George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair)
1903-1950 · Liberalism · Household name
Eric Blair, writing as Orwell, defended objective truth against a politics that manufactures its own facts. Debased language causes the rot as much as it records it, he argued, and the slide can be reversed. He separated patriotism, a defensive devotion to a place, from nationalism, which puts a chosen unit beyond good and evil. He broke with the pacifists in 1942 and refused sainthood as a human ideal.
Signature
The position Orwell is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Truth
- strongly leans Objective
- Language
- Representation
Positions on the 9 axes the sources answer
- Order
- leans Horizontal (75 on a 0–100 scale from Vertical to Horizontal)
- Ground of Being
- leans Immanence (25 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Truth
- strongly leans Objective (96 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Nature
- leans Harmony (75 on a 0–100 scale from Mastery to Harmony)
- Polity
- leans Liberalism (81 on a 0–100 scale from Illiberalism to Liberalism)
- Ethics
- mildly leans Means (63 on a 0–100 scale from Ends to Means)
- War
- mildly leans Militarism (65 on a 0–100 scale from Pacifism to Militarism)
- Ignorance
- strongly leans Bondage (10 on a 0–100 scale from Bondage to Bliss)
- Conviction
- leans Uncertain (25 on a 0–100 scale from Uncertain to Certain)
11 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Orwell refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Government
- Parliamentary System
What is your ideal form of government? - Good and Evil
- Moral Realism
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Economy
- State Socialism
What is the ideal organization of economic life? - Authority
- Consent of the Governed
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Language
- Representation
What is the fundamental nature of language?