Tuesday, April 1, 2014

I-We and Doing-Having

The thesis that My-Our is derived from I-We expresses the subordination of Having to Doing.  It, likewise, expresses that of Economics to Politics, an ordering that is pervasively inverted, e. g. where Capitalism is taken as 'Democracy', where Socialism degenerates to centralized Communism, and where Theocracy functions to reinforce the distribution of wealth.  The inversion is also at the heart of Mill's ambivalence regarding whether Utilitarianism is a descriptive theory or a prescriptive doctrine.  For, his tinkering with Bentham's version does not transcend Smith's influence on the latter, in which the value of action is determined solely by its outcome.  

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