Response to Michael P. re evil

Mea culpa. I misspoke when I referred to "those" who take a position as being bad or evil. I meant to contrast positions and not people. I think that the denial of universal human dignity, assuming that it intrudes into practical reason as it would seem to do re candidates for public office, is a clear and present danger and is evil. But I certainly agree with Robby that we should not "merely" denounce those who support such a view as "monstrous". Indeed, it would be rare that there would be any point in simply denouncing anyone, or even any idea, when engaged in conversation. (Recall that I said that even those who treat the development of babies like the construction of cars may simply misunderstand gestation.)

But we should not fool ourselves. Nietzche's dream of making nihilism "practical" is being realized in our own time.   J.H.H.Weiler put it well some years ago, when he wrote at 17 Nw. J. Int'l L. & Bus. 354,369 that "in the old, modernist perspectives, there was at least a truth to be explored, vindicated-even if that truth was one of power, exploitation and domination. One can find distasteful the post-modernist self-centered, ironic, sneering posturing. But, without adjudicating the philosophical validity of its epistemic claim, there is no doubt that the notion that all observations are relative to the perception of the observer, that what we have are just competing narratives, has moved from being a philosophic position to a social reality. It is part of political discourse: multiculturalism is premised on it as are the breakdown of authority (political, scientific, social) and the ascendant culture of extreme individualism and subjectivity. Indeed, objectivity itself is considered a constraint on freedom-a strange freedom, empty of content."

If we do not defend the truth of human dignity now, further resistance may be futile.