The Statesman's Manual by S.T. Coleridge

The comprehension, impartiality, and far-sightedness of Reason, (the Legislative of our nature) taken singly and exclusively, becomes mere visionariness in intellect, and indolence or hard-heartedness in morals. It is the science of cosmopolitism without country, of philanthropy without neighbourliness or consanguinity, in short, of all the impostures of that philosophy of the French revolution, which would sacrifice each to the shadowy idol of All. For Jacobinism is monstrum hybridum, made up in part of despotism, and in part , of abstract reason misapplied to objects that belong entirely to experience and the understanding.

(from The Statesman's Manual by S.T. Coleridge publ 1816)

As far as the French Revolution was concerned every day was commination day. The Reason as Coleridge understood it was the abstracting generalising power and the Understanding was the discovery of its principles as embodied in the particular. Now the elevation of the Reason as the supreme arbiter of the life of man, in short in the cliche of the moment, evidence based reasoning, leads to a confounding of the creative spirit which goes beyond what is presently construed as evidence. It is the individual anomaly that moves us forward to a new vision.

In Singerism the plight of the Chinese peasant ought to move us as much as the local indigent, because both are persons worthy of our attention. To feel more for one than the other is a prejudice that ought to be discarded. Animal suffering is suffering and we are guilty of speciesism if we balk at such assimilation.

I see that we are back to whiggery again. S.T.C. and W.B.Y. would not have agreed on the further reaches of the uncanny and he would likely have dismissed as mere visionariness A Vision. He writes:

Yet this again yet even Religion itself, if ever in its too exclusive devotion to the specific and individual it neglects to interpose the contemplation of the universal changes its being into Superstition, and becoming more and more earthly and servile, as more and more estranged from the one in all, goes wandering at length with its pack of amulets, bead-rolls, periapts, fetisches, and the like pedlary , on pilgrimages to Loretto, Mecca, or the temple of Jaggernaut, arm in arm with sensuality on one side and self-torture on the other, followed by a motly group of friars, pardoners, faquirs, gamesters, flagellants, mountebanks, and harlots.

Deadly Intent

I’ve been looking at the discussion on the related topics of why utilitarianism is detested and why Peter Singer is creepy.(timber 'Creepy’ good American word which I was surprised to find in a story of Edith Wharton’s from her collection Men and Ghosts. It has almost a prochronistic effect, but there it is, meaning in that case uncanny. In the Singer case it would refer to the shudder of distaste caused by rebarbative opinions unswervingly held with specious logic and requisite banality. His near perfect mastery of emotional cues is evinced by his serious discussion with a severely disabled person about the rational utility of her never having been born or if having somehow escaped screening should have as a neonate been put down.

His challenge to the logic of the intent of the dominant view of the Timberites is the kernal of the unease which they feel with him. Utilitarianism is after all about intent. As presented by Singer it would depreciate immediate intuitions of right and wrong. They are distractions from correct evaluation. Here is this compromised neonate which challenges your stated intent. Wouldn’t it be better for all concerned if they were painlessly killed? It’s all about intent and remote effects. Anything else is just culture.

The Depth of Singer's Pond

I’m looking at this post:
rescue rule
and wondering whether or not there is behind it some ironic intent some manner of ‘modest proposal’ but there doesn’t seem to be, no it’s just that rationalist sincerity in the following a principle to the brink of absurdity and then over the cliff treading air like the coyote in the cartoon. Neep-neep.

So we are to say to the Chilean or Chinese miners trapped underground sorry about that, Massa Beancounter says that you must left there as the cost of drawing you from live entombment is too great and the money might be better spent on speed traps which would save vastly more lives. Sorry about that chums.

How deep is Singer’s pond, how heavy is the fat man that is to be cast upon the tracks? Hark the unutterable pathos of the violinist!