I should note that as far as I know, neither would endorse George’s specific views on human nature. They’re just interesting as important contemporary philosophers who are aiming to rehabilitate Aristotelian views of how nature matters to practical philosophy.

Foot is more readable, at the expense of occasionally being breezy, Thompson is (probably?) more interesting, but also quite obscure. (Fwiw: I don’t think it’s skewed my judgment, but I have taken a course from him).

Speak for yourself, boy.

One cannot help feeling that the new enlightened view of sex is attempting to reverse the relative standing of the two features of a sex act seeing its pleasurable aspect as the top decisive one. A bad mistake that, which may live to regret.

There’s:

Nature (the material world). Antonym of this natural is supernatural. This “natural law” consists of stuff like gravitational force = G*m1*m2/r^2.

Nature (not created or modified by human society). Antonym of this natural is artificial. Earthquakes are natural disasters, nuclear meltdowns are artificial disasters.

Nature (verdance). Antonym of this natural is sterile. This isn’t something people would talk about formally, but informally this meaning of “nature” is sometimes used: a stretch of uninhabited desert in the Empty Quarter of Saudi Arabia might be said “not to have any nature in it,” while a carefully cultivated Zen moss garden might be said to be a “beautiful bit of nature.” Also common as a meaning in High Fantasy games and such: in a fantasy MMORPG or D&D game, a druid who is a “defender of nature” is more-or-less always a “defender of the forest.”

Nature (hierarchical corporatism): Antonym of this natural is perverse, disordered, or something. This is, I think, what George is talking about. The idea is that the interests of society override the interests of individuals — where “society” is conceived not as an aggregation of sociable, mutually interdependent individuals, but as an entity in and of itself, whose interests theoretically might not coincide with a single one of its members. The thought is based on an analogy of society to the body of a multicellular organism, and the analogy of individuals to individual organs or cells. (The conception of individuals joining together to form a larger body analogized to the human body is, of course, the etymological root of the term “corporation.”) Gays, even when they don’t hurt a single other individual, are hurting the body of society as a whole through their failure to perform their assigned role in society.

One might object that 1) this is a stupid way of looking at things, and 2) even if it weren’t, what’s the argument that gays are *actually* harming the abstract corporate body of society as a whole (insofar as society’s interests can even be inferred separately those of individuals), and not merely that some form of sanction *would* be justified against them if they were?

At any rate, hierarchical corporatist arguments seem to a common cross-cultural justification for established powers. The analogy of society to the human body is how the Laws of Manu justify the division of society into Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaisiya, and Shudra varnas. It is how Plato justified the aristocratic hierarchy of Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Iron-souled people in The Republic. It’s how the ancien régime justified division of society into First, Second, and Third estates, etc. Naturally, George is just bashing gays, not calling for a return to manorialism, but I think that’s only because of current circumstances. I’m reminded of Harriet Taylor Mill’s snark about the Chartists: “The chartist who denies the suffrage to women, is a chartist only because he is not a lord; he is one of those levellers who would level only down to themselves.” George is the opposite: he is a homophobe only because he is not a Brahmin; he is a stratifier who would only stratify society up to himself. His corporatist Natural Law arguments are the sort that are always used to justify every form of social stratification.

In the first post, I take apart the discredited Hume-Aristotle distinction on which George still relies.http://wordinedgewise.org/?p=636 It’s as though the advances in neuroscience never happened.