Good question. Fair question. I can't point to any one thinker or writer of any stature, though I hasten to add that I'm just, you know, a common reader. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if there ain't none, given the comparative disincentives of multidisciplinary work and the fact that prudence counsels considerable circumspection when invoking either biology or Machiavelli to advance a bold thesis of a social or political character. One substack author I have found very stimulating, though not always convincing or satisfying, is Michael McConkey, for example in his book A Plea for Time in the Phenotype Wars.
I wonder at the usefulness of such a wide term. If there is a through-line from Mill’s liberalism to laissez-faire then perhaps it is non-interference, but when one is focused on an individual's liberty and the other on freedom of markets, then I'm faced with a categorical conundrum. I would like to call myself a liberal, but while one version I could cry heartily from the rooftops, the other kind of makes my skin crawl.
I don’t know, maybe. Heaven knows I’m under-read on the subject, but it seems to me that the market and her most ardent supporters are wholly unconcerned with rights.
Are you familiar with the republican tradition as described and defended by such people as Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit? The fact that this tradition is more or less moribund and that efforts to rehabilitate it are confined to a scholarly elite-- and a small one at that-- is a good starting point for thinking more critically about what liberalism might really be rather than what it's sold as. Perhaps it's a noble lie; perhaps it's a "nudge;" perhaps it's an untruth of a darker sort. At any rate, I would like to suggest that things have already gone wrong when one is exercised by Berlin's artificial dichotomy or embroiled in an evaluation of the comparative merits of Mill vs. Hayek or Rawls vs. Nozick. Laissez-faire and interventionism are two sides of the same coin, and the realm in which they circulate is best scrutinized realistically, through a biologically and anthropologically informed Machiavellian lens.
Good question. Fair question. I can't point to any one thinker or writer of any stature, though I hasten to add that I'm just, you know, a common reader. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if there ain't none, given the comparative disincentives of multidisciplinary work and the fact that prudence counsels considerable circumspection when invoking either biology or Machiavelli to advance a bold thesis of a social or political character. One substack author I have found very stimulating, though not always convincing or satisfying, is Michael McConkey, for example in his book A Plea for Time in the Phenotype Wars.
I wonder at the usefulness of such a wide term. If there is a through-line from Mill’s liberalism to laissez-faire then perhaps it is non-interference, but when one is focused on an individual's liberty and the other on freedom of markets, then I'm faced with a categorical conundrum. I would like to call myself a liberal, but while one version I could cry heartily from the rooftops, the other kind of makes my skin crawl.
Mill liked laissez faire well enough. You can’t separate political and economic rights!
I don’t know, maybe. Heaven knows I’m under-read on the subject, but it seems to me that the market and her most ardent supporters are wholly unconcerned with rights.
Are you familiar with the republican tradition as described and defended by such people as Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit? The fact that this tradition is more or less moribund and that efforts to rehabilitate it are confined to a scholarly elite-- and a small one at that-- is a good starting point for thinking more critically about what liberalism might really be rather than what it's sold as. Perhaps it's a noble lie; perhaps it's a "nudge;" perhaps it's an untruth of a darker sort. At any rate, I would like to suggest that things have already gone wrong when one is exercised by Berlin's artificial dichotomy or embroiled in an evaluation of the comparative merits of Mill vs. Hayek or Rawls vs. Nozick. Laissez-faire and interventionism are two sides of the same coin, and the realm in which they circulate is best scrutinized realistically, through a biologically and anthropologically informed Machiavellian lens.
Has anyone written from a biologically and anthropologically informed Machiavellian lens?