IC maintains that Nothing is Absolutely True. The Shorter Oxford gives several meanings for ‘absolute,’ all deriving from the root meaning of detached or disengaged; in religion, for example, absolution detaches from sin. The most explicit of these is the one numbered IV.3: ‘Existing without relation to any other being; self-existent’ and (in the attached… read more »
(Reprinted from Ethical Record, December 1991. – GW) The article entitled “Remarks on the Relation Between Brain and Consciousness,” in ER for October, argues against “the old hypothesis that thought or consciousness is an independent active agent in the world.” So far we have agreement; to the best of my knowledge neither thought nor consciousness… read more »
PETER Marshall has produced Demanding the Impossible; a history of anarchism. (Harper-Collins). The free-market movement known as anarcho-capitalism he rejects as “merely a free-for-all in which only the rich and the cunning would benefit. Evidently he agrees with IC that anarchism stands not only for freedom but also for limitation; a free-for-all is not acceptable…. read more »
Jean Baptiste Colbert, Minister in charge of finance under Louis XIV, asked the merchants what he could do for them; they added to the common stock of cliches with the reply: “Laissez-nous faire.” Or so the story goes. After generations as an unassimilated immigrant the phrase has now been naturalised as the demand for a… read more »
Ideological development through the series can be presented as a series of stages in a continuing attempt to define the assumptions held, and as the definitions become sharper so self-contradiction becomes more direct. At one extreme statements made by the expedients display neither precision nor integration; the two poles of potential contradictions, seldom clearly distinguished,… read more »
Part One: REASON AS ENEMY, by Frank Antosen. (Reprinted from Freedom, 6 April). When asked to imagine the perfect society thinkers come up with many different models, one thing seems to be common though: The perfect society is governed by reason. Even anarchists tend to subscribe to this belief. But what is reason and why… read more »
IC has received a printed sheet, undated but evidently recent; bearing no indication of author or source it reports the development, in the USA and the USSR, of radiofrequency weapons. Impressive both in content and in its carefully understated, hysteria-free approach, it ends by speaking of them as “a new kind of weapon the world… read more »
SEEN FROM OUTSIDE FactSheetFive #41 says of IC “This political journal is a chewy nugget indeed, as it tries to expound the ideas of ‘systematic ideology.’ Their basic tenet is that there is a hierarchy of ideologies, with progressively fewer people at each step; they spin this out into fascinating discussions of everything from history… read more »
Kitaro Nishida’s An Inquiry into the Good has been re-issued in a new translation. [1] Reviewing this, [2] Hide Ishiguro remarks that it does not contain the two concepts, of absolute nothingness and the self-identity of the absolutely contradictory, which account for its author’s fame as a Zen philosopher. Kitaro Nishida has doubtless earned his glory;… read more »
Nobody has yet claimed that systematic ideology has all the answers; if it had, then all human problems would be solved and IC could close down. Yet knowing that further answers are needed is one thing; finding out what they are, or indeed what the unanswered questions may be, another. One approach is to look… read more »