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Samizdata quote of the day This is an idea with logical force, many practical attractions and great philosophical appeal. It is courageous. It is clever. It stands, in short, no chance of success.
– Matthew Parris, underlining that practical politics runs on interest, not intellect.
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Where did he say it, about what, in what context? Link?
Intellect exists to serve interest. The greater the intellect, the wider the scope of interest it serves – both in terms of time and number of people.
Atheism is a non-prophet organisation.
@IanB:
It’s behind the Times’ paywall. I read it in the print edition.
He was referring specifically to Nick Boles MP’s plan for an electoral pact between the Tories and LibDems, but I quoted it because I do think it is generally applicable in political affairs.
@Alisa:
Perhaps in an evolutionary sense it does, but admitting the wholly instrumental use of reason as legitimate implies collective might will always make right.
Guy, I was not referring to legitimacy or “rightness” (morality), but rather to physical reality. Isn’t ‘non-instrumental use’ an oxymoron?
As Guy points out, The Times newspaper is now behind a ‘paywall’. Investigations of the cost can begin here: http://www.timesplus.co.uk/tto/news/?login=false&url=http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/
Somewhat interestingly, they (The Times that is) want £1 per day for WWW access. This does not compare well with what they want for the printed edition, which includes an awful lot of paper, ink and delivery as far as a local newsagent.
My household sometimes invests in the Sunday Times – we did today; this costs £2.20; it also includes the comment column of Mr Rod Liddle (in parts, particularly good today), but sadly not that of Mr Matthew Parris.
Most of what is printed in The Times (and the Sunday Times) is, for me, worthless. I really do not want to pay them to waste all that paper, ink and delivery on me. It would be far better to allow me to access the more interesting bits for a much lower price than around half the cost of the paper, ink and delivery. But I don’t want to pay a large proportion of the printed cost for a day’s access; nor do I want to pay twice that for access for 7 days’ worth of publication – this when I’m interested in, at most, some of the columnists in the weekend issues.
If The Times wishes to charge me a more modest fee for download of each article, say 5% (and that’s very generous) of the printed paper issue, I would very likely pay it, through some suitable on-line subscription scheme that cost very little (for me and for them).
Otherwise, I commend to both Mr Parris and Mr Liddle, both good people from whom I learn and with whom I sometimes agree (and vastly more often than with the average ‘broadsheet’ columnist on both), the concept of taking elsewhere, the skills they currently exercise for the pound sterling of The Times. That way, their efforts would get more recognition – and they would benefit more in the longer term.
Back to Guy’s point in his main post, I strongly suspect that Nicolai Machiavelli got there long before Matthew Parris. Sadly, lacking the inclination to penetrate that paywall, I don’t know if Matthew acknowledges this, nor precisely how good is the overlap of their philosophical cases.
Best regards
The quotation is either wrong – or so broad as to be meaningless (or, rather, stupid).
People often do things that are not in their “interest” – for example vote for cuts in government spending even though they know the money they themselves get from government is going to get cut. That is how the Chris Christie became Governor of New Jersey (and he is still popular) and how Harris became Prime Minister in Ontario.
Saying that people will only “vote their interests” is a philosophy of despair – as it means the world is doomed, as already most people (in most Western nations – including the United States) either work for the government or depend upon it for their income via benefits or subsidies.
Indeed not only will some people vote against their “interests” many people will give up their very lives (surely a basic “interest”) for principles.
“But Paul – that just means that they hold that their basic interest is these principles, that this interest trumps their comfort or even their staying alive”.
In which case the quotation is not false – but it is so broad as to be silly.
Of course one can argue that “long term interests” pay a role (hence the obsession on the left with saying “in the long run we are all dead”) as people may vote against their own subsidies (and so on) if they believe “I must give up…. so that my children and grandchildren do not live under conditions of economic collapse”.
But that is hardly what Mr Parris has in mind by “interests” – his mind is as short term as the mind of Keynes was (and I am NOT making any sort of point against homosexuals, some homosexuals really do care about the long term even though they leave behind no children to see it – they do NOT “vote their interests”).
In the end there is only honour – the knowledge that one has acted rightly (done the right thing), even if the whole world is taught that one was evil and corrupt.
Seeking material interests is as absurd as seeking “happiness” (at least in the modern sense of happiness as pleasure). Life is a process of physical and mental decay – and no amount of corruption (of seeking after things by stealing from others) can alter this.
Of course one could say that “then honour is your interest” – but that is not what Mr Parris means by “interests”.
By the way – many very ordinary people are honourable, even at great cost.