Excellent piece. I recommend two good books on this topic (in addition to The Theory of Moral Sentiments which I always recommend for ever :) )
Natural Law and the Theory of Property: Grotius to Hume by Stephen Buckle. Bit of a slog at times, but really covers the transition from earlier natural law to the late medieval/renaissance Lockean period.
Law, Legislation and Liberty by FA Hayek, goes a lot into the difference between law and legislation, the former more like natural law (along with norma) and the latter “that crap the government tries to enforce”.
One reason why the legal professions, and judges in particular, need an in-depth education in classical humanities if their jobs are to make any sense. We can witness what happens if that's not the case. Great job Harrison sussing out the contradictions that modern philosophical positions produce with respect to law.
Fascinating reading for someone who didn’t go to university to study philosophy or anything else for that matter yet you write in such a clear down to earth way you make it very easy to understand what you are meaning. I find philosophy to be a deep complex and engrossing area of study which opens the mind and for those of you also familiar with it like Harrison, your knowledge in this area must be very helpful in understanding why the world appears to have suddenly gone mad!
I take some comfort in your words that humanity has survived thus far but only because the evil that exists is in parts of the world and not the entire world.
When you describe our whole world where IF everything goes against our evolution our learned experience our innate human nature our instincts and natural law and God is forsaken feels to me exactly what the globalists have planned for our whole world and everyone in it and if they are successful humanity won’t survive.
From all of the many different subjects that you have studied as well as all of the different subject areas that your subscribers have studied, as reading through all of the comments you all sound like you’re on the same page intellectually, how can we the people affect change sufficiently to at least alter if not able to entirely prevent their plans for all of our destruction?
Apr 25, 2023·edited Apr 25, 2023Liked by Harrison Koehli
Thankyou for this. I am in full agreement as a natural man.
What I saw a while back was a comment about the hierarchy of man and law and that all governments are created by man to protect the property of man.
Our trust has been misplaced and subverted. I would argue it was intentionally done by the intellectual elite in order to please the aristocracy who were seeking rent or favour from the Royalty or Monarchy in return for their loyalty.
Magnificent, clear writing with profound implications . Real discernment and distinction, practical and something that good people need to think deeply upon. Then try to live out, to counter the mechanistic evil that threatens to engulf all that's good.
Thanks Harrison! I will check it out and if it helped you that’s about the best endorsement for Forest Passage there is! The covid fear campaigns were enough to last a lifetime and now witnessing millions of deaths completely ignored by the msm and governments feels surreal. Witnessing all of the totalitarian measures creeping in everywhere in the entire western world IS frigging scary but if we can only wake up enough people to see the end goal is for the elites to have complete and total control of the global population we might survive this massive global takeover!
I'm unconvinced by the non-materialist position though, and I can't see a way to incorporate non-materialism into an intelligible account of the universe without leading to incoherence. Materialism, at least by my lights, doesn't necessitate a rejection of teleological thinking. I would argue they are complimentary.
We should be careful when trying to justify a metaphysics based on what we want the ethical outcomes to be (eg Natural Law, etc). This is motivated reasoning and will lead us astray.
Just because we are meat machines at the end of the day doesn't mean beauty, goodness, truth, justice, etc are meaningless.
This is a very good article. It speaks well to a much of my thoughts, especially how morality is self inherent through reflection, and while religion points the way towards morality, in no way is it a prerequisite for understanding the value inherent in practicing moral behavior or developing virtue.
Magnificent, clear writing with profound implications . Real discernment and distinction, practical and something that good people need to think deeply upon. Then try to live out, to counter the mechanistic evil that threatens to engulf all that's good.
This is the key undefended sentence: “Rather, the elements are as they are precisely so that such possibilities could be realized. All of this is is an expression of the ‘eternal law.’”
Why think that this sentence is more likely than not to be true? Yes, it would feel really nice if it were true. Perhaps that people believe it even makes the world better. But neither of those considerations is relevant.
In this piece you did a passable job of characterizing your opponent (albeit in the most tendentious possible tone), but you failed to defend your point of view at the key moment. To convince a rational person, you need to provide an argument with the quoted bit as a conclusion rather than mere assertion.
The materialists have all sorts of arguments, the causal closure of physical reality being the foremost. There’s no theoretical need to posit anything else. We can explain physical reality without teleology. Or at least without the sort of teleology you seem to posit.
If you’re actually interested in this, look into the philosophy of the fine-tuning problem. For life to be possible, certain constants of physics had to be within a very narrow range. This seems arbitrary. Some people like to posit a designer to explain this phenomenon.
It is refreshing to see anyone make an assertion like this these days.
Of course, my studies have led me to significantly different conclusions about all these questions.
The use of Spiritual Memory has opened up a very different story about Mankind and God. Taking many of these questions off Earth to our precursor civilizations that are easily billions of years old, we can see everything that has happened here as a reenactment - or under the influence - of earlier traditions that were developed by beings more "advanced" than ourselves in the very deep past.
This post is kind of interesting, but what I can't fathom is how this argues against materialism or that we are not machines. Did your thought just drift from the subject as you wrote?
Well, I tried to "like" it but I'm not sure my "like" took, but I'm not sure law and philosophy really mix well. One is real world deliberations while the other by definition is of the mind.
One would hope the two could meet together, but lately seems like philosophy has become a school only a few......ah forget it.
I tried to "like it" so there ought be 4 likes now, but whether there are or not, I know this.
If this posts - there will be 4 comments.
Living real time is the best way to live and philosophy is wonderful for those who got the time to think about this and that and lately the law seems to be nothing but corrupt - at least in the "west".
I can prove this is the 4th comment - I already have. But I don't think my "like" has shown up yet, but oh well - eff it I reckon.
Excellent piece. I recommend two good books on this topic (in addition to The Theory of Moral Sentiments which I always recommend for ever :) )
Natural Law and the Theory of Property: Grotius to Hume by Stephen Buckle. Bit of a slog at times, but really covers the transition from earlier natural law to the late medieval/renaissance Lockean period.
Law, Legislation and Liberty by FA Hayek, goes a lot into the difference between law and legislation, the former more like natural law (along with norma) and the latter “that crap the government tries to enforce”.
One reason why the legal professions, and judges in particular, need an in-depth education in classical humanities if their jobs are to make any sense. We can witness what happens if that's not the case. Great job Harrison sussing out the contradictions that modern philosophical positions produce with respect to law.
This is one of the best things you've ever written. And that’s a very high bar. Will comment in depth later, and will also crosspost/recommend.
Fascinating reading for someone who didn’t go to university to study philosophy or anything else for that matter yet you write in such a clear down to earth way you make it very easy to understand what you are meaning. I find philosophy to be a deep complex and engrossing area of study which opens the mind and for those of you also familiar with it like Harrison, your knowledge in this area must be very helpful in understanding why the world appears to have suddenly gone mad!
I take some comfort in your words that humanity has survived thus far but only because the evil that exists is in parts of the world and not the entire world.
When you describe our whole world where IF everything goes against our evolution our learned experience our innate human nature our instincts and natural law and God is forsaken feels to me exactly what the globalists have planned for our whole world and everyone in it and if they are successful humanity won’t survive.
From all of the many different subjects that you have studied as well as all of the different subject areas that your subscribers have studied, as reading through all of the comments you all sound like you’re on the same page intellectually, how can we the people affect change sufficiently to at least alter if not able to entirely prevent their plans for all of our destruction?
Thankyou for this. I am in full agreement as a natural man.
What I saw a while back was a comment about the hierarchy of man and law and that all governments are created by man to protect the property of man.
Our trust has been misplaced and subverted. I would argue it was intentionally done by the intellectual elite in order to please the aristocracy who were seeking rent or favour from the Royalty or Monarchy in return for their loyalty.
Magnificent, clear writing with profound implications . Real discernment and distinction, practical and something that good people need to think deeply upon. Then try to live out, to counter the mechanistic evil that threatens to engulf all that's good.
Thanks Harrison! I will check it out and if it helped you that’s about the best endorsement for Forest Passage there is! The covid fear campaigns were enough to last a lifetime and now witnessing millions of deaths completely ignored by the msm and governments feels surreal. Witnessing all of the totalitarian measures creeping in everywhere in the entire western world IS frigging scary but if we can only wake up enough people to see the end goal is for the elites to have complete and total control of the global population we might survive this massive global takeover!
Interesting piece, thanks for writing.
I'm unconvinced by the non-materialist position though, and I can't see a way to incorporate non-materialism into an intelligible account of the universe without leading to incoherence. Materialism, at least by my lights, doesn't necessitate a rejection of teleological thinking. I would argue they are complimentary.
We should be careful when trying to justify a metaphysics based on what we want the ethical outcomes to be (eg Natural Law, etc). This is motivated reasoning and will lead us astray.
Just because we are meat machines at the end of the day doesn't mean beauty, goodness, truth, justice, etc are meaningless.
This is a very good article. It speaks well to a much of my thoughts, especially how morality is self inherent through reflection, and while religion points the way towards morality, in no way is it a prerequisite for understanding the value inherent in practicing moral behavior or developing virtue.
Magnificent, clear writing with profound implications . Real discernment and distinction, practical and something that good people need to think deeply upon. Then try to live out, to counter the mechanistic evil that threatens to engulf all that's good.
This is the key undefended sentence: “Rather, the elements are as they are precisely so that such possibilities could be realized. All of this is is an expression of the ‘eternal law.’”
Why think that this sentence is more likely than not to be true? Yes, it would feel really nice if it were true. Perhaps that people believe it even makes the world better. But neither of those considerations is relevant.
In this piece you did a passable job of characterizing your opponent (albeit in the most tendentious possible tone), but you failed to defend your point of view at the key moment. To convince a rational person, you need to provide an argument with the quoted bit as a conclusion rather than mere assertion.
The materialists have all sorts of arguments, the causal closure of physical reality being the foremost. There’s no theoretical need to posit anything else. We can explain physical reality without teleology. Or at least without the sort of teleology you seem to posit.
If you’re actually interested in this, look into the philosophy of the fine-tuning problem. For life to be possible, certain constants of physics had to be within a very narrow range. This seems arbitrary. Some people like to posit a designer to explain this phenomenon.
NEO-HELLENISM... one of them invented a steam engine 2000 years ago.
The god of the abrahamics is Zeus
It is refreshing to see anyone make an assertion like this these days.
Of course, my studies have led me to significantly different conclusions about all these questions.
The use of Spiritual Memory has opened up a very different story about Mankind and God. Taking many of these questions off Earth to our precursor civilizations that are easily billions of years old, we can see everything that has happened here as a reenactment - or under the influence - of earlier traditions that were developed by beings more "advanced" than ourselves in the very deep past.
Thank HK. Erudite & mind expanding post.
This post is kind of interesting, but what I can't fathom is how this argues against materialism or that we are not machines. Did your thought just drift from the subject as you wrote?
Well, I tried to "like" it but I'm not sure my "like" took, but I'm not sure law and philosophy really mix well. One is real world deliberations while the other by definition is of the mind.
One would hope the two could meet together, but lately seems like philosophy has become a school only a few......ah forget it.
I tried to "like it" so there ought be 4 likes now, but whether there are or not, I know this.
If this posts - there will be 4 comments.
Living real time is the best way to live and philosophy is wonderful for those who got the time to think about this and that and lately the law seems to be nothing but corrupt - at least in the "west".
I can prove this is the 4th comment - I already have. But I don't think my "like" has shown up yet, but oh well - eff it I reckon.