Econrib’s article by Peter Bettke on “Political Economy, Virginia: The Journey of James Buchanan” shows how political philosophy and economics were enveloped in Buchanan’s work. It also reminded me of the interesting two-part interview with Jeffrey Brennan. The two economists often work together to co-author the Constitutional Political Economy (1985), the reason for the rules, and provide a central constitution and a summary of the constitution. (This classic book is available online. I recently reviewed it for Econlib.)
This video outlines more conversations than technical in 2013 of Dix’s work. In Vray End of the two-hour conversation, Buchanan argues about what he believes. I confessed a departure from methodological individualism, as if the meaning of death and life (or at least his meaning of life) needed a concept. I hope the entire conversation was transcribed simply because the southern accents were not accurately made to the French accent. In my own transcription of that passage below, the ellipse indicates conversational hesitation, detail, or simply unidentifiable words. Buchanan continues on life:
The whole thing might be ridiculous. What is it? …Why are you interested in what happens when I’m not there anymore? In my case, it’s not a general scholar and I don’t have any children. …But I still intervene in it. …It shems it on me – and this moves me a bit away from methodological individualism…we, or at least I feel that I am a kind of member of a tribe, something we might call a tribe for continuing our tribe. And it’s for me that’s participant in that game… it promotes those ideas…and I live as long as the ideas are alive to some degree. I’m part of the stream and, in a way, the stream is on the way. Now, people can keep pushing and keep motivating that stream, or the stream could die, but that’s not the immortality of black people. On the other hand, it transcends human life… it provides meaning to normal life. …The spirit of liberalism, the spirit of classical liberalism, or the spirit of freedom if you wish, can be a kind of justification that somehow alienates this ultimate Absadi of sorts.
There are many great mysteries in the universe that go beyond political philosophy. But whether eternal life exists or not, life is meaningful or absurd, but it is an individual who always experiences life or death. He sang poet Leonard Cohen, “Thu’ Are the Ages Gods or not.”
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Family Farms in Buchanan, Tennessee
