Sunday, December 14, 2008

The Baselessness of Idealism

La-Bas:

"The halls rose in a pyramid, becoming even more beautiful as one mounted towards the apex, and representing more beautiful worlds. Finally they reached the highest one which was the most beautiful one of all: for the pyramid had a beginning, but one could not see its end; it had an apex, but no base; it went on increasing to infinity. That is (as the Goddess explained) because amongst an endless number of possible worlds there is the best of all, else would God not have determined to create any; but there is not one which has not also less perfect worlds below it: that is why the pyramid goes on descending to infinity."

Monadology, Leibniz

"Some persons are so troubled by some effects of the market order that they overlook how unlikely and even wonderful it is to find such an order prevailing in the greater part of the modern world, a world in which we find thousands of millions of people working in a constantly changing environment, providing means of subsistence for other who are mostly unknown too them, and at the same time finding satisfied their own expectations that they themselves will receive goods and services produced by equally unknown people. Even in the worst of times something like nine out of ten of them will find their expectations confirmed."

The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism, Hayek

1 comment:

Sandra Simonds said...

This Leibniz quote reminds me of this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down

Folk Calculus?