So I gave a lecture on the problems of liberalism to the law school of Benito Jaurez in Oaxaca. Here is a school that reads Rawls and even has a professor who has written a book length account in Spanish of Rawls. They are good academics, but they are not persuaded by Rawls truth
When I heard that they read Rawls in Mexico, I was flabbergasted. I was taken aback if only for the reason that I have always wondered why anyone in the U.S.A. ever took this guy seriously. But they doboth in Mexican law schools and in the U.S.A.
Rawls develops an elaborate argument (what with the veil of ignorance and the difference principle) of procedure to end up where he wants his argument to end up as justice as fairness. It is the most complicated version of wishful thinking dressed up as deep analysis that I have ever encountered. The priority of the right to the good still ends up in what Allan Bloom, in reference to a Theory of Justice, called a First Philosophy of the Last Manand this critique is even more true when Rawls rewrote his theory to meet the challenge of its inevitable ethnocentrism (and in terms of the devastating critique) that Richard Rorty made in his essay regarding the priority of democracy to philosophy. Rortys essay led to arguments regarding the historical contingency of the free and equal self living in terms of a political not metaphysical modus vivendi and overlapping consensus that the late Rawls adumbrated in Political Liberalism.
After giving a lecture about the Locke that was wholly outside a locked box and the Rawls which justifies a creepy individualism which nonetheless surreptitiously introduces the communitarian restraints of public reason, it turns out that the Mexican scholars were just as skeptical of the rational soundness of the liberal theory of justice as fairness in its abstraction as they were skeptical of its actual practicality. Whether stated in terms of a state of nature or an original position, the liberalism of free and equal individuals has serious historical, cultural and political impediments to its implementation in Mexicoeven on the level of theoretical understanding.
Unlike the U.S.A. and its equality of conditions as Tocqueville describes it, Mexico was founded in service of the religious and economic ambitions of the Spanish empire. One should read the biased (but true) histories of Bernal Diaz and W.H. Prescott on this issue, and then compare them to John Winthrops sermon aboard the ArabellaA Model of Christian Charity.
One could say that Mexico, in its thumos, is simply avoiding the inevitability of history. But the students at the Benito Juarez school of law seem to be quite okay with a society comprised of a civil service that serves a lower class that ironically believes in the possibilities of free and equal individuals of modern bourgeois, capitalist liberal society. Mexico gives credence to the Marxist idea that the expertise of the administrative and regulatory state exists in order to keep the working class down. But calling the indigenous peoples (e.g., Zapoteca and Mixteca) working class is asinine. For all of its modernity (and the high hopes of a cosmic race found in the writings of Jose Vasconcelos), the Mexican Revolution has not brought about a worthy political order for a nation in terms of justice.
The irony is that the students who have availed themselves of the rigorous and difficult state sponsored educationand who therefore see good reasons for spending their lives dealing with cases contributing ito the common goodfind themselves confronted with an indigenous population that hopes to enter into a society of liberalism and its attendant individualism and crass materialism.
So one would think that Mexico is a place open to the teachings of postmodern conservatism, in that pomocon-ism is skeptical of overly abstract considerations of modernity and liberalism. But this would require a history of local self government, which the Zapatistas in Chiapas have attempted to establish for themselves. Our friends at the Front Porch Republic ought to investigate the Zapatistas. But they would also have to reckon with the troubled history of Christianity in this country. In Mexico, you have an official and legal laiciudad coupled with a syncretism that is indicative of the native peoples. This laicuidad and syncretism speaks beyond the possibility of human persons in relation to each other as family members, fellow union members, or even Mexican citizens. Laicuidad and syncretism lead to confusion and ultimately to the typical individualism found in the much more bourgeois society like the U.S.A.
A deeply pious people in Mexico is nonetheless a confused people regarding the complexities of the theological-political issuenot that there is an easy solution to this problem. When Bernal Diaz speaks of Hernan Cortes destroying the idols and ways of the people of Mexico 500 years ago(in a way similar to the account given by Herodotus of Cambyses in Egyptand no matter how disgusting their idolatry may have been)one must wonder of the effects and possibility of persuasion regarding the truth of persons in deep and traditional relations with each other. In Oaxaca, San Pablo is always shown holding the book but also holding the sword. This image represents the paradox of persuasion.
The Mexican Revolution, for all of its popular advocacy in the writings of John Reed, may have simply carried this march of modernity even further> The revolution was as abstract in terms of positivism (already a force during the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz) and modern socialism as Cortes..
So it is good that Mexicans recognize Rawlsianism as the empty abstraction that it isan empty abstraction that leads to a conformity in emptiness. Mexico has huge problems. Most of the Oaxacanos spoke in a language that would make porchers proud, but even they know that they have to grapple with the political and technological forces that often make porcherism resemble mere nostalgia.
So I gave a lecture on the problems of liberalism to the law school of Benito Jaurez in Oaxaca. Here is a school that reads Rawls and even has a professor who has written a book length account in Spanish of Rawls. They are good academics, but they are not persuaded by Rawls truth
When I heard that they read Rawls in Mexico, I was flabbergasted. I was taken aback if only for the reason that I have always wondered why anyone in the U.S.A. ever took this guy seriously. But they doboth in Mexican law schools and in the U.S.A.
Rawls develops an elaborate argument (what with the veil of ignorance and the difference principle) of procedure to end up where he wants his argument to end up as justice as fairness. It is the most complicated version of wishful thinking dressed up as deep analysis that I have ever encountered. The priority of the right to the good still ends up in what Allan Bloom, in reference to a Theory of Justice, called a First Philosophy of the Last Manand this critique is even more true when Rawls rewrote his theory to meet the challenge of its inevitable ethnocentrism (and in terms of the devastating critique) that Richard Rorty made in his essay regarding the priority of democracy to philosophy. Rortys essay led to arguments regarding the historical contingency of the free and equal self living in terms of a political not metaphysical modus vivendi and overlapping consensus that the late Rawls adumbrated in Political Liberalism.
After giving a lecture about the Locke that was wholly outside a locked box and the Rawls which justifies a creepy individualism which nonetheless surreptitiously introduces the communitarian restraints of public reason, it turns out that the Mexican scholars were just as skeptical of the rational soundness of the liberal theory of justice as fairness in its abstraction as they were skeptical of its actual practicality. Whether stated in terms of a state of nature or an original position, the liberalism of free and equal individuals has serious historical, cultural and political impediments to its implementation in Mexicoeven on the level of theoretical understanding.
Unlike the U.S.A. and its equality of conditions as Tocqueville describes it, Mexico was founded in service of the religious and economic ambitions of the Spanish empire. One should read the biased (but true) histories of Bernal Diaz and W.H. Prescott on this issue, and then compare them to John Winthrops sermon aboard the ArabellaA Model of Christian Charity.
One could say that Mexico, in its thumos, is simply avoiding the inevitability of history. But the students at the Benito Juarez school of law seem to be quite okay with a society comprised of a civil service that serves a lower class that ironically believes in the possibilities of free and equal individuals of modern bourgeois, capitalist liberal society. Mexico gives credence to the Marxist idea that the expertise of the administrative and regulatory state exists in order to keep the working class down. But calling the indigenous peoples (e.g., Zapoteca and Mixteca) working class is asinine. For all of its modernity (and the high hopes of a cosmic race found in the writings of Jose Vasconcelos), the Mexican Revolution has not brought about a worthy political order for a nation in terms of justice.
The irony is that the students who have availed themselves of the rigorous and difficult state sponsored educationand who therefore see good reasons for spending their lives dealing with cases contributing ito the common goodfind themselves confronted with an indigenous population that hopes to enter into a society of liberalism and its attendant individualism and crass materialism.
So one would think that Mexico is a place open to the teachings of postmodern conservatism, in that pomocon-ism is skeptical of overly abstract considerations of modernity and liberalism. But this would require a history of local self government, which the Zapatistas in Chiapas have attempted to establish for themselves. Our friends at the Front Porch Republic ought to investigate the Zapatistas. But they would also have to reckon with the troubled history of Christianity in this country. In Mexico, you have an official and legal laiciudad coupled with a syncretism that is indicative of the native peoples. This laicuidad and syncretism speaks beyond the possibility of human persons in relation to each other as family members, fellow union members, or even Mexican citizens. Laicuidad and syncretism lead to confusion and ultimately to the typical individualism found in the much more bourgeois society like the U.S.A.
A deeply pious people in Mexico is nonetheless a confused people regarding the complexities of the theological-political issuenot that there is an easy solution to this problem. When Bernal Diaz speaks of Hernan Cortes destroying the idols and ways of the people of Mexico 500 years ago(in a way similar to the account given by Herodotus of Cambyses in Egyptand no matter how disgusting their idolatry may have been)one must wonder of the effects and possibility of persuasion regarding the truth of persons in deep and traditional relations with each other. In Oaxaca, San Pablo is always shown holding the book but also holding the sword. This image represents the paradox of persuasion.
The Mexican Revolution, for all of its popular advocacy in the writings of John Reed, may have simply carried this march of modernity even further> The revolution was as abstract in terms of positivism (already a force during the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz) and modern socialism as Cortes..
So it is good that Mexicans recognize Rawlsianism as the empty abstraction that it isan empty abstraction that leads to a conformity in emptiness. Mexico has huge problems. Most of the Oaxacanos spoke in a language that would make porchers proud, but even they know that they have to grapple with the political and technological forces that often make porcherism resemble mere nostalgia.
So I gave a lecture on the problems of liberalism to the law school of Benito Jaurez in Oaxaca. Here is a school that reads Rawls and even has a professor who has written a book length account in Spanish of Rawls. They are good academics, but they are not persuaded by Rawls truth
When I heard that they read Rawls in Mexico, I was flabbergasted. I was taken aback if only for the reason that I have always wondered why anyone in the U.S.A. ever took this guy seriously. But they doboth in Mexican law schools and in the U.S.A.
Rawls develops an elaborate argument (what with the veil of ignorance and the difference principle) of procedure to end up where he wants his argument to end up as justice as fairness. It is the most complicated version of wishful thinking dressed up as deep analysis that I have ever encountered. The priority of the right to the good still ends up in what Allan Bloom, in reference to a Theory of Justice, called a First Philosophy of the Last Manand this critique is even more true when Rawls rewrote his theory to meet the challenge of its inevitable ethnocentrism (and in terms of the devastating critique) that Richard Rorty made in his essay regarding the priority of democracy to philosophy. Rortys essay led to arguments regarding the historical contingency of the free and equal self living in terms of a political not metaphysical modus vivendi and overlapping consensus that the late Rawls adumbrated in Political Liberalism.
After giving a lecture about the Locke that was wholly outside a locked box and the Rawls which justifies a creepy individualism which nonetheless surreptitiously introduces the communitarian restraints of public reason, it turns out that the Mexican scholars were just as skeptical of the rational soundness of the liberal theory of justice as fairness in its abstraction as they were skeptical of its actual practicality. Whether stated in terms of a state of nature or an original position, the liberalism of free and equal individuals has serious historical, cultural and political impediments to its implementation in Mexicoeven on the level of theoretical understanding.
Unlike the U.S.A. and its equality of conditions as Tocqueville describes it, Mexico was founded in service of the religious and economic ambitions of the Spanish empire. One should read the biased (but true) histories of Bernal Diaz and W.H. Prescott on this issue, and then compare them to John Winthrops sermon aboard the ArabellaA Model of Christian Charity.
One could say that Mexico, in its thumos, is simply avoiding the inevitability of history. But the students at the Benito Juarez school of law seem to be quite okay with a society comprised of a civil service that serves a lower class that ironically believes in the possibilities of free and equal individuals of modern bourgeois, capitalist liberal society. Mexico gives credence to the Marxist idea that the expertise of the administrative and regulatory state exists in order to keep the working class down. But calling the indigenous peoples (e.g., Zapoteca and Mixteca) working class is asinine. For all of its modernity (and the high hopes of a cosmic race found in the writings of Jose Vasconcelos), the Mexican Revolution has not brought about a worthy political order for a nation in terms of justice.
The irony is that the students who have availed themselves of the rigorous and difficult state sponsored educationand who therefore see good reasons for spending their lives dealing with cases contributing ito the common goodfind themselves confronted with an indigenous population that hopes to enter into a society of liberalism and its attendant individualism and crass materialism.
So one would think that Mexico is a place open to the teachings of postmodern conservatism, in that pomocon-ism is skeptical of overly abstract considerations of modernity and liberalism. But this would require a history of local self government, which the Zapatistas in Chiapas have attempted to establish for themselves. Our friends at the Front Porch Republic ought to investigate the Zapatistas. But they would also have to reckon with the troubled history of Christianity in this country. In Mexico, you have an official and legal laiciudad coupled with a syncretism that is indicative of the native peoples. This laicuidad and syncretism speaks beyond the possibility of human persons in relation to each other as family members, fellow union members, or even Mexican citizens. Laicuidad and syncretism lead to confusion and ultimately to the typical individualism found in the much more bourgeois society like the U.S.A.
A deeply pious people in Mexico is nonetheless a confused people regarding the complexities of the theological-political issuenot that there is an easy solution to this problem. When Bernal Diaz speaks of Hernan Cortes destroying the idols and ways of the people of Mexico 500 years ago(in a way similar to the account given by Herodotus of Cambyses in Egyptand no matter how disgusting their idolatry may have been)one must wonder of the effects and possibility of persuasion regarding the truth of persons in deep and traditional relations with each other. In Oaxaca, San Pablo is always shown holding the book but also holding the sword. This image represents the paradox of persuasion.
The Mexican Revolution, for all of its popular advocacy in the writings of John Reed, may have simply carried this march of modernity even further> The revolution was as abstract in terms of positivism (already a force during the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz) and modern socialism as Cortes..
So it is good that Mexicans recognize Rawlsianism as the empty abstraction that it isan empty abstraction that leads to a conformity in emptiness. Mexico has huge problems. Most of the Oaxacanos spoke in a language that would make porchers proud, but even they know that they have to grapple with the political and technological forces that often make porcherism resemble mere nostalgia.