https://www.irwincollier.com/harvard-renewal-of-faculty-instructorship-case-of-paul-sweezy-1940/

In our second episode on C.S. Lewis' 'Mere Christianity' we went a bit further into Lewis' notions of universal morality and justice. Lewis discusses his history as an atheist and believing the universe to be cruel and unjust - but ultimately came up against the question of what did unjust mean without a god who was good running the show, so to speak.

This is related to a post I made last week, but I am still butting up against this idea and I think there is something to it. If justice is purely subjective (simply based on the societal norms at play), then something like slavery was once just and is now unjust. I am not on board with this.

Taking it from a different angle, there are ideas of 'natural rights' bestowed upon you by the universe, and so it is unjust to strip someone of those - but this is getting dangerously close to the idea of a god (or at least an objective standard) as a source of justice.

What do you think?

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it?...Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too—for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist—in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless—I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality—namely my idea of justice—was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be a word without meaning. (CS Lewis - Mere Christianity)

Links to the podcast, if you're interested
Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pdamx-30-2-lord-liar-or-lunatic/id1691736489?i=1000671621469

Youtube - https://youtu.be/X4gYpaJjwl0?si=Mks2_RkfIC0iH_y3

For the podcast that I run, we started reading C.S. Lewis' "Mere Christianity". In it, he develops a rational argument for christian belief. A major portion of his opening argument states that morality is universally understood - suggesting that all people around the world, regardless of culture, have essentially the same notions of 'right' and 'wrong'. He goes on to argue that this can be seen in the morality of selflessness - suggesting that an ethic of selflessness is universal.

I would go so far as to say that a sense of morality is universal - but I am not sure if the suggestion that all people have the same morality, more or less, is defensible. Further, I completely disagree on the selfishness point. I would argue that a morality of selflessness is certainly not universal (look to any libertarian or objectivist philosophy).

What do you think?

I know that some people say the idea of a Law of Nature or decent behaviour known to all men is unsound, because different civilisations and different ages have had quite different moralities.

But this is not true. There have been differences between their moralities, but these have never amounted to anything like a total difference. If anyone will take the trouble to compare the moral teaching of, say, the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindus, Chinese, Greeks and Romans, what will really strike him will be how very like they are to each other and to our own. Some of the evidence for this I have put together in the appendix of another book called The Abolition of Man; but for our present purpose I need only ask the reader to think what a totally different morality would mean. Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five. Men have differed as regards what people you ought to be unselfish to—whether it was only your own family, or your fellow countrymen, or every one. But they have always agreed that you ought not to put yourself first. Selfishness has never been admired. Men have differed as to whether you should have one wife or four. But they have always agreed that you must not simply have any woman you liked. (Lewis, Mere Christianity)

If you are interested, here are links to the episode:
Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pdamx-30-1-the-lion-the-witch-and-the-christian/id1691736489?i=1000670896154

Youtube - https://youtu.be/hIWj-lk2lpk?si=PaiZbHuHnlMompmN

For my podcast this week, I talked with Ted Brown - the libertarian candidate for the US Senate in Texas. One of the issued we got into was that our economy (and people's lives generally) are being burdened to an extreme by the rising inflation driven, in large part, by deficit spending allowed for by the Fed creating 'new money' out of thin air in their fake ledger.

I find that I get pretty pessimistic about the notion that this could be ameliorated if only we had the right people in office to reign in the deficit spending. I do think that would be wildly preferable to the current situation if possible, but I don't know that this is a problem we can vote our way out of. Ted Brown seems to be hopeful that it could be, but I am not sure.

What do you think?

Links to episode, if you are interested:
Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pdamx-29-1-mr-brown-goes-to-washington/id1691736489?i=1000670486678

Youtube - https://youtu.be/53gmK21upyQ?si=y4a3KTtfTSsGwwKl

For our podcast this week, we read Schopenhauer's essay - On The Indestructibility of Our Essential Being By Death. In it he argues about the ending of a personal life cannot be seen as something bad as their conscious suffering would come to and end while will would live eternally, passing on to all living things to follow. Further, that sate of being dead is equatable to the state of not being born yet.

I personally find this type of nihilism - the negation of the importance of conscious, personal, existence to be forsaking the importance of what we know for the hope of non-existence - to be a mistake. But maybe I am missing something.

What do you think?

Indeed, since mature consideration of the matter leads to the conclusion that total non-being would be preferable to such an existence as ours is, the idea of the cessation of our existence, or of a time in which we no longer are, can from a rational point of view trouble us as little as the idea that we had never been. Now since this existence is essentially a personal one, the ending of the personality cannot be regarded as a loss. (Schopenhauer - On The Indestructibility of Our Essential Being By Death)

Link to full episode if you're interested:
Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pdamx-28-1-schopen-how-life-is-suffering-w-brother-x/id1691736489?i=1000670002583

YT - https://youtu.be/SyLV4TEXQps?si=bz57bF7h5nvZugcE