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From: vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (Cliff Joslyn)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,talk.philosophy.misc,sci.misc
Subject: Re: Democratic evisceration
Message-ID: <1011@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu>
Date: 28 Mar 88 17:01:46 GMT
References: <1125@deepthot.UUCP>
Reply-To: vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (Cliff Joslyn)
Distribution: na
Organization: SUNY Binghamton, NY
Lines: 54
Summary: Kant

In article <1125@deepthot.UUCP> macros@deepthot.UUCP (R.) writes:
>
>The following is a direct quotation from `Democratic Theory'
>(essay: Problems of a Non-Market p55) by C.B. MacPherson.
>Oxford University Press 1973 (reprint 1984)
>
>"It must therefore be a postulate of any fully democratic theory that 
> the rights or freedoms men need in order to be fully human are not
> mutually destructive. To put this another way: it must be asserted
> that the rights of any man which are morally justifiable on any
> egalitarian principle are only those which allow all others to have 
> equal effective rights; and that THOSE ARE ENOUGH to allow any man to
> be fully human...

Isn't this a restatement of Kant's Categorical Imperative? That is
(warning: paraphrase approaching), what is good is defined as that which
everyone can do and there still be an everyone (thus killing people is
bad, because if everyone killed each other, we would all be dead), and
conversely what is bad is that which if everyone does it there can be no
everyone. 

> His HUMAN capacities are taken to be only those; and those -
> the non-destructive ones - are taken to be enough to enable him to be
> fully human."
>
>Am I jumping to conclusions here or does this imply that it is an
>unqualified democratic principle that aggression is to be exterpated
>at all costs; to strip men of their CAPABILITY for aggression, their
>exercise of any vestigial aggression. 

In making this last statement, the author is using "human" not in the
sense of being of people, because clearly war is a human trait in that
sense, but rather in the sense of rationality and morality as being the
truly human charactersitics.  Unless I can see some further
justification for this use of the word, I'd be inclined to agree with
you that he's trying to re-define human as being moral, and further that
aggresion is immoral because of the Imperative.  

Further, it seems clear that many forms of aggresion are moral under the
Imperative, in that they do not entail the death of all.  In fact, some
forms of aggresion are necessary to avoid the death of all.  For
example, as was noted in rec.food.veg the other day, living (as an
animal (I'm not planning on becoming a veg anytime soon)) is eating, and
eating is killing (I know this is an extreme example).  

I suspect you may be right that there are other examples of morally
necessary aggression.  And of course there are critiques of the
Imperative (but I can't remember them!)

O---------------------------------------------------------------------->
| Cliff Joslyn, Professional Cybernetician 
| Systems Science Department, SUNY Binghamton, New York
| vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu
V All the world is biscuit shaped. . .