It's similar to that philosopher Hegel, we talked about briefly,
when we were talking about what Marx was reacting against.
Hegel has a book called, The Phenomenology of Spirit,
where he talks about different social forms of social organization.
And at one point he describes a master slave society, and he wants,
he Hegel is talking about, why it would be unstable?
And he makes the point, it's not just the slave, who would find it unsatisfactory.
The slave obviously, would, but Hegel says, the master would, as well.
Because the master wants recognition from somebody that the master regards,
as an equal, as somebody worth getting recognition from,
is getting, getting somebody in your power, somebody who's your
slave to say nice things to you isn't going to be satisfying.
So, it's this idea that we have a need to be recognized, to be affirmed by
people who we value, and we would value within a practice because they've
accomplished the, the norms they, they understand from the inside.
So this is, the virtues are embedded in practices, and we always live within
practices, and we have to understand that, and come to grips with them.
So, as he, as he puts it in a nice little summary of his view, he says,
it belongs to the concept of a practice, as I've outlined it.
And as well,
as we are all familiar with it in our actual lives, whether we are painters, or
physicists, or quarterbacks, or indeed just lovers of good painting.
Our first-rate experiments or
a well-thrown pass, that its goods can only be achieved by subordinating
ourselves within the practice in our relationship to other practitioners.
We have to learn to recognize, what is due to whom?
We have to be prepared to take whenever self-endangering risks are demanded along
the way.
And we have to listen carefully to what we are told about our own in,
inadequacies, and to reply with the same carefulness for the facts.
Okay, so this is the basic picture that he has.
We, we're born into these practices.
They're governed goods that are internal to them.
In order to understand them, and to learn how to do well,
with respect to those goods, we have to subordinate ourselves to the practices.
We learn the rules, and then we try to excel.
Yeah.
>> How he then explains or
purpose, how we chose those people who are setting up the practices?
How we know- >> How do we choose them?
>> Mm-hm.
>> So, this is, that's a very well, put question.
He, he says, by and large we don't.
We're born into them.
So, and remember this is a man, who was born into the Catholic tradition that he
rejected, and eventually re-embraced, so
it's some decs, degree you might say, it's a kind of projection.
That, that it, that we can't escape our word, so to speak.
Now, it is true that, that, and I'll say, more about this in a minute,
that he doesn't think we accept them uncritically, right?
So to go back to my example of, of your first college class maybe the, the first
class you come in, and you're nervous, and you say, where do I fit in and so on.
But after you've taken three or four courses, and you have you know,
a 4.0 transcript and you walk into a you know, cla, class in your junior year or
sophomore year, and you, you might at that point say, turn to some of your peers and
say, you know, this could be done better if we change this, that, or the other.
So, so he's not saying, he's, he's not a Burkean reactionary in that sense.
He's saying, we might, we might cha, choose to change the practices we inherit,
but always having first subordinated ourselves to them,
having first embraced where we've come from.
You can't escape your roots.
So to speak.
We are by natural constitution, historical creatures.
So we start from where we are.
We don't start from some magical choice about where we would like to go.
Yeah.