Liberalism, Part I
Richard Carnes
ago. He makes a number of assertions which I find quite strange and
which ought to be challenged.
>As I said, "old liberalism" never "declined" - it just metastatized
>into "new liberalism", growing rather than declining (in count of
>followers and in political influence) at every point in its drift
>toward the current form. Early Liberalism got its start from the more
>Aristotelian "worldly philosophers" of the enlightenment,
>particularly Adam Smith and Thomas Paine. It drifted because its
>intellectual precursors did not give to metaphysics, epistemology and
>ethics the thought they gave to economics and politics.
Adam Reed's version of political and intellectual history bears
little resemblance to what I understand. Take the last sentence
quoted above. Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, and Smith were all
deeply interested in metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, and J.S.
Mill wrote a treatise on logic. All of them were thinkers of the
first rank and made contributions to a variety of philosophical
areas. Also, I cannot make any sense of the statement that Smith and
Paine were "more Aristotelian" than most other Enlightenment
philosophers. The philosophical bases of *The Wealth of Nations* may
be found (other than implicitly in the work itself) in Smith's
*Theory of the Moral Sentiments* and to a considerable extent in the
works of his close friend David Hume.
>What [Peter] Schwartz
>has done is to identify the mechanism by which the Liberal movement
>inexorably devolved into that loathsome antithesis of classical
>liberal ideas which goes by the name of "liberalism" today.
(i) Is the term "loathsome", as used above, merely an expression of
distaste (nothing wrong with that) or does it have a philosophic
content? If the latter, what does it mean? (ii) Modern liberalism
is in no sense an antithesis of classical liberalism, but rather a
development of the same basic principles. The basic idea, more or
less, is that JUSTICE REQUIRES THAT A GOVERNMENT MUST TREAT ITS
CITIZENS AS EQUALS, with equal concern and respect. More on this in
a later article.
>For a demonstration of the link between lack of a philosophical base
>and the gradual drift toward statism, just read John Stuart Mill on
>compulsory education.
OK, I read it (I assume you are referring to the discussion of
education in the last part of *On Liberty*). What I found was
evidence of an impressively lucid and subtle thinker, not any lack of
a philosophical base, which can be found in the rest of the book and
his numerous other writings. (BTW, *On Liberty* should be high on
the reading lists of the readers of this newsgroups, whether you
think you will agree or disagree with Mill.)
>The Liberal movement, on the other hand, grew in numbers and
>influence, yet remains, among ideological movements, the paradigm of
>failure: its ideas never made a visible dent in the dominant culture,
>which remained a morass of authoritarianism, obscurantism, and
>collectivism. An ideological movement fails when it "rises" to the
>point of becoming popular among people who do not understand its
>ideology.
I find this unintelligible. Liberalism became, somewhere in the 18th
century, the dominant political philosophy of the West. It still is,
its chief rival today being socialism in its varieties. As far as
liberal ideas never making a visible dent, they made a huge dent
known as the United States of America, the preeminently liberal
polity of modern history. Please see *The Liberal Tradition in
America* by Louis Hartz. Classical liberal doctrines were extremely
influential in the 19th century.
--
Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes
Tom Tedrick
>is in no sense an antithesis of classical liberalism, but rather a
>development of the same basic principles. The basic idea, more or
>less, is that JUSTICE REQUIRES THAT A GOVERNMENT MUST TREAT ITS
This relates to my interest in corruption in political systems.
Since a large population is likely to exhibit a wide range of
abilities, intelligence, morals, etc., an attempt to treat
everyone as equal gives the more criminally inclined elements
of the population something to exploit (ie if certain rights
are guaranteed to all, the criminals can seek to exploit these
rights for personal gain, at the expense of those who will
voluntarily forgo personal gain for social welfare.)
Or it may force society to treat everyone "equally" badly in order
to guard itself against the criminal types.
So attempting to guarantee certain rights to all may in fact
be a kind of subsidy for the criminal types.
ja...@inmet.uucp
[Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes]
/* ---------- "Liberalism, Part I" ---------- */
>... I cannot make any sense of the statement that Smith and
>Paine were "more Aristotelian" than most other Enlightenment
>philosophers.
Adam Reed did not say that. He said that (1) Enlightenment philo-
sophers in general were "more Aristotelian"; (2) two of them par-
ticularly influenced Liberalism.
However, I don't see how Smith and Paine were Aristotelian. What
is so peripatetic about the Invisible Hand? I can't remember any
remotely similar idea attributed to Aristotle. As for Paine,
his forte is moral pathos, an extremist one that would be alien
to Aristotle, the philosopher of the golden mean. E.g., I have no
doubt that Paine would have heartily endorsed Goldwater's famous
statement that "extremism in defense of liberty is no vice". I
am just as sure Aristotle would have rejected it.
There is a tendency in Rand, which I suspect Adam Reed inherited,
to lump her good guys together. Smith and Aristotle are good
guys, therefore they must be philosophical kin. Rand even tends
to make Renaissance sound Aristotelian, though much of it was a
rebellion *against* Aristotle. (I, too, admire Smith, and Paine,
and Renaissance, and Aristotle - and also diversity).
>>... Liberal movement
>>inexorably devolved into that loathsome antithesis of classical
>>liberal ideas which goes by the name of "liberalism" today.
>(i) Is the term "loathsome", as used above, merely an expression of
>distaste (nothing wrong with that) or does it have a philosophic
>content? If the latter, what does it mean?
It flows, I believe, correctly from "antithesis". For someone
attached to classical liberal ideas, proclaiming their antithesis
under the guise of the same name *can* be distasteful, can't it ?
>(ii) Modern liberalism is in no sense an antithesis of classical
>liberalism, but rather a development of the same basic princi-
>ples. The basic idea, more or less, is that JUSTICE REQUIRES THAT
>A GOVERNMENT MUST TREAT ITS CITIZENS AS EQUALS, with equal con-
>cern and respect. More on this in a later article.
Now THAT is terribly wrong. In a conflict between liberty and equality,
or liberty and order, or liberty and state interest, old liberalism
chose LIBERTY. Freedom to go to hell in our own unequal ways.
If *equality* (of any kind) was its basic idea, why wasn't it called
"egalitarianism" ?
Its preference, therefore, was not for the government to treat
citizens equally but to let them alone equally.
Old liberalism was minarchist. Laissez faire was its principal
ingredient.
The new liberalism has reversed this choice completely.
It has been well said that a liberal doesn't care what you do -
as long as it is compulsory ! Its true name should be coercivism ...
(If you prefer, I can put it in Marxist terms. Old liberalism
was the ideology of the entrepreneurial class. The new one,
of the bureaucratic class. )
Jan Wasilewsky
a.reed
> >As I said, "old liberalism" never "declined" - it just metastatized
> >into "new liberalism", growing rather than declining (in count of
> >followers and in political influence) at every point in its drift
> >toward the current form. Early Liberalism got its start from the more
> >Aristotelian "worldly philosophers" of the enlightenment,
> >particularly Adam Smith and Thomas Paine. It drifted because its
> >intellectual precursors did not give to metaphysics, epistemology and
> >ethics the thought they gave to economics and politics.
>
> Adam Reed's version of political and intellectual history bears
> little resemblance to what I understand. Take the last sentence
> quoted above. Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, and Smith were all
> deeply interested in metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, and J.S.
> Mill wrote a treatise on logic. All of them were thinkers of the
> first rank and made contributions to a variety of philosophical areas.
Sorry for the imprecision. The relevant fact is that the orignal
Liberals on the above list - Locke, Hume, and Smith - made no attempt
at a rigorous derivation of ethics, politics, or social theory
from considerations of epistemology and metaphysics. Thus, in
spite of their intellectual interest in the foundations of philosophy,
the early Liberals did little that could keep Liberalism from "drifting".
The same is true of Mill.
Of the other two names on the list - Hobbes and Spinoza - neither
qualifies as a Liberal. Hobbes, with his "social organismic" theory of
the State, was the intellectual precursor of fascism and of
totalitarian democracy. Spinoza held that individual will, and thus
individual freedom, was an illusion. His pantheistic metaphysics led
to an ethics based on the premise that "Whatever exists is God". The
political corrolary of this view is acquiescence in whatever exists.
The Panglossian secularization of the above ("All is for the best in
the best of all possible worlds") was the intellectual foundation of
early conservatism, and was mercilessly ridiculed, from an
uncompromising classical Liberal perspective, by Voltaire. While
Spinoza's refusal of a royal pension from Louis XIV tells us a great
deal about his personal integrity, the fact that the pension was
offered tells us even more about the political uses and implications
of his philosophy.
I have learned a lot from Carnes' articles, but I am glad for the
occasional demonstration - such as his inclusion of Hobbes and Spinoza
in a list of philosophical liberals - of the fact that erudition does
not necessarily entail substantive comprehension of what one has read.
Adam Reed (ihnp4!npois!adam)
a.reed
> Modern liberalism
> is in no sense an antithesis of classical liberalism, but rather a
> development of the same basic principles. The basic idea, more or
> less, is that JUSTICE REQUIRES THAT A GOVERNMENT MUST TREAT ITS
> CITIZENS AS EQUALS, with equal concern and respect.
Sorry, but I find no reference to this "basic idea" in any "Liberal"
writings up to the time of House. The early Liberals - de la Boetie,
Locke, Voltaire, Smith, Paine - would have disagreed explicitly with
several components of the above:
1. Up to the time of Hegel, who made this kind metaphoric animism
academically acceptable, the ascription of personal attitudes (such as
concern and respect) to collective institutions (such as the state)
would have been regarded by every competent philosopher as a category
error.
2. As Isiah Berlin points out, the statement that "Justice requires X"
does not imply the advocacy of X unless one regards "justice" as one's
highest-priority political value. But most of the early Liberals put
Liberty rather than Justice at the head of their priorities - this is
why they were called Liberals. (Those who put Justice ahead of all
other considerations, such as order, security, virtue, and even
liberty, were called Jacobins). (Later classical Liberals, starting with
Bastiat, defined "Justice" to consist of "the predictable consequences
of one's own actions", so that a Liberal government, which left citizens
free to act, and to enjoy the consequences of their actions, would also
go a long way in the direction of ensuring "Justice". But, by
definition, a Liberal was someone who put Liberty ahead of all other
political goals).
3. Since Liberty is maximized by reducing governmental constraints on
*every* person to the absolute minimum, and since most restrictions on
the liberty of Europeans in the 18th century were the consequence of
special priviledges bestowed on members of established institutions,
the Liberals were, from the beginning, advocates of equal liberty. And,
as Amitay Etzioni put it, "those who aimed at liberty ahead of equality
have always done better by equality, than those who put equality ahead
have done by liberty". But to make equality the entire basis of
liberalism, to the total exclusion of liberty, as in the Dworkin/Carnes
formulation presented above, would have flabbergasted every Liberal up
to the time of Mill, and perhaps even later.
Adam Reed (ihnp4!npois!adam)
Richard Carnes
>Of the other two names on the list - Hobbes and Spinoza - neither
>qualifies as a Liberal.... Spinoza held that individual will, and thus
>individual freedom, was an illusion. His pantheistic metaphysics led
>to an ethics based on the premise that "Whatever exists is God". The
>political corrolary of this view is acquiescence in whatever exists.
>The Panglossian secularization of the above ("All is for the best in
>the best of all possible worlds") was the intellectual foundation of
>early conservatism, and was mercilessly ridiculed, from an
>uncompromising classical Liberal perspective, by Voltaire. While
>Spinoza's refusal of a royal pension from Louis XIV tells us a great
>deal about his personal integrity, the fact that the pension was
>offered tells us even more about the political uses and implications
>of his philosophy.
I think it is fair to call Spinoza a liberal; but it depends on where
you draw the line, and I don't want to argue about that. Spinoza
founded his political philosophy on the natural rights and rational
self-interest of individuals; individuals are led by reason to form
the state by contract. Spinoza was also a stout defender of freedom
of thought and speech.
I was not aware that Louis XIV offered Spinoza a pension, but it's
questionable how much can be read into this. Spinoza was a champion
of democracy, and Louis XIV was hardly a democrat, however much he
may have approved of Spinoza's philosophy in other respects.
I am sure I would distort Spinoza's political philosophy if I tried
to summarize it, so I will let him speak for himself. Perhaps a good
point of entry into his political philosophy is Chapter 16 of *A
Theologico-Political Treatise*. It's only 12 pages and not
difficult. If this arouses your interest or if you disagree with or
are puzzled by anything in this chapter, then read the first two or
three chapters of *A Political Treatise*, in which Spinoza explains
his views in greater detail. The former work contains this passage:
______________
Such being the ends in view for the sovereign power, the duty of
subjects is, as I have said, to obey its commands, and to recognize
no right save that which it sanctions.
It will, perhaps, be thought that we are turning subjects into
slaves: for slaves obey commands and free men live as they like; but
this idea is based on a misconception, for the true slave is he who
is led away by his pleasures and can neither see what is good for him
nor act accordingly: he alone is free who lives with free consent
under the entire guidance of reason.
Action in obedience to orders does take away freedom in a certain
sense, but it does not, therefore, make a man a slave, all depends on
the object of the action. If the object of the action be the good of
the state, and not the good of the agent, the latter is a slave and
does himself no good: but in a state or kingdom where the weal of
the whole people, and not that of the ruler, is the supreme law,
obedience to the sovereign power does not make a man a slave, of no
use to himself, but a subject. Therefore, that state is the freest
whose laws are founded on sound reason, so that every member of it
may, if he will, be free; that is, live with full consent under the
entire guidance of reason. [Spinoza inserts a footnote here:]
"Every member of it may, if he will, be free." Whatever be the
social state a man finds himself in, he may be free. For certainly a
man is free, in so far as he is led by reason. Now reason (though
Hobbes thinks otherwise) is always on the side of peace, which cannot
be attained unless the general laws of the state be respected.
Therefore the more a man is led by reason -- in other words, the more
he is free, the more constantly will he respect the laws of his
country, and obey the commands of the sovereign power to which he is
subject.
Children, though they are bound to obey all the commands of their
parents, are yet not slaves: for the commands of parents look
generally to the children's benefit.
We must, therefore, acknowledge a great difference between a slave, a
son, and a subject; their positions may be thus defined. A slave is
one who is bound to obey his master's orders, though they are given
solely in the master's interest; a son is one who obeys his father's
orders, given in his own interest; a subject obeys the orders of the
sovereign power, given for the common interest, wherein he is
included.
I think I have now shown sufficiently clearly the basis of a
democracy: I have especially desired to do so, for I believe it to
be of all forms of government the most natural, and the most
consonant with individual liberty. In it no one transfers his
natural right so absolutely that he has no further voice in affairs,
he only hands it over to the majority of a society, whereof he is a
unit. Thus all men remain, as they were in the state of nature,
equals.
This is the only form of government which I have treated of at
length, for it is the one most akin to my purpose of showing the
benefits of freedom in a state.
________________
--
Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes
Richard Carnes
>> Modern liberalism
>> is in no sense an antithesis of classical liberalism, but rather a
>> development of the same basic principles. The basic idea, more or
>> less, is that JUSTICE REQUIRES THAT A GOVERNMENT MUST TREAT ITS
>> CITIZENS AS EQUALS, with equal concern and respect.
Adam Reed replies:
>...
>1. Up to the time of Hegel, who made this kind metaphoric animism
>academically acceptable, the ascription of personal attitudes (such as
>concern and respect) to collective institutions (such as the state)
>would have been regarded by every competent philosopher as a category
>error.
To speak of "government treating its citizens with equal concern and
respect" is clearly a metaphor (or some other figure of speech), and
has nothing at all to do with Hegel. If Adam has any principled
objection to the use of metaphor, he will have to go stand in the
corner with Thomas Hobbes, who said somewhere that a metaphor is a
lie, and somewhere else said "the state is a great Leviathan." For
libertarians are unable to write three sentences in a row without
speaking of "the government" as an intentional agent, as in
"seat-belt laws mean the government is telling you what to do for
your own good." This is a legitimate manner of speaking as long as
one is aware that a government cannot have intentions and feelings in
the same sense as an individual, unless the government is identified
with one individual. There's nothing wrong with saying "the Reagan
Administration intends to overthrow the Nicaraguan government," as
long as we understand that the meaning of this statement needs to be
analyzed. But I haven't yet seen a libertarian analysis of such
statements, at least on the net.
"Hegel made this kind of metaphorical animism (ascribing personal
qualities to supraindividual entities) academically acceptable, thus
committing a category error." This is baloney, both in its
interpretation of Hegel and its implication that he made such errors
acceptable to the general run of philosophers. Do you really
understand Hegel's incredibly complex philosophy? Neither do I, so
instead of talking uninformed blather about Hegel, I will quote
Charles Taylor from his book on *Hegel*, also quoted in the Sandel
volume I mentioned previously. Taylor addresses the issues raised by
Adam Reed and among other things rebuts the standard libertarian
(mis)interpretations of Hegel.
_______________
"Sittlichkeit" refers to the moral obligations I have to an ongoing
community of which I am part.... The common life which is the basis
of my *sittlich* obligation is already there in existence.... Hence
in *Sittlichkeit*, there is no gap between what ought to be and what
is, between *Sollen* and *Sein*.
With *Moralitaet*, the opposite holds. Here we have an obligation to
realize something which does not exist. What ought to be contrasts
with what is. And connected with this, the obligation holds of me
not in virtue of being part of a larger community life, but as an
individual rational will....
The doctrine of *Sittlichkeit* is that morality reaches its
completion in a community....
This is the point where Hegel runs counter to the moral instinct of
liberalism then and now. Between obligations which are founded on
our membership of some community and those which are not so
contingent we tend to think of the latter as transcending the former,
as the truly universal moral obligations. Hegel's reversal of the
order and his exalted view of political society is what has inspired
accusations of "Prussianism", state-worship, even proto-Fascism. We
can see already how wide of the mark these are. We tend to think of
*Moralitaet* as more fundamental because we see the moral man as
being ever in danger of being asked by his community to do the
unconscionable. And particularly so in an age of nationalism. We
are probably right in feeling this in our age, but it was not what
Hegel foresaw. The community which is the locus of our fullest moral
life is a state which comes close to a true embodiment of the Idea.
Hegel thought that the states of his day were building towards that.
He was wrong, and we shall discuss this more later on. But it is
ludicrous to attribute a view like "my government right or wrong" to
Hegel, or to think that he would have approved the kind of blind
following of orders of German soldiers and functionaries under the
Third Reich, which was a time if ever there was one when *Moralitaet*
had the higher claim....
Full realization of freedom requires a society for the Aristotelian
reason that a society is the minimum self-sufficient human reality.
In putting *Sittlichkeit* at the apex, Hegel is -- consciously --
following Aristotle....
The idea that our highest and most complete moral existence is one we
can only attain to as members of a community obviously takes us
beyond the contract theory of modern natural law, or the utilitarian
conception of society as an instrument of the general happiness....
The community is an embodiment of *Geist*, and a fuller, more
substantial embodiment than the individual. This idea of a
subjective life beyond the individual has been the source of much
resistance to Hegel's philosophy. For it has seemed to the common
sense at least of the Anglo-Saxon world as both wildly extravagant in
a speculative sense, and morally very dangerous in its "Prussian" or
even "Fascist" consequences, sacrificing the individual and his
freedom on the altar of some "higher" communal deity....
Hegel denies that the state exists for the individuals, in other
words he rejects the Enlightenment utilitarian idea that the state
has only an instrumental function, that the ends it must serve are
those of individuals. But he cannot really accept the inverse
proposition.
The state is not there for the sake of the citizens; one could say,
it is the goal and they are its instruments. But this relation of
ends and means is quite inappropriate here. For the state is not
something abstract, standing over against the citizens; but rather
they are moments as in organic life, where no member is end and none
means....
Rather we see here that the notion of ends and means gives way to the
image of a living being. The state or the community has a higher
life; its parts are related as the parts of an organism. Thus the
individual is not serving an end separate from him, rather he is
serving a large goal which is the ground of his identity, for he only
is the individual he is in this larger life....
But why does Hegel want to speak of a spirit which is larger than the
individual? What does it mean to say that the individual is part of,
inheres in, a larger life; and that he is only what he is by doing so?
These ideas only appear mysterious because of the powerful hold on us
of atomistic prejudices, which have been very important in modern
political thought and culture. We can think that the individual is
what he is in abstraction from his community only if we are thinking
of him *qua* organism. But when we think of a human being, we do not
simply mean a living organism, but a being who can think, feel,
decide, be moved, respond, enter into relations with others; and all
this implies a language, a related set of ways of experiencing the
world, of interpreting his feelings, understanding his relation to
others, to the past, the future, the absolute, and so on. It is the
particular way he situates himself within this cultural world that we
call his identity.
But now a language, and the related set of distinctions underlying
our experience and interpretation, is something that can only grow in
and be sustained by a community. In that sense, what we are as human
beings, we are only in a cultural community.... The life of a
language and culture is one whose locus is larger than that of the
individual. It happens in the community. The individual possesses
this culture, and hence his identity, by participating in this larger
life.
...The fact is that our experience is what it is, is shaped in part,
by the way we interpret it; and this has a lot to do with the terms
which are available to us in our culture. But there is more; many of
our most important experiences would be impossible outside of
society, for they relate to objects which are social. Such are, for
instance, the experience of participating in a rite, or of taking
part in the political life of our society, or of rejoicing at the
victory of the home team, or of national mourning for a dead hero;
and so on. All these experiences and emotions have objects which are
essentially social, i.e. would not be outside of (this) society.
...So that it is no extravagant proposition to say that we are what
we are in virtue of participating in the larger life of our society
-- or at least, being immersed in it....
...The objects of public experience, rite, festival, election, etc.,
are not like facts of nature. For they are not entirely separable
from the experience they give rise to. They are partly constituted
by the ideas and interpretations which underlie them. A given social
practice, like voting in the ecclesia, or in a modern election, is
what is is because of a set of commonly understood ideas and
meanings, by which the depositing of stones in an urn, or the marking
of bits of paper, counts as the making of a social decision. These
ideas about what is going on are essential to define the institution.
They are essential if there is to be *voting* here, and not some
quite other activity which could be carried on by putting stones in
the urns.
...[These ideas about voting] involve a certain view of man, society,
and decision, for instance, which may seem evil or unintelligible to
other societies. To take a social decision by voting implies that it
is right, appropriate and intelligible to build the community
decision out of a concatenation of individual decisions. In some
societies, e.g. many traditional village societies throughout the
world, social decisions can (could) only be taken by consensus....
Thus a certain view of man and his relation to society is embedded in
some of the practices and institutions of a society. So that we can
think of these as expressing certain ideas....
In this sense we can think of the institutions and practices of a
society as a kind of language in which its fundamental ideas are
expressed. But what is "said" in this language is not ideas which
could be in the minds of certain individuals only, they are rather
common to a society, because embedded in its collective life, in
practices and institutions which are of the society indivisibly. In
these the spirit of the society is in a sense objectified. They are,
to use Hegel's term, "objective spirit."
...There is no specially odd Hegelian doctrine of a superindividual
subject of society, as is often believed. There is only a very
difficult doctrine of a cosmic subject whose vehicle is man. This is
woven into a theory of man in society which by itself is far from
implausible or bizarre....
But the attempt to understand Hegel within the terms of this liberal
tradition has just led to distortion. A notorious example is Hegel's
doctrine of the state. In the atomist liberal tradition, "state" can
only mean something like "organs of government". To talk of these as
"essence" or "final goal" of the citizens can only mean subjection to
irresponsible tyranny. But what Hegel means by "state" is the
politically organized community. His model is not the *Machstaat* of
Frederick the Great, which he never admired, but the Greek polis.
Thus his ideal is not a condition in which individuals are means to
an end, but rather a community in which like a living organism, the
distinction between means and ends is overcome, everything is both
means and end. In other words the state should be an application of
the category of internal teleology. [Charles Taylor]
--
Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes
Paul V. Torek
commentary is wrong on at least one count (here I am criticizing, not his
exegesis of Hegel, but his apparent endorsement of the view he is
elaborating). Taylor contrasts the individual considered "as an organism"
vs. "as a human", but why are these mutually exclusive viewpoints (as seems
to be implied)? (Hint: They aren't -- a human is a certain distinctive *sort*
of organism.) Sure our communal life is important, but how does "liberalism"
fail to acknowledge this? F'rinstance: Taylor lists utilitarianism among
the "modern liberal" viewpoints; where does he get off accusing it of
ignoring or disparaging communal life? I keep hearing this axe-grinding
against "individualism", but just what is it and why is it objectionable?
Feel free to give the answers you think Hegel, Taylor, and/or Alisdair
MacIntyre (to throw in another contender with whom I'm more familiar) would
give, or, of course, your own.
--Paul Torek torek@umich