β Scribed by Bruce Baugh
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
In this essay, I use some of the concepts of Jean-Paul Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason I to explain how the arms race, which is constituted by a series of free human actions, can take on "inertia," and so persist despite our desires to be rid of it. Sartrean analysis can reveal the intelligibility of a process in which a series of prima facie rational actions produced a result that no one wanted, the threat of global annihilation. The arms race may also be the product of errors, greed, and even stupidity. But treating the arms race as an unwanted outcome of rational actions gets at the question of what, if anything, rational agents ought to do about it.
Before looking at the arms race, let us look at some simpler cases in order to illustrate three concepts of Sartre's Critique that will figure in my analysis: counter-finality, the practico-inert, and seriality.
π SIMILAR VOLUMES