
gum Road and what's the other one, subscribe Star and
if you do that, you will get access to the
audio file. So head on over to the pekan Yonashow
dot com. You'll see all the ways that you can
support me there. And I just want to thank everyone.
It's because of you that I can put out the
amount of material that I do. I can do what
I'm doing with doctor Johnson on two hundred Years Together
and everything else, the things that Thomas and I are
doing together on Continental Philosophy, it's all because of you.
And yeah, I mean, I'll never be able to thank
you enough. So thank you. The Pekinyonashow dot com. Everything's there.
I want to welcome everyone back to the Peking Yona Show.
Thomas is back and we will continue the series on
continental philosophy. How are you doing, Thomas, I'm doing pretty
well well. I uh I slept a little way todays.
My sleep schedules screw up, but I feel well prepared.
Speaker 2: But if if it seems uh short, that's why, So
forgive me for that. This was kind of a hectic week. Thankfully,
I feel a lot better, but I'm still fighting some
fatigue and stuff. I read up. I study a lot
on Grotius, the legal theorist, you know, and he was
active about twenty years before Hobbes, and he's Hobbs is
something of a counterpart to Grotius, although Grotius rejected the
idea that he himself was in the mold of and
at risk it's political theorist, and he were checked it outright,
the idea of a political science, and that's important. And
Grotus really everybody from Oliver Wendell Holmes Junior to hla
Heart and I would argue even these law and economics types,
their spiritual forbear is Grotius, and Grotius is the father
of legal positivism as we know it. There's a lot
of capital l liberals who like to claim that the
idea of a natural right accruing in all humans to
certain protections at law and things of this nature derived
from Grotius. I think that's misguided. For a lot of reasons.
Grotis was he was in a hostile dialogue with the
concept and natural law, and for complicated reasons. But anybody
who picks up Groteus, uh the love of war and peace,
which is as magnum opus, will notice too that Carl
Schmidt it was a debt to Grotius. And there's something
peculiar in America because on the one hand, I mean,
I'm convinced the American judiciary is quite literally a pository
of abject mediocrities. I think a lot of these people
don't have any meaningful understanding of the law, Like I
really don't. That's not just because I have a not
flattering view of people in government. I mean they're they're
conceptual illiterates, like like the conceptual syntax of the law,
which is pretty complicated at base, they just don't understand it.
And I think that's going to become clear. I know
a lot of people don't accept that, but I if
you know what to look for in reading these opinions
now from the federal bench. It's not just that they're
ideologues who enjoy the opportunity to pontificate. It's the reason
why they read like sociological screeds or like essays. It's
because these people don't understand legal reasoning, so they're not
really capable of rendering political opinions, you know, because it's it's, uh,
it's like somebody who who can't master high school algebra
holding forth on as like an MIT lecturer and like
advanced you know, theoretical math or something. You know. But uh,
there's this peculiar tendency in America to act like there's
some sort of something like sacro sanct about the law.
And I think that's frankly a highly Semitic tendency. But
that's abou outside the scope of what we're talking about here.
But what they but the people who propose these kinds
of things, they invoke kind of like a bastardized legal
positivism to shore it up, you know, And then they
claim that they reject quote unquote religious rationalizations for rights
based paradigms and things. But you know, you can't you
can't claim to be a secularist and then invoke natural law.
It doesn't work that way, you know, And you can't
claim that the judiciary somehow sacra saying we've all got
to like take a knee before it because the law
is the sacred thing, while acknowledging that legal positivism is
basically an empirical and pragmatic enterprise. And that's one of
the contradictions I think that is going to prove fatal
to this increasingly decrepit ideological consensus that reigned since nineteen
thirty three. I mean, I see it's happening all over
the place because like that just it doesn't have a
leg to stand on in terms of precedent. Then it's
when you're talking about a body of law and the
theoretical foundations of it, you can't rely on a tautology,
you know, for reasons that some of which are obvious
and some maybe not so obvious. But you know, this
isn't this isn't a superficial thing. It Uh. I just
got a new laptop and still kind of figuring out
I'm sorry, let me, I'm trying to open fucking window.
There we go. But yeah, the law, the law of
war in peace Grotius uh was most active in the
early seventeen eighth century. He's more than fifteen eighty three.
And yeah, his The Law of or in Peace was
his most significant work. And again this preceded, This preceded
Hobbes's body of work by about twenty years. That'll be
clear too. Like Grotius, he wasn't interested in establishing a
paradigm of or producing a central treatise. It's simply on
positive law. It's not limited exclusively to the law of
nations or what we'd consider international law in some rudimentary sense,
but that is its central focus, and the law of nations.
I think Grotius's opinion, it derives from practical reason and
it comes into existence by way of consent us to
the body politic within you know, the several states that
constitute you know, political structure between governments. So there's an
interconnectivity here that you know has to be abided. So
you can't talk about positive law in discrete terms. You
know that are categorically isolated from the systemic whole. The
way to understand it is kind of like a statement
of what the Romans considered the public law. You know
that just publicum you know, from the perspective of a science,
if you will. Okay, But again Groty has conspicuously distinguished
as enterprise from that of Aristotle. I said this, There
isn't a science of politics. There's a science of the law,
wherein you know, order can be imposed on political impulses
which are often pre rational and although predictable and cyclical,
and you know, arguably conducted living parameters of bound irrationality.
You know, particularly at zenith to the expression of these impulses,
which is you know, the state of war. That that
doesn't mean there's some underlying science to political behavior or
you know, the manner in which nations conduct each other
in their efforts to survive and perpetuate their existence and
capture power from their rivals. But the law, however, can
be understood through you know, the lens of a of
a systemic science. You know that framework. At least Grotius
is the first thinker, as far as I know, in
the Western canon, who held himself out held out his
body of work as juristic, purely juristic, as opposed to
a philosophical or theological treatment of politics and the law
of war on peace. It kicked off this entire body
of work in Western Europe that dealt with treaties is
on the public law, the laws of nations, and this
tendency kicked off, you know again in the sixteenth century
and really continued until you know, the end of the
eighteenth century. And that's really interesting. There's a significance there.
And it's not it's not just the fact of you know,
the century leading up to the to the Thirty Years
War was very anarchic, but there's some that there's like
an apocal significance in terms of the development of Europe's
intellectual heritage that you know, it is the reason for this,
I'm convinced. You know, it's something that would require a way,
a way more thorough investigation. But the central premise of
the law of or and peace and Grotius his entire
body of work is the idea that man is by
nature of rational and social animal. Okay, that doesn't mean
that everything man does is derived from rationality. And again
he acknowledges that politics often is derivative of pre rational impulses.
But man is capable of a reason and that's what
distinguishes him from beasts of the field. And ultimately, you know,
man is most expedient in looking after what's going to
guarantee his own self preservation. Okay, and this is a
point too that is echoed very much in Hobbes. Okay,
almost certainly, Hobbes read a lot of Grotius, you know,
different as they were in terms of their suppositions on
political ontology, but you know it, uh, Grotius conspicuously too
he attacked the classical idea of conventionalism and classical natural
right as distinguished from Thomas to natural rights, you know,
which is basically the Aristotilian model, which, as we got
into an earlier episodees it suggests not just that it's
you know, it's a just positive component the essential nature
of different kinds of men, like what their station is,
and what their potentialities are, what the potential letters are
of their soul, you know. And this idea that convention
or you know, justifies itself by its tendency to be perpetuated.
You know, this is suggestive of you know, institutions being
the product of a pre ordained structure and things. Grotius
rejects that, and interestingly he attacks it in part in
the form of a dialogue and one of the recurring
characters in his dialogue was Carniatis. Carniatis was He was
the head of the Athenian Academy during what was called
the Skeptical period around the one fifties BC, and Grotius
has Carniades argue and plade the cases foreign against like
various tendencies that Grotius either wants to explicate or contrast
with his conceptual paradigm, or that he wants to attack
outright and attempt to impeach. Basically, what you can derive
from these dialogues is Grottias are saying, look, allah is
is these are these are These are rules that man
is imposed upon himself collectively, you know, in in congress
with the social organism of which he is a part,
for a reason of expediency and self protection, you know.
And yeah, from place to place and culture to culture
and race to race. You know, laws vary, but there
are certain commonalities that derive from that core rational impulse,
and the law is the product of that cap capacity
to reason. But that doesn't mean that there is some
law of nature. Strictly speaking, you know, all men are impelled,
in Grotius's view, by natural desires towards ends that are
ultimately advanced to themselves and are largely exclusivists. And yes,
man is a social organism. And unless men are truly
possessed of pure avarice and not going to go out
of their way as individuals to harm their fellows for
just you know, for for its own sake. But at
the end of the day, Ingrowtius's paradigm, these these consensus
don't emerge that impose law upon the body politic or
the social organism, you know, based upon some immutable natural
law that can be identified and divinated by either something
like learned caste of jurists, or by you know, resort
to pious reflection on you know, the conscience of the
inner which this or by you know, the study of
scientific principles that you know seem to suggest a harmonious
order to the universe, you know, be it physical properties
or the metaphysical permutations of you know, valued judgments and things.
You know. Consequently, there is no there is no form,
There is no justice that is natural to man other
than you know, remedies for social evils that derive from
this capacity for higher reason you know, and mana'ge ability
to calculate those remedies in congress with others, you know,
as as part of a social organism, you know, suggests
that man is capable of higher purposes in his designs
and plans. But again, you know, we're back to this
impulse towards self preservation and self protection and the practical
business of the governance in lieu of anarchy and reversion
to savagery. We're not talking about identifying, you know, is
some godly or metaphysically present or epistemically prior, you know,
body of knowledge or something that that that just adheres
to some perfect concept of justice or something you know.
And like I said, and what really jumps out of
me is studying Grotius. And in the manuscript I'm writing
right now, Grotius features rather large and I got I
got turned on to Grotius before I went to law school. Well,
not that anybody cares, but just for context, I started
reading them when I was an undergrad. Because I realized this,
I bumped up again and again against this, this kind
of peculiar, sort of bastardized claim that cloaked itself in
the language of positive law, yet was retorting to natural
law arguments. But again not the ones that were familiar
and precedented. You know, it's kind of like, what is this?
And I I realized, well, it's it's it's an effort
by you know, the liberals and progressives and people with
kind of utopian ideas that were common to the to
the New Deal era and especially the post war years
to that draw upon legalism and uh, and an attempt
to suggest that a linear heritage between themselves and you know,
the the progenitors of of of kind of modern legal theory,
which axiomatically leads to some you know, any such person
trying to they claim to Grotius, or they claimed to
the Mantles as his error. But yeah, so what jumped
out to me first and foremost was, you know, this
is Ali Rendel, Holmes and H. L. A Heart and
that's you know where they that's all the great legal
positives or legal realists. Would you know, that would be
their starting point, So that that's important. Interestingly too, Grotius,
he he Andrew impeached Stoicism as well as Epicureanism, and
a lot of his dialogues where Carniatis is like a
main character, and uh that uh, that's not accidental Carniades
was very heterodox, and he was an enemy of the
Stoics and intellectual terms, which was unusual, at least in
the way he went about it. Like to be clear,
like that the Stoics technically fell in the skeptic camp,
even though even though they had some concept that like
a monatic unity to reality that presumably contained at least
an aspect of you know, a will of the gods
or a prime a metaphysical prime movement, you know. And
obviously that that said odds with a pure skepticism of
the kind that had taken rid of the Academy. But
it's it's still outside the scope and it's complexity the argument,
I mean, but it's not it's not an accident that
that Grotius suggested this setting and and the characters that
he did for these thought experiments. That that's important for context,
that is what I mean. But uh the U. But
he also direct but he also took a lot from
the Stoics, and I think that that's why Grotius another
secondary reason why he went out of his way to
make much of the aspects of their ethical posture and
and their their and their ontological claims that he disagreed
with it. Uh, what Grotius did accept Again, men are
in their natural state impelled really merely merely preserved their
own being, their own physical essence. This is distinguished from
wanting to seek pleasure and avoid pain. You know, you
can train an animal to seek pleasure and avoid pain.
Grotius isn't saying that man is basically a highly capable
animal who's a verse to one kind of stimulus and
favors another. That's not what he's saying. He's saying that
from jump or from this, you know, beginning point, man's
cable of conceptualizing what is going to preserve himself, and
he's also a cable of contemplating a posterity beyond himself,
whether it's his nation, or his tribe or his direct lineage.
You know, it's not it's not self preservation the basis
most primitive sense. I mean, obviously that's a component of it.
But again this is derivative of man's nature as you know,
the exclusive beneficiary of of of higher you know, the
capacity to reason, and in a way that you know
sets them apart from all other life forms. And that's
why he denies that this is the defining quality of man.
You know, this might be the behavioral paradigm that gives
rise to all theoretical structures that come to constitute, you know,
the political and the juristic framework that makes the political possible.
But you know these things is derived from the capacity
to reason. And that is what is the definitive quality
of man. So simply stated to Grotius, that kind of
core original desired to preserve one's natural physical constitution then
guarantee one's posterity. That's essentially a hardwired or instinctive or
subconscious drive in man to realize its full nature and
to grow and develop and continue to develop as a
rational being capable of higher reason. So the rational faculty
is the essential quality of man. And you know that
that can be said to be the most excellent and
the highest of all the of all the original or
natural desires or instincts or tendencies within man. If another
reason that it makes it makes all other human activity possible,
you know. And it's this rational faculty which perceives justice
as virtuous because justice makes it possible to live in society.
And living in society is the only way that this
rational faculty and man's excellent and and and and higher
nature can truly flourish, you know. So Proteus is saying,
saying that the classical view, as well as the Thomas view,
is backwards, you know, in the way it describes you know,
the the ontology these things, as well as the as
well as the metaphysics of uh of of virtue. You know.
And this is a very novel argument, you know, and
people should take notice. There's there's nothing in this that
suggests some like equalitarian or you know, remedial social justice
in terms of equalizing tendencies. There there's nothing like that
in here, because Groty has never made those claims, you know.
So this idea that as uh some early and you know,
not so really progresses claimed that well, you know, Grotius
describing the essential nature of man like vesting in in
the human being, like quad the human being, rather than
suggesting that it vests in that human being station or
that you know, his function, you know, be it a
landlord or a father, or a patriarch or a slave
or a king. You know, the idea of that essence,
that essential nature vesting in the human being independent of function.
See that that that's that's the first suggestion of a
of a progressive view of the human being, and you know,
the dignity of the human being. That's nonsense, Nothing like
that is being suggested. And again, anybody who claims that
what they're doing is they're they're making a positivist argument, well,
injecting these kinds of undefinable in concrete terms, you know,
metaphysical characteristics into the human being and suggesting that the
substance of justice has to be the realization of the
dignity of every human being, which seems to almost always
entail some kind of wish fulfillments that you know, doesn't
really have to do with you know, capital s society,
or with improving upon the human beings moral character, you know,
nor of perfecting the rationality of the human being, which
you think that somebody would consider paramount if they're a
true humanists. But that I I'm not trying to rant
about a tangential subject. But this is important because you'll
find all kinds of treatments of grogious that from especially
in the last fifty years, that are kind of through
the lens of people like either gen Rawl's or they're
these kinds of bastardize them progressive ast screeds and that
are always trying to claim, you know, modern political theorists
as as their own. But to bring it back grotius
description and his impeachment of the concept of natural right
as conventionally understood, that's the key to understanding since his
conceptions paradigm. It's in relation to this conception of man
is a rational and social animal that any any any
any notion of right, and any concept of political society
or be understood right and its primary meaning to Grotius
is that which is just, you know, and that which
is just is that what facilitates, you know, society and
the men finding society within a political organism, you know.
So again, what's right is what is just. What is
just is what derives from practical reason, and what derives
some practical reason is the highest good because it's the
most excellent human characteristic, and it's the most excellent human
characteristic because it allows man to fully flourish and realize
his exceptional potentiality as an organism. And what is unjust,
thus is anything that is in conflict with the nature
of society between human beings who are endowed with the
aforementioned higher reason, And interestingly, Grotius quotes Cicero and Seneca
to shore up this statement. I believe that's him invoking
a kind of loose model of practice, or something at
least suggestive of that. Less people dismiss these things. That's
just axioms and postulate's about. You know, what can be
identified as the good in in kind of axiomatic terms.
Obviously to the great Roman statesman, you know, the natural
attraction of mendu society and their ability to act in
conformity with that instinctive attraction would be something very worthy
of praise and discussion. I'm not enough of a Roman historian.
I'm not like a classicalist. I know something about Doric Athens,
but I don't I'm not qualified enough to speak on
why he chose a Cicero and Seneca. Augustus Caesar will
probably have been who I invoke. But again I I'm not.
I'm not learning in the subject matter in a way
that can substantiate it. Hostulitz. You know, so praggly speaking,
a crime is an act of injustice because it's destructive
of trust generally within the social organism. You know, like,
for example, if you steal from somebody, you see, if
you Steve, Steve, you steal what belongs to others. It's
not just you're not just harming that person and violating
that person's trust and their fellow man. You're undermining the
basis of all trust and therefore of society, and you're
acting against the natural order to which man belongs, you know, which,
in addition to being a pragmatic affair, the structuring of
this social organism and society, it also reflects man's capability
towards the flourishing of his excellence. So really, all injustice
is merely injustice. There's not some that's acceptable, in some
that's not. You know. Basically, any unjust act is as
bad as any other, you know, And this is this
is what kind of eliminates the distinction between you know,
a kind of civic morality and you know, a true morality,
if you will. A lot of positive law. Theoris subsequently
made that distinction very enthusiastically, and anyone who reads growth
has realizes that there is no such distinction. In fact,
the core tenet is that that's an artificial paradigm, you know,
or it's it's just an incorrect way of understanding what's
under discussion. How were doing okay, I was just checking
on our time, you know. And similar similarly, you know,
the law of nature such that it exists, again, not
natural law, but the law of nature, the the conditions
that attached to things that from which you know, the
social organism derives in terms of its structure, and you know,
the behavioral modes and coming upon parties to it and
things like that. The law in nature permits a person
to kill somebody escaping with stolen property, you know, if
for example, it's not possible to otherwise recover that stolen property.
You know. But the reason why that's acceptable is because
again it's not that you know, property is so very important,
and it's not because you know, any any any individual
man is permitted to the satiate some sort of instinct
towards vengeance if somebody steals from him. It's because again,
to commit a crime is to commit is they do
violence to the entire concept of trust and to threaten
the totality of the enterprise. So any myscrant so disposed
needs to be eliminated with extreme prejudice, because it's not
a matter of precisely, because it's not a matter of
individual rights, you know, it's a matter of collective defense,
and without the social organism and the laws that both
derive from and facilitated, no man's property, no man's life,
no man's family is safe and can be secure. And
that's the nature of justice in Grotius's paradigm. And that's interestingly,
there's a selective invocation of that reasoning in a somewhat
perverse capacity that's traditionally invoked by enemies of the death penalty.
That's an issue that's kind of falling off. I was
thinking about this Forgere the tangent. But there's DeSantis, Florida's
executing a huge amount of people lately. I think they've
already executed seven people this year. And there's two more guys.
There's two more condemned of detainees, and the sand it's
just signed their death warrant literally one of them. Particularly
horrible and bizarre case this Uh, this, this guy committed
this brazen rape and homicide of this poor lady in
a fairly public place, and you know it. UH is
definitely kind of a textbook case of what's euphemistically called
special circumstances, which the jury are aggravating circumstances that permit
the imposition of of the of capital liability. But in
any event, what jumped out at me is this was
in the national news cycle. I think probably more because
people are have kind of like a passing interest into
Santis and the facts of this case are so horrible
and lurid. But you know, really until I mean, you're
you're littler than me, you remember this too. There used
to be this really impassioned discussion and opposition to the
death penalty, and that's really kind of gone away, you know,
I don't. It's just not something people really engage with anymore.
But traditionally there's this kind of egalitarian or not a yeah,
there's there's there's the egalitarian argument, which is what's arbitrary
and capricious who gets executed? But then there's a they'd invoke, uh,
this kind of pragmatic argument that will if if if
if a capital, if capital punishment isn't adequately functioning as
a deterrent, then it can't be justified. And it's really
not precedented in terms of why men are put to death.
You're put to death because that's the punishment, because like
scripture tells us, you know, the blood of the victims
cry out the heaven for vengeance. And like Demeistras said,
you know the essences, sovereignty is the power of life
and death. So if the sovereign is gonna say, I'm
gonna let some miscreant murder people with impunity and I'm
gonna hamstring myself and deny myself the same power, then
what's purporting to be the sovereign isn't actually sovereign if
some sort of gilded you know, imposter but such that
there is precedent, I mean, granted the argument that it
is outlined that was often invoked by opponent's gable punishment.
That's it's a bastard version of the argument. But it
is whether they realize they' or not, derivative of this
kind of early positive law paradigm as to what the
nature is of justice and things of that nature, which
is interesting. But again, I I realize younger people probably
aren't going to be familiar with the fact that there
was this tremendous debate over death penalty issues and the
kind of the kind of resolution of that that and
and and gun rights, and I know there's a lot
of like there's a lot of bluster and a lot
of cap about, you know, from the regime and and
and these functionaries saying they want to ban guns, but
that's not that's not gonna happen, you know. And I
got mixed feelings about the Supreme Court enforcing the Second
Amendment against the States, but regardless of those concerns, just
the fact that it has been incorporated against the States
means that it's essentially a settled issue, like private ownership
of firearms is never going to be categorically banned, and
the death penalty is never going to go away nationally,
you know, the states that have it, it's gonna continue
in earnest and it's just kind of off the table,
and that that's fascinating because it represents a seat change.
So you know, this is the key kind of takeaway
and the reason why I keep invoking these examples of
how this paradigm that growth is you know, developed, differs
from contemporary perspectives is a because it's completely at odds
with the with with the idea of of of human
rights as we would think of it, you know, or
the idea of subjective rights that you know, held by
the person simply as as a human being, you know,
and and not embodying objective qualities again, such as that
of a master or a slave, or a ruler, or
a father or head of a household or a landowner.
You know, there is some sort of connection between Grotius's
body of theory and the kind of fully realized contemporary
idea of absolute subjective rights. But that's not unlike you know,
like there's a connection between Marx and Hagel. You know
that that doesn't mean that Hegelianism is truly you know,
the ethical forebear of Marxism or something. You know, and
if you accept the you know as I do, that
the dialectical process is uh kind of like the prime
agent in the development of political and sociological structures. You know,
there's going to be cross pollination between monumental ideas. Obviously,
that doesn't suggest some sort of unimpeded lineage or like
some unselling heritage between you know, what came before in
the present. It it just means that nothing occurs in
isolation and particularly not you know, matters of political significance
that impact the psychological environment in just positive ways and
you know, inform and impact these uh structures in the
real world. I mean that should be obvious, but I
desibate some pushback on this, so I'm kind of trying
to or maybe not, but I'm trying to preclude some
of that. And I mean, and that's totally illegitimate. I mean,
I'm not saying people shouldn't call me out on some
of these things. It's a complicated subject matter, but it's
important to clarify, and not just because I'm interested in
depriving the regime of credibility in terms of the intellectual
precedent that it claims to be the heirs to, but
I think that's important too. We're appropriate, obviously, but that's
not The kind of linear view of historical processes is
insidious for the similar for similar reasons. You know, it
kind of cuts off not just critical analysis, but constructive
structuring and conceptual terms of what came before, and that
really precludes a meaningful diagnosis of you know, the state
of things, particularly again in dialectical and psychological terms. And
these things are paramount if you know, you're a politable
theorist or if you're a a layman who dedicates himself
to this subject matter, you know, like I am. It's
there's also and this isn't as developed at least and
Grotius's main body of work, the kind of final iteration
of right as a naturally occurring phenomenon derived from these
structures that you know, are the product demands higher rationality
and the social organism that encompasses and is the product
of that capability. The kind of the kind of unexamined
aspect of that is uh, that which obliges the men
to act correctly, not just to refrain from doing things
that violate you know, the public trust and the you know,
confidences in the essential aspects of the social organism and
political society, but you know, there's a natural sanction that
it must attend people who refrain from correct action, and
people would deliberately shirk their obligations they're in and that
kind of volitional understanding of right and that kind of
affirmative obligation towards action of a certain type, you know,
within the per number of justice. We're probably talking about,
you know, what citizenship is, but it's not. But it's
distinguishable from an active citizenship because it's explicitly moral, you know,
and that warrants that kind of deeper dive. I've got
my own thoughts on that, but I I've got a
that I'd have to delve deeper into some a grody.
Is this more esoteric stuff, and particularly the dialogues that
he wrote, you know, but this is another aspect that,
you know, kind of removes this entire theoretical model from
the merely pragmatic or utilitarian. You know, you don't impose
affirmative duties for the sake of mere pragmatism, you know,
in the purely in the purely utilitarian model of what
constitutes the the duties in coming upon individuals and the
social organism. It basically stops it non interference, you know.
And I think, uh, there's more of a there's at
least an Aristotelian echo in Grotius. Much as he sought
to distinguish himself from political theories, I think that that
owes more to just that. I think you wanted to
make it clear that he wasn't suggesting some overall theory
of politics. He was suggesting a science of the law
which had anthropological and psychological aspects that were explanatory of
the human condition within this narrow domain of human activity,
you know, that domain being you know, within political society.
I I don't read into that some sort of blanket
repudiation of you know, Aristotelian political ontology. But again, I uh,
i'd have to dive deeper into the subject matter. That's uh,
that's not all I got on Grotius for today. I
hope that was worthwhile. It's a very complicated subject matter.
I mean that that's not to say that this, you know,
I the subs can follow this stuff as well as
I can. I wasn't such anything like that, but it
can be difficult to make it interesting. But it's important.
It's the essential foundation of of some of what we're
going to get into. I was contemplating, I want to
cover Calvin and Martin Luther because I think that that's important.
But to be fair, that means I should also cover Aquinas.
And I've got to bone up on that because I'm
not Roman Catholic, and when I was at Loyola, I
had to read Aquinas, and everybody should read Aquinas anyway.
But in the interest of kind of like equal time,
and it probably seems like I should have arguably, like
after Thucydides, I should have we should have gotten into
Aquinance in the scholastics. But to be fair, you know,
I'm a political theorist at Base, and I wanted to
emphasize the trajectory of political theory within the Cononell tradition.
And you know, if it seems like I'm jumping around
to uh go back to Aquinas and Scholasticism as we're
reading about Reformation thinkers, I wanted to include there in.
I mean, theology is always in dialogue with theology. There's
something about it that is kind of outside of temporal politics.
And that's not to say that theological considerations aren't impacted
by political and cultural variables that are temporally sensitive. Obviously
they continue it rather obviously they are. But I think
it makes sense to deal with the the the directly
theological aspects, you know, kind of in succession. So I
gotta think about this for a minute. But yeah, I
if not next session the following one, I'm going to
get into Calvin and Martin Luther. If that sounds agreeable, Man,
it's your show.
Speaker 1: Study both of them at length.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's great. Yeah, all right, man, I hope this
was worthwhile to the subsc well it all.
Speaker 1: It seems to me when you look at Grotius, considering
he's talking about natural law, the fact that he's also
a humanist. There's tension there, so it's going to be
it seems like it's going it's going to be complicated.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the law is always when you're talking about
the law, like unless you're literally talking about you know,
and unless you're talking about you know, and it's most
kind of basic and primitive you know, uh, like like
a penal code that just like sanctions like obvious you know,
violations of the person's property or their bodily entirety. You're
talking about, uh, you're talking about like conceptual models that
are like abstractions built on abstractions. And you know, one
of the ands I like Oliver Wendell Holmes, you know,
like he to the point that the law is always politicized,
you know, and and people who can't accept that, they're
they're going to resort to this kind of increasingly tortured
reasoning that to try and suggest that you know, well,
you know, the the laws that sort of like learned
science of ethics, you know what I mean that that
that spins things off and all kinds of sophistry and
tatological you know, nonsense. But it's yeah, it uh, but
also too I mean there's just, uh, there was a
it's kind of remarkable to like this the uh, like
the the fifteen, sixteen, and seventeenth centuries you had. There's
like the politics of Europe are incredibly complicated, you know,
and you still had you know, like sectarian matters. We're
still having a huge impact on on Warren Peace question,
the midical dayity affairs. You know, the scientific Revolution was
going full steam. You know, the modern state was arriving
and you know, imposing genuine future shock on populations. You know,
the first Industrial Revolution was kicking off, you know, and
so you had really really great minds writing on matters
of politics and you know it's yeah, it's really fascinating economically.
But yeah, well we'll continue the series in earnest then. Yeah,
I was, I was, like I said, I'm still I'm
not I'm feeling good, but I'm still struggling with fatigue
a little bit. So like, forgive me if I seen
a little low energy, I hope I didn't convey that.
Speaker 1: No worries, do quick plugs, We'll get out of here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I uh, I'm trying to increase the volume and
frequency of my content on substack. Yeah, I'm doing a
lot of collabs. I just collaut with Joel Davis. I'm
doing the World at War collab with you know, my
dear friends Adam and Nick at the mid of the
twentieth Century podcast. I just dropped another episode of Radio
Free Chicago is my collab with Jay Burden. You know,
you can find all that stuff plus like the mind
Phaser pod on my substack. It's real Thomas seven seven
seven at substack dot com. As I think I mentioned before,
I'm kind of restructuring my content, but my substacks your
one stop shop right now. You know, I'm on Instagram,
on Telegram, on YouTube in a lot of places, but
my long form stuff, my podcast content, you can find
my substack and they've seen to me the one platform
that doesn't censor me, despite the fact I never violate
TOOS anywhere. But that's where you should go for now
and just search around. Like on Spotify, you'll find my stuff.
On YouTube, you'll find my stuff. And like I said,
I'm trying to structure things to make it easier to
find all of my shit. So moving forward this summer,
we'll get that done, all right, Thank you.
Speaker 1: Talking a couple of days