Fred Foldvary wrote:
>Why is an axiomatic deductive approach invalid?
Because it presumes that you know which axioms to
start with, which presumes (in the case of humane
sciences) that you know the final terms for what
man and society are, which is to claim you know
the end of the argument before it starts. Claims
to possession of those terms can always be mooted
in reason. What is really the problem is the
distinction between the speculative and the
practical reason, or as we might term them, the
demonstrable and the deliberative. As far as I
know, this distinction is not controversial.
Demonstrations start in axioms that are
considered to be self-evident, or from
propositions clearly derivable from such axioms.
But axioms of action do not possess this
self-evident character. The nature of man is not
something self-evident, even to the man himself;
it is something discovered in time; this does not
preclude reasonable judgements; it does preclude
possession of a final term that can be reached by
demonstration. The "axioms" will always dissolve
into beliefs about the nature of man, beliefs
which are reducible to nothing else than belief.
As a practical matter, nearly all systems start
with terms that at the very least partake of the
universal, but it would be very hard to show that
any such terms exhaust the universal. I am not
advocating cultural relativism, which I in fact
reject, but a certain humility and reality in
recognizing the source of claims about humans and their societies.
As far as reaching the universal, John Locke is
an exceptionally bad example. His purpose was to
justify the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688, which
was a revolution of property owners (and a
relatively new kind of property at that) against
royal authority (which embodied another kind of
property claim.) His "universality" was limited
to a certain class of Englishman, and did not
extend to Catholics, Africans, or other "lesser
breeds without the law," to use Kipling's quaint
phrase. Indeed, he defended slavery and was an
investor and shareholder in the Royal African
Company, whose major trade was in slaves. For
Locke, "the chief end [of society] is the
preservation of property" and slaves, being
incapable of property, could not have any social
or political place or dignity. Do these sound
like final terms? Like reason? And yet there is
an air of reason about them, but not a reason that ends all reasonable debate.
What is true in the case of Locke is true
generally: those who make claims to possession of
the final terms are usually shown to be mere
defenders of some class or interest. Locke
defended the new gentry, Smith the worker,
Ricardo the investor, and Mises the pure
capitalist. This is not always done with an ill
will, but arises from the fact that any
particular view of man is likely to be partial at
best, and only a part of an on-going deliberative
process. It is not their claims that are
necessarily invalid, but only their particular
claims to universality. There is much in Locke I
find useful, and nearly nothing I find final; the
understanding of some terms he advanced, while
others he retarded. He is part and parcel of the
on-going deliberative process. Those who claim to
have reached the final terms can usually be shown
to be servants of some set of class interests,
interested only in partial terms, namely the
terms that justify their partial interests.
John C. Medaille
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