Kenneth Minogue (1930-2013) The Liberal Mind (1963)
Chapter four: Moral and Political Evasions
II.: The Lure of the Positive Approach
…The welfarist energetically creating sequences of political changes designed to improve the society we live in suffers a double-pronged hazard. The first prong results from the fact that, like all individuals, he is complicated. Often no one is more distressed than he at the growth of philistinism and anaesthetic popular culture-indeed, he often takes it far too seriously, distressed at a world in which literacy simply means being able to read advertising slogans. Yet he is often the last to realize what he is doing to weaken social institutions that might better combat this philistinism. His right hand hates what his left hand is doing.
<...> The second prong of this hazard is that while the welfarist is concerned with vague general ends, it is in fact the means which are crucial in society-for the simple reason that the ends are never reached. Especially where the end is vague and utopian, the politician will be particularly liable to misunderstand the actual implications of his work. How many visionaries have unwittingly prepared a hell on earth because their gaze was stubbornly fixed on heaven? And when hell comes-well, there is always some ad hoc theory of sinister interests or Judas-like betrayal to extricate the theorist from his disaster.
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The view that it is the peculiar duty of philosophers and scientists to help improve the world is untenable.