We are not God. We cannot become God, make God, or speak with the authority of God. This is axiomatic and the beginning of wisdom and prosperity.
Because we are not God, we cannot know the full nature of God, or even for certainty whether God exists at all. As a result, we cannot know any purpose, including ultimate purpose, each of our lives may have. Because we cannot know the full nature of God, should He exist, nor any purpose our lives may have in His sight, we lack the authority to compel the beliefs of others, lest we lead them into ultimate error. In particular, we therefore lack the authority to alienate anyone, self or other, from the possibility of fulfilling that purpose. In short, lacking the authority of God, we lack justification for the compulsion of our fellow man.
In that we all lack the authority of God and thus any justification for the compulsion of our fellow man, all men are created politically equal. Nothing in the world, which is also not God, justifies an intrinsically limited human being to hold political or social authority over another without the consent of both parties to that relationship. Any authority we can hold over any other person must therefore be earned, provisional, temporary, and voluntarily given and accepted.
Men, by their morally limited nature, which is sometimes called “fallen,” often seek to compel the belief, speech, and action of other men, both for good reasons and bad. The primary mechanisms by which a man can successfully compel another man to belief, speech, or action are through credible threats to his life, liberty, and livelihood, generally recognized in the last case as his property. Further, because of the nature of the ultimate privacy of conscience, which men may have any number of good reasons to keep private from other men, undue violation of the privacy of man and the contents of his mind can coerce him. Any who can destroy another’s life, liberty, or livelihood, or sufficiently violate his privacy, can compel his belief, speech, and activity and thus alienate him through destruction or compulsion from any potential ultimate purpose he may have. Only God could possibly hold such authority, and we are not God. No man can justify claiming such authority.
Thus, we hold these truths to be self-evident: that we are not God, and by virtue of that, we have been endowed by that which led to our existence, our Creator, whether the Laws of Nature or Nature’s God, with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are his life, liberty, and property, including the property of the private contents of our minds, and the ability to make use of these to pursue our happiness, fortunes, and whatever purposes, ultimate or otherwise, there may be within and of our lives.
These rights and the privacy necessary to maintain them shall be set aside and therefore, in light of the original meaning of the word, regarded as holy.
Because men must nevertheless live among one another in as much peace and in pursuit of as much prosperity as we may attain, some political system—a just government—needs to be instituted among them not for their rule but for the securing of these holy and unalienable rights. The primary purpose of a just government is therefore to secure these rights and to facilitate the peaceful resolution of conflicts and disputes that arise between men as a result of them and their individual differences.
What must such a government abide by, then, so that it can achieve this sacred task without itself alienating man from that which is unalienable? Government, too, is not God, no matter in what way it is instituted among men. It cannot become God, neither can it make God, nor can it speak or act with the authority of God. It must abide by limitations of nearly every imaginable sort and must secure the inalienable rights of man from itself and others.
Because a government lacks the authority of God, a just government has no intrinsic political authority over the men among whom it is constituted. That is, a just government cannot rule, and it cannot govern except with the consent of those whom it governs. Since government cannot usurp the authority to rule, law must rule in its place, subject to mechanisms of production and amendment that guarantee the participation and consent of those over whom it rules. In that none possesses any special political authority, none can be exempt from the law that is instituted among men for their own just governance.
All governments, including a just government, must possess and wield political authority, however, including to produce and enforce the law, which rules in its stead. That authority in a just government is of the people, by the people, and for the people, and as such it is all loaned political authority ultimately answerable at any time to the people it governs, is provisional, and subject to limits of time, scope, and checks and balances on its power.
A just government must be democratic in nature to obtain the consent of those it governs, but it cannot secure the rights of the few against the many unless the democracy is republican in application. Servants must be consented to by the people they represent. Fair and impartial elections must be held at intervals to loan political authority to public servants and to pass it to others at want or need, or else it usurps an authority greater than itself to which it can claim no right. The greater must be given a say and the lesser must be granted enough representation to counter the tide of opinion held prejudicially or negligently against it.
A just government must secure the rights of speech, press, protest, and petition or it cannot be held to account and the consent with which it governs cannot be duly informed. Its powers must be limited, divided, and placed into a system of checks and balances to prevent it from any illegitimate claim to rule with political authority it cannot have. Government is not God because we are not God. Just governments understand this and keep it. Unjust governments reject this and run afoul of it and the men they are meant to serve.
A just government cannot compel the beliefs, speech, or actions of men because it lacks any such authority, which cannot even be given on loan, and consequently it cannot deprive men of their lives, liberties, or properties, or a reasonable expectation of privacy, without the due process of law pursuant to its solitary sacred objective: to secure the inalienable rights of those whom it serves and protects. It therefore must secure the right to believe, speak, and worship as well as the rights to defend oneself against any and all attempts to alienate men from those fundamental rights which he retains inalienably. It cannot punish cruelly or unusually, torture, or compel any man to profess his own guilt.
Because individual belief and conscience is self-evidently inviolate, just government consequently must also secure a right to privacy without interference in private spaces and a reasonable expectation of limited privacy even in public spaces. In that governments are not God, because we are not God and they are instituted amongst us, they have no authority to violate the inner sanctity of the human mind in any person, neither to torture, nor to surveil persons without justified suspicion or manipulate their beliefs, actions, or environments so as to coerce them against their self-determined will. Instead, as with our other unalienable rights, just governments have a duty to secure a reasonable right to privacy between citizens and hold no right to violate that right themselves. Because we also are not God, none of us individually has any such authority over one another either.
As with just governments, just individuals must obtain any social or political authority they hold over another man by obtaining his consent. Because none possess intrinsic authority over others, consent to hold political authority must not be absolute and should be given freely and under contract according to merits and on terms determined by both relevant parties to be acceptable to each. Political authority between adults is therefore extended by virtue of demonstrated competence that is compelling to those in the relationship. Just governments should secure these arrangements and establish courts of justice to facilitate the resolution of conflicts between parties. The courts must adjudicate the law with impartiality, favoring neither the greater nor the lesser, and only under such judicial restraint should just men submit to the court. Arbitrary power must be resisted, and any doctrine of nonresistance against arbitrary power and oppression is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind. Courts must therefore be impartial in carrying out the law.
Because belief cannot be compelled, likewise, none possess the authority to compel another to believe in any idea, right or wrong, true or false. Therefore, no proposition is to be regarded as true or good by virtue of he who made it. Every proposition earns its authority through processes of validation that demand it survive challenge by competing ideas that ultimately must be brought to bear against our best assessment of the laws of nature of objective reality or of God’s Creation, which by definition cannot be wrong or false and rest outside of but are accessible to each and every man. Men can establish themselves as authorities, to which others can consent or not, based upon their demonstrated capacities to determine that which is right and true through the successful applications of their talents and perceptions. In that every man is not God, which is to say he is limited and finite, no man obtains special or final authority on any of his proclamations of rightness or truth and must consent to seeing his own ideas challenged by those of others.
Because our right to our own property is inalienable, so is our right to do with our property what we will so long as it doesn’t violate the inalienable rights of others. In other words, we have the right not only to hold our property but to engage in commerce with it according to the principles of free enterprise under the law. Property can be exchanged by any two parties who mutually consent to the terms of the contract of exchange without undue interference by third parties, and a just government should secure this right to engage in commerce under its duty to secure the rights of each citizen’s property.
In summary, we are not God. The consequences of this self-evident proposition are vast. None of us possesses the authority to compel another or his belief because we lack in our limitation understanding of the significance of any error against his intrinsic value and potential purpose made in that way. We therefore self-evidently start the project of organizing our society from a position of political equality with certain rights that are inalienable, among these life, liberty, property, capacity for their use toward our happiness and purposes, and a reasonable expectation of privacy in which we can maintain their sanctity. Lacking authority to rule over one another, we are ruled instead by law and merit and lend social and political authority in limited ways as such through processes that are open in their nature and that may best determine these as objectively as we may. Individual belief is sacrosanct not because any man is God but because every man is not. The individual is politically inviolate because he is the vessel of his own sacrosanct individual belief.
Together, these provocative and humbling ideas and the social and political project they define have a name. These are classical liberalism.
23 comments
The ideas in the article compacted for purposes of critique (below):
1) Only God can hold authority over men
2) Men are not God.
3) Nothing in the world is God.
4) Because of 2), men cannot know what god wants, or even whether God exists
5) Because of 2), and 4) men cannot hold authority over men.
6) Because of 5), men have the sacred right not to have authority held over them.
7) Because of 6), men must prevent men from holding authority over men.
8) 7) is accomplished with Government.
9) Because of 3), Government is not God.
10) Because of 9), Government has no authority, and rules only with the consent of the governed.
11) Because of 7), Government must secure the sacred rights of men.
critiques on 1)-11):
12) Considering 4), on what basis can Lindsay know 1)?
And 1) cannot be derived from 5)-6) because this would be a circular argument, considering that they derive from 2) which requires 1) considering 2)’s reference to “God”.
The following number appears to be similar to 12).
13) Considering 4), how does Lindsay refer to “God” at all?
14) 6) does not actually derive from 5).
15) 1), 2), 3), 5), 9) and 10) contradict 6) 7) 8) and 11).
16) 8) is not necessarily so.
Lindsay is anti-zoophilia. I do not know how he derives this from Classical Liberalism. Perhaps it is the following?
1) Because men are not god they do not have authority over animals.
2) Therefore animals have the same sacred rights as humans
3) animals cannot consent.
The question then becomes: Is James Lindsay a vegan?
Well I would like to be able to email you James, but your site has decided I am a spammer for some reason. I never see the captcha and I am not even sure what reCaptcha is, but I guess I have to give up on contacting you at all about anything. I wanted to buy your books, but NOT from Amazon. Oh well.
This is just a quick thank you to James. Nobody seems to break down these issues, or to connect the dots, better than James. I often find myself listening to James’ podcasts multiple times to fully grasp the explanations and concepts. The concepts are not intuitive, and the explanations are enlightening.
In response to this very subject in past times, I have borrowed someones else’s short answer.
There are 2 sure facts in this life.
1/ there is a God
2/ you are not him.
This prompts me to remember also words of Jesus himself in Matthew 11:25-26 (NIV) when He said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children”.
With respect, I understand the essential point of your dialogue, but the basic Christian teaching here actually only requires brief explanation. It does not require intellectual prowess to understand.
This is great. Mr. Lindsey should consider writing a whole book about Classical Liberalism. I’d buy a copy.
I would add that since man did not create land or natural resources, there is no good claim they are truly individual property. So economic rents from these rightfully should belong to men equally following the Georgist/ Ricardian arguments about ground rent.
I have found that concepts of God (as The Creator) are not central to understanding the human condition.
Even according to the Bible, the human being has a soul. That sould IS godlike, and thus we CAN know something of God, as we have a similar – if not identical – ability to imagine and create.
Thus I do not agree with the need for the axiom stated in the first paragraph of this article,
While we cannot justify compulsion of belief or action, we attempt it all the time. This is partly because the young and the sick require this control (care) to survive. The challenge is to help the young and the sick to grow out of this reliance on the direction or control of others and become fully independent beings. This is no small challenge.
Because some men seek to control others over their objection and for no justifiable purpose, governments are demanded by the population to protect them from such people. They are called “criminals” and we as a group agree that our government may deprive them of their basic rights in the hame of the survival of the group. The judiciary is there to settle disputes, but this is not the required function of government and could in theory be provided by a separate institution. Part of the judiciary is there to determine if the label of “criminal” has been justly applied. In a just society, some such mechanism should always be provided.
The downfall of classical liberalism has been the inclination of its supposed adherents to neglect the godlike aspect of every being – even the young, the sick and the criminal. In this recognition lies a possible resolution of the problem of “liberalism.”
Nice summary of Classical Liberalism. Dense, but clear and gets to the heart of it. Thanks for posting.
Very quaint!
This is not a doctrine with which to combat guns, bombs, imprisonment, censorship, fraud, greed and all the ‘joys’ of sex ‘n drugs ‘n rock ‘n roll.
However, it doesn’t detract from the excellence of JL’s various analyses of wokism. It’s just that there has to be some authority somewhere and if there is no God, or at least we can’t know what God says, which is basically what is posited here, then it’s the law of the jungle; and this means that you’ve got to get the guns!
commenter wrote: “…if there is no God, or at least we can’t know what God says, which is basically what is posited here, then it’s the law of the jungle…”
Hamas, ISIS, Hezb’allah, Boko Harum, Muslim Brotherhood, and the countless contemporary Islamic jihad violence groups that are trying to exterminate and enslave the West (and the world) all know exactly and devoutly what their “God” says. It’s written in “his” book, which they believe was “dictated” by that “God” directly to his “prophet”. Despite knowing their “God” and acting upon “divine” instructions, their Godly world is beyond the law of the jungle: It’s the savage predation of the bottomless pit. Perpetual human depravity on a scale and degree beyond comprehension. Yet they know their “God” very well. And they have the guns and knives and bombs and torture and colonization and conquest that they use in their god’s name every day against their infidel kafir unclean filth enemies, i.e., all the humans on Earth who do not believe in their “God”.
So here is an example of 2 billion people on Earth who 100% know “God” and what this “God” says, yet that knowledge still results in the law of the jungle.
This reality contradicts your statement.
(ps. This essay is yet another of James Lindsay’s finest moments.)
Not at all. In Islam they don’t know God. A good place to get a perspective on the ‘God’ of Islam is Wafa Sultan A God who Hates. She describes growing up surrounded by the fear and oppression generated by what she depicts as an ogre. In Islam, their ‘God’ is explicitly not knowable. Not personal; no knowable.
All apostates say that — that’s why they become apostates. Islam apostate (and Christian convert) Ayaan Hirsi Ali and many others all tell the same story of escape from the Umma. And all pay the price of persecution with fatwas and death threats by the 2 billion non-apostate Muslims who are flooding into the West at the West’s (Leftist Woke and Christian church) invitation.
You make a claim about Islam presumably not as an apostate. Your claim is that their “God” is not a real God and they don’t “know” God. You are saying that there is a real God (your God) and a false God (their God). Do you believe this strongly enough to write that statement on a sign and walk into the 100,000 strong mob of Islamic fanatics rioting across all major cities? You’d be torn to pieces and afterward arrested and thrown into solitary “Gitmo” with the Capitol “criminals” by those theologians of Diversity, Biden and Obama for insulting their Islamic middle eastern money backers and new Democrat voter blocks.
If you claim there is a real God, then what do you do about the 2 billion fanatics of the false God who are now colonizing your own country? Colonizers who were abetted by fanatics of your own (presumed) religion, the Christian diversity fanatics whose “congregations” imported Islamic “refugees” of the false God by the millions to show off their “charity” and “compassion” and left wing street cred as well as receive all of that lovely Democrat, Soros and NGO Open Borders “refugee” grant money to shore up the empty churches’ cashless and empty pew self-created decline. Whited sepulchers! How dare you do this to your fellow citizens! Do you hate us — and yourselves — so much that you would destroy your society merely to self-aggrandize your own purported piety? Vile!
What a mess both Leftists and Christians have made of the lives of the rest of us (believers or nonbelievers) who simply wanted to be left alone. Now you have forced everyone to have to deal with the violence and horror brought about by this latest selfish catastrophe of religious mania – one side comprised of raving false God fanatics and other side importing these fanatics to prove their own smug fealty to their real God. Those who God destroys He first makes mad.
The breakthrough message of James Lindsay’s essay is the anti-Gnostic anti-elitist anti-totalitarian creed of freedom: No one is God. No person, group, organization, church or government is God or can act as God. Those who act as God by flooding their country with fanatics of a false God to show off their “love” and “brotherhood” of Mankind are just as bad as the puffed up Elite Leftist atheist satanist corruptocrats who money-brokered the churches’ society-destroying act of “love”. When will humanity be freed of these ideologies and theocracies! Thideologies — theocratic ideologies and ideological theocracies — and their accompanying tribal Identarianisms are the keystone of Totalitarianism. The black bile of humanity! When will it stop!
Some rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem is rubbing its hands together and having a very good laugh right now.
There is a difference between knowing God and claiming to know God. Additionally there is a question about which God you are claiming to know. Allah is not the same as YHWH is not the same Krishna is not the same as the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I find that very often the God non-Christians think Christians worship is vastly different from what any given Christian would admit to worshiping. Who you worship establishes the framework of what reality is and how the believer is expected to act within that paradigm.
Regardless, Lindsey is correct, we are not God, the State is not God, none has a direct apprehension of God (certain mystics are a separate case) and no man can compel another to believe in his God his way.
In all seriousness, I think you missed the point. The philosophy of Classical Liberalism is the basis for our inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is making the case that whether or not you believe in God, these are the minimum requirements for a functional society where all live safely and, by their own efforts, happily.
Well, everyone has well articulated educational responses. I am going to just say this in very simple terms. We are living in unprecedented times.
We are at a time where we will see evidence of the existence of God and people like James will be forever changed. God is real and He is Spirit and Truth. James is half way there, He is walking in God’s TRUTH, I can’t wait when he will be hit with the Spirit of God just like the apostle Paul. James is a brilliant man and it is only a matter of time when he will realize that it all came from God and I believe God will supernaturally bring him up to speed with the Word of God and man, he will be a POWERHOUSE to contend with!
And… this is all in comparison to Marxism (and the occult hermetic traditions before it) which explicitly teach, and deeply believe, that humans are our own gods, capable of shaping reality itself to our wills.
The original post states: “Because our right to our own property is inalienable, so is our right to do with our property what we will SO LONG AS IT doesn’t violate the inalienable rights of others.”
And this one caveat renders the rest of Classical Liberalism nearly useless in a practical sense.
Because there are always Emergencies where your use of property and commerce involving said property will “violate the inalienable rights of others.” Climate change, for example. Operating within the structure of institutional systemic racism, for example. And on and on.
A small group of people armed with propaganda and one of these unlimited and unending “Emergencies” has every means within the framework of Classical Liberalism to create a completely intrusive government that controls every aspect of our lives. And once the government becomes immense and super complex, who can really tell if the rule of law is being followed, especially since “innocent mistakes” will happen even in the best of systems.
You figure out a way to limit the government and defend Classical Liberalism even with these supposed existential Emergencies and then I’ll believe it to be a useful concept. Otherwise, it’s just more philosophical mumbo jumbo.
@Bret,
Our legitimate, morally inalienable rights that each of us possess are as follows:
The right to self-ownership; personal liberty; bodily autonomy; intellectual freedom; freedom of speech and assembly; peacefully acquired property of any type and quantity; privacy; self-defense; the keeping and bearing of any type and quantity of weapons; freedom of association; freedom of non-association, including peaceful discrimination for any reason whatsoever; and freedom of contract.
The source, and thus the legitimacy, of all of these rights is our essentially human-defining and exclusively human ability to reason and volitionally control our thinking and physical action.
Objective, i.e. reality/fact-based law, therefore, just and morally sound law, upholds and defends these rights. If government exists, this can be its only purpose in a free and civilized society: to protect and defend these rights.
Since these rights are legitimate, they do not conflict with each other, even in an emergency.
For elaboration, please read “The Ethics of Emergencies” by Ayn Rand.
The two examples you present as emergencies are not so by an objective definition of the concept, which is an unchosen, unexpected event, limited in time, that creates conditions under which human survival is impossible—such as a flood, an earthquake, a fire, a shipwreck.
It is humanly possible to address emergencies without violating legitimate individual rights; but if circumstances result in their violation, it is just and ethical for the violators to make full restitution to those whose legitimate rights they have violated. For example: breaking into people’s property and stealing food, clothing, medicine, etc., i.e., violating private property rights, morally necessitates making full restituion to the property owners, or to their estates if they are deceased.
Emergencies do not trump or negate legitimate individual rights, and objective law limits government solely to the protection and defense of those rights. This is the essence of Classical Liberalism.
I think that James is implying when he states “SO LONG AS IT doesn’t violate the inalienable rights of others.” he is referring to slavery. Which did violate the inalienable rights of thers.
I’m with Dr. John Clauser on “Climate Change” (aka weather)– Dr. John Clauser, Nobel laureate in Physics 2022, recently made a notable statement: “the climate narrative is a dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and the well-being of billions of people.”
This has to be one of, if not the best and most comprehensive, manifestos on Classical Liberalism ever conceived. As a Christian Conservative who believes that a proper Liberal stance straddles both sides of the Centre, not sitting on the fence, but seeking to engage both Left and Right, this also serves as a near perfect template (because perfection only comes from God, and we are not God) for the constitution of an ordered society and the positive pursuits which inform and flow out from that.
It also cuts the legs off more radical expressions, both Right and Left, like Marxism (in all its manifestations) and Libertarianism. Once you compromise on the principles outlined here, however slight, you have crossed the line on all.
The only point I would draw attention to is the distinction between God and Nature as organising principles and higher powers. As Nature is not in and of itself a higher power, being subject to the organising principles of what we call the Laws of Nature, then Nature cannot stand as an alternative to God as either higher power or organising principle. Neither can it be an object of worship. Thus, the Laws of Nature point logically to a higher organising power than Nature, whose identity, as it points even higher than the high principles outlined here, should logically be the highest subject of every person’s focus and pursuit, as it goes even beyond the principles outlined so comprehensively here, and as James Lindsay shows, it also is fundamental to their operation.
The entirety of your third paragraph is a commission of the Fallacy of Rewriting Reality by positing what is, in fact, a false dualistic metaphysics, by claiming that reality comprises two dimensions of existence: a natural/material one, and a supernatural/immaterial one, the latter being REAL, TRUE reality, and the former being an inherently a defective emanation, an intrinsically base/filthy/sinful, unreal reality BECAUSE it is natural/material.
This false metaphysical dualism lies at the heart of practically every religion throughout human history. In practice, it has led inevitably, invariably to every expression of tyranny, misery, and destruction that human beings have suffered.
Its becoming clear that for thousands of years humans wanted and needed moral certainty & that the elite would forever educationally polarised this so it it would be tenderised for multi tasking it. We have a sketchy idea that is the truth surrounding what really went on due to religion. No data as really dear COL – the post truth is a pre truth and a present one whether we accept that phenomenology or not. And not because natural selection or ‘A GOD’ somehow designed that <<< NO NEED = Ockams etc blah. Because the fucking elite have always been there to route matters into the sidings
James tried to pin this down by assigning it the name 'Gnosticism' as if at birth rather than deal with a profound cosmological duality like god & evil. James is now a kind of rapidly catching up 'retard' / great white hope in a way, by a cruel arrested development via new atheism fused with being brought up well. Not fatal its seemed & clearly his brain can be clean out like Niki Lauda had his lungs irrigated. Lindsay had a terrible brain injury accident with new atheism thats best forgotten. Groomed ? yes – by the writings of new atheism and his band of misanthropic bandido's. What could be more typical and illustrative of the problem today than persons of such average intelligence as those four horse twits of the 'END' & that dimwit metaphysical philosopher they have creeping around. Their ability was faked and the sense of knowledge 'grunt' i.e the supposed super human I.Q. of these absolutely mediocre jerks was actually state backing / marxist reification hidden behind them. Thus stupid sized budget @ 'getfananatics' is probably involved in order to smooth this problem of a brain like that of Dawkins ( just for instance there ) & what his fanatics think it can do.
Which is like leave the solar system & get the 4.2 lights years easily they – his ludicrous fanatics – think. When actually lands end to john o groats might be too much for that not too impressive neuro.
''This false metaphysical dualism lies at the heart of practically every religion throughout human history. In practice, it has led inevitably, invariably to every expression of tyranny, misery, and destruction that human beings have suffered''
Far be it from me COL for i speak not to challenge but from conscience best i know it upon one like me . Your statement is True but will be falsified by the post truth algorithms in force. This our position cannot be facilitated but absolute statements good kind COL. They can move their synthesised 'TRUTH'. This is one of the reasons they have
SPLIT.
They split COL.
This means a much smaller intensified ELITE that can either understand their own ever shifting sands ( or let the old girl or man shift em & update at some point ) – are showing how much they care about a MASS they haven't snuffed out by a deliberate war. Well till now – until they do
RIGHT ?
Do 'I' i.e me blame them ? In some way NO. I do hope theres no transposition to de-population via a resort to a continental wars thats overpaid ( for it ) by looting that continent. But the literal problem as of today NO. We are living in a period of time where the elites can see what the peasants are accusing them of. And FACT ? – for every allegation 'the people make' – they'll avenge them 1000 fold.
Well perhaps / who really knows. There is REVENGE INVOLVED against the people certainly.
This race has learned how to deal with critique, but it does not suit agenda very often COL. The ELITE have mainly sub contracted its logical explosions to persons it considered able to receive them. In that sense Socrates – Kant – Heidegger – Descartes are a few.
I find a kind of libidinous folly stretched resurgence for Descartes amusing at present. People like Levin on YT doing Taoist physics and giving the mind body problem a pardon etc. Why funny ? – because that of Descartes or any other mind body issue ( he's just blamed summarily for all ) – never was a issue or matter of substances to condemn given such thing simply are not soluble thus only an idiot ( like richard dawkins ) – needs to treat such inquiries as if
HUMANS need to be OFFENDED by DESCARTES
The need just did nor exist and the psychotic effort to do it are telling of either that mans mental problems or unhealthy involvement with those who will deceive.
WE did not need to be offended by Descartes – he only pointed out the matters differential equations at a point in time that the language and numbers were not there to help.
COL – none of us from this position want to do that mate.