MODERN ERRORS: #1 Arguing In The Margins

   Everyone has heard the axiom "...the exception defines the rule...". Well that's all changed in contemporary thought. In today's marketplace of ideas "...the exception IS the rule...". This is the result of what I call 'arguing in the margins' of a given case or about all cases in general. This manner of argumentation has become mainstream as the evidence is overwhelming. The random passing atheist sees a religious shrine on a distant hill and convinces the rest of a willing society that such a sight is so offensive to him/her that it must be removed over the objection of the surrounding citizens that put it there. You can't schedule a Christmas party because it may offend non-Christian guests. You can't debate the social ethics of homosexual marriage because such a debate may be taken as mean and hateful homophobic speech.  You can't disagree with the 'consensus' of some climate change scientists because you're wrong and the debate is over. You have to show an valid ID to bag groceries but carefully chosen illegal residents need no valid ID to receive welfare benefits, drive a car or even vote. They are protected 'exceptions' to the rule of law. Even in the Vatican, some Cardinals argue that adulterous Catholics should receive the Eucharist because exceptions need to be made to canon law for otherwise 'good' Catholics. Rioters burning down neighborhoods responding to shooting deaths by police chant "No justice. No Peace! meaning their exceptional view of justice and their biased view of peace where they can have "Everything for everybody!" . 

   There seems to be no limit to the list of 'exceptions' that are now argued as the rule and the rule is thereby tossed. Change, that vague, ambiguous, arbitrary and capricious political pablum, is now viewed as the sole justification for the tail wagging the dog in our life of ideas and certainly in our social policy adjudication. In short, if your personal and exceptional peccadilloes are not instantiated as binding public policy, then no peccadillo can be instantiated. Each individual has now become the 'majority of one' ruling the many. 

   How did this happen? How did the western culture turn from accepting objective principles and values for ethical behavior and moral actions to a slouching surrender to "God is dead. Everything is permissible." There is a long trail of philosophical, historical, psychological and sociological influences  that account for the diametric swing in the opposite direction

   The tempting short answer is to blame...'cultural relativism'. But that would beg the question for how did modern cultural relativism come to command contemporary ethical debates? Some shallow commentators say it was the '60's'. Yes, they insist, the Beatles, the hippies, the free love movement, rock-and-roll, porn, drugs and even the election of JFK. But this also begs the question for how did these cultural and political events come to pass? Certainly they did not happen by chance. Whose ideas paved the way and set the stage for the notion that "...it's all about me..."?

   Drilling down to the origins of marginal argumentation requires going back at least a few hundred years to find those philosophical seeds that blossomed centuries after they were thought. Here's my partial list with dates and links to Wikipedia entries on each. It will be very difficult for you to understand how the exceptions have become the rule if you are not familiar with at least an overview of these thinkers that others used to craft arguing in the margin as the new tool for justification of any notion.

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   Modern Philosophy

• Auguste Comte (1798–1857). Social philosopher, positivist.
• William Whewell (1794–1866).
• James Mill (1773–1836). Utilitarian.
• P.J. Proudhon (1809–1865). Anarchist.
• Bernard Bolzano (1781–1848).
• Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882). Transcendentalist, humanist.
• Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872).
• Max Stirner (1806-1856). Anarchist.
• Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871). Logician.
• John Stuart Mill (1806–1873). Utilitarian.
• Charles Darwin (1809–1882).
• Margaret Fuller (1810–1850). Egalitarian.
• Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855). Existentialist.
• Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862). Transcendentalist, pacifist, abolitionist.

1850-1900 CE

• Sojourner Truth (c. 1797–1883). Egalitarian, abolitionist.
• Karl Marx (1818–1883). Socialist, formulated historical materialism.
• Harriet Taylor Mill (1807–1858). Egalitarian, utilitarian.
• Friedrich Engels (1820–1895). Egalitarian, dialectical materialist.
• Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet (1788–1856).
• J. S. Mill (1806–1873). Utilitarian.
• Hermann Lotze (1817–1881).
• Herbert Spencer (1820–1903). Nativism, libertarianism, social Darwinism.
• John Venn (1834–1923).
• Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906). Feminist.
• Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876). Revolutionary anarchist.
• Franz Brentano (1838–1917). Phenomenologist.
• Henry Sidgwick (1838–1900). Rationalism, utilitarianism.
• Richard Dedekind (1831–1916).
• W. K. Clifford (1845–1879). Evidentialist.
• Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914). Pragmatist.
• Edward Caird (1835–1908). Idealist.
• Ernst Mach (1838–1916). Philosopher of science, influence on logical positivism.
• T.H. Green (1836–1882). British idealist.
• Gottlob Frege (1848–1925). Influential analytic philosopher.
• Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911).
• Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). Naturalistic philosopher, influence on Existentialism.
• Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) (1832–1898).
• Bernard Bosanquet (1848–1923). Idealist.
• Giuseppe Peano (1858–1932).
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902). Egalitarian.
• David George Ritchie (1853–1903). Idealist.
• Émile Durkheim (1858–1917). Social philosopher.
• William James (1842–1910). Pragmatism, Radical empiricism.
• Josiah Royce (1855–1916). Idealist.
• F.H. Bradley (1846–1924). Idealist.
• Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923). Social philosopher.
• Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929). Social philosopher.
• Sigmund Freud (1856–1939). Creator of psychodynamic philosophy of mind.
• Max Weber (1864–1920). Social philosopher.
• Henri Bergson (1859–1941).
• John Dewey (1859–1952). Pragmatism.
• Alexius Meinong (1853–1920). Logical realist.
• Cook Wilson (1849–1915).
• Henri Poincaré (1854–1912).
• Pierre Duhem (1861–1916).
• Edmund Husserl (1859–1938). Founder of phenomenology.
• Samuel Alexander (1859–1938). Perceptual realist.
• Jane Addams (1860–1935). Pragmatist.
• Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison (1856–1931).
• G.E. Moore (1873–1958). Common sense theorist, ethical non-naturalist.
• Benedetto Croce (1866–1952).
• Carl Jung (1875–1961). Founded analytical psychology.
• Emma Goldman (1869–1940). Anarchist.
• Hans Vaihinger (1852–1933). Specialist in counterfactuals.
• Rosa Luxemburg (1870–1919). Marxist political philosopher.
• Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936).
• Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913). Linguistic structuralist.
• J. M. E. McTaggart (1866–1925). Idealist.
• George Herbert Mead (1863–1931). Pragmatism, symbolic interactionist.
• Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947). Logician.
• Martin Buber (1878–1965). Jewish philosopher, existentialist.

1900-2000 CE[edit]

• George Santayana (1863–1952). Pragmatism, naturalism; known for many aphorisms.
• Bertrand Russell (1872–1970). Analytic philosopher, atheist, influential.
• Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951). Analytic philosopher, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, influential.
• Giovanni Gentile (1875–1944). Idealist and fascist philosopher.
• Georg Lukács (1885–1971). Marxist philosopher.
• C. D. Broad (1887–1971).
• A.O. Lovejoy (1873–1962).
• W.D. Ross (1877–1971). Deontologist.
• Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955). Christian evolutionist.
• Nikolai Berdyaev (1874–1948). Existentialist.
• Hans Kelsen (1881–1973). Legal positivist.
• Moritz Schlick (1882–1936). Founder of Vienna Circle, logical positivism.
• Otto Neurath (1882–1945). Member of Vienna Circle.
• Frank P. Ramsey (1903–1930). Proposed redundancy theory of truth.
• Ernst Cassirer (1874–1945).
• Nicolai Hartmann (1882–1950).
• Karl Barth (1886–1968).
• Walter Terence Stace (1886–1967)
• Martin Heidegger (1889–1976). Phenomenologist.
• Jacques Lacan (1901–1981). Structuralism.
• Kurt Gödel (1906–1978). Vienna Circle.
• Ralph Barton Perry (1876–1957).
• Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937). Marxist philosopher.
• Roman Ingarden (1893–1970). Perceptual realist, phenomenalist.
• C.I. Lewis (1883–1964). Conceptual pragmatist.
• Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962).
• A.J. Ayer (1910–1989). Logical positivist, emotivist.
• Friedrich Waismann (1896–1959). Vienna Circle. Logical positivist.
• Jacques Maritain (1882–1973). Human rights theorist.
• José Ortega y Gasset (1883–1955). Philosopher of History.
• Xavier Zubiri (1898-1983). Materialist open realism.
• Alfred Tarski (1901–1983). Created T-Convention in semantics.
• Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970). Vienna Circle. Logical positivist.
• Walter Benjamin (1892-1940). Marxist. Philosophy of language.
• H.L.A. Hart (1907–1992). Legal positivism.
• Willard van Orman Quine (1908–2000).
• Brand Blanshard (1892–1987).
• E. Nagel (1901–1985). Logical positivist.
• Karl Popper (1902–1994). Falsificationist.
• Ernest Addison Moody (1903–1975).
• Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980). Humanism, existentialism.
• Gilbert Ryle (1900–1976).
• H.H. Price (1899–1984).
• Susanne Langer (1895–1985).
• J.L. Austin (1911–1960).
• Albert Camus (1913–1960). Absurdist.
• Mortimer Adler (1902–2001).
• Karl Jaspers (1905–1982). Existentialist.
• Ayn Rand (1905–1982). Objectivist, Individualist.
• C.L. Stevenson (1908–1979).
• Theodor Adorno (1903–1969). Frankfurt School.
• Alan Turing (1912–1954). Functionalist in philosophy of mind.
• H.A. Prichard (1871–1947). Moral intuitionist.
• Gabriel Marcel (1889–1973). Christian existentialist.
• Leo Strauss (1899–1973). Political Philosopher.
• Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979). Frankfurt School.
• Simone Weil (1909–1943).
• Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986). Existentialist, feminist.
• J. L. Mackie (1917–1981). Moral skeptic.
• Allan Bloom (1930–1992). Political Philosopher.
• Donald Davidson (1917–2003).
• P. F. Strawson (1919–2006).
• R. M. Hare (1919–2002).
• John Rawls (1921–2002). Liberal.
• Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995). Post-structuralism
• Frantz Fanon (1925–1961). Post-colonialism
• Michel Foucault (1926–1984). Structuralism, Post-structuralism, Postmodernism, Queer theory.
• Hilary Putnam (born 1926).
• David Malet Armstrong (born 1926).
• John Howard Yoder (1927–1997). Pacifist.
• Noam Chomsky (born 1928).
• Jürgen Habermas (born 1929).
• Jaakko Hintikka (born 1929).
• Alasdair MacIntyre (born 1929). Aristotelian.
• Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995).
• Jacques Derrida (1930–2004). Deconstruction.
• Richard Rorty (1931–2007). Pragmatism, Postanalytic philosophy.
• Robert Nozick (1938–2002). Libertarian.
• John Searle (born 1932).
• Alvin Plantinga (born 1932). Reformed epistemology, Philosophy of Religion.
• Jerry Fodor (born 1935).
• Thomas Nagel (born 1937).
• Alain Badiou (born 1937).
• Saul Kripke (born 1940).
• David K. Lewis (1941–2001). Modal realism.
• Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (born 1942). Post-colonialism, Feminism, Literary theory
• Derek Parfit (born 1942).
• Slavoj Žižek (born 1949). Hegelianism, Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis
• Judith Butler (born 1956). Poststructuralist, feminist, queer theory
• Joxe Azurmendi (born 1941). Basque Philosopher, Political philosophy, Social philosophy,Philosophy of language
• Charles Taylor (born 1931). Political philosophy, Philosophy of Social Science, and Intellectual History
• Giorgio Agamben (born 1942). state of exception, form-of-life, homo sacer, and the concept of biopoltics

   Subsequent posts will refer to this list of influences on contemporary sources of relativism thanks to research being done by my colleague, Matthew Bixby. His blog, http://whythink.net/ is pulbished weekly on the general topic of "Why Philosophy Matters" and is highly receommended for it's ease of understanding and penetrating insight applying philosophy to our everyday human lives.

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