Category: History

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Hannah Arendt grew up in Königsberg, the birthplace and home of Kant. Königsberg was a city built by Teutonic Knights, homes to Dukes of Prussia: a city which found itself on the Russian front during the First World War and which became a port of discharge for Russian Jews fleeing to England and the USA. The city eventually fell to the Russians and was renamed Kaliningrad. Kant may have spent his illustrious life in this city but it was a different city that Arendt lived in. We know that Napoleons troops visited Kant’s grave shortly after his death when Kant’s influence was already on the wane. The troops were unfortunately a sign of things to come in both Königsberg and Europe. The invading force was led by a conqueror with delusions of grandeur and we do not know how much Napoleon knew about the peaceful Philosophy of Kant : a philosophy that would have found the military world empire constructed in the mind of someone possessed of ” a desire of power after power that ceaseth only in death”(Hobbes) to be a regressive historical phenomenon. Men ought to be rational, Kant argued, but they are not, and will not be fully so for another one hundred thousand years. He would not therefore have been surprised by such a regressive phenomenon. The premise that men as a matter of fact are not rational was for him a minor premise that did not define mans nature. Existentialists, however, are prone to promoting this minor premise to the status of a major premise that justifies the rejection of rationalist philosophies such as that of Aristotle and Kant. Arendt’s Philosophy does appear to deny the logical space created by ought premises that are justified by principles(Aristotle) or a moral law(Kant). The basis of such a denial is connected to the contention that Existence precedes essence. This is particularly puzzling in the case of action, a phenomenon which uniquely and self sufficiently causes a state of affairs to come into existence. Such a phenomenon appears to demand the logical space of justification in terms of essence, in terms of rationality.

For Aristotle form equals essence and forms are brought into existence via the activities of sexual reproduction, producing artefacts, doctoring, teaching etc. Each “form” is a principle(hence the connection to essence) directed respectively at the goods of the body, the external world, or the soul. The essence or principle of being a human being or human existence is for Aristotle summarised in his definition “rational animal capable of discourse”. The essence or principle of action is of course connected to mans potential for rationality and well expressed in the Greek term areté that means both “virtue” and ” doing the right thing at the right time in the right way”. Aristotle’s conception of Philosophy has clear systematic intentions and can therefore be summarised in the characterisation “the systematic understanding of the world as a systematic whole”. There is here both a connection to the desire to understand and the activity of reasoning.

Kant’s Categorical Imperative was Kant’s answer to the question “What ought we to do?”. Kant, like Aristotle, is also a critical rationalist and for him critical reason seeks the totality of conditions for both existence and “modes of experience”. Kant suggests that the scope of Philosophy can be defined in terms of four questions which includes the above question as well as the question “What is man?” There are complex relations between all four questions but the relations between the nature of man and his moral choices are explored in both Kant’s writings on Morality and Anthropology. The third of the fourth questions Kant discusses extensively in his first Critique is “What can we know?” and the failure to distinguish this question from the question “What ought we to do?” gives rise to a host of logical fallacies including the naturalistic fallacy which involves arguing that what a man ought to do should refer to what men actually in fact do. If men in fact do not keep promises as they ought to do then this for the moralist inspired by naturalism suffices as an argument that keeping promises is not necessarily what we ought to do. For Kant. for example, the argument that men are not rational animals could never become the major premise of an ethical argument in which particular ought conclusions follow relating to particular promises. For Kant the major premise of an ethical argument must be a universal and necessary ought statement such as “Promises ought to be kept”. In other words being potentially rational animals it is is our categorical duty to keep promises.

Arendt is a fascinating source of reflection upon the premise that “Man is not rational”. It would be no exaggeration to claim that her reflections are modern twentieth century elaborations upon the ancient Greek Prophecy(proclamation) that all things created by man are destined for ruin and destruction. Exhibit number one comes from her early work “The Origins of Totalitarianism”:

“Two world wars in one generation, separated by an uninterrupted chain of local wars and revolutions, followed by no peace treaty for the vanquished and no respite for the victor have ended in an anticipation of a third World War between the two remaining powers. This moment of anticipation is like the calm that settles after all hopes have died. We no longer hope for an eventual restoration of the old world order with all its traditions or for the reintegration of the masses of five continents who have been thrown into a chaos produced by the violence of wars and revolution and the growing decay of all that has still been spared. Under the most diverse conditions and desperate circumstances we watch the development of the same phenomena—homelessness on an unprecedented scale, rootlessness to an unprecedented depth. Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self interest–forces that look like sheer insanity. It is as though mankind had divided itself between those who believe in human omnipotence(who think everything is possible if one knows how to organise masses for it) and those for whom powerlessness has become the major experience of their lives.”(Preface VII, The Origins of Totalitarianism, New York, Harvest Books, 1951)

Over sixty years later these words still stand in judgment over us. Arendt then goes on to sketch three political phenomena that became related in unexpected ways: anti-semiticism, imperialism, and totalitarianism. The way in which these phenomena became a part of our everyday life of course belies what Arendt regards as the myth of Progress and suggests instead the power of Evil on the road to ruin and destruction. Totalitarianism is the logical consequence in political terms of the manipulation of the masses. Arendt describes the leaders of these mass political movements in no uncertain terms: they are cynical realists with a cavalier contempt for the complex texture of political reality. Arendt is clearly in agreement with the Ancient Greek proclamation in relation to the creations of man and the inevitable ruin and destruction of these creations. Her belief in the premise that “Man is not a rational animal” would have caused her to dismiss the Platonic answer to the oracles proclamation, namely that all will be well politically if Philosophers become kings or kings become Philosophers. The Aristotelian solution of educating a large middle class to work for the common good would also have been regarded by her as idealistic.

Arendt’s relation to Marxism is complex. She promised a book on Marx but Jaspers, her doctoral supervisor persuaded her eventually that Marx had respect for neither freedom nor justice. Her work “The Human Condition” contains Marxist themes that perhaps partially explain her antipathy to the rational positions of Aristotle and Kant. This work was interesting, however, in that it sketched a political position motivated by the concept of “action in a public space”. Action we have argued throughout this work is an important component of Philosophical Psychology. Arendt distinguishes in this work carefully between the human activities of labour, work, and action. Labour she claims interestingly, is cyclical and fundamentally connected to the biological life of man. Work has a closer relation to the final product of ones activity and is a more complex activity inserted in a more complex form of life that appears related to higher causes. Action is the highest form of activity and is related to the activity of bringing something new into existence in the complex context of a plurality of competing wills and desires. The Human Condition is also about earth threatening powers(cf Origins of Totalitarianism) that have arisen in our history. Margaret Canovan in the Introduction to this work has the following comment:

“Human animals unconscious of their capacities and responsibilities are not well fitted to take charge of earth-threatening powers. This conjunction echoes Arendt’s earlier analysis of totalitarianism as a nihilistic process propelled by a paradoxical combination of convictions: on the one hand the belief that “everything is possible”, and on the other, that human beings are merely an animal species governed by laws of nature or history, a history in the service of which individuals are entirely dispensable.”(Human Condition P XI)

Note the references to the laws of nature and laws of History. These laws were appealed to by two different totalitarian regimes. In the spirit of cynical realism these regimes appeal to these “false grounds” as justifications and explanations for their programs of domestic terror and foreign conquest. With the disappearance of the Kantian idea of Freedom at the hands of subsequent “revisionist” Philosophers and the claim that all traditional political, religious, and ethical structures have now lost their meaning, there is of course a limited logical space for a new politics demanded by the modern world. Arendt also interestingly defines the modern world differently from the modern age, in terms of the first atomic explosions.

Political action was, of course a key focus for the ethical and political philosophies of both Aristotle and Kant. For Aristotle action was undertaken by the Phronimos, that great souled man who did the right thing in the right way at the right time(areté). It is not entirely clear, however, whether the collapse of tradition Arendt refers to, includes the collapse of the Aristotelian/Kantian logical and normative conditions of political activity. If this is the case then this must include the political science of Aristotle as well as the knowledge needed to design and pass laws. Arendt emphasises, as many other Existentialists have, that in a chain of actions something “new” can always emerge and change the intended consequences of the action. Given the emergence of the phenomenon of totalitarianism this is a reasonable observation to make if one believes that the task of politics and ethics is a historical task, concerned that is with chains of causes and effects that constitute our social reality. The cyclical organic activity of labour and the instrumental activity of work can be described in terms of chains of behaviour that are constituted by logically independent Humean events . Thinking about human activity in terms of causes and effects(consequences) in a context of discovery in which we do not know the effect, leads naturally to the skepticism Arendt voices in relation to our unpredictable futures. The context of discovery is by definition a search for an unknown x. Such an unknown x may lay in the past in which case we will require History to assist us in the search. If we imagine Politics to be the search for a future unknown effect, an unknown x we will certainly be led astray by the context of discovery if we are followers of Aristotle and Kant who both emphasised the context of explanation/justification in both History and Politics. Two of the tasks of the Phronimos or “law-maker” in the civilising process of communities, cities etc is the preparation and writing of laws. These tasks are not the search for an unknown x but rather the justification of what is known to be the case, e.g. that a particular kind of action is right or wrong. An important part of this process is acknowledgment of the major premise of all law-makers, namely that “laws ought to be followed”. We are not in this case dealing with a hypothetical generalisation in the context of discovery of unknown x’s. It would be absurd therefore to suggest that we should be prepared to abandon the law if someone decides not to follow it. Instead, it is an important part of the process of justice that we create and maintain an apparatus to penalise those people that refuse to follow the law. Ethics and the law are obviously related in a number of ways. The Logic of Justification for a particular law is as follows:

“The laws of the land ought to be followed.”

“Laws relating to the purchasing of sex have been recently passed in Sweden.”

Therefore “the law relating to the purchasing of sex ought to be followed”

This law replaced an earlier law in which the ” seller” of sex was the law breaker. The reason for the change in the law was an ethical objection relating to the freedom of the person who was deemed to be the law breaker. Prostitutes are often victims of their circumstances and the violence of others who are forcing them to do what they do. For many the supposed choice does not exist. In this legal context of justification the role of the ought system of concepts is very similar to that which we find in moral contexts:

“Promises ought to be kept”

“Jack promised Jill he would pay the money back he wishes to borrow”

Therefore: “Jack ought to pay the money back”

In this latter context of ethical justification any argument against the major premise or principle of the argument that took the form of pointing out that many in Jack’s position have not kept their promise and never had any intention of doing so, suffices as an argument against the universality of the major premise or principle. Such a position is a confusion of the context of natural explanation with the context of ethical justification. We should also remember that the context of natural explanation involves a normative major premise or what the later Wittgenstein called a norm for representation, for example:

“light travels in straight lines”

In Kantian language the above would be regarded as a disguised principle statement in spite of the fact that it looks like a description of a state of affairs. The Principle is technically expressed as the Principle of the Rectilinear Propagation of Light . Principles are normative for how we conceptualise the phenomena and the circumstances they are about. Historically the above principle emerged from the context of exploration/discovery. The quantification experiments that followed demanded thought in the context of explanation, demanded, that is, reflection upon the cause of the phenomena that were being observed and manipulated. This kind of investigation for Aristotle was what he meant with the term epistemé: the kind of investigation that actualised a number of the powers of the rational animal capable of discourse. The power of perception, for example, discriminates whilst the powers of memory and thought allow what Aristotle calls “basic terms” to emerge in this epistemological process. Kant would largely agree with this account and he regarded it as a part of the architectonic system that he proposed : it was the task of the powers of understanding judgment and reason to construct this account. Whilst this does not logically connect principles and circumstances and phenomena together, it does relate them conceptually. The connections or relations are twofold. Firstly, the application of principles to the phenomena and circumstances is justified if it occurs as a logical condition in a series of premises in which the movement from term to term is logically valid and no category mistake occurs. Secondly, these principles function , to use a term of Ryle’s, as an inference ticket or warrant that licence judgments which are conceptually related to the relevant circumstances.

Ryle’s example of the category mistake that can be made in relation to the concept of “University” can be used to illustrate the above. A University can be defined as :

“A group of scholars engaged in methodical teaching of students and the advancement of research in subjects of a curriculum of historical and contemporary importance to the maintenance and development of civilisation”.

The above.of course implies the physical circumstances of being housed in a complex or series of complexes in which this work can take place. Someone who, for example , upon being shown around a university, campus asks the question “But where is Oxford University?” is making some kind of conceptual mistake. The concept of “university”, in other words is a ground for the judgment “So this is Oxford University”. It is, in Ryle’s words an “inference ticket”. It may in fact be more difficult to define a concept than a principle even if the rule for the use of a concept is “like” a principle. So let us consider instead the principle of Aristotle’s human soul(psuche). His definition of this principle or “form” is “rational animal capable of discourse”. A principle, according to Aristotle is a form which can be characterised by an essence specifying definition. This takes us back to the discussion of the anti-rationalist “judgment” of Existentialism, namely that “Existence precedes essence”. We are not denying that this is a truth in the form of a brute fact: we are merely denying the strategic importance of the “fact” in contexts of explanation/justification. Aristotle acknowledges material existence as a ” material substrate” underlying all physical forms. If the form or principle in question is psuche(animal or rational), then the so called mental powers of rational discourse(understanding, judgment, reason)that arouse skepticism in Existentialists are fundamentally connected to the physical substrate of the body and its principles of physical functioning(the energy regulation principle(ERP) and the pleasure pain principle(PPP)). Rationality is a function of what Freud called the Reality Principle(RP). Part of the epistemic function of this principle is to know what is the case and why, and part of the practical function is to say and do the right thing at the right time in the right way. These three principles form what we will characterise as the “Aristotelian/Freudian architectonic” in the contexts of exploration and explanation/justification.

Aristotle’s system is clearly hylomorphic but this hylomorphism is embedded in a system of metaphysical change that include 4 types of explanation, three epistemic/existential principles and four kinds of change, all of which together establish the kind of Being or Existence we are dealing with in the wider Aristotelian context of the many meanings of Being. We have mentioned several times previously in this work that the Freudian system is similarly hylomorphic and that the ERP, PPP, and RP and their architectonic relation to each other, confirm this claim. There is, however, insofar as Freud is concerned(considering the fact that his writings extend over 50 years) a need to demonstrate that we are indeed dealing with hylomorphism and not a reactionary dualism that might have occurred immediately the “Scientific Project” was abandoned.

For Aristotle it is a kind of necessary truth that existence precedes essence in contexts of physical description and explanation. He would not, however agree with any attempt to characterise this existence independently of principles or forms of existence. This is particularly important in contexts of explanation/justification. In such contexts the why and the how questions require more complex accounts than the mere naming and “descriptions” of Reality. It is interesting to note that Aristotle does not speak about laws as many modern Scientists have been inclined to do in the past. The word “nomos” in Greek is in fact in his Philosophy best associated with the term oikos (which means house, household or family). Nomos in this context means to distribute or allot benefits. Now the laws of the city probably also indirectly distribute benefits but such distribution in this larger context connects nomos to the more abstract term diké(justice). With diké we are also dealing with the establishment of the limits of what can be and cant done in the spirit of fairness(areté).

It can be clearly seen that the above terms nomos, diké, areté are essentially practical ideas but diké does seem to be essentially connected to epistemé(as Plato pointed out). This is an important observation to make if we are to prevent the instrumental term techné from inserting itself in what is essentially a categorical debate in which universality is an important element. Diké raises the level of discourse to principles that transcend experience whilst at the same time retaining some kind of abstract connection to areté. Nomos, on the other hand has a more concrete connection to experience and the utilitarian existential goods of the external world. Diké, in contrast concerns the goods of the soul. For Plato these latter goods must be both good in themselves and good in their consequences. Without this dual requirement in relation to the “technical” activity of the “making” of laws we lose the tie with epistemé and the kind of universalisation that allows us to present essence specifying definitions of human psuche such as ” rational animal capable of discourse”. The kind of knowledge involved must involve principles that transcend empirical experience(which requires the use of the imagination instead of reason and the accumulation of examples in a context of discovery rather than a more conceptual orientation toward a context of explanation/justification). The Greek Philosophers, especially including Aristotle, knew that experience without regulation by principles is chaotic. The man of experience(empeiria) obviously uses a dialectical form of logic to synthesise the opposites that juxtapose themselves comfortably in the imagination. This influence upon law makers should not be underestimated because it is conceivable that laws can be crafted with only consequences in mind and without considering their ethical dimension of the good-in-itself( eg. criminalising the “sellers” of sex). One aim of the law is obviously to prohibit forms of behaviour that cause “chaos” in society, but exclusive focus on the consequences serves merely to deny the so-called law of double effect where one consequence in a chain can be good and a later consequence in the same chain can be bad. The classical example of this is the case of a soldier throwing himself on a hand grenade in a confined space to save his comrades in arms. He saves his comrades and that is a good thing and loses his life which is not. This action has its reasons and it is this that decides that irrespective of the bad consequence and given that this was a choice the soldier made the action was good-in.-itself in virtue of the good-will or good intention behind it(to save his comrades). We might, of course, and perhaps we did, arrive at the same decision via the dialectical logic of the good and the bad(the thesis and antithesis) and reconcile these opposites in our thought about the results of our context of exploration.

Consequentialism is certainly operating in a sense in the decision of the judge to sentence a criminal for his crimes but even here there is an ethical justification behind the whole enterprise of punishing criminals. Were it true for example that a man was always determined to do whatever he does because of external forces the whole institution of punishment would lose its meaning. It is only because we know that the criminal had a choice just as the soldier in the above example had a choice between acting and not acting. Deciding to act for the soldier was doing what he felt he ought to do and that action falls then clearly into the realm of the Kantian ought system of concepts and principles. Kant called his moral principle a moral law in order to emphasise the compelling nature of our duties and commitments. Yet there is also a sense in which in thinking about nomos, distribution of benefits (or burdens), in the sentencing of the crime is done by the calculating part of the mind that is involved in calculating means to ends. This realm for Kant would be the realm of prudential action, the realm of the instrumental or hypothetical imperative(If the person is guilty then he should be given a prison sentence of 5 years). We can then see that the change in the law from criminalising the act of prostitutes to criminalising the person purchasing the sex was an ethical matter relying on the relative freedom of the respective parties. Here we are not using the principle of prudence or the calculating part of our mind but are clearly in the realm of ends in themselves, in the realm of what Plato called the good-in-itself. Both Aristotle and Plato thought that epistemé was involved in this kind of categorical thinking. Epistemé we should recall for Aristotle corresponds both to an area of knowledge(discipline) and a state of mind. He who knows geometry is a geometer and he who knows science is a scientist. (Science, however was a far broader category for Aristotle including both practical and productive science). All three sciences, theoretical, practical and productive have their respective principles and a domain of application. Practical science for example studies voluntary action using principles of the good. Two examples of practical science are ethics which broadly relates to the flourishing life(eudaimonia)of the individual and Politics which relates to the flourishing life of the city. The above reference to the change in the law relating to the purchasing and the selling of sex would have considered both the eudaimonia of the individuals concerned and the eudaimonia of the city. Law making requires epistemé relating to practical science(knowledge of the good as an end-in-itself) and this is what the Phronimos possesses. But is also requires as we have seen knowledge of the instrumental good that is determined by the principle of prudence and involves the calculative parts of our minds. For Aristotle the Phronimos has a duty to preserve the city from ruin and destruction. We should also recall that in this context Aristotle does not regard the city as an artificial, conventional ,almost accidental assemblage of elements. The city is rather an organic entity and demands to be treated as a unity like a soul. The Phronimos is guided by the knowledge that souls or citizens ought to be rational and appreciate that the laws are meant to function like the Kantian categorical imperative. Both Aristotle and Kant are convinced that the potentiality for rationality that is expected of the citizens of a city are part of the essence of a human soul and that there is in a sense no imposition of an arbitrary authority on citizens. Rather the laws are seen to be a part of the actualisation process of both individuals and cities. This is why it is not a contradiction to do as Kant does and imagine a kingdom of ends in which rationality is instantiated in the human species and the expectations of what one ought to do is carried out on the level of morality rather than the law. In such a Cosmopolitan state the laws have become a part of the state of mind of the citizens, embedded in their characters. This kind of city will be a city where almost everyone is a great souled man, a phronimos. Such a citizen would thrive on phronesis, epistemé arché(principle) and areté. In this account we can see more clearly than in Kant the fundamental integration of the philosophical areas of Ethics, Politics, Philosophical Psychology, and Metaphysics.

The point of the above discussion is to emphasise the extent to which the Greeks distinguished clearly between activities regulated by techné and nomos and activities regulated by arche, epistemé and diké in the relam of practical reasoning. The law covers both of these aspects of our practical activity but conflation or confusion of these two aspects, that are related to different parts of our mind, ought to be avoided.

It is important to understand that for Aristotle the polis was the final tribunal of justification and explanation for all things including the duties and responsibilities of individual citizens, families and villages. It is the polis namely that ensures the self sufficiency of all these organic components. The polis is the telos of existence and it is not clear that Kant would have shared this point of view given his commitment to the inability of countries to avoid war and live in peace without some kind of international organisation.

The existentialist would deny the claim that the polis is the telos of human existence. The question we need to ask ourselves is whether Arendt’s thinking is closer to the existentialist position or the Kantian position. What is on the existentialists agenda is to construct a relation to Science that is philosophically defensible. What they mean by science is not however what Aristotle or Kant had in mind when they used that term. This may be partly due to the latinisation of the Greek language which may also be related to a shift on the part of modern sciences from talking in terms of principles and toward talking in terms of laws in a sense closer to nomos than to epistemé. This shift is a shift also toward a rationality or a thought process that is more mathematical and calculative. This is particularly surprising in view of the fact that Kant gave an argument against the possibility of quantifying the activity of thought when epistemé was at issue, i.e. where the telos of this thought activity is truth or knowledge of substantial and qualitative kinds of phenomena in the world. This does not preclude the possibility that insofar as the objects of thoughts that find themselves in the category of the physically or materially quantifiable is concerned, these can of course be subject to the laws of mathematics that, as Plato and Aristotle claimed can lead us toward principles but are not able to proceed from principles.

In the modern world, defined by Arendt as beginning with atomic explosions, we can encounter the Philosophy of the later Wittgenstein resurrecting the distinction between laws and principles. Both laws and principles fall very clearly into what we have been calling the context of explanation/justification but this in no way is meant to diminish the importance of the context of exploration/discovery in the history of the growth of science. Aristotle pointed to the importance of induction in this process where principles grow out of our experience and manipulation of phenomena which scientists like to characterise as “variables”. During the lifetime of Aristotle, Time was measured by the Attic calendar, sundials and water clocks. Indeed the observation of a shadow moving around an object probably gave rise to the idea of a clock face that emerged much later. The original experience that led to the invention of the clock of shadows was probably the observation of the relationship between the sun in the sky and the shadows cast on the earth by various objects. This experience was then connected with a desire to regulate human activity by means of time-spans. Socrates very early on in his career was engaged in the investigation of the nature of the physical world but, after reading a work by Anaxogoras which argued that everything of importance in our life was fundamentally connected to our minds, Socrates subsequently abandoned these kind of investigations in favour of philosophical investigations into the nature of the mind and justice. He is reputed to have said that if he continued his investigations into the nature of the light of the sun, his soul might be blinded. One wonders whether Socrates before he changed his mind about natural science, suspected the existence of the principle of the rectilinear propagation of light. This was clearly something, given the available evidence, that could have been “discovered” from the phenomena associated with the shadow-clock, especially if one was accustomed, as Socrates was to search for the “conditions” of phenomena.

Stephen Toulmin in his work “The Philosophy of Science”(London, Hutchinson University Library, 1953) claims that the kind of inference involved in moving from the phenomena of shadow and light to the principle of the rectilinear propagation of light is not a “discovery-inference” of the kind that is involved in a discovery of phenomena related to the category of “efficient cause”, (e.g. the footprint in the sand that has been caused by the man making it). Here, that is, we can clearly imagine discovering the “cause” as Robinson Crusoe did when he “discovered” man Friday. Toulmin claims that the principe of the rectilinear propagation of light is not not a cause of this kind. He insists that this principle is rather something that enables us to “see light in a new way”. This new perspective, then enables us to connect mathematics to this dynamic play of phenomena. This perspective enables us, he argues to ask different questions such as where does the light come from, and how fast does it travel. The Greeks did not ask the question how fast light travels probably because they looked upon the sun more biologically, more as a source of the maintenance of life on earth. For the modern scientist on the other hand, this principle appears not as a law but as something that can explain or justify the phenomenon of the moving shadow and its length. The mathematics of calculating the length of the shadow was of course familiar to the Greeks. Plato and Aristotle, however, were aware that a particular kind of calculative rationality was involved in this activity. Plato tells us in the Republic that images are involved in mathematical calculation. Toulmin recognises this and characterises it as a technique(techné) for representing the aspect of the phenomenon one wishes to explore. Toulmin also refers to the principle of the rectilinear propagation of light as a “technique” (for seeing the phenomenon in a new way). Aristotle would however have referred to principles such as this as arché or morphé (because we are dealing here with the understanding of the Being or “form” of the phenomena we are studying). For him techné was a principle of the productive sciences and more relevant to the form of artefacts that have been instrumentally created(the goods of the external world).

Toulmin is very reluctant to talk in the above categorical terms that we find in Aristotle because in his mind science has become a technological activity(a consequence of the technologically minded Romans and their technologically oriented language?). This is why he aptly uses the term of art of “model” to characterise scientific theorising. This use of the term “model” may also be motivated by the mathematical images associated with the phenomena in question. For Toulmin scientific principles and laws are not “universal” because they are only “temporary” truths awaiting the next best “model” to represent the phenomena the theory is about. The lack of universality of the principle of the rectilinear propagation of light(for us moderns) resides in the fact that light can of course be attracted by large masses in the vicinity, and various other processes can also interfere with the rectilinearity of the propagation. Yet we could question this interpretation of what a principle or law is on two grounds. Firstly both are norms for representation of the referenced phenomena and circumstances: they “cover” these phenomena and circumstances and given particular descriptions of initial conditions they can make predictions of what ought to occur given these conditions. They obviously can only do this because they are both disguised “ought-statements”. The Rectilinear propagation of light principle is not a “description” because if it is to meet the criteria of an Aristotelian principle it must explain both the presence, and absence of the phenomena referenced, e.g. Explain how light behaves unless it is caused to do otherwise by gravitation, refraction etc. So it ought to travel in straight lines unless something happens to interfere with its normal behaviour. Newton used these criteria(involving arché) in his laws of motion when he claimed, for example that a body either remains at rest or carries on its motion in a straight line unless acted upon by external causes(such as gravitation). Here, talk of “models” would be a confusing distraction for either Aristotle or Newton. It entered into the language-games of science and their form of life with Bohr, Planck and Einstein. The Greeks would have regarded the term “model” as belonging in the form of life of craft (techné). The idea that the “model” is for temporary use until a better one appeared would have been regarded as a “category-mistake for Aristotle for whom epistemé was connected to both universality and necessity. Kant was also clear about the universal and necessary nature of principles:

“If the word “nature” is taken merely in its formal significance(inasmuch as the word “nature” signifies the primal, internal principle of everything that belongs to the existence of a thing), then there can be as many natural sciences as there are specifically different things and each of these things must contain its specific internal principle and the determination belonging to its existence….cognition that can contain merely empirical certainty is improperly called science. That whole of cognition which is systematic can therefore be called science, and, when the connection of cognition in this system is a coherence of grounds and consequents, rational science. But when the grounds or principles are ultimately merely empirical, as. for example, in chemistry, and when the laws from which reason explains the given facts are merely laws of experience, then they carry with themselves no consciousness of their necessity, and this whole does not in a strict sense deserve the name of science. Therefore chemistry should be called systematic art rather than science( Kant, I, Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science trans Ellington J, USA, Hacket Publishing, 1985, Preface P 3-4)

Toulmin in accordance with his “model” theory of science would be forced to accept the chemistry of Kant’s time as a science because at that time the theory appeared to adequately explain the changes and processes that were being studied. the argument that Toulmin uses in justification of his position is that we cannot prove that a logically deductive relation exists between the observation reports of a theory and its theoretical doctrines. Aristotle noted in his investigations into the nature of science that observations in the context of discovery give rise to the formation of the basic term of that science(given the operation of certain powers of mind). This basic term or concept will be related to a certain kind of change(e.g. either substantive, qualitative, quantitative or locomotion. Substantive change will obviously be connected to the kind of change that brings something into existence , constituting it’s very being or essence, or alternatively, the kind of change that takes that thing out of existence. Qualitative change can be related to the things essence or not. Quantitative change or locomotion are not essence specifying changes. They are not principled kinds of change. Socrates is Socrates because of his essential powers of humanity, but he is not Socrates because he is 5 foot tall or because he has a sun tan or because he has moved from the agora and is on his way home. Epistemé for Aristotle, then, included the context of discovery of the essence specifying forms of existence responsible for the kinds of change we witness in the universe. There were three kinds of epistemé: all of which presupposed the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason: Theoretical Science(metaphysics-Theology, Maths, Physics) Practical Science(Economics, Ethics, Politics) and Productive Science(mimetic arts, crafts). For Aristotle there would definitely be theoretical connections between principles and observations. It would not make sense, for example to claim that I observed that lightning had struck a tree and at the same time insist that something else(in the form of a god) damaged the tree. Given that perception is a power of discrimination between one thing and another, the principles of logic apply at this observational level. The relation, however between the concept of lightning and my intuitions of lightning is a more mysterious one that Kant produced a better account of when he appealed to the unity of apperception or the “I think”, claiming that the concept unifies the manifold of representations associated with the lightning strike. For Kant, too, the principles of logic must be operating at this level.

Toulmin, however attempts to deny the logical relation between theory and observation on the grounds that logic is equivalent to the deductive relation that occurs in relation to the premises of an argument. This would appear, however, to be missing the point that this deductive relation is regulated by the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. Of course principles are not summaries of observations, they explain or justify them and in that sense and in that sense only they can be described as new ways of looking at the phenomena.

Now just as in the practical case where nomos introduced a mechanism of quantification into diké thus calling also upon the calculative part of the mind, so in the theoretical case the technological imperatives of mathematics use the same part of the mind when focusing upon material and spatial aspects of reality.

Toulmin uses Snell’s Law to illustrate what he regards as the distinction between a principle and a law. Snell’s Law is stated as follows:

“whenever any ray of light is incident at the surface which separates two media, it is bent in such a way that the ratio of the sine of the angle of incidence to the sine of the angle of refraction is always a constant quantity for these two media.”(P.53)

Snell’s law is a law that supposedly explains why a stick half immersed in water looks bent. The stick of course, is not bent but only looks bent and so Snell’s law is part of the principle of the Rectilinear propagation of light. It does not prove that light does not travel in straight lines but is rather an explanation of what happens when a transparent medium interferes with the transmission of light. After any activity of interference the principle holds good unless another interfering external cause presents itself. Snell’s law helps us to explain some of the limits of the principle. In the above case it appears as if there is a kind of logical dependence of the law upon the principle, perhaps of a kind similar to that dependence between diké and nomos. Snells law definitely appeals to the mathematical calculative part of the mind via the image of straight lines and triangles. The quantitative conclusion of the law is self evident. We need to recall here, however that the principle of the propagation of light is only one of 5 essential properties of light and therefore cannot on its own be regarded as an essence specifying definition in the same way as “rational animal capable of discourse” can be insofar as being human human is concerned.

Toulmin then proceeds to elaborate on the idea of a model and claims that Snell’s law is initially treated as a hypothesis(the context of discovery) until it becomes part of the framework of explanation, but, he then claims that as it does so we ca no longer justifiably ask the question “Is it true?”. This latter claim is somewhat paradoxical and may fail to be regarding a law as a true major premise. This treatment may be in a sense Hegelian, transforming the law from a proposition into a concept that ” covers” a large range of representations and this may be an interesting way in which to think about the relation of a Law to a Principle(principles involve a veritative synthesis of concepts where we think something about something).

The Kantian and Aristotelian counterargument to the position that a law is modelling nature is that it involves an appeal to the calculating part of our minds that tends to focus both logically on quantitative judgments and also needs to concretely use the images of mathematics. This calculating part of the mind also has a practical aspect and uses practical reasoning to reason about the means to ends(focusing upon the causal power of the means to bring about the ends). Regarding principles as means to further ends, however, is disregarding their categorical nature. The hypothetical history of a principle may have been necessary to determine the representational content of the concepts. Using the hypothetical judgment as the “model” of scientific theorising is also using empirical verification as a touchstone of the truth. Kant reflects upon the categorical rational power of mind contemplating the truth, in the following way:

“What is Truth? The nominal definition of truth, that it is the agreement of knowledge with its object is assumed as granted: the question asked is as to what is the general and sure criterion of the truth of any and every knowledge….Now a general criterion of truth must be such as would be valid in each and every instance of knowledge, however their objects may vary. It is obvious, however, that such a criterion(being general) cannot take account of the (varying) content of knowledge.(relation to its specific object). But since truth concerns just this very content it is quite impossible and indeed absurd to ask for a general test of the truth of such content(Critique of Pure Reason, P82-83).

Now this does not entail that Principles are hypothetically valid or that they cannot be known. If Principles are knowledge than the agreement with their object is assumed categorically. “Norms of representation” is an expression that can be taken in a number of different ways. Norms are assumed categorically to be “justified”. To say in this context as Toulmin does:

“In this respect laws of nature resemble other kinds of laws , rules and regularities. These are not themselves true or false, though statements about their range of application can be”(P.71)

is to say the least problematic. “Promises ought to be kept” is a moral Principle and is nominally true as Kant points out. This does not, however mean that it can sensibly be doubted. In this case there is perhaps a case to be made for using the term “model” if by that is meant something universal and categorical. Given that we find ourselves in the realm of the ought-system of concepts, it can be claimed that if the concept “world-view” has any meaning it surely is here in which we have practical “images” of universal actions that are schemata for what ought to be done. There is no sense however in which this is not therefore a categorical necessity and this is confirmed in the fact that making promises with no intention of keeping them is a practical contradiction.

Snell’s law in this discussion does seem to have more to do with the concept of refraction than the more general concept of light. This together with the quantitative nature of the law suggests that light as a phenomenon will be associated with a higher genre substance or principle such as electro-magnetic radiation and in that sense may be a quality of electro-magnetic radiation which is very closely tied with quantification both in terms of its speed and direction. Colour in its turn might then be regarded as a quality of this quality and also be capable of quantitative characterisation. The position of refraction in this hierarchy does indeed suggest, however, that with respect to Snell’s “law” we may be dealing with the quantitative determination of a concept(which also like colour is a quality of a quality). There will be representations to which this concept is related but if what is going on in this law is that I am merely uniting representations under a concept using the power of apperception then this is clearly not yet at the level of judgment or understanding. The judgment or understanding in their turn work at the level of asserting something about something(concepts in relation to each other) in the context of the categories of the understanding.

Toulmin, however does offer us an interesting proposal for a distinction between laws and principles that refers to the earlier point he made about the place of laws in a framework of thinking. The form of thinking he refers to, however, is the mathematical calculative form:

“Why is the Rectilinear Propagation of Light called a Principle and Snells law a law?”. The distinction turns upon something we noticed earlier; namely the role of the principle as the keystone pf geometrical optics…the principle that light travels in straight lines seems to be almost indefeasible: certainly it is hard to imagine physicists abandoning completely the idea of light as something travelling in straight lines, for to give up this principle would involve abandoning geometrical optics as we know it.”(P.74)

What Toulmin is indirectly referring to in the above is the category of Quantitative judgments and the role of Geometry in the physical/spatial realm of change. All the Aristotelian categories of existence form part of the architectonic theory of Change in the Aristotelian account of the many meanings of Being. This architectonic also includes categories of judgments that are truth forming or veritative syntheses of concepts as well as, of course the Principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. The Kantian account of this systematic unity of our judgments occurs in his First Critique which deals with the Metaphysics of Material Nature:

“Human reason is by nature architectonic. That is to say it regards all our knowledge as belonging to a possible system, and therefore allows only such principles as do not at any rate make it impossible for any knowledge that we may attain to combine into a system with other knowledge.”(A 474)

The table of categories of the Understanding that are used in the categories of judgments provide a supporting schema for the Principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason in this metaphysical architectonic system. A key part of this system is obviously the power of apperception or the “I think”. This form of consciousness is of vital importance for Philosophy. Thought is unified in one mind systematically:

“that consciousness in itself is not a representation distinguishing a particular object but a form of representation in general, that is, of representation insofar as it is to be entitled knowledge: for it is only of knowledge that I can say that I am thereby thinking something.” (B404)

These representations do not create their objects but as Kant pointed out above in relation to the discussion on truth, they agree with their object. These representations, that is, point beyond or transcend themselves. In the case of the objects of shadow and light the category of causality is used by thought to arrive at the “Principle” of the Rectilinear Propagation of Light. The concept of Light is a way if thinking logically and causally about the objects of shadow and sunlight–a manifold of representations are consciously thought in a context of discovery and a causal judgment is related to a substantial judgment(as to what light is), modal judgment(de re necessities relating to light and logical quantification in terms of the judgments universality). The Kantian account would probably regard the rectilinear propagation of light as a concept and not a principle of light as such. Judgments related to this concept once they have been related to the concepts and principles of geometry must be related systematically to the phenomena of sunlight and shadow–the subject of the judgment.Light is subsumed under the concepts of motion and straight line. In support of this architectonic view of concepts and phenomena Kant has the following to say:

“no part of this totality is given in itself as true, they must reciprocally determine one another in such a way that the truth is thereby determined.”(Metaphysical Foundations of Material Nature, P 157)

Colour is also a concept that belongs to this architectonic structure given that it is a causal effect of light which must also in the Kantian system be conditionally intuited under the forms of intuition of space and time. The Aristotelian concept of colour is embedded in a different but related architectonic or system of concepts. Aristotle thought that colour was a divine phenomenon sent by God via light. There is not much said in Aristotle about Light. Most of what is claimed is to be found in an essay “On Colour”:

“Darkness is due to privation of light….Light is clearly the colour of fire; for it is never found with any other hue than this, and it alone is visible in its own right whilst all other things are rendered visible by it. But there is this point to be considered, that some things, though they are not in their nature fire nor any species of fire, yet seem to produce light–it is only by the aid of light that fire is rendered visible.”Collected Works of Aristotle” P 1219-1220)

Colour, then. according to Aristotle is the consequence of the blending of darkness and light. Darkness has no “form” and is the colour of space where there is no light. Colours belong to all four elements of the universe, fire, air, water and earth:

“Air and water in themselves are by nature white, fire(and the sun) yellow, and earth is naturally white. The variety of hues which earth assumes is due to dying, as is shown by the fact that ashes turn white when the moisture that tinged them is burned out. It is true that they do not turn a pure white but that is because they are tinged by the smoke, which is black.”(Aristotle Collected works P 1219)

Light, then, for Aristotle is a property of the divine substance, the sun, and colour is a property of the light that comes from the sun. The claim that all elements except for fire are white means that black is not a colour of light but as was claimed above the privation of light. In the realm of substances on earth, however when fire transmutes something into something else we can see the colour as black which is also exhibited in the colour of shadows. Newton thought that all light was white but that white was in a sense composed of all colours given that it can, when passed through a filtering medium, give rise to all the colours of the spectrum, namely Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet. Aristotle also identified most of these colours. In his theory we might connect the red, orange, and yellow photon packages with the sun and and blue, indigo and violet packages with the darkness of space: each colour being darker due to the privation of the amount of light. Aristotle knew nothing of the nuclear processes in the sun that produced both its energy and its light but it is remarkable that his reflections on the substance of the sun still provide a framework for our theory of light and colour today. The sun for Aristotle had a (divine?) form and that form was also responsible for all life on earth. For him the heat of the sun must have been just as important as its light which miraculously enabled the eye to pick out even the concrete shape of the sun in the sky. We also tend to forget that many ancient religions worshipped the sun as a God and one can wonder whether the reasoning behind this was as complex as that of Aristotle. If the Aristotelian connection of the sun to life is accurate and if Julian Jaynes’s theory of the breakdown of the bicameral mind in 1200 BC is correct then the combination of these theories would suggest that those that practiced sun worship and human sacrifice were not reasoning in the ways that Plato and Aristotle did. Most of us are familiar with the allegories of the sun, the divided line and the cave from Plato’s Republic where the sun was the physical equivalent of the form of the good. We should also remember that for Plato, as for Kant, the form of the good trumped the importance of the form of the truth.

It is customary for scientists to take a similar view to that of Wilfred Sellars and believe that the Scientific view of the world somehow compromises the philosophical manifest view of of the world as outlined by Aristotle. Socrates’ view of such a state of affairs might be a skeptical one given the fact that it was a part of the examined life insofar as he was concerned to appreciate the role of the mind in the understanding of physical phenomena. If Socrates, who turned his back upon his earlier physical investigations of the physical world, is correct, then it can be said that Science has yet to reach the Socratic stage of the Philosophy of science. This might involve realising that physical phenomena of light are only philosophically useful as an allegory for the much more important human power of the understanding. Light will no doubt be an important physical condition for perception and life but it will only form a small part of the total architectonic.

Philosophers have always spoken about their awe and wonder in the face of the sublime infinite darkness of outer space and the sublime blueness of the sky and the sea. Aristotle appeared to suggest that if all the colours form a system such that even though we know that light and darkness could give rise in theory to an infinite number of colours(given the infinite nature of the physical world) then the truth value of the judgment “The sky is blue” entails(if there is a logical relation between the colours in the colour system) that the statements that the sky is any of the other class of infinite colours must all be false. If this is true then we can reason our way toward such a position using the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. Such is the infinite reach of a knowledge system governed by reason for both Plato and Aristotle. If this is not a logical system then nothing is.

We humans are one form matter can take and the sun is another form. Were it not for the presence of the sun, life would never have evolved to the complexity it has on earth. The sun, therefore must be one condition of psuche for Aristotle. It is also necessary for the continuance and quality of life.

The above has been a long excursion into the relevance and irrelevance of modern Science to the philosophical knowledge we have of the many meanings of Being, whether we are talking of the being of the sun or the being of the knower of the knowledge we have of the sun. Existence may not be a predicate or a concept as Kant claimed but it is nevertheless understandable. The blue of the sky exists and both Aristotle and classical Science have pointed to a system of conditions that are responsible for such a judgment. The Philosophy of Existentialism, on the other hand, including the form of Existentialism Arendt was propagating is highly skeptical towards both Aristotelian and Kantian metaphysics. Kantian Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science basically adopts a diagnostic approach to the Science of his day which we perhaps should continue to use to evaluate the observationalism and experimentalism of modern science. We saw that Ricoeur’s philosophical diagnostics, applied to the human sciences, led him to define existence as the effort to exist and the desire to be. In Ricoeur’s work these characteristics are revealed by interpreting the works, monuments, deeds, and texts of men. Hannah Arendt, on the other hand, diagnoses science not in terms of a fact stating observationalism but rather as a manipulative venture initiating processes such as that of leaving the earth in a space ship and the exploding of nuclear bombs in imitation of the processes of the sun. Man, unable to fly to the sun, brings the sun to earth perhaps without a full understanding of the consequences of his actions. This, Arendt argues, is a form of action unknown to the Greeks and also perhaps to the Enlightenment thinkers, although the French Revolution unleashed unprecedented earthly forces with a similar failure to appreciate the consequences of the actions involved.Arendt conceives of modern science not that long after Hegel conceived of History in the same way, relating the telos of historical process to an idealistic “spirit” or telos of a happy ending that seemed to be totally disconnected to the revolutionary painful process of change. Freud with his set of diagnostic tools did not hesitate to suggest that modern processes of change had the spirit of Thanatos hanging over them. Arendt describes this state of affairs in her work “The Human Condition” thus:

“Whereas men have always been capable of destroying whatever was the product of human hands and have become capable today even of the potential destruction of what man did not make–the earth and its earthly nature–men never have been and will never be able to undo or even control reliably any of the processes they start through action…. this incapacity to undo what has been done is matched by an almost equally complete incapacity to foretell the consequences of any deed or even to have reliable knowledge of its motives.”(P 232-3)

What price are we now to put on the prophecy of the Ancient Greeks that everything created by humans is destined to ruin and destruction? A process appears to have begun that can only end in the extinction of the human species. A long way indeed from the diagnostics of Ricoeur that the works of man will reveal an effort to exist and a desire to be. Reason has obviously disappeared in this process as has Freedom. If the French Revolution began in the spirit of freedom it certainly did not end in that spirit, ensnaring us in a web of deterministic forces more powerful than the powers of Reason and Freedom. One possible response to such a state of affairs for Arendt is to withdraw from the world and abstain from action. This response for the Kantian would, of course, be underwhelming. Aristotle too would have stroked his beard in consternation. Freedom in the modern world, on Arendt’s analysis is devoid of reason and dedicates itself to the instrumental production of something new in a nation state dedicated to consumption and possessing a view of man as animal laborans caught in his self created cycle and with only one ladder to ascend above it, above this world of lost souls. Using this ladder takes us into the world of homo faber and another world of “instrumental values”. A world of irreversible processes that can only be understood by attempting to stabilise these processes of change (and the future of such processes) through the making of promises.

There is a famous argument by Socrates in the Republic in response to one of the “new men” of his time Thrasymachus. The discussion is about diké(justice) and the previous attempts by the interlocutors of Socrates were submitted to the Socratic method of elenchus(the precursor to the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason). At this point in the dialogue Thrasymachus inserts himself into the discussion aggressively with a definition of justice that would have brought a nod of approval from Machiavelli: justice, argues Thrasymachus, is merely the passing of laws in the interests of the ruling party. This occurs after Thrasymachus had rejected the Socratic appeal to the common good. Socrates’ counterargument is the following: without knowledge of what is good and what is not good these men will at some time pass laws that are not in their interests, thereby contradicting the account given by Thrasymachus. The moral of this story on the accounts given by both Plato and Aristotle is that the knowledge of the good is one of the critical features of justice. Plato, as we know, in the later books of the Republic produces a number of arguments for the good along with the allegories referred to earlier: the sun, the divided line, and the cave. The task set by Glaucon (after his expressed dissatisfaction with Socrates’ argument against Thrasymachus) was to produce an account that prove that the good was both good in itself and good in its consequences. The Platonic Theory of Forms was the Socratic response to this challenge. It is, of course, important for both Plato and Aristotle to claim that it is only if we know the good that we will do it.. The theory of Forms implies areté or the virtues which Plato characterises as wisdom, courage, justice, and self control. The virtues in their turn require the powers of reason, understanding, and judgment. Plato believes that any city that is without men of virtue in positions of power is destined to ruin and destruction. In his work “The Republic” he states that philosophers are best suited for the task of ruling but he appears to abandon this position in his later work “The Laws” where it seems as if everyone is potentially able to understand the good.

This moment of everyone possessing the potentiality of understanding the good may well have passed for a world that is in the middle of an Industrial Revolution initiated by the “new men” who appear to have little knowledge of the good: no idea of what the consequences of their actions could be or no idea of what the “reasons” for their actions are. Man as Animal laborans apparently does not “think” in the way the Ancient Greeks did with their desire for areté, diké or epistemé. Indeed the “new men” of the Industrial Revolution era are men of science who with no thought of what they were doing played with the forces of the sun and created a weapon of destruction that could destroy humanity and the earth. We should recall in this context that there was no shortage of contributors to the Manhattan Project. Einstein the hybrid scientist/philosopher provided some of the ideas for the project but declined to actively participate in the final stage of practical creation. Arendt problematically, without reference to the rational categories of areté, diké and epistemé portrays the presence of “thinking” in the lives of animal laborans and homo faber as something that comes from “outside” the scope of their activities– a meaning that is “divinely imposed”(P.236) by “stories” that are “fabricated”. It is these stories that create the “promise” of the future, of, for example, a promised land. The man of action emerges here as someone who transcends these two conditions(animal laborans, homo faber) and “binds” the future through the making and keeping of promises. Arendt also in this context appeals rather surprisingly to the notion of “forgiveness” presumably because in an ocean of uncertainty we can never be certain of the consequences of our actions. Now this may be true for “new” environments that are a part of the context of exploration but of what relevance are such “observations” to Greek/Enlightenment accounts in which the context of explanation/justification is of primary importance, (especially insofar as explaining the connection between good intentions and consequences are concerned). According to Arendt the modern environment requires a culture of “forgiveness” in order to mitigate the uncertainty over the consequences of our actions. This is not Arendt’s intention but in relation to this term “forgiveness” the spectre of Religion arises promising De Civitate Dei. This is obviously a very different vision from that of the Republic and the philosophers ruling a city that is structured like the parts of a soul, namely in terms of the judging-judged relation and the Theory of Forms. Arendt suggests that this latter vision of an individual thinking about their own actions is insufficient because it rests on:

“experiences which nobody could ever have with himself”(HC P.238)

In other words Arendt believes that the public space where all people interact will be a better environment in which to obtain understanding for the fact that one does not understand the consequences of ones action. The context of this public space is obviously the context of self/moral exploration. An Aristotelian notion of plurality is appealed to in this context. This idea of plurality for Aristotle was a political idea in the context of political thought in which many people bringing their respective experiences to the political decision making processes is a better alternative than one monarchical ruler(even if they have benevolent intentions). It is important to point out, however, that insofar as Aristotle was concerned, in the context of law-making or constitution-making the presence of the virtues(areté) must be presupposed. It would be absurd to suppose, for example, that such constitutional questions would be measured by the standards of Thrasymachus. Forgiving a Thrasymachus after the city was brought to ruin and destruction would seem to be a pointless activity. Forgiving someone who was an enemy of the city would have been a practical political contradiction for Plato and Aristotle for whom even friendship had its limits. Freud we know, that theorist of Eros and love, claimed that it would be positively dangerous to love ones enemies. For him this was part of the battlefield of the giants, Eros and Thanatos that threatened the very foundations of civilisation.

In the aristocracy that Aristotle had in mind as one of the good forms of government there would be no essential difference between the justifications and explanations given by groups of people or individuals. For Kant the moral judgment that “promises ought to be kept” will guide the particular promises made by individuals in exactly the same way as it would guide groups of constitution or law makers. As Socrates pointed out in the Republic, a city is merely the soul writ large. There is no significant difference between the positions of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle on this point. The deontological ethics of duty is a presupposition of areté and diké.

Arendt, however, wishes to use the Christian idea of forgiveness in a secular sense in order to reverse the processes of History and Science. This idea she argues is the only remedy to undo what has been done. The fundamental duty thus becomes, to forgive. The question is whether this is based on a consequentialist view of ethics whereby one believes that the consequences of action are always unpredictable and that this therefore suffices to remove the responsibility from the individual for his actions. One of the arguments that Arendt provides for this position is surprising. She argues for reversing the meaning of disastrous consequences through forgiveness. This involves freedom, but freedom in the negative sense of freedom from vengeance. In a context of interaction where two parties are intent upon destroying each other the message of forgiveness obviously has some relevance: indeed it might be the only way in which to break the cycle of violence. That it did not occur to Arendt to situate such a state of affairs in a moral context and ask whether the parties ought to be thinking in terms of vengeance would not have occurred to her until her later work “The Life of the mind” where she decided to venture into this area of the relation of thinking to action. In the context of the ultimate acts of destruction such as the dropping of atomic bombs on defenceless populations the act of forgiveness may be the only rational act possible given the finality of the circumstances. This does not however replace or neutralise the judgment that this act ought not to have occurred.

Arendt seems to be arguing at one point that one can trace the institution of promising back to both the Roman legal system and to Abraham in the Bible making a covenant with God. A covenant is a mutual agreement to exchange promises for mutual benefit. This practice arose, according to Arendt out of a context in which we could not trust unreliable men with “darkness in their hearts”(P.244). Two skeptics making an agreement together does not however seem to be an appropriate model to use to evaluate the free act of the Kantian promise in which the promise is made unconditionally and categorically, as an end-in-itself and not as a means to some anticipated consequences. Arendt’s defence is of course at the root of Arendt’s reasoning about social contract theory. Any attempt to connect Kantian theory to this kind of covenant between a state and its citizens fails to understand the appreciation that Kant had for the Greek notions of areté, diké, and epistemé. The social contract between skeptics insuring themselves against the “darkness in mans hearts” is a technical matter, a matter of techné. This kind of covenant is truly a creation of homo faber, a creation in the sense of something “crafted”,something “made” against the background of skeptical intentions and a fear of unforeseen consequences. We cannot but recall the social contract theory of Hobbes and its ultimate aim of “commodious living”, and “safety”.

Arendt refuses to enter into the Kantian territory of theoretical and practical reasoning or aesthetic and teleological judgment, probably because of the impossibility of being a master of what is occurring in a Hobbesian environment of:

“foretelling the consequence of an act with a community of equals where everybody has the same capacity to act.”(P.244)

We must therefore live in this uncertain human space because this is the price we have to pay for our freedom. A very Hobbesian contract indeed!

Arendt too is transposing the Kantian ethical concept of “promise” into a political environment:

“We mentioned before the power generated when people gather together and act in concert disappears the moment they depart. The force that keeps them together, as distinguished from the space of appearances in which they gather and the power which keeps this public space in existence is the force of the mutual promise or contract.”(P.244-5)

So here we have an existential picture of “the best that can be done in woeful circumstances”(in a context of suffering). It is important. however, to realise that it misses the absolute of the good will in the Kantian ethical system. Kant thought it was a part of being a human being in a vale of tears that he be able to lift his eyes unto the hills and assume people to be ends-in-themselves and treat them accordingly, whatever the Thrasymachean or Machiavellian circumstances. The problem with characterising the Kantian Categorical Imperative in terms of the Christian Golden Rule: “Do unto others as thy would be done unto” is the contractual reading of this rule which carries with it an expectation of a beneficial consequence. There is no expectation of any particular consequence insofar as the categorical imperative is concerned. There is however a general expectation of a logical consequence that relates to leading a flourishing life(eudaimonia). The Kantian action is performed because, to use Socratic language, it is good-in-itself–which means also that the source of the action is the good will or the good intention.

Arendt characterises action as the “one miracle working faculty of man”(P. 246) that can save the world from ruin and destruction. This may have in a sense been true also for Kant but he certainly would not have oscillated in his characterisation of this power between the uncomfortable alternatives of the darkness in mens hearts, and miracles. She claims that neither faith nor hope were part of the Greek heritage but this fails to appreciate the comfortable relation that philosophers like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle had to their religion and it also fails to appreciate the hope that these three philosophers pinned on leading the examined and contemplative life.

Arendt’s work is very dissimilar to other continental Philosophers because she places History fairly and squarely in the centre of her theorising. In the final chapter(“The Vita Activa and the Modern Age”) of her work “The Human Condition” Arendt claims that three events have determined the spirit of the Modern Age:

1. The Age of Discovery(including the discovery of America)
2. the expropriation of monastic property and possession during the Reformation
3. Science and technological developments such as the discovery of the telescope

These were events in what she termed the pre-Modern world. In this work we have referred continually to the suppression of certain elements of the Greek heritage which actually continued in the Existential tradition and to some lesser extent in the existentialism of Arendt. In Arendt we have reference to selected elements of this collective heritage. Martin Heidegger we should remember was one of her teachers and in his work we encounter a commitment to the primary experience of Being as well as a criticism of what he regarded as the rationally inspired empiricism of Kant.

We do, however share with Arendt the view that in the context of exploration there is an irreversibility that continually requires new acts of discovery even if there is nothing left on earth and we have to send rockets into the darkness of space to satisfy our desire for something new. Arendt characterises this as a desire to leave the prison of the earth but this may be an over-conceptualisation of a desire of man to master or dominate his world, a desire to “possess” his world.This is surely not an act of freedom. Images of a barren lunar surface with no obvious signs of life surely cannot compare with the earlier tales of the discovery of new continents ,oceans and islands bursting with signs of life. The context of exploration, that is, seems to have begun with a spirit of adventure and ended in the realisation that we are living in the only place in the solar system capable of sustaining human life naturally. The image of a solipsistic space man walking on the surface of the moon may have been a giant step for mankind but it was a greater achievement for technology. This was indeed a moment in which our Being was thrown into question. The shadows of darkness that was cast upon our exploits on the barren surface of the moon might have begun with the Reformation and the fracture of Christianity in the name of challenging an earthly institution and its eccentric practices. This was the moment in which De Civitate Terrana challenged the very idea of De Civitate Dei and the potential tranquillity of our souls.(P.209). The invention of the telescope in the light of the collapse of De Civitate Dei and the irreversibility of the desire to find a “new earthly city” transformed our effort to exist and desire to be into a will to power that demanded irreversible and constant demonstrations of its strength and reach. Philosophers like Descartes and Hobbes were proclaiming their originality and their solutions as final on the basis of the Philosophical Reformation of the Philosophy of Aristotle.

Merleau-Ponty, in his work “Phenomenology of Perception” argued for replacing the “I think” with “I can”. This is also in line with the motivations of the “new men” in the modern age– “I can therefore I exist” could well be modern mans answer to the spirit of the Hanseatic league expressed below:

“they that go down to the ships, that do business in great waters, these see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep.”(Psalms 107:23-4)

Both of these positions stand in stark contrast to the Kantian good will exercised in the spirit of areté, diké, and epistemé. A spirit that is in fact much closer to the explorers of the age of discovery than to the technological solipsists of our age “acting out” on our television screens whilst engaging in pathological irreversible projects.

The project of Globalisation has been with us in some sense since the Greeks and Arendt characterises an important moment in this project:

“Only man can take full possession of his moral dwelling place and gathered the infinite horizons which were temptingly and forbiddingly open to all previous ages, into a globe whose majestic outlines and detailed surface he knows as he knows the lines in the palm of his hand. Precisely when the immensity of available space on earth was discovered, the famous shrinkage of the globe began..”(P.250)

The telos of the Globalisation process, namely Cosmopolitanism was not always present(in military and economic domination, for example). The above “impression” of the “shrinkage” of the globe was however a necessary stage on the road to the Kantian Kingdom of Ends which was a Cosmopolitan state based on equality and peaceful coexistence. Railroads, ships, aeroplanes and maps together with that metaphorical activity of man to view the world “uno solo ochiata”, to bring the world into the possible grasp of our mental faculties(sensibility, understanding, judgment, reason). has contributed to “globalisation”. The technology of telecommunications have also assisted in this belief that we can grasp the world “uno solo ochiata”(in thought). Weber believed that the pursuit of safety and a commodious life style–the spirit of capitalism–results in an “inner-worldly asceticism”(a reaction to the loss of De Civitate Dei?) After the Reformation the feudal system collapsed in favour of a system that eventually produced animal laborans, homo faber and the idea of a social contract. Concern turned progressively away from forms and principles and toward the Cartesian music of the lonely transcendental solipsist. The more abstract almost mathematical idea of membership of a class replaced being a member of a family or a community. Political discourse swung like a wild pendulum between the systems of Capitalism and Communism in the 20th century. This climate together with growing nationalism alienated the project of Cosmopolitanism and peaceful coexistence in a system of nation states. According to Arendt both the private and public realm of discourse declined(P.257)–leaving man enclosed in a technological cocoon.

The Industrial Revolution may be well named by the Historians. The word “Revolution” namely, carries with it suggestions of radical and violent change in the steering mechanisms of our social and political forms of life and perhaps this kind of change was necessary given the fracturing division of De Civitate Dei during the Reformation, a division assisted by our solipsistic interpretations of the word of God.The resultant transformation of the economic system, from owning property to the accumulation of Capital without end removed the focus on a slow moving tranquil life in favour of a fast moving dynamic life style the principles of which were unclear.

We have argued for the importance of the influence of philosophical ideas in the process of peaceful globalisation. These processes began with the Greek Philosophers and culminated in in a resurrection by the Stoics of the idea of the cosmopolitan man–an influence that continued into the age of the Enlightenment–that transitional period between the Reformation and the Industrial Revolution. During this age Philosophy moved into the Universities and both Kant and Hegel used this public space to propagate very different contradictory ideas. We have earlier drawn attention to the “instrumental spirit” of the faculties of Theology, Law, and Medicine. This use of a “principle of specialisation” cast suspicion upon messages of universalisation, and the atmosphere of an apprenticeship which was different for each specialisation reminded one of the Guilds of homo faber. In contrast to that spirit during the time of Kant we found prior to Kant a commitment to Aristotle that was fighting on the philosophical fronts of dualism and materialism. Kant temporarily resolved this conflict in the spirit of Aristotle and there was a temporary relief from the divisiveness of instrumentalism. A Principle of universalisation found expression in the lectures and works of Kant. This was a consequence of the recommendation of Aristotle that education should be a public concern and also perhaps a consequence of the “schools” of the Academy and Lyceum that also propagated ideas in the spirit of the principle of universalisation. Both Science and the nomos of oikos in 20th century Universities were hives of specialisation and contributed to the eventual triumph of the principle of specialisation over the principle of universalisation. The key figure in this process was Hegel who questioned the rationality of the Principle of Universalisation in favour of a Spirit of explorative dialectical logic and a spirit in which slaves strive for the mutual recognition of their masters in a public space of domination.

Both Locke and Kant wrote works on Education which was the only institution that possessed the “spirit” needed to propagate philosophical ideas in the community, yet Arendt says very little about this public steering mechanism. Kant continued the tradition of reasoning in the spirit of Aristotle. Hegel turned this tradition upside down for almost one hundred years. In England, for example, we find both Russell and Moore and many other English philosophers struggling to shake off Hegelian historicism and idealism. Russell’s approach was via Mathematical Logic and this too was a “specialist” form of logic that could, by definition say nothing universal about action, or the ethical and political forms of life. The early work of Wittgenstein attempted a Hegelian “final solution” for all philosophical problems but found to his embarrassment that nothing could be said about the most important philosophical problems related to Religion, Ethics, and Psychology.

Arendt denies in her work “The Human Condition” that there are “subterranean” globalisation processes at work, claiming that everything is on the surface in plain sight. We have been claiming that there are “background” forces waiting to actualise given the right conditions:conditions that acknowledge the principles of Aristotelian and Kantian Philosophy. This is not to deny the veracity of Arendt’s analysis of the historical forces and their culmination in the events of the terrible twentieth century.

In spite of this penetrating analysis, however, we find in Arendt’s thought an obsession with the slogan “Existence precedes essence”. For her neither the imaginings of the astronomers nor the speculations of philosophers constitute historical events such as the age of discovery, the Reformation and the invention of telescope(P.259) that can penetrate the darkness of space with a precision and scope that defies the imagination(6 billion light years in Arendt’s time and 15 billion light years now).

Kant tells us about Carazan’s dream in which Carazan, a wealthy and miserly man who failed to honour his fellow man around him was sent as punishment, on a journey through endless space beyond the presence of all light, a journey that would last forever(“ten thousand times a thousand years”)–a journey that later telescopes would duplicate in the name of searching for an unknown x that might not exist(at the expense of this known x that actually built this “dream machine”). Kant felt that this sublime impulse to make Carazan´s journey was highlighted by the writings of the “new men” who questioned tradition in no uncertain terms. Rousseau whose work was supposedly an inspiration for the French Revolution also inspired Kant to abandon his rationalism and begin formulating a universal moral philosophy based on the freedom of men: a Philosophy that also teleologically postulated a Kingdom of Ends which resembled both a new society of men treating each other as ends in themselves and a religiously hoped for divine Kingdom on earth. Rousseau, that is, pushed Kant into reflecting upon the essence of man as well as the principles that were driving man to progress ever so slowly on this long earthly journey on this long earthly road. A journey that begins in the dark yet expects at every moment the light to appear and the landscape to burst into colour.

We in our modern age appear to be living Carazan’s nightmare, sitting behind our telescopes when we should be engaging over the issue of justice (diké)in the agora or in our universities with the aporetic questions of Aristotle and Kant. Arendt acknowledges this “world alienation”(P.264) as the hallmark of modern science and on that issue both Aristotle and Kant would have been in agreement. Arendt furnishes further evidence from the world of Mathematics when she claims that terrestrial sense-data and movement is reduced to the movement of algebraic symbols. Scientific experiments armed with these symbols and formulae gave rise in turn to the practice of the manipulation of conditions(variables) that would force nature to speak with a mathematical voice in a context of exploration that demanded only mathematical justifications. This was not the mathematics of Plato but rather the mathematics of the “new men” like Descartes and Hobbes. Mathematics is no longer, as Arendt urges, the science of Being as it was in the case of Newton and Kant, but rather the projection of a calculative instrumentally dominated mind(P.266). This projection has become as Leibniz pointed out an instrument which can describe any conceivable universe in terms that disregard the essences that inhabit those universes.

Arendt points in this context to the fact that since Newton the word “universal” has changed its earthly meaning, to a mathematical meaning that asserts the primacy of what is quantitative. She also points out ominously:

“Everything happening on earth has become relative”(P.270)

In this process of transformation Arendt says of man what she once said of Eichmann, namely that we have lost the ability to “think”. Like Carazan, we have perhaps recognised(in Hegelian manner) the existence of man but have failed to appreciate his essence, his Kantian moral personality.

Arendt acknowledges an important fact about Newton’s work, namely that he regarded his Science as “natural philosophy”. She also mysteriously acknowledges that Kant may have been the last Philosopher, given his comfortable juxtaposition of scientific exploration/understanding/justification with moral description/understanding/justification. These acknowledgments however ought to be tempered by her earlier claim that neither Kant’s nor Newtons speculations were significant events in the life of homo faber for whom the invention of the telescope was the event that changed our view of the world. What is being celebrated here is of course the temporary effect of a triumph of technology over our powers of sensibility, understanding, judgment, and reason. It was Descartes of course who first argued that our experience of reality may be a dream, like Carazans´, which we awake from and find ourselves in a completely different world. If reality could be doubted, so could salvation, the masses argued when they detached themselves in waves from even their reformed Church. In these waves of change we also find the son of instrumentalism, namely pragmatism born on the continent of pragmatism and revolution: the USA. Doubt about sacred revelation followed on the heels of doubt about salvation in spite of the fact that the Cartesian method of doubt had concluded that a Good God must exist. Cartesian introspection, however appeared to require that consciousness exist and the dissolution of objective reality into a solipsistic state of mind was almost complete. The mind can only know what it produces itself and the best of its products is mathematics, a product that is best suited for the description and explanation of processes. Seven plus five equals twelve is no longer looked upon as one thing being the same as another, but rather, in terms of seven operated upon by the operation plus- five which in turn becomes twelve: something is transformed into something else as is the case when in the context of exploration some unknown x is discovered.

Aristotle is nowhere present in these discussions, presumably because whilst his ideas continue to exist in the ivory towers of the non-instrumental departments of Universities, this is equivalent, according to Arendt, to a subterranean influence that very few know or care about. In the later phase of instrumentalism, namely pragmatism, metaphysical philosophy and transcendental logic no longer “work”. The Vita Contemplativa, the light of the mind has been overshadowed by the Vita Activa an aspect of the mind shorn of the Aristotelian powers of understanding, judgment and reason. What was once higher mental powers now become lower as part of the last wave of change. Arendt points out the inherent contradiction in this wave since Science itself would probably not have emerged without the above mental powers in a climate of the dominance of the principle of specialisation/relativity.

Arendt then lists a number of philosophical “reversals”:

“Academic Philosophy, as a matter of fact, has ever since been dominated by the never ending reversals of idealism and materialism, transcendentalism and immanentism, realism and nominalism, hedonism and asceticism etc”(P.292)

Arendt believes that these reversals symbolise radical change of the kind that turn things “upside down”. What she does not believe, however, is that there can be a return to a Philosophy which could serve as a framework for the occurrence of stable change and as a framework for the explanation/justification of change. She sees rather the fortunes of Philosophy through the lens of a modern child who sees an old relative as a burden or irrelevant. She may be correct insofar as modern philosophy is concerned because it is largely conducted in a pragmatical or mathematical spirit that would be anathema to both the Greeks and Kant who reasoned about Being and Change before reasoning about concrete processes.

The key thought is that homo faber experiences all processes as means towards ends but this is not taken up in the spirit of the categorical understanding of the knowledge of Being, but rather in the spirit that the principle of utility (which is the principle of specialisation in disguise) was overruled by the maxim of the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Arendt looks upon this latter transformation as the loss of all value. She rightly points out that what is involved in this transformational process is a shift from a concern for the reality of the objects produced to the amount of pleasure and pain experienced. Freud, the hylomorphic Philosopher clearly saw that the pleasure-pain principle(PPP) if solely used in the thinking processes, produces only unhappiness. For Freud, the Reality Principle(RP) modelled upon areté, diké, and epistemé was the principle of thought implicit in the reflective processes of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Freud also saw himself as a Kantian psychologist and would have subscribed to Kant’s specific criticism of the so called two sovereign masters of the mind of man(pleasure and pain). For Kant the principle of happiness was the principle of self love in disguise and for Freud these “two masters” were solipsistic, not to say narcissistic. In using this latter term Freud was well aware of the tale of Narcissus who fell in love with an image of himself and was eventually consumed by his own desire. Bentham’s hedonic calculus( regulated by the “two sovereign masters”) merely confounded everyone’s confusion. Surely, Kant would have argued, happiness must be both related to the objects of ones happiness and the important consideration of whether one’s actions made one worthy of this happiness. Arendt in the context of this discussion appeals to Hume’s claim that it is pain and fear that are the true sovereigns of mans existence. Hume’s appeal to this “Pain-principle” is clearly anti-rationalistic:

“if you push your inquiries further and desire a reason why he hates pain, it is impossible he can give any. This is an ultimate end and id never referred to by any other object.”(Enquiry P.293)

Hume confirms his place of honour among the “new men” alongside Hobbes, Descartes, Bentham, Adam Smith etc., all of whom share this reference to an objectless state. Perhaps this is the ultimate terminus of thinking for Existentialism.

Arendt suggests that emphasis upon the life force, Vita Activa, gives rise to the lifting of the fortunes of animal laborans above that of homo faber. With this wave of change, life becomes the dominating value, the highest good. This she partially attributes to Christianity and its appeal to the final “telos” of life, namely the paradoxical idea of life after death: an idea she claims was disastrous for politics. Those that were Christians would live, and sinners will die because as St Paul claimed “the wages of sin is death”. Arendt reminded us that Paul was a Roman citizen but no reference is made to the Aristotelian principle of life or psuche which certainly placed this idea of the form of life at the centre of hylomorphism, an idea connected to both the reality of death and rationality via a metaphysics that would have nothing to do with the immortality of the soul and sin.

Christianity raised animal laborans to the level of the human because labour was necessary to sustain life. Aquinas refined this idea of Augustine’s into the idea that labour is a duty because it is necessary to stay alive. Aquinas in embracing the Aristotelian hierarchy of forms also insisted that the life of contemplation stands above all other forms of psuche. In this context Aristotle would not have accepted the Christian contempt for the goods of the external world, although he himself would have prioritised the goods of the soul above both the goods of the external world and the goods of the body.

Arendt mentions several times the problem that Cartesian doubt caused for religious belief systems. It is Cartesian contemplation and not Aristotelian contemplation that is opposed to Vita Activa . Cartesian doubt was certainly used in the wave of de-secularisation that swept over the world. This wave was driven by a “life-process” sanitised of all human value and dignity. The automatic functioning of the labourer as a cog in the means of production is a dream of behaviourism come true. The problem for Arendt, with the role of Science in this scenario is that science acts into nature adopting a view from nowhere rather than via a web of human relationships and public spaces. This process of acting into nature lacks

“the revelatory character of action as well as the ability to produce stories and become historical”(P.324).

For Arendt it was action and History that generate meaning not by illuminating essences or the principles of things but by somehow illuminating existence itself. Action, she claims, however, has become the possibility of a privileged few and the artists who are also few in number. Both of these groups engage in the latest form of the context of exploration in order to discover the meaning of meaning.