Sublime

The role of agents and their subjectivity (i.e., the so-called “interior” world of beliefs, emotions, identities, perceptions, etc.) in consciously shaping physical and social worlds has long been a source of tension between realists and idealists. Very generally, realists maintain that there is a world out there that is separate and distinct from

Mill’s insight in this passage has a name: the paradox of egoism. And it has a history, dating back at least to sermons preached by Joseph Butler at the Rolls Chapel in London, which were published as a book in 1726.9

Whatever their conscious motives, these men cannot know why they are as they are. Nor can we account for why we are not like them.

In his magnum opus Human Action, Mises constructs a brilliant vision of how people can best live and work together. He begins by building on the answers to basic questions such as “How do we know things?” and “How do we know what’s true and what’s right?”