Thread by @ZoharAtkins

All critics of modernity, on both the left and the right, hold that the invention of the individual is iatrogenic.

The best, most honest responses to the critics of modernity is not to deny the side-effects of this invention, but to argue that, net-net, the damage caused is worth it.

Both the critique and the defense of the individual make use of evidence. Both commit one to a certain path that becomes self-fulfilling.

Social contract theory is but the first of many interventions needed to sustain the invention of the individual.

Once you are Leviathan-pilled, as it were, there is no end to the drugs needed to offset the side-effects of that initial dose.

But reading Adorno, Strauss, Heidegger, or Foucault while living in an individualistic society is like reading alternative living blogs against Big Pharma while sitting in the waiting room of an anesthesiologist.

Both those who defend liberty and demote justice (moderns) or who seek justice by demoting liberty (premoderns) are engaging in sample bias. They are the survivors for whom their preferred method was good enough.

How does one choose?

This is the dilemma of the thinking person, the dilemma of one who feels the "quarrel between ancients and moderns" described by Strauss.

It's the Hamlet question. Should we listen to ghosts? (The ghost being a stand in for the authority of ancestors, here, but not here).

Should we heed Aristotle, for whom politics and ethics are co-extensive? Or should we heed Machiavelli, who believed that the greatest evil was "to speak evil about evil."

This is the political philosopher's version of "Should I take Tylenol?"

Personally, I think we should take the Tylenol. But I would say that, given my position and temperament But I do think we should be more sympathetic to those for whom the Tylenol is damaging. More appreciative that the question is not settled, historically or philosophically.

We should at least realize that it is more pluralistic to admit the reasonableness of those who are anti-modern than to self-congratulatingly and hypocritically label the anti-moderns unpluralistic, and be done with it.

Do take the Tylenol, advocate for it, etc. but consider that social contract theory is a technology, not a truism. It can be evaluated as a matter of what it allows and enables, prevents and destroys. But it's not a matter of 1+1=2.

If you want to defend Tylenol, defend it on pragmatic grounds, not metaphysical ones.

End.