[TPF Essay] The Authoritarian Liberty Paradox
The Authoritarian Liberty Paradox: A Study in Contradictions and Nonsense
This essay argues that radical individualism is less a coherent political philosophy than a theatrical pose that conceals its reliance on collective institutions, rationalizes inequality and rebrands domination as personal freedom. By examining its philosophical roots and public champions we expose a paradox at its core: the celebration of liberty through authoritarian means.
We focus on three figures: Elon Musk, Donald Trump and Jordan Peterson. Though differing in style and domain all present the image of a self-legitimating individual opposed to collective authority. Yet each depends on immense institutional power. Musk benefits from public subsidies and corporate scale, Trump commands state machinery and nationalist rhetoric, Peterson draws authority from platforms and institutional critique.
This is what I call the Authoritarian Liberty Paradox: a worldview that denounces power, structure and constraint while glorifying individuals who wield all three. At its heart lies a contradiction between rejecting institutions in theory and relying on them in practice. This paradox is not only cultural but grounded in the libertarian tradition, especially in the work of Robert Nozick.
In the world shaped by these figures, from techno-utopianism to populist grievance to self-help transcendence, the individual is imagined as sovereign, institutions as suspect and freedom as a solitary conquest. This essay unpacks the beliefs sustaining this view, the contradictions it produces and the philosophy that enables its survival.
What makes this paradox politically dangerous is not just its incoherence but its corrosive effect on democratic norms and public solidarity. It promotes the illusion of self-sufficiency, undermines trust in institutions and casts redistributive policies as threats to liberty rather than its conditions. At the same time it elevates figures who use public power for private gain and disguises domination as freedom.
The ideology enables policies that weaken safety nets, disenfranchise the vulnerable and concentrate power in unaccountable hands. It fosters political apathy and strengthens demagogues who promise freedom while dismantling its foundations. The Authoritarian Liberty Paradox is not just a contradiction. It is a script for democratic decline disguised as moral clarity.
1. Radical Individualism: Core observations
The political and cultural individualism of Musk, Trump and Peterson follows a script rooted in Nozicks Entitlement Theory. In Anarchy, State and Utopia Nozick defends a minimal state limited to protecting property and voluntary exchange, rejecting any patterned or redistributive justice. For Nozick, justice depends not on outcomes but on whether transactions are procedurally uncoerced.
This model, often adopted implicitly, informs much of todays radical individualism. The typology below outlines key elements of this view:
1.1 The Individual Is Supreme
Each person is seen as a sovereign centre of agency. Musk resists regulation, Trump invokes the will of the people over institutions and Peterson promotes personal responsibility as a remedy for social disorder. These views echo Nozicks belief that the self owns itself and its output. Tax, regulation or moral pressure are framed as violations of that self-ownership.
1.2 The State Is Inherently Coercive
Following Nozicks minimalism, the state is presumed coercive unless confined to protecting contracts and property. Musk resists oversight by regulators, Trump calls the bureaucracy a hostile deep state and Peterson portrays universities and laws as authoritarian tools. Yet all three rely on institutional power. Legal protections, executive enforcement and media platforms are not only defensive tools but weapons of influence.
1.3 Abstraction as Suspicion and Tool
This worldview is suspicious of terms like society, systemic injustice and ideology. Nozick shares this suspicion by prioritising individual liberty over structural analysis. Still these figures depend on abstraction. Concepts like liberty, merit and order are treated as if natural even though they are historically shaped.
1.4 Hierarchy is Natural if Chosen
Nozick argues that inequality is acceptable if it results from voluntary exchange. In practice this becomes a defence of hierarchy as long as it appears merit-based. Musk supports a technocratic elite, Trump relies on loyalty structures and Peterson affirms gendered and competence-driven social roles.
1.5 Nostalgia for a Purified Order
These figures promote visions of organic community untouched by modern institutions. Musk imagines post-state colonisation, Trump romanticises cultural homogeneity and Peterson appeals to traditional archetypes. All reflect Nozicks suspicion of planned outcomes and preference for spontaneous association.
2. The Performative Contradictions of Individualist Power
Despite claiming independence from institutions, these figures continually rely on and reinforce them. The contradictions in their worldview are not incidental. They are structural. The following section shows how these contradictions operate in practice.
2.1 Abstract Values and Concrete Dependencies
Radical individualists often reject collectivist abstractions like the state while embracing terms like freedom, merit and truth without acknowledging their own abstractions. Petersons order and chaos, Trumps American greatness and Musks vision of Mars all depend on metaphysical claims as abstract as those they attack. These rhetorical moves do not transcend ideology. They express it. The contradiction is not a rejection of abstraction but a double standard: their values are presented as natural while others' are dismissed as ideological.
2.2 Liberty Through Coercion
Trumps trade war illustrates liberty asserted through force. Tariffs and trade barriers, classic interventions, are reframed as tools of sovereignty and pride. That self-described libertarians embrace them shows how flexible freedom becomes. What matters is not principle but the actor. Coercion becomes liberty if used by the right person. Hierarchy is acceptable if it matches their ideals.
2.3 Dependency as Power
Each figure presents as autonomous but is structurally dependent. Musks innovation is state-funded and run by an educated workforce, Trumps strength comes from institutions and Petersons platform relies on algorithms and corporate media. They oppose the system only when it fails to serve them. Their independence is a performance. They rely on power to gain more of it.
2.4 Justice That Begins After the Crime
Nozicks justice assumes holdings are legitimate if acquired justly, with a vague nod to rectifying past injustice. In practice this clause is ignored. The theory becomes cover for inequalities rooted in historical theft. Property is treated as legitimate unless clearly stolen. This conceals injustice rather than addressing it.
2.5 Aestheticized Authority as Freedom
The freedom on offer is not substantive but aesthetic. It is self-determination performed through access to platforms and power. It opposes interference but demands loyalty. It praises individualism while requiring followers. What it celebrates is not liberty from power but the power to dominate without constraint. This is not accidental. It is the organising principle.
These contradictions do more than reveal hypocrisy. They corrode democratic trust. When power is disguised as personal liberty, it weakens belief in shared rules and invites manipulation. What begins as defiance of control ends in the erosion of accountability.
3. What Kind of Individualism Are We Talking About?
The individualism examined here is not the moderate liberalism of dignity and mutual recognition. It is a more radical variant: anti-institutional, absolutist in its commitment to negative liberty and rooted in a metaphysical image of the self as a pre-social moral unit. This view rejects collective responsibility and treats the individual as both the source and end of all ethical concern.
It sees the social world not as the ground of freedom but as its main obstacle. Institutions are not tools of liberty but threats to it. What this view overlooks, and what the next sections explore, is the extent to which individuality is socially and historically formed and how real freedom depends on shared conditions, not their absence.
3.1 The Myth of the Unencumbered Self
Radical individualism begins from a specific image of the person: self-contained, rational, pre-social and independent. This unencumbered self is the hero of libertarian and classical liberal thought and the figure celebrated in anti-institutional ideologies. As a theory of human nature it is deeply flawed.
3.1.1 Constitutive Sociality
Philosophers like Hegel and Charles Taylor argue that the self is not formed alone but shaped through language, recognition and cultural frameworks. Hegel sees the individual becoming a self only through mutual recognition. Taylor builds on this in his idea of the dialogical self: to know who we are we must understand the social contexts shaping us.
Even self-determination depends on shared norms and language. We inherit speech before we talk, moral frameworks before we choose and institutions before we act. The idea of a person fully separate from these processes is not only unrealistic but incoherent.
3.1.2 Recognition and the Dialogical Self
Without mutual recognition there is no identity. Recognition is not a reward but a condition of subjectivity. In Hegels master-slave dialectic, autonomy comes not from withdrawal but from social struggle. Taylor's model likewise shows that identity is formed not in isolation but through conversation.
To speak a private language is to speak no language at all. To claim a fully self-created morality is to tell a fiction. The sovereign individual who denies social formation is not free but unintelligible.
3.1.3 The Fiction of Sovereignty Without History
Radical individualism ignores history. Nozick assumes property, contracts and social status can be justified without examining how they arose. But our capacities and entitlements depend on historical contexts that shape access and recognition.
To claim full ownership of oneself and ones labour without acknowledging the role of health, language, education or inheritance is to ignore the structures that make those claims possible. The sovereign individual relies on collective legacies they refuse to name.
3.1.4 Implications for Moral Responsibility
If we are shaped by others, responsibility is never just personal. Freedom depends not only on the self but on the systems of recognition and support that sustain it. This does not cancel agency but situates it. Freedom is a shared achievement, not a private possession.
Radical individualism should be seen not as liberation but as moral retreat. The unencumbered self is not only false. It is harmful. It erases the obligations of interdependence, hides the roots of privilege and excuses the neglect of those who cannot act out the fantasy of self-sufficiency.
3.2 Freedom Is Not the Absence of Constraint
Radical individualism often equates freedom with non-interference. This reflects the classic liberal view of negative liberty, as defined by Isaiah Berlin: freedom from external constraint or coercion. The ideal subject is left alone to pursue personal goals. But this idea, though rhetorically powerful, proves conceptually and practically inadequate.
This essay adopts a relational view of freedom, not merely as non-interference but as a condition made possible through mutual recognition and institutional support. This aligns with republican and Hegelian traditions, where liberty is not solitary but structured, not natural but achieved.
3.2.1 Hegel: Freedom as the Insight into Necessity
For Hegel, freedom is not simply the absence of obstacles. It is self-determination achieved through integration into ethical life, including participation in family, civil society and the state. Institutions do not limit freedom. They enable it. True freedom, Hegel argues, is the insight into necessity: realising that autonomy depends on a rational and social order.
The institutions radical individualists reject are the very structures that allow people to act safely and intelligibly. Moving through public space without fear, challenging injustice in court or accessing healthcare are not natural conditions. They support agency and to treat them as constraints is to misunderstand how freedom is obtained in fact.
3.2.2 Arendt and the Paradox of Isolation
Hannah Arendt distinguishes between private freedom from interference and public freedom through action. The latter, she argues, is the political kind: appearing, speaking and acting with others in a shared space. Retreating into the household, the market or the self does not protect freedom. It eliminates it.
To be free, she writes, means not to be subject to the will of another man and not to subject others to one's own will. Freedom means initiative in shaping a shared world. The radical individualist, in rejecting institutions, avoids the very site where freedom becomes real. What remains is not liberty but solitude. Not sovereignty but silence.
This is the paradox of isolation: escaping the social also means escaping recognition, meaning and responsibility. Freedom without others is not freedom. It is disappearance.
3.2.3 Freedom as Enabled Capacity
stronger account of freedom includes not just non-interference but enabling conditions. The right to speak means little without a forum. Property is meaningless without legal protection. Voting is hollow without fair institutions.
Freedom comes not from isolation but from inclusion. Not from rejecting structure but from meaningful participation in it. Structures that are coercive or exclusive block freedom. Structures that are transparent and contestable make it possible.
Radical individualism, in trying to purify liberty, weakens it. It sees dependence as weakness, institutions as threats and social life as a trap. But this strips liberty of its foundation. Freedom is not given. It is built, shared and sustained. In public.
3.3 The Ideological Mask of Radical Individualism
Radical individualism often presents itself as ideologically neutral. It does not claim a tradition or worldview but instead appeals to what seems natural, original or self-evident. It invokes intuition, common sense or the sanctity of the individual as if these were beyond history or politics. But this appearance of neutrality is itself ideological. It hides assumptions about power, value and order behind a language of purity and noninterference. By ideology, we mean both the structural misrepresentation of power relations, as in Marx, and the subtle production of subjectivity through discourse and normativity, as explored by Foucault and Butler.
3.3.1 Marx: Freedom That Conceals Constraint
Marx distinguishes between formal and real emancipation. Liberal rights grant freedom to own property, practise religion and make contracts but only within a market that already limits choice. One may be free to sell labour but not free to avoid the conditions that require it.
Marx writes: ... man was not freed from religion, he received religious freedom. He was not freed from property, he received freedom to own property. He was not freed from the egoism of trade, he received freedom to trade. The worker is free to contract but not to escape economic compulsion. The market does not eliminate domination. It moves it into private life.
Nozick's theory repeats this move. It stresses voluntary exchange and entitlement but ignores structural coercion. Inequality and dispossession disappear because only the final transaction is judged. Radical individualism, in this form, hides power by recasting it as personal choice.
3.3.2 Foucault: Power Without Sovereignty
Foucault challenges the idea that power is only held by institutions and applied through law. Power is diffuse, relational and productive. It acts through norms, language and identity. One does not escape power by avoiding the state. Power shapes how we see and behave.
Foucault writes: [Power] is produced from one moment to the next, at every point, or rather in every relation from one point to another. Power is everywhere, not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere.
This undermines the libertarian claim that shrinking the state increases freedom. When state power recedes, corporate control, algorithms or social hierarchies will expand. Musk rejects regulation but controls opaque hierarchies. Trump attacks bureaucracy while concentrating executive power. Peterson opposes state mandates while enforcing cultural conformity. The loss of formal power allows informal domination to grow.
By treating coercion as something only states do, radical individualism misses the deeper forces of control. It confuses deregulation with liberation, when deregulation enables other modes of domination.
3.3.3 Ideological Innocence as Strategic Amnesia
Claiming neutrality is not apolitical. It ignores the conditions under which people become agents. It is a form of forgetting. By treating the current distribution of power as natural, it frames criticism as suspect and reform as oppressive.
This forgetting serves inequality. Radical individualism tells a flattering story: the powerful earned it, the weak failed and justice already exists where consent is given. Privilege becomes virtue. Inequality becomes fate.
This is not just a flawed theory. It is a mechanism that protects power. The sovereign individual appears only after the web of support has been erased. Freedom becomes a story that hides the systems that make it possible.
By reframing injustice as personal failure, this ideology turns critique away from systems toward individuals. It hides the sources of domination and drains the collective will to resist. The result is fatalism. Inequality is not only accepted. It is moralised.
3.4 Dependency Is Not Oppression
At the heart of radical individualism lies a discomfort with dependency. Dependency is not seen as part of human life but as a weakness. It is cast as a threat to autonomy, dignity and moral worth. The ideal individual needs nothing, owes nothing and answers to no one. But this vision is both ethically limited and factually false.
3.4.1 The Ethics of Vulnerability
Judith Butler and Emmanuel Levinas offer alternative views that begin with vulnerability rather than autonomy. For Butler, the body is not self-contained but porous and interdependent. Survival and agency depend on a world structured by care, recognition and support. For Butler, this interdependence is not only material but discursive: our vulnerability is shaped by whose lives are deemed grievable and whose are not. Recognition, in her account, is performative and politically conditioned. One does not become a body without also becoming dependent on a world, she writes.
Levinas goes further. He argues that subjectivity begins in responsibility. We do not choose to become ethical. We are called into it by the presence of the other. The ethical demand comes before self-assertion. A person emerges through encounter, not isolation.
In both views, dependency is not a flaw. It is the ground of moral obligation. Denying this does not affirm strength. It denies what makes us human.
3.4.2 Radical Individualism as Denial of the Human Condition
By rejecting dependency, radical individualism cuts the individual off from the conditions that make them possible. It frames care as constraint, solidarity as threat and obligation as theft. But human life is inherently interdependent. We are born needing others, survive through cooperation and grow through mutual support. The myth of autonomy erases this and distorts our moral understanding.
Musk criticises social programs while benefiting from public funding. Trump rejects shared responsibility while centralising power. Peterson sees suffering as personal failure while ignoring the social and institutional forces behind mental health, opportunity and stability.
3.4.3 Reclaiming Dependency as Moral Ground
Reclaiming dependency does not mean denying agency. It means understanding agency within the reality of human need. Autonomy is not about needing nothing. It is about managing need in ways that are just, mutual and sustainable. Freedom and care are not antonyms. They support each other.
Support is not subjugation. It is what makes action possible. Obligation is not the enemy of liberty. It can be shaped to express fairness. A society that centres vulnerability does not abandon the individual. It builds a stronger freedom, one that can endure illness, crisis and grief. It creates dignity beyond the illusion of invulnerability.
Dependency is not the opposite of liberty. It is its foundation. The question is not whether we depend but how we do it. Our support systems can either reflect justice and reciprocity or leave people behind. Radical individualism refuses to face this reality. It offers not freedom but a denial of the human condition.
3.5 The Social is Not a Trap
A core premise of radical individualism is that social structures constrain freedom. Institutions are seen as cages, norms as impositions and collective life as a threat to autonomy. The sovereign individual is imagined as most free when most detached. But this view reverses the truth. The social world does not obstruct freedom. It enables it.
3.5.1 Institutions as Enablers of Agency
Institutions coordinate human activity across time, space and difference. They are not just restrictions. They are scaffolding for action. Language enables communication. Law secures expectations. Public goods, from roads to courts to schools, make freedom real. Even routine bureaucracies help stabilise identity, distribute resources and make rights legible.
Legal rights mean little without enforcement. A vote means nothing without structures to count and honour it. Freedom of speech requires not only the absence of censorship but a space where speech matters. Radical individualism overlooks that mobility, security and expression rely on collective structures.
3.5.2 Coordination, Visibility, Participation
Institutions make individuals visible. A birth certificate confirms existence. A tax system records labour. A health service recognises vulnerability. These structures do not erase identity. They give it form. Without them, a person is not free but unseen, not sovereign but precarious.
Institutions also allow cooperation among strangers. They reduce friction and help manage plural life. Participation in shared rules, norms and rights is not a betrayal of freedom. It is its development. Freedom is lived through systems of mutual recognition.
3.5.3 The Myth of the Outside
Radical individualism suggests there is an outside to society where true autonomy lives. But no such space exists. Even the most independent person depends on shared language, inherited norms, tools and the labour of others. The dream of pure autonomy feeds on the very structures it denies.
Musk relies on public infrastructure and scientific tradition. Trumps populism runs on legal and bureaucratic tools. Petersons critiques emerge from academic and media networks. The self-made man is always socially produced.
This denial of interdependence has political effects. It breeds isolation and mistrust. Solidarity becomes suspect. Institutions lose legitimacy and are easier to dismantle. What replaces them is often private and unaccountable power disguised as liberty.
3.5.4 The Task of Institutional Transformation
The challenge is not to reject institutions but to reform them. Institutions can exclude or empower, block or enable. Political life means shaping them to support dignity, participation and justice. Freedom does not require structure to vanish. It requires structures worth inhabiting.
Abandoning institutions leaves public life to those who would twist it. The solution to bureaucracy is not withdrawal but accountability. Bad laws need better ones. Maturity means seeing that freedom grows not in spite of structure but through its democratisation.
3.6 Why Nozick Doesnt Save You: Libertarianism, Justice and the Limits of Entitlement
To understand the philosophical core of radical individualism as it appears in contemporary politics, economics and public rhetoric, we must confront its most systematic expression: Robert Nozicks entitlement theory. In Anarchy, State and Utopia, Nozick outlines a vision of justice grounded in self-ownership, voluntary exchange and historical entitlement. If an asset is acquired justly or transferred freely, it is considered justly held, no matter the resulting distribution. For Nozick, justice is procedural, not patterned.
This framework is elegant in its simplicity and seductive in its moral clarity. But it is also, in most meaningful ways, inadequate. It relies on assumptions about the origin of holdings, the legitimacy of markets and the meaning of freedom that are empirically untrue and morally shallow.
3.6.1 Historical Injustice and the Starting Gate Problem
Nozicks theory depends on the idea that holdings are just if they result from a sequence of just acquisitions and transfers. But it says almost nothing about property rooted in conquest, slavery or colonialism. Nozick acknowledges past injustice but offers no mechanism for redress. The theory operates as if history were clean, even though present inequalities are linked to centuries of dispossession.
As a result, the theory legitimises inequality as long as no one is visibly being robbed today. It treats structural theft as a matter for historians, not for justice. The theory begins after the crime and ends by sanctifying its consequences.
3.6.2 Social Cooperation and the Myth of Pure Self-Ownership
Nozick assumes individuals own themselves and their labour in an absolute sense. But this ignores how all work is socially embedded. Skills, opportunities and even desires are shaped by language, education, infrastructure and collective effort.
No one invents language, builds roads or develops patent regimes alone. What we call achievement depends on cooperation. Treating ownership as natural, outside history or politics, is to mistake a social reality for a metaphysical claim. The idea of pure self-ownership denies the conditions that make ownership meaningful.
3.6.3 Consent and Structural Coercion
Nozick treats voluntary exchange as morally sufficient. If two parties agree to a contract, it is assumed just. But this ignores the context of consent. Desperation, inequality or lack of alternatives can make consent hollow.
A tenant agreeing to unaffordable rent or a worker accepting unsafe conditions may have no better option. Nozicks framework has no way to assess whether consent reflects freedom or constraint. It replaces justice with procedure.
3.6.4 Power and Market Idealization
Nozicks Wilt Chamberlain example imagines a frictionless market where wealth flows from admiration. But most markets are shaped by power: monopolies, gatekeeping, regulatory capture and inherited advantage.
The wealthy do not just earn more. They are positioned to extract more. Control over assets, knowledge and institutions matters as much as effort. Nozick's view of markets as neutral exchanges ignores the forces that determine who wins and who loses.
3.6.5 Patterning and Moral Judgment
Nozick rejects patterned justice based on need, equality or merit, seeing it as a violation of liberty. But all societies already pattern outcomes through law and policy. We ban certain contracts not because they are involuntary but because they are unjust. We tax and regulate because liberty without material security is empty.
Calling patterned justice tyrannical while treating the current distribution as neutral ignores how law shapes who gets what. Law is not a passive framework. It is a tool of judgment and design.
This essay argues that radical individualism is less a coherent political philosophy than a theatrical pose that conceals its reliance on collective institutions, rationalizes inequality and rebrands domination as personal freedom. By examining its philosophical roots and public champions we expose a paradox at its core: the celebration of liberty through authoritarian means.
We focus on three figures: Elon Musk, Donald Trump and Jordan Peterson. Though differing in style and domain all present the image of a self-legitimating individual opposed to collective authority. Yet each depends on immense institutional power. Musk benefits from public subsidies and corporate scale, Trump commands state machinery and nationalist rhetoric, Peterson draws authority from platforms and institutional critique.
This is what I call the Authoritarian Liberty Paradox: a worldview that denounces power, structure and constraint while glorifying individuals who wield all three. At its heart lies a contradiction between rejecting institutions in theory and relying on them in practice. This paradox is not only cultural but grounded in the libertarian tradition, especially in the work of Robert Nozick.
In the world shaped by these figures, from techno-utopianism to populist grievance to self-help transcendence, the individual is imagined as sovereign, institutions as suspect and freedom as a solitary conquest. This essay unpacks the beliefs sustaining this view, the contradictions it produces and the philosophy that enables its survival.
What makes this paradox politically dangerous is not just its incoherence but its corrosive effect on democratic norms and public solidarity. It promotes the illusion of self-sufficiency, undermines trust in institutions and casts redistributive policies as threats to liberty rather than its conditions. At the same time it elevates figures who use public power for private gain and disguises domination as freedom.
The ideology enables policies that weaken safety nets, disenfranchise the vulnerable and concentrate power in unaccountable hands. It fosters political apathy and strengthens demagogues who promise freedom while dismantling its foundations. The Authoritarian Liberty Paradox is not just a contradiction. It is a script for democratic decline disguised as moral clarity.
1. Radical Individualism: Core observations
The political and cultural individualism of Musk, Trump and Peterson follows a script rooted in Nozicks Entitlement Theory. In Anarchy, State and Utopia Nozick defends a minimal state limited to protecting property and voluntary exchange, rejecting any patterned or redistributive justice. For Nozick, justice depends not on outcomes but on whether transactions are procedurally uncoerced.
This model, often adopted implicitly, informs much of todays radical individualism. The typology below outlines key elements of this view:
1.1 The Individual Is Supreme
Each person is seen as a sovereign centre of agency. Musk resists regulation, Trump invokes the will of the people over institutions and Peterson promotes personal responsibility as a remedy for social disorder. These views echo Nozicks belief that the self owns itself and its output. Tax, regulation or moral pressure are framed as violations of that self-ownership.
1.2 The State Is Inherently Coercive
Following Nozicks minimalism, the state is presumed coercive unless confined to protecting contracts and property. Musk resists oversight by regulators, Trump calls the bureaucracy a hostile deep state and Peterson portrays universities and laws as authoritarian tools. Yet all three rely on institutional power. Legal protections, executive enforcement and media platforms are not only defensive tools but weapons of influence.
1.3 Abstraction as Suspicion and Tool
This worldview is suspicious of terms like society, systemic injustice and ideology. Nozick shares this suspicion by prioritising individual liberty over structural analysis. Still these figures depend on abstraction. Concepts like liberty, merit and order are treated as if natural even though they are historically shaped.
1.4 Hierarchy is Natural if Chosen
Nozick argues that inequality is acceptable if it results from voluntary exchange. In practice this becomes a defence of hierarchy as long as it appears merit-based. Musk supports a technocratic elite, Trump relies on loyalty structures and Peterson affirms gendered and competence-driven social roles.
1.5 Nostalgia for a Purified Order
These figures promote visions of organic community untouched by modern institutions. Musk imagines post-state colonisation, Trump romanticises cultural homogeneity and Peterson appeals to traditional archetypes. All reflect Nozicks suspicion of planned outcomes and preference for spontaneous association.
2. The Performative Contradictions of Individualist Power
Despite claiming independence from institutions, these figures continually rely on and reinforce them. The contradictions in their worldview are not incidental. They are structural. The following section shows how these contradictions operate in practice.
2.1 Abstract Values and Concrete Dependencies
Radical individualists often reject collectivist abstractions like the state while embracing terms like freedom, merit and truth without acknowledging their own abstractions. Petersons order and chaos, Trumps American greatness and Musks vision of Mars all depend on metaphysical claims as abstract as those they attack. These rhetorical moves do not transcend ideology. They express it. The contradiction is not a rejection of abstraction but a double standard: their values are presented as natural while others' are dismissed as ideological.
2.2 Liberty Through Coercion
Trumps trade war illustrates liberty asserted through force. Tariffs and trade barriers, classic interventions, are reframed as tools of sovereignty and pride. That self-described libertarians embrace them shows how flexible freedom becomes. What matters is not principle but the actor. Coercion becomes liberty if used by the right person. Hierarchy is acceptable if it matches their ideals.
2.3 Dependency as Power
Each figure presents as autonomous but is structurally dependent. Musks innovation is state-funded and run by an educated workforce, Trumps strength comes from institutions and Petersons platform relies on algorithms and corporate media. They oppose the system only when it fails to serve them. Their independence is a performance. They rely on power to gain more of it.
2.4 Justice That Begins After the Crime
Nozicks justice assumes holdings are legitimate if acquired justly, with a vague nod to rectifying past injustice. In practice this clause is ignored. The theory becomes cover for inequalities rooted in historical theft. Property is treated as legitimate unless clearly stolen. This conceals injustice rather than addressing it.
2.5 Aestheticized Authority as Freedom
The freedom on offer is not substantive but aesthetic. It is self-determination performed through access to platforms and power. It opposes interference but demands loyalty. It praises individualism while requiring followers. What it celebrates is not liberty from power but the power to dominate without constraint. This is not accidental. It is the organising principle.
These contradictions do more than reveal hypocrisy. They corrode democratic trust. When power is disguised as personal liberty, it weakens belief in shared rules and invites manipulation. What begins as defiance of control ends in the erosion of accountability.
3. What Kind of Individualism Are We Talking About?
The individualism examined here is not the moderate liberalism of dignity and mutual recognition. It is a more radical variant: anti-institutional, absolutist in its commitment to negative liberty and rooted in a metaphysical image of the self as a pre-social moral unit. This view rejects collective responsibility and treats the individual as both the source and end of all ethical concern.
It sees the social world not as the ground of freedom but as its main obstacle. Institutions are not tools of liberty but threats to it. What this view overlooks, and what the next sections explore, is the extent to which individuality is socially and historically formed and how real freedom depends on shared conditions, not their absence.
3.1 The Myth of the Unencumbered Self
Radical individualism begins from a specific image of the person: self-contained, rational, pre-social and independent. This unencumbered self is the hero of libertarian and classical liberal thought and the figure celebrated in anti-institutional ideologies. As a theory of human nature it is deeply flawed.
3.1.1 Constitutive Sociality
Philosophers like Hegel and Charles Taylor argue that the self is not formed alone but shaped through language, recognition and cultural frameworks. Hegel sees the individual becoming a self only through mutual recognition. Taylor builds on this in his idea of the dialogical self: to know who we are we must understand the social contexts shaping us.
Even self-determination depends on shared norms and language. We inherit speech before we talk, moral frameworks before we choose and institutions before we act. The idea of a person fully separate from these processes is not only unrealistic but incoherent.
3.1.2 Recognition and the Dialogical Self
Without mutual recognition there is no identity. Recognition is not a reward but a condition of subjectivity. In Hegels master-slave dialectic, autonomy comes not from withdrawal but from social struggle. Taylor's model likewise shows that identity is formed not in isolation but through conversation.
To speak a private language is to speak no language at all. To claim a fully self-created morality is to tell a fiction. The sovereign individual who denies social formation is not free but unintelligible.
3.1.3 The Fiction of Sovereignty Without History
Radical individualism ignores history. Nozick assumes property, contracts and social status can be justified without examining how they arose. But our capacities and entitlements depend on historical contexts that shape access and recognition.
To claim full ownership of oneself and ones labour without acknowledging the role of health, language, education or inheritance is to ignore the structures that make those claims possible. The sovereign individual relies on collective legacies they refuse to name.
3.1.4 Implications for Moral Responsibility
If we are shaped by others, responsibility is never just personal. Freedom depends not only on the self but on the systems of recognition and support that sustain it. This does not cancel agency but situates it. Freedom is a shared achievement, not a private possession.
Radical individualism should be seen not as liberation but as moral retreat. The unencumbered self is not only false. It is harmful. It erases the obligations of interdependence, hides the roots of privilege and excuses the neglect of those who cannot act out the fantasy of self-sufficiency.
3.2 Freedom Is Not the Absence of Constraint
Radical individualism often equates freedom with non-interference. This reflects the classic liberal view of negative liberty, as defined by Isaiah Berlin: freedom from external constraint or coercion. The ideal subject is left alone to pursue personal goals. But this idea, though rhetorically powerful, proves conceptually and practically inadequate.
This essay adopts a relational view of freedom, not merely as non-interference but as a condition made possible through mutual recognition and institutional support. This aligns with republican and Hegelian traditions, where liberty is not solitary but structured, not natural but achieved.
3.2.1 Hegel: Freedom as the Insight into Necessity
For Hegel, freedom is not simply the absence of obstacles. It is self-determination achieved through integration into ethical life, including participation in family, civil society and the state. Institutions do not limit freedom. They enable it. True freedom, Hegel argues, is the insight into necessity: realising that autonomy depends on a rational and social order.
The institutions radical individualists reject are the very structures that allow people to act safely and intelligibly. Moving through public space without fear, challenging injustice in court or accessing healthcare are not natural conditions. They support agency and to treat them as constraints is to misunderstand how freedom is obtained in fact.
3.2.2 Arendt and the Paradox of Isolation
Hannah Arendt distinguishes between private freedom from interference and public freedom through action. The latter, she argues, is the political kind: appearing, speaking and acting with others in a shared space. Retreating into the household, the market or the self does not protect freedom. It eliminates it.
To be free, she writes, means not to be subject to the will of another man and not to subject others to one's own will. Freedom means initiative in shaping a shared world. The radical individualist, in rejecting institutions, avoids the very site where freedom becomes real. What remains is not liberty but solitude. Not sovereignty but silence.
This is the paradox of isolation: escaping the social also means escaping recognition, meaning and responsibility. Freedom without others is not freedom. It is disappearance.
3.2.3 Freedom as Enabled Capacity
stronger account of freedom includes not just non-interference but enabling conditions. The right to speak means little without a forum. Property is meaningless without legal protection. Voting is hollow without fair institutions.
Freedom comes not from isolation but from inclusion. Not from rejecting structure but from meaningful participation in it. Structures that are coercive or exclusive block freedom. Structures that are transparent and contestable make it possible.
Radical individualism, in trying to purify liberty, weakens it. It sees dependence as weakness, institutions as threats and social life as a trap. But this strips liberty of its foundation. Freedom is not given. It is built, shared and sustained. In public.
3.3 The Ideological Mask of Radical Individualism
Radical individualism often presents itself as ideologically neutral. It does not claim a tradition or worldview but instead appeals to what seems natural, original or self-evident. It invokes intuition, common sense or the sanctity of the individual as if these were beyond history or politics. But this appearance of neutrality is itself ideological. It hides assumptions about power, value and order behind a language of purity and noninterference. By ideology, we mean both the structural misrepresentation of power relations, as in Marx, and the subtle production of subjectivity through discourse and normativity, as explored by Foucault and Butler.
3.3.1 Marx: Freedom That Conceals Constraint
Marx distinguishes between formal and real emancipation. Liberal rights grant freedom to own property, practise religion and make contracts but only within a market that already limits choice. One may be free to sell labour but not free to avoid the conditions that require it.
Marx writes: ... man was not freed from religion, he received religious freedom. He was not freed from property, he received freedom to own property. He was not freed from the egoism of trade, he received freedom to trade. The worker is free to contract but not to escape economic compulsion. The market does not eliminate domination. It moves it into private life.
Nozick's theory repeats this move. It stresses voluntary exchange and entitlement but ignores structural coercion. Inequality and dispossession disappear because only the final transaction is judged. Radical individualism, in this form, hides power by recasting it as personal choice.
3.3.2 Foucault: Power Without Sovereignty
Foucault challenges the idea that power is only held by institutions and applied through law. Power is diffuse, relational and productive. It acts through norms, language and identity. One does not escape power by avoiding the state. Power shapes how we see and behave.
Foucault writes: [Power] is produced from one moment to the next, at every point, or rather in every relation from one point to another. Power is everywhere, not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere.
This undermines the libertarian claim that shrinking the state increases freedom. When state power recedes, corporate control, algorithms or social hierarchies will expand. Musk rejects regulation but controls opaque hierarchies. Trump attacks bureaucracy while concentrating executive power. Peterson opposes state mandates while enforcing cultural conformity. The loss of formal power allows informal domination to grow.
By treating coercion as something only states do, radical individualism misses the deeper forces of control. It confuses deregulation with liberation, when deregulation enables other modes of domination.
3.3.3 Ideological Innocence as Strategic Amnesia
Claiming neutrality is not apolitical. It ignores the conditions under which people become agents. It is a form of forgetting. By treating the current distribution of power as natural, it frames criticism as suspect and reform as oppressive.
This forgetting serves inequality. Radical individualism tells a flattering story: the powerful earned it, the weak failed and justice already exists where consent is given. Privilege becomes virtue. Inequality becomes fate.
This is not just a flawed theory. It is a mechanism that protects power. The sovereign individual appears only after the web of support has been erased. Freedom becomes a story that hides the systems that make it possible.
By reframing injustice as personal failure, this ideology turns critique away from systems toward individuals. It hides the sources of domination and drains the collective will to resist. The result is fatalism. Inequality is not only accepted. It is moralised.
3.4 Dependency Is Not Oppression
At the heart of radical individualism lies a discomfort with dependency. Dependency is not seen as part of human life but as a weakness. It is cast as a threat to autonomy, dignity and moral worth. The ideal individual needs nothing, owes nothing and answers to no one. But this vision is both ethically limited and factually false.
3.4.1 The Ethics of Vulnerability
Judith Butler and Emmanuel Levinas offer alternative views that begin with vulnerability rather than autonomy. For Butler, the body is not self-contained but porous and interdependent. Survival and agency depend on a world structured by care, recognition and support. For Butler, this interdependence is not only material but discursive: our vulnerability is shaped by whose lives are deemed grievable and whose are not. Recognition, in her account, is performative and politically conditioned. One does not become a body without also becoming dependent on a world, she writes.
Levinas goes further. He argues that subjectivity begins in responsibility. We do not choose to become ethical. We are called into it by the presence of the other. The ethical demand comes before self-assertion. A person emerges through encounter, not isolation.
In both views, dependency is not a flaw. It is the ground of moral obligation. Denying this does not affirm strength. It denies what makes us human.
3.4.2 Radical Individualism as Denial of the Human Condition
By rejecting dependency, radical individualism cuts the individual off from the conditions that make them possible. It frames care as constraint, solidarity as threat and obligation as theft. But human life is inherently interdependent. We are born needing others, survive through cooperation and grow through mutual support. The myth of autonomy erases this and distorts our moral understanding.
Musk criticises social programs while benefiting from public funding. Trump rejects shared responsibility while centralising power. Peterson sees suffering as personal failure while ignoring the social and institutional forces behind mental health, opportunity and stability.
3.4.3 Reclaiming Dependency as Moral Ground
Reclaiming dependency does not mean denying agency. It means understanding agency within the reality of human need. Autonomy is not about needing nothing. It is about managing need in ways that are just, mutual and sustainable. Freedom and care are not antonyms. They support each other.
Support is not subjugation. It is what makes action possible. Obligation is not the enemy of liberty. It can be shaped to express fairness. A society that centres vulnerability does not abandon the individual. It builds a stronger freedom, one that can endure illness, crisis and grief. It creates dignity beyond the illusion of invulnerability.
Dependency is not the opposite of liberty. It is its foundation. The question is not whether we depend but how we do it. Our support systems can either reflect justice and reciprocity or leave people behind. Radical individualism refuses to face this reality. It offers not freedom but a denial of the human condition.
3.5 The Social is Not a Trap
A core premise of radical individualism is that social structures constrain freedom. Institutions are seen as cages, norms as impositions and collective life as a threat to autonomy. The sovereign individual is imagined as most free when most detached. But this view reverses the truth. The social world does not obstruct freedom. It enables it.
3.5.1 Institutions as Enablers of Agency
Institutions coordinate human activity across time, space and difference. They are not just restrictions. They are scaffolding for action. Language enables communication. Law secures expectations. Public goods, from roads to courts to schools, make freedom real. Even routine bureaucracies help stabilise identity, distribute resources and make rights legible.
Legal rights mean little without enforcement. A vote means nothing without structures to count and honour it. Freedom of speech requires not only the absence of censorship but a space where speech matters. Radical individualism overlooks that mobility, security and expression rely on collective structures.
3.5.2 Coordination, Visibility, Participation
Institutions make individuals visible. A birth certificate confirms existence. A tax system records labour. A health service recognises vulnerability. These structures do not erase identity. They give it form. Without them, a person is not free but unseen, not sovereign but precarious.
Institutions also allow cooperation among strangers. They reduce friction and help manage plural life. Participation in shared rules, norms and rights is not a betrayal of freedom. It is its development. Freedom is lived through systems of mutual recognition.
3.5.3 The Myth of the Outside
Radical individualism suggests there is an outside to society where true autonomy lives. But no such space exists. Even the most independent person depends on shared language, inherited norms, tools and the labour of others. The dream of pure autonomy feeds on the very structures it denies.
Musk relies on public infrastructure and scientific tradition. Trumps populism runs on legal and bureaucratic tools. Petersons critiques emerge from academic and media networks. The self-made man is always socially produced.
This denial of interdependence has political effects. It breeds isolation and mistrust. Solidarity becomes suspect. Institutions lose legitimacy and are easier to dismantle. What replaces them is often private and unaccountable power disguised as liberty.
3.5.4 The Task of Institutional Transformation
The challenge is not to reject institutions but to reform them. Institutions can exclude or empower, block or enable. Political life means shaping them to support dignity, participation and justice. Freedom does not require structure to vanish. It requires structures worth inhabiting.
Abandoning institutions leaves public life to those who would twist it. The solution to bureaucracy is not withdrawal but accountability. Bad laws need better ones. Maturity means seeing that freedom grows not in spite of structure but through its democratisation.
3.6 Why Nozick Doesnt Save You: Libertarianism, Justice and the Limits of Entitlement
To understand the philosophical core of radical individualism as it appears in contemporary politics, economics and public rhetoric, we must confront its most systematic expression: Robert Nozicks entitlement theory. In Anarchy, State and Utopia, Nozick outlines a vision of justice grounded in self-ownership, voluntary exchange and historical entitlement. If an asset is acquired justly or transferred freely, it is considered justly held, no matter the resulting distribution. For Nozick, justice is procedural, not patterned.
This framework is elegant in its simplicity and seductive in its moral clarity. But it is also, in most meaningful ways, inadequate. It relies on assumptions about the origin of holdings, the legitimacy of markets and the meaning of freedom that are empirically untrue and morally shallow.
3.6.1 Historical Injustice and the Starting Gate Problem
Nozicks theory depends on the idea that holdings are just if they result from a sequence of just acquisitions and transfers. But it says almost nothing about property rooted in conquest, slavery or colonialism. Nozick acknowledges past injustice but offers no mechanism for redress. The theory operates as if history were clean, even though present inequalities are linked to centuries of dispossession.
As a result, the theory legitimises inequality as long as no one is visibly being robbed today. It treats structural theft as a matter for historians, not for justice. The theory begins after the crime and ends by sanctifying its consequences.
3.6.2 Social Cooperation and the Myth of Pure Self-Ownership
Nozick assumes individuals own themselves and their labour in an absolute sense. But this ignores how all work is socially embedded. Skills, opportunities and even desires are shaped by language, education, infrastructure and collective effort.
No one invents language, builds roads or develops patent regimes alone. What we call achievement depends on cooperation. Treating ownership as natural, outside history or politics, is to mistake a social reality for a metaphysical claim. The idea of pure self-ownership denies the conditions that make ownership meaningful.
3.6.3 Consent and Structural Coercion
Nozick treats voluntary exchange as morally sufficient. If two parties agree to a contract, it is assumed just. But this ignores the context of consent. Desperation, inequality or lack of alternatives can make consent hollow.
A tenant agreeing to unaffordable rent or a worker accepting unsafe conditions may have no better option. Nozicks framework has no way to assess whether consent reflects freedom or constraint. It replaces justice with procedure.
3.6.4 Power and Market Idealization
Nozicks Wilt Chamberlain example imagines a frictionless market where wealth flows from admiration. But most markets are shaped by power: monopolies, gatekeeping, regulatory capture and inherited advantage.
The wealthy do not just earn more. They are positioned to extract more. Control over assets, knowledge and institutions matters as much as effort. Nozick's view of markets as neutral exchanges ignores the forces that determine who wins and who loses.
3.6.5 Patterning and Moral Judgment
Nozick rejects patterned justice based on need, equality or merit, seeing it as a violation of liberty. But all societies already pattern outcomes through law and policy. We ban certain contracts not because they are involuntary but because they are unjust. We tax and regulate because liberty without material security is empty.
Calling patterned justice tyrannical while treating the current distribution as neutral ignores how law shapes who gets what. Law is not a passive framework. It is a tool of judgment and design.
Comments (107)
3.6.6 The Minimal State and Structural Indifference
Nozicks state exists to protect contracts and property. It cannot address systemic injustice. It cannot act on discrimination, poverty or precarity beyond affirming formal liberty. If someone is free to starve or live without healthcare, the theory offers no help. It defines liberty only as non-interference.
This turns liberty into abandonment. The state recedes but inequality remains. Exploitation continues but is no longer recognised as injustice. Whats left is a theory that mistakes inaction for fairness.
3.6.7 A Systematic Apology for Inequality
Nozicks theory is not a defence of liberty. It is a defence of existing power. It grants legitimacy to outcomes no matter how they came to be. It offers moral cover to inherited privilege while posing as neutral and principled.
If radical individualism rests on Nozick, it rests on sand. What looks like a theory of justice is a polished excuse for inequality. The real question is not whether to interfere with liberty but whose liberty is already constrained and how.
What emerges is not just a flawed theory but a political project: one that praises formal liberty while shielding structural power. Before concluding, we must return to the broader implications of how this worldview reshapes institutions, reframes moral responsibility and rewrites the terms of political life.
4. No One Is an Island, Not Even A Libertarian
Radical individualism offers a seductive vision. It promises a world without interference, where each person is the sole author of their fate, untouched by history, insulated from obligation and immune to the needs of others. It is, at first glance, a philosophy of dignity and moral clarity. A defence of the self against the claims of society.
But it is also, fundamentally, a myth. And more dangerously, a myth that rationalizes inequality, conceals power and undermines the very conditions of freedom it claims to protect.
The sovereign individual of radical libertarian thought is not the baseline of political reality but its exception, often sustained by vast unseen structures, whether economic, cultural, infrastructural or familial, but that go unacknowledged in the name of self-sufficiency. The theory flatters the ego but fails the world.
It misunderstands the self, imagining identity as self-generating rather than socially constituted. It oversimplifies freedom, reducing it to non-interference rather than also enabling capacity. It obscures power, treating the absence of government as the absence of domination. It denies dependency, recasting mutual obligation as moral failure. And it misdiagnoses the problem of institutions, demanding their erasure when what is required is their democratization.
Nozicks philosophy distils these errors into a coherent but deeply flawed system. His libertarian utopia, free from patterned justice and redistributive politics, leaves unresolved the historical and social forces that make liberty unequally available. It offers purity instead of fairness, formalism instead of justice and procedure instead of repair.
What we need is a different conception of freedom. One that acknowledges our interdependence, values solidarity and invests in the public institutions that enable each of us to act meaningfully in the world. This is not a call for collectivist uniformity or authoritarian oversight. It is a call for participatory, responsive and just institutions. In other words, more democracy everywhere that recognize the individual not as an island but as a node in a shared and fragile network of life.
This is not merely a philosophical quarrel. It is a live political dilemma. The Authoritarian Liberty Paradox is not confined to podiums, podcasts or billionaire brainwaves; it shapes public policy, corrodes social trust and legitimizes inequality under the guise of freedom.
When radical individualism is taken at face value, the result isnt a flourishing of liberty but the quiet dismantling of its conditions: public goods erode, solidarities fray and those most in need are told their suffering is a personal failure, not a systemic injustice. It breeds cynicism toward democracy and opens the door for authoritarian figures to redefine freedom as obedience to themselves. What begins as a philosophy of personal sovereignty ends in the normalisation of power without accountability.
The freedom juxtaposed in the essay against that of radical individualism has no such paradox. The goal is not to reject individual agency but to anchor it in structures that make agency meaningful, reciprocal and just. Those who perform autonomy while depending on unaccountable power cannot escape this paradox; they can only obscure it. But we, as political agents and moral interlocutors, can resist the spectacle and demand something better: institutions worthy of trust, freedom grounded in solidarity and agency rooted in interdependence.
Real freedom is not the absence of others. It is the presence of shared conditions in which dignity, voice and action become possible. It is built not in retreat but in relationship. If we continue to treat liberty as a solitary performance rather than a shared foundation, we will not only mistake inequality for merit but we will also hollow out democracy itself. The Authoritarian Liberty Paradox is not just an intellectual contradiction; it is a political danger. One we must name clearly and confront together.
Reading list:
Isaiah Berlin Two Concepts of Liberty
Hegel Elements of the Philosophy of Right
Hannah Arendt The Human Condition and In Between Past and Future
Charles Taylor Sources of the Self
Judith Butler Precarious Life; The Psychic Life of Power
Michel Foucault Discipline and Punish; The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1
Karl Marx Capital Vol. 1
Robert Nozick Anarchy, State and Utopia
By: @Benkei
Enough said. Will do. Making my way there...slowly but unsurely...
The Intro is certainly a draw:
Quoting Moliere
I hope all authors are being patient. There's a whole world of reading in this event. It's only the 4th.
Quoting Moliere
There it is, right there: the hard kernel of contradiction. What is property? The concept doesn't exist in nature; it's a social convention, underpinned and guaranteed by Law, that giant edifice maintained at public expense, and which functions only so long as a large majority of the population is not free of its constraints. If property were acquired through individual effort and voluntary exchanges, the profits and losses* should not be heritable. Every infant should start life in equal swaddling, perhaps under the care of robots or professional nannies, so that they have a "level playing field", where no person or group is in a position to manipulate the rules.
I recall a popular libertarian argument about a rich man talking to his university student daughter who'd been exposed to egalitarian ideas: "You study hard and get high marks. Your roommate Audrey doesn't. Should you be forced to share your grades with her?" The argument ends there, cutting off the daughter's response: "She gets lower grades because she works two part-time jobs to pay the tuition. Audrey wouldn't need my grades, if I shared your money. "
Here's some graphic commentary.
Essentially, minimal governance means rich people, with material wealth in excess of their requirements, enlisting poor people, with insufficient material wealth to meet their requirements, to protect rich people's stuff from one another and compete for the remote little carrot of becoming rich themselves. *Voluntary exchanges are either fair - that is, both parties are equally free to accept or decline an offer, or they impoverish one party (loss) to enrich the other (profit). This means 97% of any population is denied the freedom of choice. The trend can only go one way, unless organizations such as government regulators and trade unions step in. Libertarians oppose both, attempting to equate a giant corporation and an assembly line worker.
Quoting Moliere
Yet no holders of inherited wealth (and its considerable dividends) seems eager to embrace the doctrine of restitution to enslaved Africans or displaced Natives.
Anyone who steals my stuff should be punished by law, even the theft of a pizza that took place five years ago, but my acquisition of that stuff should never be questioned. Or mentioned in history classes.
Quoting Moliere
Not even robots to thank for raising him to adulthood; he just growed out of the sidewalk and started a business.
Quoting Moliere
As a not-so-great actor said in opposition to government poverty relief programs:
That's not a paradox so much as it is simple blatant hypocrisy, covered by noisy rhetoric.
Quoting Amity
Agreed. I'm having to do some slow, careful work here, but it's worth every minute.
Berlin's point was that Negative Liberty is better than Positive Liberty. He was warning against authoritarianism dressed up as the pursuit of liberty.
On another note, I would really have liked to have seen some comparisons with Popper's views. I would be really interest see the author's thoughts on what Popper had to say in regards to 'Open Society And It's Enemies'. There seems to be a direct parallel to what is being discussed in this essay.
I have the following comments just on the introduction to the paper.
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Quoting Moliere
The essay starts with a straw man fallacy (an argument that misrepresents an opponent's position and then attacks it). Radical individualism as a coherent political philosophy does not rely on collective institutions and domination, though it may rationalise inequality. If there is a coherent political philosophy that does rely on collective institutions, domination and rationalises inequality, then it is not radical individualism.
Logically, I cannot disagree with the idea that if Radical Individualism as a political philosophy is not about radical individualism, then it is not Radical Individualism.
The author is attacking a political philosophy for something it is not.
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Quoting Moliere
Hardly accurate, when Musk's companies employ about 110,000 people worldwide, Trump in the 2024 US election gained 77,302,416 votes to Kamala Harris's 75,012,178 votes and Peterson is Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Toronto.
The use of the word "present" is ambiguous. Is the author saying that these three people deliberately present themselves as individuals opposed to authority, or is the author's subjective opinion.
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Quoting Moliere
I find it very hard to believe that Musk, Trump and Peterson reject institutions in theory, as each of them clearly depend on institutions for their livelihoods.
Is the author arguing that these three want to return to a time before there were any Institutions?
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Quoting Moliere
I am sure that most would agree that the individual is sovereign and institutions are suspect. Institutions were created for the benefit of the individual. The individual is not there for the benefit of the Institution.
I what way would the author disagree with John Stuart Mill about the individual as being sovereign?
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Quoting Moliere
Any paradox in radical individualism is a construction of this essay. There is no paradox in radical individualism as a coherent political philosophy.
There is only a paradox when the paper describes radical individualism as something it is not.
There is only a paradox when the paper describes Musk, Trump and Peterson as holding opinions that they in fact don't hold, such as the dismantling of democracy. Where is the evidence that this is something they have promoted?
Scrolling down, I read about 'common sense' as an ideology and immediately thought of Trump:
Quoting Moliere [emphasis added]
There are more than a few examples of Trump's appeal to 'common sense' as opposed to scientific evidence for political decision-making. It can be harmful and ridiculous. I noticed it first in 2012 when Trump's fury knew no bounds:
In Scotland, he challenged the planning permission for windfarms in sight of his multi-million pound golf development, near Aberdeen. Not only would the turbines spoil the view but he claimed that Scotland was committing "financial suicide" by building them.
Quoting BBC News
See embedded clip (00.31).
Mr. Trump proceeded to make a series of legal challenges, right up to the UK's Supreme Court where
he failed in his efforts. That was then, what about now?
Trump's antipathy to the harnessing of wind power continues.
'I never understood wind' - a Trump tirade
Now, he is President Trump and bigly transactional, employing the threat of tariffs world-wide. To pursue his own agenda, increase his power and riches with the slogan "Drill, baby, drill!"
"Working out well for all"? Really? At what cost? For whose benefit?
Back to common sense as an ideology:
Quoting The Conversation
Embedded video - see 01.34 of 02.49 clip.
And that is only the tip of a fast-melting ice-berg.
***
I look forward to examining more of this powerful essay and how:
Quoting Baden
The conclusion is compelling:
Quoting Moliere
A strong call to name what is wrong before we can rectify the erosion of rights. The melting of morals.
The paradox is also explained here:
Quoting Is Radical Individualism Destroying Our Moral Compass - Psychology Today
Similar conclusions but, as always, light on detailed action.
The How of the matter. Ask and ye shall receive?
Quoting Moliere
I agree with this in general. However, in the face of eternal global wars, this seems more than a little idealistic. Solidarity struggles daily, hourly, every second a damning atrocity.
People are fighting for their very lives, survival - free to bite the hands off others for sustenance.
You obviously know nothing about nature. Most organisms are territorial.
Your focus is biased. There are plenty on the left that are just as self-centered and manipulative. It has nothing to do with political ideology.
That's pretty much the point. Institutions brought them fortune, power and fame and they're busily attacking and tearing down those institutions, in order to deprive other people of the protection they offer.
Quoting RussellA
All over the news over the last six months.
(Peterson doesn't really belong here. He made a mediocre living as a psychologist, but he's cleaning up as a big-time hot air machine. I don't know whether he has a political ideology; he just knows what to say to audiences who'll shell out 2-300,000 to feel good about their privilege.)
It seems to me that Musk and Trump have created their own institutions. Do institutions inherently endow individuals with fortune, power and fame? Which ones do and which ones don't typically have much to do with one's political persuasions but with favoritism and nepotism.
Yes, I value the whole process. Being involved and learning other perspectives. Challenging my thoughts. I have a few essays left but as far as me contributing anything worthwhile or otherwise. Hmmm.
Not so hot on Wittgenstein but he seems to have an appeal :wink:
Do you have any evidence that they are attacking and tearing down those institutions that brought them fortune, power and fame?
I am always willing to change my opinion if there is something that I don't know about.
You might be surprised.
Most sentient organisms. Grass, not so much, although it can be 'invade' the artificial domains of mankind.
Defending one's home, feeding grounds and cache of winter supplies against rivals and enemies is not much like holding the deed to an estate - or ten estates - stocks and bank accounts, a vault full of fur coats, pictures and diamonds to which the government is expected to guarantee your absolute right, including the maintenance of legal institutions in which to squabble with one's mate over them.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Of course it has nothing to do with ideology: they believe in nothing but self-enrichment, self-aggrandizement. They just proclaim that it is in order to get people to obey them. I agree that Peterson was an inappropriate inclusion. So, could you please name two of the contemporary examples from the American left who are equal to them in self-centered manipulativism?
Quoting Harry Hindu
Institutions inherently allow individuals to do what their fellow men on a level playing field would not.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Trump created the monetary system that let him receive $400 million without contest or effort, and the legal system that protected him from the victims of his various flim-flam operations. Then he went on to invent network television, the US electoral system, racism and sexism.
I'm skeptical.
And far too impatient with this topic to delve into Musk's genesis. I hope those poor endangered Afrikaner refugees are managing with no help from any institutions.
I would question the figures being focused on to some degree, because I think it obscures how the issues raised here are topics of open debate within the Right. These aren't really intellectuals we would expect to have coherent platforms. Two of the figures have had quite public struggles with drug addiction and difficulties coping with wealth and fame, of the sort that obviously tends to lead to incoherence. They also interact heavily through social media, and I have found that social media tends to make even otherwise quite sensible figures say very silly things on a regular basis.
I think the tension that arises from the modern tendency to define freedom in terms of power/potency (the ability to choose or be anything), as opposed to in terms of actuality (the ability to actualize the Good) actually has a much wider reach than the focus of this article. It leads to deep tensions in progressive liberalism and modern communitarianism as well (actually, maybe this article does get at the tensions in right-wing communitarianism in some ways, since it cannot take over from Neoliberalism precisely because this ideal of freedom is so fixed).
I think it also may be missing the way in which the general movement represented by these figures often explicitly appeals to tradition and communitarian identity, not just individualism. Is there a contradiction here? Perhaps, and the article does a good job on some of that. But I think there are other figures who represent more serious efforts to overcome these tensions.
Liberalism, in its battles with its ideological opponents, ended up sublating key elements of socialism and nationalism. The Right certainly focuses heavily on individualism, but it does incorporate elements of both the aforementioned (normally the former being justified in terms of the later, a conception of a "people" who are deserving of membership in the welfare state, which tends to exclude migrants). Note that progressive liberalism also focuses heavily on the individual. The reason given for why we need more progressive redistribution, and the reason we need to focus on biological markers of identity (sex, race, etc. instead of class, religion, etc.) is because progressivism is ultimately still justified in terms of the individual getting to decide and achieve their own good.
I think the article misses how appeals to pre-modern tradition also figure into this though. The crowd around Trump really likes their ancient Rome memes. So does Musk. There is "Red Caesarism," etc. These elements tend to be far more communitarian, and are openly critical of libertarianism, and even sometimes critical of capitalism. Tariffs are and a push for autotarky are actually not out of line with this way of thinking. This is a tension within the Right that is out in the open, not something that is ignored.
Movements like Generation Identity in Europe are in some ways more grounded in national epics like the Nibelungenlied, the Poetic Edda, the Iliad, and ancient political theory than in modern liberalism/libertarian ideology. More Beowulf, less Ayn Rand. Certainly, they rely heavily on these sources for aesthetics, and these are romantic movements where aesthetics is given a very important role (e.g., a film like 300 might have more currency than many political dissertations).
It is certainly true that these movements often cannot abandon certain classical liberal precepts, and that this arguably makes them incoherent, or at the very least opens them up to grifters and abuse. But I do think there is more there than simple opportunism.
Go look at popular right wing spaces and I think you're far more likely to find discussion of Deneen's "Why Liberalism Failed," than Nozick. "Neoliberal" has become a sort of slur in these spaces. "Zombie Reaganism" and the "Boomerism" of the classically liberal GOP is almost as much of a punching bag as the Left. Wagner, particularly his epic Ring Cycle, starts to eclipse his friend Nietzsche in popularity, and names like Goethe, Schiller, and Schelling push out Hamilton, Locke, and Mill.
Which is just to say maybe that this internal contradiction actually seems to me to be more of an open civil war in the Right (also one that tends to pit the young communitarian traditionalists against the older individualistic liberals), and these figures, being broadly popular, are just nexus points for this conflict.
I'd also add that I don't think these sources are necessarily problematic. What is problematic is that liberalism, in its phobia of thymos, as so utterly starved young people (particularly young men) of any "education of the chest," that, in their desperation to find some source of thymos, the fall easy prey to the simplicity of "might makes right," and the "super individual," the "alpha Chad." But funny enough, Homer, Virgil, etc. are actually full of warnings against this sort of thing.
They are also taught to be skeptical of logos, the effects of post-modernism come home to roost, which removes the idea that thymos must be in service to logos (pietas), leaving only the sort of cannibalistic energy of Achilles (or ultimately, in his failings, Aeneas') thymotic rage (furor). Not to put too fine a point on it, but without logos leading, the parallels to Hitlerism seem fairly robust.
Who is "most?" I think Marxism, most pre-modern political thought, most Eastern thought, a lot of Continental thought, and post-modernism would all reject this to some extent, although for very different reasons. However, this is certainly the view of neoliberalism, which is currently the hegemonic ideology, but it's not like neoliberalism is without significant critics.
This is, for instance, not what one gets even looking at the old heroic epics. There is no Aeneas without the Trojans and future Romans. He is an exceptional individual. A hero. The son of a god. Yet his desires are continually subservient to the needs of the whole, and shaped by the destiny of the whole. Without the whole, he wouldn't be a hero.
Greek drama, likewise, tends to pivot around conflicting duties (e.g. to family versus polis), not on duty versus individual desire. There, the answer is (to them) too obvious. The individual cannot conflict with the polis absolutely because there is no individual without the polis. It's Christianity and Platonism, with their focus on a justice beyond the particularities of any one culture, social role, or historical moment that allows the individual to absolutely oppose the polis, but even here it is not the individual, but their ultimate duty (to principles) which is at question.
It's hard to see how a focus on three non-philosophers who the author dislikes amounts to anything more than ad hominem. A philosophy essay needs to avoid such strong reliance on ad hominem. The piece is more than that, but it is bogged down by it.
Quoting Vera Mont
I other words the concept does exist in nature. Mankind is a natural outcome of natural processes. Everything humans do is natural for them, which includes staking one's territory.
Quoting Vera Mont
But it is like a nation using it's might to protect it's territory. Why wouldn't the same concept hold true for individuals too?
Quoting Vera Mont
There are many to choose from. The fact that you are asking me just shows the scope of your bias. Nancy Pelosi, the Clintons and all those that kept Biden's condition from the American people as well as those that manipulated the Democratic primary in 2016 sidelining Bernie Sanders. The fact that I need to point these things out to you just shows how easy it is to forget the bad behavior of your own side.
The only reason one would continue to support one side or the other would be because of some emotional investment they have in supporting the party. Political parties employ group-think and group-hate. People would much rather blame people they never met or spoke to for their problems.
Quoting Vera Mont
Not always. Competition is what allows a level playing field, not using government to artificially prop up one group or another, or one institution or another.
On their view, they are saving those institutions. That's pretty clear from the rhetoric. I don't think they are entirely wrong here, at least on the need to save those institutions from opposing forces, even if the counterattack is equally disastrous.
An interesting thing is that if you look at hit pieces on Peterson, the things he is being criticized for (e.g. obscurantistism) are precisely the things that made him a successful academic and could easily make him a "brilliant theorist" if he held more orthodoxly (in the context of the academy) left wing positions.
So maybe, a symptom of the "post-modernization of the right," although Nick Land, Curtis Yarvin, etc. are better figures representing that phenomenon.
'Property' no. Animals compete and fight for things they need and want; they have no 'right' to them. But, according to libertarians, Quoting Moliere Other animals have concept of 'state' and 'contract'.
Quoting Harry Hindu
You mean, if I build a wigwam on a Mar A Lago putting green, it's mine as long as I can successfully fight off anyindividual who tries to take it from me?
Quoting Harry Hindu
Because of the law. Guys who are stronger and better armed than the millionnaire still aren't allowed to take his stuff.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Of those people, only the last mentioned is on the political left.
Even the middle-ground Clintons and Pelosi are nowhere near equal in self-service to Trump and Musk.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I think maybe people have reasons beyond labels for supporting a political party. Don't you? I do: it's their policies and track record.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I thought, having resulted from nature, humans couldn't do anything artificially.
Fine. Prove it by abolishing inheritance, subsidies, lobbies, private funding of political campaigns, 'tax incentives', corporations, investment, inequality of prenatal and childhood nutrition and education. Or, you could stage hunger games.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
And you're quite sure that rhetoric is sincere, in light of the acts?
I wouldn't accuse Peterson of obscurantism on the whole, though he does lapse at times. He's basically an academic Jungian who has answered a cultural need and in the process become exceedingly popular. As he ventures further from home and gets further out over his skis his errors become more noticeable. The content he is engaged in is done better by others like, say, Charles Taylor. But figures like Taylor do not engage or possess the popular culture in the way that Peterson does. If we compare Peterson to figures like Taylor then Peterson loses, hands down. If we compare him to other figures in popular culture, especially in the long-form video world, then he is far above average.
Peterson is one of those who are forging a new path or Type, namely that of the academic who abandons their post and becomes a cultural commentator within the popular culture. In the ancient sense these cultural commentators and movers should be called politicians, for they are primarily concerned with political (and ethical) life and redirecting the interests of a democratic population. I suspect that we will see more individuals move into that sphere. They are reminiscent of the academics who stopped publishing academic books and started publishing popular books, but in this case platforms like YouTube make the lecture and dialogue format distributable at scale.
At this point anyone who thought Musk's rhetoric about the national debt was insincere has been proven wrong beyond any shadow of a doubt.
It doesn't. It starts by stating the conclusion that will be argued for in the main body of the essay. The argument hasn't been presented yet, so there can be no fallacy at this stage. Have you ever read a philosophical essay before?
The essay looks great, but I haven't read it yet.
I think this is spot on. :up:
In the first episode of Tom Holland's podcast, "The Rest is History," he points to the same parallels between pre-modern political regimes and a number of 20th and 21st century figures, including Trump.
I think what is happening is that libertarianism is being blown out of proportion in order to produce a larger target. I could buy Musk as a libertarian, but not Trump or Peterson. I think the leftist tends to fasten upon libertarianism, given that it is the most potent antagonist on his horizon. Other antagonists then get lumped under that label.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I would only add that this is a fault line which overlaps many different political identities. The individualist/communitarian bifurcation is something that most Western political identities wrestle with to one extent or another.
Good post.
Quoting Moliere
I've been thinking about the political use of 'common sense'. Its appeal to the common people. Individuals who know what they know and are happy with that. What they know is what is best for them.
They look to whoever will best serve their interests or appeals to their taste. What you see is what you get. Right? No.
In the video I included about wind power, supporters see Trump in full rant mode about 1,000s of birds killed by windmills, their carcasses littering their lawns or backyards.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/992326
He is a powerful presenter of images, bigly and badly but also Godly/goodly.
Trump can do whatever he likes, so can his supporters. That's the common sense of the self-interested.
Yes, it 'flatters the ego but fails the world'. Freedom serves the good and the bad.
This essay resonates with me. I've been looking here:
Quoting Moliere
The actor is central. Not only in terms of agency but drama. The imagery of a God-like warrior fighting to secure peace, not war...how real is that? It is based on the fear of insecurity, the need for more land to gain riches to promote strength. A military base. To buy or plunder. Trump's Golden Globe.
The Supreme Scared Bully. Freedom is granted to those who curry favour and are of the right colour, creed and gender.
Quoting Moliere
Very well said. There is always the reversal. The projected fears of the selfish, self-serving who do care but not, necessarily, to share. Unless it is in their interests. Common sense.
If they do not know or understand the reasons for preventive health, homelessness, criminalised - they are limited. But still free to think what they like. Based on emotions of anger at the other. MAGA. But which America? What constitutes 'greatness'?
Trump stokes the great fires of hatred. Divide and conquer. It was ever thus.
Quoting Moliere
Populism
Quoting Britannica - Populism
Trump, the criminal, is a hero to many. Re-elected, his power has increased. He has extended his image of himself as a divine being. He is holier than the Pope. It is no joke. He has delusions of grandeur. See his AI image:
Quoting BBC - Trump's AI Image of himself as Pope
Some people in America bask in his Divine Glory.
In God We Trust. Stamped on coins. Stash'n'Cash. Freedom. Signed, Sealed, Delivered.
Next up, 'In Trump We Trust' ? He has a propensity for re-naming, making the world all about him.
Quoting Moliere
Yes. I think that most careful observers can see that. Some call it the dismantling of America.
But this conservative view of individual failure requiring state assistance is prevalent elsewhere.
Yes. We can see how global authoritarian figures capture the imagination, stir the populace with rhetoric and fear. Eternal wars.
The victims or survivors may well live in hope of a better world. But this is not enough. They do not need to be persuaded by a philosophy essay or treatise. Theoretical concepts are of no use. They are written in seas of sand. Shifting shape as the wind blows.
There is a need to harness power at ground level. To rise like the Phoenix...but how...
Does it need one powerful, political actor or many with radical agency.
Radical: not extremism but fundamental, far-reaching diligence in quality of progressive care.
First, knowledge, then understanding. Working with and from reality as experienced.
Opening eyes and ears...look in, out, up and around...but don't get too dizzy...
The Authoritarian Liberty Paradox
There seem to be three main points in this essay.
Point 1. The author is opposed to Nozick's Entitlement Theory, which he calls radical individualism. The author is in favour of the individual as being part of a society.
As the author puts it:
As you put it:
Point 2. The author says that there are some people who pretend that they believe in radical individualism but are in fact using this to disguise their Authoritarianism.
Point 3. The author says that Musk, Trump and Peterson are examples of people referred to in Point 2.
As regards Point 2, I am sure many examples of such people can be found both in current and past administrations.
As regards Point 3, the author gives no evidence to support their claim. A philosophical essay makes a claim then defends it. The author has made this claim but neither defends it nor makes a counter-argument.
As regards Point 1, he is setting up a radical position few would probably agree with. He even calls it "radical individualism", almost a pejorative term, rather than a more mainstream term such as Libertarianism, which would have wider support.
Nozick's Entitlement Theory, radical individualism, I would suggest, would have minimal support (as the name suggests). I am sure that many figures in public life are hypocrites. The author does not defend his claim that Musk, Trump and Peterson pretend to support radical individualism yet are at heart Authoritarians.
Is this a philosophical essay?
A philosophical essay makes a claim and then defends it. Where does the author defend their claim? Where does the author make a counterargument?
I don't question the figures as presented by the author. They are highly pertinent regarding 'the theatrical pose' of radical individualism. As such, they don't need to be 'intellectuals' with 'coherent platforms'.
Their interaction with the public via social media is central to their power. This is what people see and hear on a regular, almost addictive, basis.
They are prime examples, immediately recognised globally. They are known. They fit the bill perfectly.
I read again to remind and reinforce my understanding of this essay:
Quoting Moliere
The figures are all about image. The picture of success and strength. Virility, potency, manliness.
Domination of weaker minorities. Who hail freedom, yet deny it to others.
Quoting Moliere
Yes. A dangerous myth. How to change the narrative?
There is no morality when lies abound. When people in power talk about protection, our ears should prick up. Security at what cost? Prisons full of 'traitors', those who dare challenge the person in charge.
A person so full of personal insecurity, he rages against his 'distorted' portrayal.
Typically, he attacks the female artist:
Quoting Trump calls for removal of portrait - ABC News
Ah, 'neutral' is not his style. Look at the one he prefers. His mugshot as criminal, hung on a golden frame, just outside the Oval Office. Just 'another president on the wall'.
If we want to change the political narrative, we need better images, no?
'Common sense' validates common nonsense. Not knowing is all right with them. In fact, they'll go out of their way to avoid knowing tings: they're happy to turn off all but one source of 'news', forbid courses in school or keep their children out of school altogether, ban books - or burn them, right alongside the elitist eggheads what rote them - and shout down anyone who tries to explain why something is good or bad for them.
What they generally want is to be able to bully other people, as they imagine their kind (whatever they identify as - in this instance, white christian males) once used to do. Populists always appeal to this stolen past greatness that never was.
Anyone believe DT's read Atlas Shrugged? Betcha Rand Paul knows John Galt's 52 page rant off by heart. But he didn't get to be president, did he?
Give me a break. The left was willing to accept money from Trump and accept Musk's electric vehicles until they decided to run for president as a Republican and supported a Republican president. The outrage is selective.
Quoting Vera Mont
...which is a gross misunderstanding of what it means to be a libertarian. How easily one forgets that the state is made of up elitist individuals that have made their own contracts among themselves and write the laws to serve themselves. They maintain their control through favoritism and nepotism.
Quoting Vera Mont
Sure. That's why nations sign alliance agreements - contracts to protect the territorial integrity of other nations. There is nothing unnatural about individuals seeking alliances with other like-minded individuals or groups. The thinks treats everyone as a greedy criminal in that we need to control everyone's behavior when the reality is that most people respect each other and laws are really only needed for the select few who aren't happy unless they're telling other people how to live their lives. The right is no different. Both extremes love their Big Brother.
I wonder about that assertion without some context and citation. And of course, about how accepting a car is on par with mass deportations to a foreign prison without due process. Of course, one time, Trump called himself Democrat, so maybe it has to do with labels. There was nothing wrong with the cars, btw, many people still like them today; it's the Musk they enrich that smells bad.
Let us keep in mind that the people you mentioned as representing "the left" are not and have not claimed to be socialists. That false perception became prevalent only when the right was pushed so far that conservatives were dragged to the middle (unless culled entirely) and the beneficiaries of Corporateland found themselves on the 'left'. And a former state attorney-general was even branded a radical left lunatic. Funny how extremes are categorized.
On the whole, though, I'd prefer a return to the OP essay, rather than our subjective notions of the political spectrum.
There's plenty that can be found with a 30 second Google search. The fact that you can't do this yourself is evidence that you aren't willing to question your own party. Group-thinking is, by definition, the antithesis of progressive-thinking.
Donald Trump was once a registered Democrat and party donor. So why did he jump ship?
History of Donald Trump's political donations, 1989-2015
Most of Donald Trump's Political Money Went To Democrats Until 5 Years Ago
So, his habits changed around 2011, around the time when this DEI BS started, and many Dems have "jumped ship" since then as well with Karine Jean-Pierre being the most recent.
Notice that he would donate to both Dems and Reps, which is what every smart business person would do since we have a two-party system where power shifts from one party to the other, and is evidence that it really doesn't matter which one is in power as they both work together (despite what they tell you) to ensure the status quo is maintained.
Trump is not right-wing. He supported the abortion bill and recreational marijuana amendments in Florida, but was thwarted by the real right-winger, Ron DeSantis who possibly used tax-payer funds to run commercials that lied about what the amendments actually said.
The fact that you either do not have or refuse to produce any evidence of wrongdoing by these examples from the so-called 'left' that would in any way approach the wrongdoings by the examples of the so-called 'right' is evidence of something off-topic.
Is Trump's change of party attributable to the Clintons in some way? Do his political contributions attest to criminal behaviour? If so, it was perpetrated by Trump, not the candidates. Does receiving campaign contributions equal the 34 felonies of which Trump was convicted and the thousand more, including treason, that he hasn't been charged with?
Quoting Harry Hindu
Obviously. Neither is the Republican party, anymore; they're a cult (unless they wake up soon and feel around under the bed for their lost vertebrae). How is that relevant to the discussion of hypocritical libertarian rhetoric?
I'm bored with this non sequitur now.
I was expecting to see some mention of 'the hidden-hand'. Did I miss that?
The usual suspects are here, bending over backwards to pretend that it doesn't apply to them. What a sad lot they are... the self-made man has a fool for his creator.
Would have been nice to see in-text citations to back up the claims made. I find the interpretation of Nozick to be taken at a stretch to say the least.
I felt reading this that there was an attempt to frame Nozick as stating his thoughts on these matters are to be applied to the real world. He quite explicitly give hypothetical scenarios to explore the workings of how justice is distributed through cooperative agreement and disagreement. It is necessarily simplistic as most hypotheticals are because they are exploratory tools not rules to live by.
It should also be noted that Nozick ends this book by on a very liberal individualistic note in saying no one should be forced to act against their own will, and that people can cooperate on likeminded schemes (nothing radical about this?).
The thrust of the argument seems to be more or less how the author of this piece equates what Nozick wrote to what certain individuals do in the real world today. This is missing the point of Nozick. Maybe this is the only claim here? That Nozick's exploration in 'Anarchy, State and Utopia' has been taken on in too literal a sense by some.
I personal found this a little perverse in the sense that it is a work of rhetoric that seems to steer away from the substance of Nozick's and looks to sully them with people as antagonistic to their own position.
Example of a problem I had when reading this:
Quoting Moliere
No he does not. He outlines a hypothetical scenario in order to explore how concepts of ownership can arise. An equal critique could be leveled at Rawl's when he talks about the 'veil of ignorance'. We all know this is not actually plausible, but we understand the general idea behind it. It is a means of exploring morality on a societal level not a rule to dictate how we live.
Is this a vague finger pointing at 'hidden-hand'?
I understand your confusion. I am still unsure. This essay needs to be read several times. To see the connections. However, the author describes his interpretation of 'Radical Individualism', starting here:
***
In an earlier post, I introduced the issue from psychology: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/992326
Quoting Amity
I searched for more on Radical Individualism and found an interesting pdf essay. I was slow to realise that it was from a Christian perspective. Nevertheless, it seems to be a careful examination of 'Individualism & Radical Freedom' by Dr. Gordon Carkner. I don't know enough to ascertain if the author has the best understanding.
From p1/18:
Quoting ubcgcu.org
From the Conclusion, p11:
* There is a useful Reading List at the end of this essay. Taylor and Foucault are referenced in Section 3.
(Taylor 3.1.1 and Foucault in 3.3 and 3.3.2):
Quoting Moliere
* Quoting Moliere
I agree that in-text citations are useful. However, during initial discussions as to essay requirements for this event, it was decided that such were not essential. There were no stringent requirements. This was to encourage philosophy writing in the broader sense. As far as I recall. @Moliere ?
It is thought-provoking. Stimulating and...frustrating...
Within this writing are two distinct and independent topics.
Topic one is saying that radical individualism as a political philosophy is both flawed and dangerous, and in section 3 a strong case is made for this claim.
Topic two is saying that Musk, Trump and Peterson are hypocrites in pretending that they don't believe in institutions whilst in fact making use of them, for which no evidence is given.
Topic one is basically a philosophical essay. Topic two isn't.
The problem is that these two different topics are jumbled up into one piece of writing, making it difficult to unpick them.
This writing, "The Authoritarian Liberty paradox", is basically a philosophical essay that does include evidence about radical individualism jumbled up with an attack without any evidence on Musk, Trump and Peterson.
You're moving the goal-posts. You asked:
Quoting Vera Mont
in response to this:
Quoting Harry Hindu
I provided the links to show that Trump supported Democrats. Now you are asking for links to the wrong-doings of Democrats. :roll:
I showed that you are unwilling to do your own research and to question your own party - effectively your are a group-thinker. The fact that the Democrats and Republicans ostracize any party member that questions the party just shows how deep group-think is embedded in both political parties.
Quoting Harry Hindu
My objections were that the persons you mentioned do not represent "the left", and you have not shown that any of them personally accepted either money from Trump or gift cars from Musk. What you cited was legitimate contributions to earlier political campaigns. How's that relevant?
And how does that constitute being
Quoting Harry Hindu
on par with the Trump&Musk act of the past year?
Plus, you've got the essay all wrong. He's comparing rhetoric to reality.
I'm not aware that there are any Libertarians, or politicians using the libertarian memes in their speeches, anywhere on the left. So why would the author focus on them?
Perhaps the examples are less appropriate than they could have been; they were probably chosen for their high public profile. But there was no perceptible outrage. So what are you still on about?
The author's thesis states that "This essay argues that radical individualism is less a coherent political philosophy than a theatrical pose"
However, in section 3, the author makes a strong case that radical individualism is a coherent political philosophy.
The author concludes that radical individualism is a coherent political philosophy, even if it is flawed.
The thesis in the introduction is at odds with the body and conclusion.
One of the aspects which I do wonder about in relation to this is the backlash against transgender and I was interested that the author included mention of Judith Butler, who has written extensively on gender.
In America, Trump has been harsh in his fundamentalist approach towards trans individuals. Even though the essay doesn't look at England there has been a legal ruling against self-identification of gender. The full impact of this has not become clear but it seems to be in conjunction with monitoring of people's choice of public toilets. It seems to be ushering in an approach in which transgender people are expected to use the toilets of their birth gender, even if they have had biological treatments to change gender. In some cases, it does seem that individuals may have to use disabled/unisex facilities only, which makes them vulnerable to violent attack.
Of course, the trans toilets issue is just one aspect of increasing authoritarian measures and there is lack of clarity over how it is going to be monitored. There is also the question of whether people who are not even trans may be affected. That is because some people get misgendered or have their gender questioned who don't have gender identity issues at all.
In general, it does seem that since the time of the pandemic the liberty/authoritarian paradox has become more apparent. It is as if the restrictive rules to protect others have ushered in a speedy form of authoritarian compliance.
I tend to start with the title. Then the subtitle:
Quoting Author
The author introduces us to a worldview. A study. A way of looking at power and freedom.
Quoting Author
The effects of the Authoritarian Liberty Paradox are outlined and explored. The essay offers an interpretation of 'radical individualism' as exemplified in 3 globally recognised individuals. It relates to the issues of manipulation and morality. Is 'what is good for one, good for all'?
Quoting Author
I am grateful to the author for this helpful interpretation of what is new to me, 'Radical Individualism'. I realise that there is more than one perspective, including e.g. from psychology and religion. They seem to align with the ideas expressed. I posted earlier:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/992647
I think most people can see the paradox, or hypocrisy, but would not be able to put a name to it.
They would, however, recognise 'One rule for us, another for them'.
As exemplified in the UK's ex-PM, Boris Johnson, at the time of the covid pandemic.
In full: Boris Johnson's apology over lockdown drinks party
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-59969631
One rule for us, another rule for them will be Boris Johnsons legacy
The prime minister is the foremost exponent of one rule and always has been, but this sort of behaviour is far from unique to him.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/boris-johnson-one-rule-tory-party-b1992319.html
***
I agree with this:
Quoting Author
Power without accountability. Think about it. Who comes to mind?
Do you have a better example?
Not wanting a man who self-identifies as a woman into teenage girls' changing rooms is more an example of common sense than authoritarianism.
Who could disagree with the title?
Who could not dislike a public figure who says that they support liberty but in practice is an authoritarian. No one likes a hypocrite.
The problem is, the thesis of the essay is contradicted by the body and conclusion of the essay.
The thesis argues that radical individualism is a political philosophy that on the one hand publicly supports the individual against the institutions but on the other hand privately supports the institutions against the individual.
Yet the body and conclusion of the essay argue something totally different, that radical individualism supports the individual against the institutions.
The essay makes no case that radical individualism is an example of Authoritarian Liberty. In fact, it makes exactly the opposite case.
I am sorry to say that we have a completely different approach and understanding of this.
I don't see what you see, and you don't see what I see.
It happens. You are entitled to your views, I mine.
I will leave it there. Thank you.
It may appear as common sense, but it depends how far it goes. Some politicians have suggested always going by birth gender, which ends up with transmen who look completely male being expected to use women's toilets, which will upset women. It also means transwomen in male toilets. Okay, people say that there are unisex toilets but they aren't always available. It depends whether any flexibility and common sense will apply or simply rigid policies, which may occur within authoritarianism.
:100: I agree. Who would want authoritarianism. Common sense is better.
The common sense of an authoritarian:
Quoting Sky News Trump - There are only two sexes
Edit to add:
Previous comment related to common sense as described in the essay:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/992326
Also the Supreme Court in the UK, who have judged that legally the term "woman" means a biological woman.
Baroness Falkner, who heads the watchdog that regulates equality laws, described the judgement as a victory for common sense.
Regarding "the common sense of an authoritarian":
Are you saying 1) Trump is an authoritarian who happens to have common sense about this particular gender issue or 2) Trump is an authoritarian because he has common sense about this particular gender issue?
My thoughts about Trump and his common sense are revealed in previous posts.
No further comment.
Why would a man be in a teenaged girls' changing room? Are random women welcome? If there is a boy who aspires to be a girl is in their gym, the girls already know him. If they feared him, they'd say so. What's the transgendered individual expected to do in there that would harm the girls? Is it just the odd glimpse of bare flesh you begrudge The Other? As if not enough of it were available on the internet?
How much molesting actually takes place in public rest-rooms? If a person with a penis sits down in a cubicle in the women's washroom, what bad thing happens?
I wonder why conservatives are so potty-obsessed.
Quoting Jack Cummins
There is more to it than that. Some minorities are always suspect in the mind of ignorant masses, who are always eager to find a focus for their failures and frustrations. The authoritarian keeps a pocketful of witches and infidels in reserve, to use as scapegoats whenever they want to rile up the pitchfork-mob. While they're howling after the goat, the authoritarian's minions are quietly fastening in their leg-irons.
Exactly. Was extreme collectivism also criticized? It seems to me that the answers lie between the two extremes - that we are individual members of a social species and that an individual can choose which collective they are a member of and to choose to not be a member of a group at all. Some people can choose to be hermits. How is their choice to be a hermit affecting others?
Just ask a man!!! :rofl:
So it seems to me. Neither radical individualism nor radical institutionalism.
The trouble is that thinking has been based around 'Silence of the Lambs' stereotypes of motivation. Lawyers may have once erred in the direction of presumptions that women who dressed in certain ways were asking for rape. The leaning may now have gone in the opposite direction, that all 'biological males', including those who wish to become women should be viewed as potential 'rapists'. Feminism was needed to alter fear and, now, it is a basis for generating authoritarian ideologies of fear.
Yes, radical positions are not helpful, whether radical individualism or radical institutionalism. Voyeurism might be a less radical explanation. Even so, 3.8 billion years of life's reproductive evolution on Earth is difficult to ignore.
What would real world examples of radical individualism and radical institutionalism look like?
I gave an example of radical individualism as a hermit. How does a hermit's choice to live in the Canadian or Alaskan wilderness affect you the life you choose to live? How does that compare to the influence radical institutionalism would have on your life's choices?
Our daily lives are more impacted by radical institutionalism than radical individualism.
The hermit in Alaska, as an example of radical individualism, has little affect on my life. However, the European Union, as an example of radical institutionalism, does have a wide-ranging negative affect on the lives of European citizens.
Radical institutionalism is either authoritarian or very close to it.
Therefore, it is the radical institutions that we should be the most wary of, especially when they present themselves as supporters of the individual.
It is not so much an Authoritarian Liberty Paradox, but rather an Authoritarian Liberty Hypocrisy.
:up:
Which is exactly what Democrats and Republicans are doing. Neither wants to appear authoritarian because in a culture that values freedom and individualism over authoritarianism, that would look ugly. So they have to run cover for their authoritarian stances on some issues by talking almost exclusively about their libertarian views on the other issues and their opponents authoritarian views on those other issues. Both parties share authoritarian and liberal tendencies but only the libertarian rejects all authoritarian tendencies.
Have a lot of men pretending to identify as women asked to be in the teenaged girls' dressing rooms? Or maybe they all snuck in via the public toilets. What did they do? Anything a man who didn't claim to be a woman wouldn't do? Quoting Harry Hindu
Why, in an essay about one ideology would the author be criticizing another ideology? Shouldn't the essay be about what the author says it's about? There will be plenty of critics to drag in completely unrelated topics.
:100:
It doesn't need to be a lot to make a problem, a few is sufficient.
That there are not a lot of deaths in road traffic accidents in London on a particular day does not mean that deaths in road traffic accidents is not a problem.
As the article in "Feminist Current" writes
The difficulty is being able to distinguish between someone identifying as something and someone pretending to identify as something, which is one of the themes of this essay "The Authoritarian Liberty Paradox".
I look forward to reading the author's feedback. Until then, then. The 16th June.
If the author does not want to appear biased then they would take a more objective position. By focusing on the lesser of the two "evils", your intent does not appear to be to solve the problem they are showing but to simply bash one ideology.
This is why I asked:
Quoting Harry Hindu
It seems to me that, while both extreme, one is worse than the other, and the worse one is not the one the author is focused on.
How many, exactly? What were the outcomes?
I mean, are teenaged boys' and girls' locker rooms really open to the general public in the USA and UK?
I heard the artificial ruckus about public toilets and the huge enormous giant problem of boys and girls wanting to compete in each other's sports, but I've heard no scandals involving random adults walking into kids' change rooms. All the youth-molesting I've heard of was done by coaches, scout leaders and pastors who stuck staunchly to their birth-gender. Of course, transgendered people are harassed and abused all the time, wherever they try to relive themselves.
Quoting RussellA
And yet the city fails to make changes to intersections where no accidents have taken place, but some imaginable accident might on some future Thursday. (How many roundabouts will Londoners tolerate?)
Quoting RussellA
Exactly!
Some crimes are committed by some transgendered people, who must therefore all be judged, punished and prevented from being able to commit potential crimes.
Most crimes are committed by some birth-gendered people, who must therefore be judged and punished individually.
By their actions shalt thou know them. And according to their actions - rather than your imagination or their rhetoric - should you judge them.
Every essay takes the position it takes on the subject it discusses. The author talking about Kierkegaard makes no appeal to Schopnehauer. The one discussing past and present doesn't get into a critique of Judaism. An op-ed piece on cinema hardly mentions what's wrong with painting and a recipe for bean soup doesn't even consider pumpkin pie.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Where does the author say this essay is intended to solve a problem? Or the relative size of evils?
Quoting Moliere
It's not bashing the ideology; it's showing its shortcomings as a philosophy. It points out the gaps between the stated tenets of the ideology, political theory and social reality, as illustrated by some high-profile figures who claim to be its embodiment.
Quoting Author
Quoting Author
Quoting Author
Quoting Author
The liberty paradox - more dangerous than mere hypocrisy - is shown in its extreme form.
Trump, the current criminal in charge of the USA, uses the common sense of authoritarianism.
Threated by protest, he brings all his power to bear. He is free so to do. He celebrates this and commands the state institutions to oppress those against him. Freedom not for them. Quite the opposite.
Quoting Guardian - Los Angeles ICE protests
Quoting The Guardian
Quoting Sky News
No longer an academic exercise. An essay in power and liberty. This is happening.
The author's choice of high profile Trump vindicated.
Quoting Author
The common sense of an authoritarian. To protect himself from the protesting public. Public freedom in action will not be tolerated. Trump. The criminal, bully and coward in charge.
It is not about crimes committed. It is about, as you said:
Quoting Vera Mont
Quoting Amity
I don't understand where the paradox comes from.
If someone denounces power yet glorifies an individual that wields power they could be called a hypocrite or could be said to be talking nonsense.
Where is the paradox?
Try reading the essay carefully. Not only what the paradox is, but its effects.
Quoting Author
Recent events have shown the danger of Trump to American democracy.
Trump believes that he, as President, is above the rule of law. He is in aggressive pursuit of expanding presidential power. He feels he has the authority to do whatever he wants.
His MAGA freedom is only for those who are in agreement with him. Objectors are traitors and will be punished accordingly. And more. He is an autocrat if not a dictator.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/science-tells-us-the-u-s-is-heading-toward-a-dictatorship/
Hypocrisy is only a part of it.
That is avoiding the question.
The author describes the Authoritarian Liberty Paradox as, for example, a worldview that denounces power while glorifying individuals who wield power.
Nowhere in the article does the author explain how a worldview that denounces power while glorifying individuals who wield power is a paradox.
It may be hypocritical, it may be nonsense, but that doesn't make it a paradox.
George Bernard Shaw's "youth is wasted on the young" is a paradox, because although initially it seems contradictory, on reflection it makes sense.
"A worldview that denounces power while glorifying individuals who wield power" is certainly contradictory, but also makes no sense.
Can you explain in your own words why it is a paradox?
Exactly. And I am not off topic discussing authoritarianism and libertarianism in a thread titled: The Authoritarian Liberty Paradox. This is a typical tactic of not agreeing with what said but instead of making an argument against what was said, you assert it is off-topic. Well, my posts have not been deleted for being off-topic, so.... next.
Quoting Vera Mont
I don't know. Why would the author write the essay asserting that Libertarianism is actually Authoritarianism unless they planned on inciting others to do something about it? The whole essay is a straw-man. It appears to be an authoritarian describing libertarianism. It's like a man describing what it is like to be a woman.
Quoting Vera Mont
Just because someone claims to be a woman does not mean they are a woman. Just because someone claims to be a Libertarian does not mean they are. One is a woman by the way they are born. One is a Libertarian but the way one behaves and treats others with a healthy understanding and respect that others have the same freedoms as you do.
Any unbiased, intelligent person understands that ALL politicians lie and manipulate the facts. I have already pointed out that both Dems and Reps hide their authoritarian tendencies by covering them up with their Libertarian tendencies. Just as you telling me what pronouns I have to use is not an expression of freedom and inclusion. It is a form of authoritarianism. Just as the right likes to talk about religious freedom but that is just cover talk for Christianity is the state's religion and there is no separation of church and state. So the essay appears to be describing the two-party system, not Libertarianism.
The political parties don't want you thinking for yourself, and people typically join political parties to be told what to think because thinking for yourself and doing the research is difficult and time-consuming.
No. It isn't. It is a suggestion. Take it or leave it. I am not about to spoon-feed you.
The essay we're supposed to be discussing never mentioned changing rooms.... Although, speaking of, since you're so deeply invested in them, what exactly was Donald J. Trump doing in the Miss America contestants' locker room? Oh, yeah, I remember... Not wearing a dress.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Aside from the misrepresentation of this topic, are you saying the only reason to write an essay to incite?
Quoting Harry Hindu
The essay is about one of those subjects.
Quoting Harry Hindu
It's not describing either of those things. It's pointing out discrepancies between theory and reality, rhetoric and action. Yeah, it's hard to discern those subtle nuances.
Quoting Harry Hindu
How do you know? Do you recall being born and knowing what gender you were? Are you speaking of every woman's experience, or are you a man describing what it is to be a woman? What so troubles you about women and who's allowed to be one? I've been one most of my life, and it's not that special. I'm willing to share womanhood with anyone who wants it.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I've never met an unbiased person, and damn few intelligent ones. I have, however, known politicians who didn't tell ginormous lies or borrow the philosophical stance of people they don't understand or agree with.
Quoting Harry Hindu
You've asserted that, yes. Wanna do it again? Go ahead, we've got time.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I'm not telling you any such thing. Someone who prefers to be addressed in a way you don't approve of might you ask you politely to use the correct pronoun, but no Democratic president has passed an executive order forcing people to an assigned gender.
Your notion of equivalency could benefit from a review.
Well, "incite" could be one possible reaction according to some on these forums. Why would someone write an essay with a faulty analysis of the facts?
Quoting Vera Mont
Then we agree that people are not always what they claim to be. An individual is what they are based on natural causes (in the context of mating and medicine) and their actions since becoming a legal adult (in the context of the laws of the society they live in) that preceded their existence at this moment in time.
Quoting Vera Mont
Exactly. I was a male regardless of what I knew or believed until I acquired more information.
Lots of people would, for lots of reasons - climate change denial comes to mind... or the benign uses of coal power.... This author hasn't. Quoting Harry Hindu
That's a bit of a snag for authoritarians proclaiming themselves liberators.
Quoting Harry Hindu
And once you acquired more information, you learned what it is to be a woman? Well, all right, sister. Welcome to our rest room!
I don't get your point. If you don't judge people based on past behavior you just end up believing the same people that have lied to you and engaging in useless conversations with people that refuse to be intellectually honest. There's nothing authoritarian about that. It's just simple logic.
Quoting Vera Mont
Ok, so I was in a hurry in typing that last part, but I'm sure that you knew what I meant.
I'll re-phrase:
My sex was determined at the moment of fertilization despite what I, my mother, father or the doctors knew at that time. It was only in making observations over time that my sex became known to the doctors, my mother and my father. I had to wait to acquire this information (not create it) by making my own observations.
Yeah, it's hard to peek over the baby belly when your head is too heavy to lift. But eventually, you became an expert on what a woman is. Amazing!
Quoting Harry Hindu
That, at least, is evident.
On that note, I'm only replying once, hoping to clarify some questions that arose and comments I thought were relevant enough to engage with. What I wanted to say is in the essay itself and I don't feel like revisiting it after having already spend so much time on it.
Quoting I like sushi
I agree there are surface-level parallels with The Open Society and Its Enemies. Popper also warns against ideologies that, under the guise of grand principles (historicism, in his case), end up justifying authoritarianism.
That said, I have to confess: I don't like Popper as a political philosopher. While his falsification theory of science was groundbreaking, his reading of Plato is a caricature.
Even so, my essay shares some of his concerns. Especially the idea that freedom can collapse into its opposite but I approach it from a different angle. Popper was reacting to collectivist historicism; Im critiquing an atomized conception of liberty that pretends to transcend power while covertly depending on it.
Thanks for this constructive reply. Theres a lot I agree with here and some clarifications I should probably have made more explicit.
First, you're right that Nozick often writes hypothetically and Anarchy, State, and Utopia is also a thought experiment. Nozick presents entitlement theory as a hypothetical and hes explicit that its not a comprehensive vision for society. But my disagreement runs deeper than just how others have appropriated him; Im also directly critiquing the structure of Nozicks theory itself.
Heres where I take (the most) issue: Nozicks framework assumes that we can assess justice in holdings without attending to the prior social and historical processes that shape how property, status and capacity emerge. Even granting his justice in acquisition and justice in transfer, the theory has virtually no resources to address how initial entitlements are formed in practice. How power, history, violence and exclusion precondition what looks like a voluntary exchange. Nozick acknowledges the importance of historical injustice but provides no account of how to redress it. He offers no guidance how far back to look, what counts as evidence, if we're going to pay reparations or redstribute, who should pay and who should benefit. Justice in rectification is just a rest category for anything that doesn't fit justice in acquisition or transfer - which, unfortunately, is where almost every transaction lies.
The Wilt Chamberlain example is meant to dissolve patterned principles of justice by showing how free choice can lead to inequality. But it does so without questioning the background conditions that make some people Wilt Chamberlain and others anonymous ticket buyers. Thats not just an omission, its a profound limitation. Because once you bracket social embeddedness and historical injustice, the resulting model will systematically obscure domination as long as it's mediated by consent.
So Im not just saying people took Nozick too literally. Im arguing that even in its ideal form, entitlement theory builds in an atomism that cannot adequately account for structural injustice. And when that framework is imported into political discourse, it becomes a rhetorical shield for power: inequality becomes merit, and domination becomes choice.
I do take your point that my treatment of Nozick is compressed (and perhaps a little sharp). A more academic version of this argument would give him a more thorough and charitable reading. But I stand by the critique in its essence: not just of how hes used but of what he proposes. And I believe it's a critique that becomes more urgent as these frameworks, however hypothetically introduced, bleed into real-world moral reasoning.
Quoting Leontiskos
I would agree if the essay would hinge too heavily on the critique of these public figures. I tried not to focus on personalities but principles, tried to connect their (sometimes implicit) assumptions to underlying principles and ideas and don't think I show particular disdain for them individually. From an academic standpoint, it is indeed not a purely technical exploration of liberty, statehood and liberal theory and can accept you would find their inclusion as distracting or even unrigorous but ad hominem seems to be a step too far.
I chose Musk, Trump and Peterson not because they are philosophers in the strict sense but because their public rhetoric, popularity and institutional power make them emblematic of a wider cultural phenomenon. Their behavior and speech illustrate how the celebration of personal liberty often relies on invisible structures of power and how individualism can slide into authoritarianism under the banner of freedom. The critique is of the logic they embody; not merely the personalities involved.
Thank you for your detailed and generous engagement. A few clarifications might help explain where I'm coming from and where I agree with you.
You're absolutely right that the figures I chose (Musk, Trump, Peterson) are not systematic philosophers. My intent was not to treat them as such, but to use them as emblems of a broader cultural logic: one where radical individualism is performed, celebrated and weaponized in ways that conceal structural dependency and authoritarian drift. They're not my targets as people; theyre case studies. They represent styles of political and cultural power that dominate media and public imagination and through which certain ideological patterns become visible. If anything, they are incoherent, and thats part of the point: incoherence is a feature, not a bug, of the spectacle of liberty masking domination.
That said, you're absolutely right to point out that this ideological terrain is more fractured than the piece could cover. You may very well be correct about a "civil war" within the Right. I'm alas not fully aware of it in a way you seem to express it. I also think that it happens to be outside the scope of my essay. It isn't called Why the Right is Authoritarian, but rather about a paradox (that quite frankly annoys me): how certain forms of liberty, when stripped of institutional humility or shared obligation, collapse into their opposite.
Your observations about appeals to tradition, aesthetics and thymos are appreciated. I also agree that progressive liberalism shares in this paradox and I gesture toward that in the pieces broader implication: that liberty, detached from collective structure and moral obligation, becomes cannibalistic wherever it shows up (Power is everywhere: when we call the Other "stupid" or "uninformed" or "voting against their interest" we are creating a basis for denying them a say by not having to take them seriously). I chose this specific style of right-wing libertarianism because it's particularly visible right now, steeped in structural contradictions and shapes global discourse disproportionately.
Thanks again for giving the piece such serious thought. I'd be interested in reading your version of this argument; perhaps one that dives deeper into the tragic tension between the individual and the polis in pre-modern sources. Thats a tradition worth recovering, not just referencing.
Thank you for reading and engaging with my essay. While thoughtful, I believe you're mislocating emphasis. It isn't a take-down of Nozick or about Musk ,Trump or Peterson but an attempt to expose a structural paradox.
Let me clarify the core argument, which I think is getting lost:
The paradox is not simply hypocrisy (people saying one thing and doing another), but that the ideological celebration of radical self-sovereignty requires the very collective institutions it claims to transcend. When freedom is defined solely as freedom from obligation, without a shared framework of norms, mutual responsibilities or institutional integrity, it ends up needing coercion to enforce itself, and thus paradoxically invites authoritarianism.
As for the use of the term "radical individualism"; youre right that its deliberately strong. I'm not critiquing all forms of individualism or libertarianism but a specific tendency to treat the individual as metaphysically prior to society, as if freedom is a natural state threatened by interference rather than something cultivated through shared norms and institutions. That distinction matters because much of our political rhetoric today still draws from that myth, even when its incompatible with real conditions.
Finally, regarding evidence: youre right that I dont present detailed dossiers on Musk, Trump or Peterson, but that wasnt the goal. This isnt a biographical critique. Its a philosophical argument illustrated by these public figures whose rhetoric aligns with the paradox. If I rewrote the piece for a more academic audience, Id replace them with abstract types. But that would lose the essays urgency and resonance with the world we actually live in. Additionally, these figures are well known so a dossier might not even be necessary. Decisions decisions...
I think the tension youre pointing to actually reflects the rhetorical arc of the essay, rather than a contradiction.
The goal wasn't to deny that radical individualism has an internal logic. On the contrary, I tried to lay out its metaphysical and moral premises clearly so that I could then examine how they play out in practice. The essay argues that while this worldview presents itself as a coherent political philosophy, it functions more like a performance: a posture of self-sovereignty that depends on the very collective conditions it denies.
So yes, I acknowledge the appeal and apparent coherence of radical individualism but only to show how it collapses under its own weight when mapped onto real-world politics, institutions and relations. The central claim is that this supposed coherence is theatrical: it has rhetorical force but neither philosophical nor political durability.
I hope that clarifies the structure.
Thanks for this clear, comprehensive and informative feedback. I've never read better. ( or I can't remember! Memory, huh?!) Your essay engaged at many levels. The to and fro most stimulating. A true learning experience. :clap: :flower:
:cool:
Excellent strategy. To take time. To respond carefully. This is one of the benefits of this kind of event.
Compared to the urgent cut and thrust of TPF threads, it slows the pace to allow considered and considerate appraisals. There is a place for both and we wouldn't want it any other way, would we?!
Quoting Moliere
This statement for instance lacks nuance. Also a libertarian loves the social world because where else can she or he practice trade? Also liberarianism contains within it the concept of recognition. The shape of that recognition takes the shape of the free individual contracting with the other free individual. Through the contract the other as an owner is recognized. I say specifically 'as an owner' because that is what the other is, an owner of possessions, of herself, her labour, etc. Within the contract both parties affirm their being owners in their bartering with each other. Institutions must exist but to the extent that they enable this recognition and not compromise it. It actually comes worryingly close to the classical conception of the individual in private law, the indivdual as a bundle of rights. That conception is I think flawed, you think so as well, but in the context of the essay it merits some more treatment.
Quoting Moliere
It enables it, but more by accident. Its ideal is the world as a market place where each of the participants realize their inner being, namely as contracting parties, rights wielders.
Quoting Moliere
If Nozick is consistent it does not. In fact, libertarianism might well argue for rather wholesale redistribution based on a large trajectory of coercive trades. The people you take issue with are bad libertarians, but making an example out of a weak opponent does feel a bit 'straw manish'.
Quoting Moliere
Here too, Nozick could counter this. 'Real existing libertarianism' pans out this way but that does not necessarily harm the theory. My qualm would be with its unreflective acceptance of the notion of property and its defense of it. I believe the case for property rests on the fact that one 'mixes one's labour' with a good. However, if that is the case the good owns the person mixing just as much, because if it is a mix, who says only one party acquires the right to do with the good as she pleases? The problem with libertarianism is that it lacks awareness of ecology. You also treat this in your essay strongly, but sometimes a bit too cursory for me. I think two ideas within libertarianism merit further discussion, individual autonomy and its concept of 'the other'. As your correctly argue, both of these doctrines in liberarianism are deeply flawed I think, but why is a nice question.
Quoting RussellA
I would disagree with that. Why would institutions be 'suspect'? It is akin to saying gravity is suspect. Also the second part of the sentence is questionable. There are all sorts of examples of people sacrificing themselves for a higher goal and lo and behold, they are not derided but revered as heroes.
Quoting RussellA
The view of Mr. Mill here is absurd. The first counterexample pertains to children. You do feel it is ok for a parent to restrain a child when he considers crossing the road do you? Yes you do. You might object, 'but they are not individuals yet!', sure but in all kinds of settings, old age, psychological ailment, physical impairment, we allow others to make decisions for individuals. And that's okay; it's good when you prevent a friend from jumping in front of a train, really!
The second counterexample pertains to criminal law. If we consequently follow Mill we cannot punish, say a war criminal, if there is no danger of recidivism. Many war criminals led perfectly normal lives afterwards; should they really not be deprived of their liberty?
I make this point not just to quibble with Mr. or Mrs RusselA here, but to point out the gross simplifications that liberals and libertarians tend to make. Which the author indeed unmasks very strongly. Just like in many other contexts in which the word 'sovereignty' is used, in the context Mill uses it too, it is but a fiction. We are not sovereigns. That is the whole point of the essay and the point so sadly missed by libertarians.
I am thinking for instance about the idea of the first appropriation and the Lockean proviso: 'take what you want but leave enough and as good to others to take likewise'. This may work in a world of infinite natural resources and a finite amount of human beings, but we have realized we live in a world of finite resources with infinite (human) beings if you take future generations into account.
It seems that in the essay you sometimes employ this strategy, but sometimes also go to libertarianism based on what these three do. By the way I think that for a more comprehensive history also Ayn Rand must be mentioned and the influence she wielded through US think tanks. I find it fascinating how a philosophical theory not taken seriously at all in Europe may be so influential in the US. That is not to bash the US, the reverse is also true, Europeans have doctrines that Americans find utterly bollocks, but, interestingly, ostensibly rather similar people can differ so much about what constitutes s strong political theory.
It depends what is meant by "Institution".
I am sure many parents would sacrifice their lives for the institution of their family, and if they did would be revered as heroes.
However this is not the meaning of institution as used by the author in this essay. The author is referring to institutions as large, complex, highly formalized bodies with immense power. For example, in the European context, bodies such as the European Union.
I am sure that no one would sacrifice their lives for the institution of the European Union, and if they did, would be more derided than revered.
The EU in their publicity material may say that their goal is the benefit of its citizens, but in practice, the EU acts as if its citizens are there for the benefit of the EU. This is why institutions with immense power such as the EU are suspect. This is the type of institution referred to by the essay.
Quoting RussellA
The institutions mentioned in the essay are as diverse as the (federal) state, the corporation and academia. None of the three people discussed though, draw any power from the European Union :grin: These institutions that wield immense power themselves are also dependent on institutions. The corporation for instance is dependent on law, the state on a form of nationalism and academia on the notion of education. Each of the three institutions shape modern life and hence 'wield immense power'. You think the European Union is suspect, but you claim all institutions are suspect, that is simply too unnuanced of a claim, so needs qualification.
Quoting RussellA
Equally fascinating as off topic, so I will not go into it much. Funny that you have such a beef with the EU though it is nowhere to be found in the essay. From what perspective do you approach the EU? Is it public policy, or law, or economics? The EU is also not a monolithic entity, so do you focus on the European Commission, the Council of Ministers, the European Parliament, or the European Court of Justice? Or do you think the fault lies in the EU constitution, which comprises the Treaty, its annexes and court judgements such as Van Gent & Loos and Costa Enel? All these are actually institutions in their own right and wield power. We can discuss them in a separate thread. This small break down just goes to show one simply cannot escape institutions, just like one cannot escape gravity.
That radical individualism may in practice be unworkable doesn't make it a paradox. It is no more a paradox than Icarus' attempt at flight using a pair of wax wings made by his father Daedalus.
Even if it might be an incoherent decision to follow radical individualism in one's daily life, this does not mean that radical individualism as a political philosophy is incoherent.
Suppose we take the quote by John Stuart Mill as an example of a liberal or libertarian position. It may well be a simplification of his position, as it is just one quote.
However, it seems that the author of the essay is not attacking radical individualism in itself, but rather is attacking the hypocrite who purports to be a radical individualist, yet in fact does not believe in it.
John Stuart Mill is not a hypocrite who purports to be a liberal but in practice does not believe in liberalism.
The essay is about individuals who pretend to be radical individualists but in fact rely on authoritarian, collective institutions that wield immense power.
This is not a problem particular to the USA.
If a philosophy is in practice unworkable, it may mean that its assumptions are flawed. If the idea that we are sovereigns is in practice unworkable, that may be because there are some mysterious mechanics at work preventing us from realizing our true selves, or it may simply mean we are not individual sovereigns. You may like it to be the case, but then your theory is a moral theory, about which values institutions should incorporate. Why you would like to accept it is beyond me though.
Quoting RussellA
I agree with you there and therefore I advise turning it around. Find problematic, counterintuitive or incoherent notions within the theory and then focus on how they shape the thoughts of notable figures. Otherwise your assertion that the essay uses straw man reasoning is correct.
Quoting RussellA
No, hypocrisy is not particular to the USA, but that does not prove or disprove anything, right? :chin: There is less of a following for radical individualism in Europe, though, so also public figures will not as easily espouse it. It is an interesting observation, maybe, but that does not seem to add or detract anything from the essay.
Yes, but that does mean that an unworkable philosophy must be a paradox.
===============================================================================
Quoting Tobias
Exactly, that is what the essay should have done.
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Quoting Tobias
I'm not so sure. There are plenty of hippy communes in Europe who could be called radical individualists. They renounce the power structure of institutions and the constraints these institutions put on their lives.
For example, there is the "free town" of Christiana in Copenhagen. It was founded in 1971 by a group of anarchic squatters and artists who took over an abandoned military base and proclaimed it a free zone.
Radical individualism is a coherent political theory that can work in certain contexts.
No, but it is an indication that there might be paradoxes or incoherences within the theory. That is why I urged to focus on those theoretical inconsistencies.
Quoting RussellA
Yes, but they seldom embrace notions of unbridled private property, quite the contrary. The libertarian conception of the individual extends to the assertion that self-ownership entails ownership of the fruit of one's labour. Hippy ideology, if there is such a thing, is indeed individualistic but has a less thick conception of the self.
Quoting RussellA
That might well be true, but that shifts the terms of the debate right? Also Benkei did not attack all forms of radical individualism, but a specific libertarian variation of it, if I understand correctly. As for Christiana, I would be interested to see how the inhabitants view their community. I have an inkling that they reject interference by the Danish state and what they perceive to be its oppressive structures. I wonder if they extend that rejection to the notion that community itself plays no part. There must be sociological research on it, but little time to really dive into it.
Radical individualism is a coherent political philosophy that may work in certain contexts and not in others.
It may work in a hippy commune of a dozen people living in the woods, but is unlikely to work if 100 million people in the USA decided to adopt it.
I am still missing where the paradox is.
===============================================================================
Quoting Tobias
The essay is about radical individualism.
Has a connection been made between radical individualism and libertarianism.
===============================================================================
Quoting Tobias
He seemed to attack all forms of it.
Correct but I do go out of my way defining its key characteristics; so if there's someone out there calling something "radical individualism" but doesn't meet the 5 core observations, it is not "radical individualism" as treated here. Obviously, I have independent points against each core observation so any belief resting on any of those five observations is immediately suspect.
Well possible. I have no idea how people do things in Christiana. I would like to know what radical indivdualism actually means. If it is simply a belief that 'my' existence precedes community existence, then it may be that certain hippy communities conform to that notion. I still think the notion, also in that very imprecisely defined form is incoherent.
Quoting RussellA
Well, one of them is for instance the idea of a shared meaning of the word 'radical individualist'. If I tell you I am a radical individualist, you can only know what I mean if we share the same discursive understanding. Such understanding does not come about out of nowhere but is dependent a system of education and a history of ideas to which we both refer. Both of those came about through cooperation, through funding, to some extent coercion and to a certain cultural proximity. Even to discuss the subject of radical individualism coherently requires access to collectivities.
Of course I offer a very radical form of radical individualism, someone who rejects all forms of social commitment. Benkei's 5 characteristics describe a thicker version in some respects and in some respects thinner. What would you consider radical individualism to be?
I think that is more than a little unfair. In the preface he makes clear his critique is aimed at nuances, but I can see how you and others may read this as a 'caricature'. I find this harsh judgement though. His attack is on social engineering, so perhaps it is more or less to do with a particular stance you have on social engineering that lies at the heart of your position?
I do not wish to create a strawman argument here, but I think it may help if you explain from exactly what social position problems arise, what is meant by justice in your eyes, and how the law and enforcement plays its part too. The 'strawman' I am trying to avoid here is the idea of a blank slate/equal society. I do not think you are asking for that but I am just trying to read between the lines. I assume you understand that some people are better than others at different things and that this is part and parcel of human life.
Using this same line of logic, an individual could pretend to be a radical collectivist but is actually an authoritarian radical individualist that consolidates power to become dictator. In essence they are an individual that views the citizens as their property. Stalin comes to mind.
How can we use the essay's explanation to distinguish between the two? Was Stalin a collectivist or a radical individualist that relied on authoritarian, collective institutions that wield immense power?
Why do you preach to the choir?
So that they choir will sing.
There's a character that fills shop floors that I call "The Cowboy" -- the cowboy sees themselves out in this world alone with nothing but themselves to rely upon, and furthermore, the cowboy knows they're good enough to get by without anyone's help. They'll accept the consequences of whatever comes. In a way this is an ultimate form of self-responsibility -- accepting any consequences whatsoever and adapting to said consequences. But on the other hand it's false: You're not a cowboy, you're Teddy whose worked in the maintenance shop of Parks and Recreation for 15 years and hasn't paid his dues while reaping the benefits of a union contract.
So, yes, I agree with your position and by that fact it makes it difficult for me to be critical.