Philosophy Now Forum

Think about Isaiah Berlin Hedgehog and the fox.....

whereas the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows
one big thing...

so we can make some more sense of this if, if we think about liberals
and conservatives....Liberals believe in the many, in multiculturalism,
in the multiview's of all, in democracies, truth is found in the many,
not just in the one.... or to say it in one line, liberals are foxes...
and conservatives believe in the one, they believe in dictatorships
or monarchies, and they hate multi anything... or to put in in one line,
conservatives are a hedgehog...

and you can see this in liberals support of gays, trans, of minorities,
the rainbow flag, of the "woke" culture, of being pro-choice, of
being supportive of the choices people make in terms of our personal
choices....right and wrong is subjective.. and these are just a few
of the ways that liberals "roll"

and conservatives believe in the one, one love, one state, one church,
one culture and one society...and anything outside of the "one" is
forbidden, unwanted, even prosecuted,..

and my choice is quite clear... I stand with the many, the possibilities,
with choices for all.... for me, life is fluid, flowing, mobile, unstable,
restless, active...... a moving feast for all.... and not just for the one....

and therein lies the crisis for our time.... my beliefs are fluid and ever moving
and the conservative beliefs are fixed and set and based on the validity
of the one... whereas I believe in the many....
many beliefs, many people, many values, many hopes and many possibilities...

and this battle for the soul of America and in turn the world is bounded
by our two different belief systems, of the beliefs of the fox and the belief of
the hedgehog... the values of the one vs the values of the many...

the "truth" has many possibilities says the liberal and the truth has
but one meaning, one possibility says the conservative....

once we have a definitive answer, the many or the one, we shall be at
peace once more...

Kropotkin

and in light of this understanding that the conservative holds
to the one, you may recall that conservatives hold to the
understanding of the one, the belief that values have
a universal understanding... whereas liberals don't hold
to universal values..... there is no such thing as universal
values to a liberal and that is all there is to a conservative...
there are only universal values for a conservative....

the conservative says morality is a universal value... in which
god gave us morality.. given in the book of glad tidings...
but morality isn't universal.. it is both a cultural and social
construct.. there is no such thing as a universal morality...
the one vs the many... so says the liberal.....

Kropotkin

and we can work out various approaches to this question
of the one vs the many in science, education, philosophy,
politics, law, history and religion to name a few areas....

we can think of history in light of this question, one vs many...
the expansion of rights from the one to the many in the political,
from monarchies to democracies is one example...the move
from theological thinking to scientific thinking...from philosophy
being about ''schools'' from the ''Kantian'' or the ''Nietzschean''
school to whatever the hell we have today...even in Existentialism,
we can see a focus on the many, not on the one....
which is to say on values, not on individual beliefs...

The modern age is a pluralistic, scientific, multifaceted world...
and that is why the conservative is alienated and disconnected
from our modern world... it is, in large part, a liberal world..
where the one is rejected in terms of the many... ...

the modern revolt is from the right, not the left....
and proof of this lies in our modern world of the GOP/MAGA
parties... who is desperately trying to remake the world into
what once was, not what might be or is, but was once true....

Kropotkin