Dear frank sorry about your car I wish you and your family a very blessed and enjoyable stay in our Country which was the land of saints and scholars and will be again
May god bless you and your family and reward you for all your good work
Thank you for the reading suggestions, the Catechism of Modernism is wonderful! and the vocabulary word from TS Eliot is an absolute delight; "Tergiversation" also describes Vatican II and Modernism as well!
Enjoy your vacation; Ireland is the only place I have ever visited and did not want to leave.
I think it's important to note that modern (postmodern cultural relativism) liberalism deliberately misreads Berlin, and if we look at a comparison between Popper and Berlin then it becomes apparent that Berlin had a far more tragic outlook. The chattering classes tend to ignore the fact that Berlin recognised that liberalism could become tragic when values conflict and subsequently prove to be irreconcilable. He believed that some values were irreconcilable. He called the problem of the incommensurability, although if we are splitting hairs one could divide the problem into incommensurability, incompatibility/conflict, and irreconcilability.
It's useful to go back to one of Berlin's four favourite counter enlightenment philosophers when constructing an argument in opposition to the cultural relativist version of the Open Society which has become dominant. Herder made a distinction between objective (scientific) and subjective (cultural) knowledge. He deliberately rejected the notion that any culture was inherently superior to another. He also believed every culture would eventually find its own centre of gravity.
Importantly, Herderian pluralism does not logically entail unlimited immigration, multiculturalism, or cultural convergence. In fact, it can potentially point in the opposite direction. If cultures are historically developed forms of life with their own internal coherence, then rapidly combining fundamentally different cultural systems isn't necessarily an uncomplicated enrichment, instead it can lead to the incomparable loss of a precious and culturally unique way of life.
In the modern context the correct question to ask is not whether another culture is better or worse, but rather is it right for us, and does living in close proximity to other specific cultures require us to compromise our own culture in ways that violate our basic sense of dignity, safety or our most important values? It shouldn't be rocket science to understand that when it comes to values and cultures, the host culture's values should prevail unless the large majority of the host culture wants to incorporate some particular custom and practice which might make for an improvement.
Some people like Salsa dancing. Other people like line dancing. I'm sure most Brits wouldn't be too upset to keep both. If only all foreign customs and practices were as savoury...
A great excerpt of Berlin in interview from the Isaiah Berlin Virtual Library: 'Like Herder, I regard cosmopolitanism as empty. People can’t develop unless they belong to a culture. Even if they
rebel against it and transform it entirely, they still belong to a stream of tradition. New streams can be created – in the West, by Christianity, or Luther, or the Renaissance, or the Romantic movement, but in the end they derive from a single river, an underlying central tradition, which, sometimes in radically altered forms, survives. But if the streams dried up, as, for instance, where men and women are not products of a culture, where they don’t have kith and kin and feel closer to some people than to others, where there is no native language – that would lead to a tremendous desiccation of everything that is human.'
Thanks for the list Frank. Enjoy the holiday.
Thank you, Frank ... now will read :-)
Dear frank sorry about your car I wish you and your family a very blessed and enjoyable stay in our Country which was the land of saints and scholars and will be again
May god bless you and your family and reward you for all your good work
Viva Cristo Rey!
It could have been a lot worse and it wasn’t - thanks be to God! Thank you too for your welcome and your kind wishes!
Thank you for the reading suggestions, the Catechism of Modernism is wonderful! and the vocabulary word from TS Eliot is an absolute delight; "Tergiversation" also describes Vatican II and Modernism as well!
Enjoy your vacation; Ireland is the only place I have ever visited and did not want to leave.
I think it's important to note that modern (postmodern cultural relativism) liberalism deliberately misreads Berlin, and if we look at a comparison between Popper and Berlin then it becomes apparent that Berlin had a far more tragic outlook. The chattering classes tend to ignore the fact that Berlin recognised that liberalism could become tragic when values conflict and subsequently prove to be irreconcilable. He believed that some values were irreconcilable. He called the problem of the incommensurability, although if we are splitting hairs one could divide the problem into incommensurability, incompatibility/conflict, and irreconcilability.
It's useful to go back to one of Berlin's four favourite counter enlightenment philosophers when constructing an argument in opposition to the cultural relativist version of the Open Society which has become dominant. Herder made a distinction between objective (scientific) and subjective (cultural) knowledge. He deliberately rejected the notion that any culture was inherently superior to another. He also believed every culture would eventually find its own centre of gravity.
Importantly, Herderian pluralism does not logically entail unlimited immigration, multiculturalism, or cultural convergence. In fact, it can potentially point in the opposite direction. If cultures are historically developed forms of life with their own internal coherence, then rapidly combining fundamentally different cultural systems isn't necessarily an uncomplicated enrichment, instead it can lead to the incomparable loss of a precious and culturally unique way of life.
In the modern context the correct question to ask is not whether another culture is better or worse, but rather is it right for us, and does living in close proximity to other specific cultures require us to compromise our own culture in ways that violate our basic sense of dignity, safety or our most important values? It shouldn't be rocket science to understand that when it comes to values and cultures, the host culture's values should prevail unless the large majority of the host culture wants to incorporate some particular custom and practice which might make for an improvement.
Some people like Salsa dancing. Other people like line dancing. I'm sure most Brits wouldn't be too upset to keep both. If only all foreign customs and practices were as savoury...
A great excerpt of Berlin in interview from the Isaiah Berlin Virtual Library: 'Like Herder, I regard cosmopolitanism as empty. People can’t develop unless they belong to a culture. Even if they
rebel against it and transform it entirely, they still belong to a stream of tradition. New streams can be created – in the West, by Christianity, or Luther, or the Renaissance, or the Romantic movement, but in the end they derive from a single river, an underlying central tradition, which, sometimes in radically altered forms, survives. But if the streams dried up, as, for instance, where men and women are not products of a culture, where they don’t have kith and kin and feel closer to some people than to others, where there is no native language – that would lead to a tremendous desiccation of everything that is human.'
https://berlin.wolf.ox.ac.uk/lists/interviews/gardels.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com
I hope the link works. I couldn't find it without the help of AI.