Benjamin Cain
1 min readNov 23, 2020

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Do you mean to ask how I’d save liberals from nihilism? In my writings I attempt to reconstruct moral values in aesthetic terms (see for example the link below from my blog). Aesthetic values (beauty versus ugliness, originality versus cliché) are arguably objective and not just matters of arbitrary taste, because the aesthetic stance requires detachment from personal or instrumental considerations, which makes this stance comparable to scientific objectivity. This leads to a kind of naturalistic, pantheistic mysticism which takes everything to be mere art (a set of natural creations).

In any case, a more concrete proposal would be that liberals should simply adopt my analysis and identify themselves as humanists, forcing conservatives to show how they’re not effectively just animalists. That would oblige liberals to grapple with the existential problem of what it means to be a person who’s broken free of the animal life cycle.

But there are no easy answers for people as such, which is why conservatives want us to live like animals (as masters and slaves). The existential predicament of how best to live as a liberated creature arises only for people who are implicitly liberal humanists. Animals just have to follow their genetic programming, because they lack the same degree of self-control as people. Freewill alienates us from nature and compels us to create an alternative world, which is the tragedy of being godlike.

http://rantswithintheundeadgod.blogspot.ca/2013/11/life-as-art-morality-and-natures.html

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Benjamin Cain
Benjamin Cain

Written by Benjamin Cain

Ph.D. in philosophy / Knowledge condemns. Art redeems. / https://benjamincain.substack.com / https://ko-fi.com/benjamincain / benjamincain8@gmailDOTcom

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