Talk:Neoclassical philosophy
From the Quicksilver Metaweb.
It would be best to resolve all those empty links.
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism (sometimes rendered as Neo-Classicism) is the name given to distinct movements in the visual arts, literature and music.
Visual and literary neoclassicism
In visual art, neoclassicism began as a reaction against the Baroque, and a desire to return to perceived "purity" of the arts of Ancient Greece and Rome, and to a lesser extent the examples of Renaissance Classicism.
Neoclassicism first gained influence in France in the 17th century, and continued to be a major force in art through the 19th century and beyond, although from the late 19th century on has often been considered anti-modern or even reactionary in some art circles.
Noted neoclassical artists have included painter Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres and sculptor Antonio Canova. Neoclassical architecture includes the Smith Tower. Known writers of the period have included Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope and John Dryden.
Yes, the current communal entry is choppy - it's tying together some disparate sources.
Can you agree with this: the Roman Empire under Marcus Aurelius, the Renaissance especially in Italy as documented in The Discourses by Niccolo Machiavelli, and modern neoclassical economics share very similar assumptions. They are all challenged by something called in each age Celtic, Baroque, and Gaian perspectives. These have much in common, most notably humour, refocus on some "body" which is not the vague national body of The Empire, rejection of a common Imperial concept of "Man" which may exclude women, slaves, workers, apes, or whatever a body view might say is valuable but not part of the Empire's power structure.
Here's another view from the 20th century perspective:
Neoclassical philosophy is the basis of neoclassical economics and its variants in 20th-century political economy. It is in turn based on key ideas: falsification, Aristotelian logic and Plato's ontology. Moving past it is thought critical by advocates of any post-apocalyptic economics. Strict adherence to it is a foundation of market theology.
From the 1960s to present, there have been many challenges to both the neoclassical philosophy and its chief rival, Marxism. For instance, modern cognitive science of mathematics also rejects Plato's ontology but embraces many elements of his method. Karl Popper asserted a strict form of Aristotelian logic and attempted to avoid any ontology at all. This is considered ridiculous by Seventh Millenium theorists not least because such an attempt ineviably leads to assuming God's eye view, and significant subject-object problems only resolving by some authority.
It is just this problem which Ludwig von Mises, Ayn Rand, Alan Greenspan, Friedrich Hayek, Bertrand Russell and other influences on late-20th-century political economy failed to resolve. Some were close to Popper. They were uniform in rejecting Wittgenstein's concept of point of view to embrace Popper's unconcern with the means of the disproof itself. They would also likely have rejected any philosophy of action or the body, e.g. that of Michel Foucault. As Foucault himself made note of:
Today it is the body, bodily harm, bodily action, that are seen as the basis of truth. A medical definition of truth, for instance, requires that advocating purposeless risk to the body, e.g. smoking, be defined as propaganda. This view however often places the doctor in the authority position, e.g. as in psychiatry, in tension with markets or political authority itself. Thus neoclassical philosophy is often advocated by conservative movements who seek to offset professional or expert "institute" hegemony. Thomas Szasz, a psychiatrist leader of the anti-psychiatry movement (!) is another key figure of the neoclassical philosophy in the USA.
Fairly obviously, all these view of philosophy refer back to some authority, at the least, that which funded the medical or other professional education, or that which regulates the market by force.
There are many alternative views. The radical postmodern view is that it is the body itself which performs falsification, e.g. as in the theories of Carol Moore which are themselves based on systems view of Gandhi. This view is variously called Seventh Millenium or sometimes The Embodiment and is associated with the anti-globalization movement.
There is also resistance from faith movements. the Islamization of knowledge, like the above, rejects not just Plato's ontology but the epistemology and logic inherited from Aristotle - these were rejected from Islam in the 11th century! For this reason one might call globalization an infidel philosophy or at best archaic, a direct descendant of that which led to the original Roman Empire. This is of course the origin of the adjective neoclassical, which suggests a revival of pre-Christian, pre-Islamic, anti-Celtic, views, and some imperialism but in a watered-down form that tries to restrict itself to "protecting property".
Advocates of fact and truth cannot reasonably avoid taking some position on these philosophical issues, thus a theory of propaganda must address these questions quite directly, and take positions on them which are conceivably subject to disproof. For instance, in the politics of Gandhi and Moore and related anti-globalization and embodiment theory, the disproof of globalized market policies' fairness is quite literally provided by the number of bodies non-violently protesting in the street, not co-operating, and building other intitutions. This contrasts the neoclassical focus on buying decisions:
In the United States, the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Cato Institute have been commonly accused of promoting a narrow form of neoclassical philosophy often called market theology. As Richard W. Behan writes:
"Dating at least to the publication of Milton Friedman^3s Capitalism and Freedom in 1962, a messianic conviction has taken hold in some quarters that governments suppress individual freedom and markets maximize it. The idea dates from the late 1800s, and that^3s why the movement to advance it is known as neoliberalism^xbut the referent word here is ^2liberty^ (as in ^2libertarian^). Neoliberalism has nothing to do with progressive political thinking: it is archconservative to the core."
Thus, the less confusing, more fundamental and more accurate term neoclassical, which refers to assumptions not goals, is preferred. This term implies: * a correspondence to, and justification of, neoclassical economics * a revival of "classical" philosophy and professions from Ancient Greece, and their universal authority via imperialism and celebrity methods of Ancient Rome. * no confusion with "liberal" and no use of "classical liberal" labels * a rejection of faith movement and embracing of market-oriented morality.