Yeah mate, I understand Kant wrote around this topic, but haven’t read him so don’t know his take. Haven’t read ‘The Theory of Moral Sentiments’ either – just bits of ‘The Wealth of Nations’. I came to this stuff from a psychological angle via Jordan Peterson:
Our minds are simple representations of reality – at best. For example, how old were you when you found out Father Christmas wasn’t real? You collected ‘evidence’ (he drank the beer I left for him), to support the belief that he was the reason there were presents under the tree in the morning. During/after high school we’re constantly presented with narratives, and we have the choice of accepting them or adapting them to better fit our perceived reality. One such example is, “capitalism works well, but we can improve it” / “capitalism exploits poor people”. These narratives didn’t sit well with my lived experience, so I made adjustments early on – thank God!
It’s what we believe that makes us feel the way we do. The experience of understanding economics properly feels a lot better than feeling exploited by the rich. What we believe also limits our ability to perceive – the bigger the falsehoods we believe, the greater we limit our chances at making our mental representation better and more functional. The poorer your representation, the poorer you feel, and the harder it is to make progress.
“Every man is the sum total of his reaction to experience.” – Hunter S. Thompson
That simple representation of reality in your head is the subject. Everybody else, and everything else are objects (including abstract concepts) – their inter-relations are described/organised by the subject. Cause and effect and so on. Of course, you’re treated as an object by others.
Reading Part I of Jung’s ‘Psychological Types’ really helped clear this stuff up for me – Jung discusses Kant’s thinking in this. There are two approaches to being a subject.
Some ‘expect’ objects to conform to their subject – this is unconscious, because they’re convinced that what they believe is more than that – they think it’s a universal reality that everybody experiences. This would be like believing in Father Christmas, and demanding that everybody act like it’s true. Or believing that Trump is a racist, misogynistic asshole, and expressing moral indignation toward anyone who supports him.
Others ‘expect’ their subject to conform to the objective world. This too is unconscious. A good example of this type are entrepreneurs. When a business idea doesn’t work out, they can move onto the next with ease. They don’t feel that the world ought to bend to their will, but that they should bend toward the will of the world.
These temperaments are not absolute, but in degree. For example, some entrepreneurs love their business idea, and will make sure it doesn’t work before moving on. Jung coined the words introverted and extraverted to describe these basic temperaments.
Of course a balance between these is preferable – that one adjusts his subject to be a better representation of reality, whilst allowing his subject to exert an influence upon that reality. This balance is facilitated by individualism and is expressed by Benjamin Franklin – “Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom – and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech.”
An environment of individualism is one where my subject cannot impose itself upon yours, nor yours upon mine. However, subjects can cooperate – and this makes things really interesting. Religion is an example of inter-subject cooperation. Atheists who believe the world would be better off without religion are dealing with the impossible. They’d have to use force to ‘rid’ the world of religion – and even if done, religion would only be illegal and not gone in any way. Dawkins and co are trying to bend the objective world to fit their subjective representation.
This object/subject/inter-subject dynamic is useful in figuring out when to change your mind and when/where to try impose your subject. If you consider tradition as a long-term pattern of beliefs/actions stemming from inter-subject cooperation, it would be unwise to try impose your lone subject – and would require force if not completely impossible. It would be better to seek knowledge and understanding of that part of the objective world. This could be considered as traditionalism – a respect for tradition even if your individual subject cannot articulate the value of the traditional beliefs/actions. Many people just stew and never even try to understand what doesn’t fit them like a custom suit.
On the other hand if your subject is part of inter-subject cooperation, you’d be wise to protect tradition and transmit it to lone subjects.
A nation comes out of inter-subject coordination, and is thus a more powerful sovereign than the individual. God, or ‘all yet unarticulated Truth’ if you prefer, is the greatest sovereign. Inter-subject cooperation therefore creates a hierarchy of sovereignty…individual —> political party —> government —> nation —> God, etc. Representative government and ‘federalism’ are aimed at promoting inter-subject cooperation in governance of the people – of deriving authority from the people. Rather than having arbitrary subjects operating the levers of authority, in which case a great many subjects will operate under force. It is not wise when people attempt to overthrow this naturally occurring hierarchy of sovereignty, and not much better to maintain it through slightly better collective ‘values’.
Individualism ensures that the good presuppositions that the West is founded upon, will only be replaced by better presuppositions. This is the best I can do to articulate the value of individualism; and further to reconcile it with conservatism/traditionalism. Traditionalism can be understood through individualism; and individualism explains traditionalism.
Cheers.
P.S> That’s not to say that we wouldn’t be better off using another name, other than Traditionalists – as it is off-putting to the layman. I’ll edit this and include it in the ‘Notes’ section of the constitution, and email a PDF out before the next meeting.
