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One of the distinguishing characteristics of the forms of human co-existence in large groups , (e.g. state of nature, civilisation, and culture), is the relation of these forms to Philosophy, History and Law, and their associated institutions of the State, e.g. University and legal institutions. In a state of nature Hobbes claimed that men are essentially equal in that the strong man is still vulnerable to the violence of groups of weak men or even the cunning of a weaker man. For Hobbes and his followers some kind of contract is needed to exchange ones natural freedom for the security of a civilisation. The idea of the transactional relation of the contract between negotiating parties might not actually be the best way of characterising the role of Philosophy, History and Law in the civilising process. The ancient Greeks perhaps best manifested the important role of epistemé and the knowledge of the form of the Good in the transitional phase of community life from the phase of Civilisation to the phase of Culture, a transition in which the matrix of concepts of psuche, areté, diké, arché, eudaimonia and phronesis play important roles in the establishment of the principles of freedom, equality and human rights(all important elements in the provision of security for the citizens of a polis or a state).
Hobbes focussed on the contract perhaps because his goals for humanity were the material goals of security and “commodious living”. Locke too was concerned with property and ownership, and the protection of property was Locke’s motivation for the social contract. He, in contrast to Hobbes, believed that life in a state of nature was not solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short, but rather a peaceful form of coexistence. It was probably only with the Enlightenment and Kant that the returning theme of the importance of the universal intellectual “property” of ideas, made the notion of the social contract otiose. We know Hume claimed that no such contract had ever existed. With Kant, the issue of individual human rights is indirectly posed against the background of a universally embraced categorical imperative. The transition between a utilitarian civilisation and a self sufficient culture meeting both the concrete and abstract needs(e.g. knowledge, justice, etc) of man is, for Kant, assured as a task or telos of the humanistic project. The concrete physiological and safety needs(Maslow), are, of course, important maintenance needs and are necessary conditions for the life of man, but they are not self-sufficient for the being who thinks holistically about a form of existence which he wishes to be a good-spirited flourishing life(eudaimonia), and who is prone to questioning the value of his own being(Heidegger: man is a being form whom his very being is in question). In Cultures the concern for justice is integrated with the ideas of freedom, responsibility and equality. In such a social form we find a combined concern which is continuous with the concerns of the ancient Greeks embedded in the matrix of psuche, arché, epistemé, diké, areté, and eudaimonia.
Kant argued that man as an individual is not rational, but that rationality will actualise itself in the species as long as there is a continual commitment to the moral life and its imperatives and principles. For Hobbes, the issue of the power of the government overrides all concerns for the idea of the cultural man who argues that “the government is representing the people”, meaning that there is a sense in which the government is the people expressed best in the formula “by the people and for the people”. For Hobbes reason is an activity that is merely in the service of exercising power for his narrowly defined ends of humanity.Power for the cultural man is not associated with the sword, as it was for Hobbes, but associated rather with the pen and the book, the law and the gavel, i.e. the powers of language and argumentation and its various forms. These forms may be one of the most important gifts that we have inherited from the Golden Age of ancient Greece, e.g. eristic, elenchus, enthymemes, dialectic. With the exception of eristic which turned argumentation into a competition, the remaining forms aimed primarily at arriving at rational conclusions from supporting premises: conclusions which aimed at the True and the Good depending upon whether the issue was theoretical or practical. With modern forms of “argumentation” which aimed at the rejection of the rational in favour of observation by the senses and free play of the imagination, reasoning fell into disfavour and even became an object of humiliation and indignation if the reasoning was attempting to categorically say that something was true or claim that something was categorically good. This modernism of course risked the whole project of epistemé or knowledge which was designated as “abstract”, in favour of the experience of the concrete by means of the senses.
“Prohibitionism” is a modern movement that further risked the humanistic project by concentrating on defending the differences between cultures rather than asking about the totality of conditions necessary for a culture to be a culture(Ask of everything what it is in its nature). The characterisation of different cultures was presented in the form of an “album of sketches” rather than the concern of the rational philosopher for “perspicuous representation” of the phenomena under consideration. Aristotelian Hylomorphic and Kantian Critical Philosophy was as a consequence marginalised and the humanistic project as a consequence is currently stalled in its tracks.
In a discussion about international mindedness at a Teachers conference some years ago, it was suggested that the humanistic project had to be begun again, not of course from scratch, but by using the Greek rhetorical techniques of elenchus, dialectic and enthymemes, in order to criticise the modern tendency to “reduce” cultures to their differences. There is, of course, a difference between the wines , the foods , the languages and the climates of different countries, and these should be described and appreciated and add to the richness of our experience. Such differences can be described in the form of an “album of sketches” but this “album” is best presented in social contexts when we are at leisure and socialising together. This type of conversation has no need of elenchus, dialectic, or rhetorical techniques, because the imagination is the primary cognitive faculty that is being mobilised and there is no need for anything more than “showing” the phenomena being discussed.
Should, however, the discussion at the dinner table turn to more serious matters, such as the role of women in different societies, the album of sketches approach describing the phenomena of interest will not suffice for the furtherance of the humanistic project which requires elenchus, dialectic, and the logical principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason if prejudices are to be removed from the minds of the dinner guests, and the justice of the cause manifested. It is, of course, a fact that in some societies women are ordered by the government to dress in particular ways, behave in particular ways, and they are also prohibited from behaving in particular ways(e.g. driving cars, demonstrating and voicing their opinion). This form of prohibitionism has ridden on the modern wave of anti-rationalism into the pole position of debate on such issues, and there is even in our culture a prohibition relating to insisting on the value of our freedom, equality, and responsibility which extends all the way to the government which sometimes even prohibits itself from voicing what is important in our culture( on the grounds of non-interference in the lives of its citizens).
There is an argument on the grounds of freedom for the government to take such a position, but it does risk slowing down the rate of progress of the humanistic project and its commitment to equality and justice. In the current modern climate in which everyone appears to be able to be offended by anything, a modification of the Greek strategies was suggested. If someone insisted or acted as if it was not permissible to criticise other cultures, the humanist strategy should consist in, at the very least, attempting to “show” without directly saying, that women, to take one example, should have the freedom to dress, drive cars, speak, be educated, and form relationships of various kinds openly. This can be done by an interrogative technique that questions ones assumptions and the consequences of these assumptions. Such a technique requires epistemé: knowledge of the relation of assumptions and their consequences. The questions have, of course, to be diplomatically formulated, and also leave conclusions about such assumptions, as it were hanging in the air, waiting for their obvious answer(Of course equality requires that women dress as they please, drive if they wish to, express themselves freely, go to school and university and form different kinds of relations with whomever they please(within moral boundaries)).
Prohibitionism as embodied in government action when it, for example prohibited the sale of alcohol in the 1930’s in the US infringed upon obvious rights of privacy that individuals have in virtue of being, as the constitution claims “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights”. What these rights are, of course, is not as self evidently true as the constitution proclaims. This passage, for example, has been appealed to in relation to the right to bear arms that are capable of widespread destruction. Yet imagine the chaos if the government of the 1930’s, in order to avoid criticism of its policies, enforced a ban on freedom of speech. The prohibition of alcohol was born from the union of lack of knowledge about the real properties of alcohol, and its excessive consumption, and the moral indignation of religious figures who conducted debate in an atmosphere of (imagined)humiliation rather than an atmosphere of (informed)good will. This pattern of imagined humiliation and moral indignation is still in use today by terrorists and governments inspired by the same perverted logic. For us moderns it is not as obvious as it was for the ancient Greeks that the good spirited flourishing life was a difficult thing to achieve and required constant vigilance and questioning using reliable methods. Life for them was constantly subjected to a tribunal of reason where evidence was weighed in the light of the demands of the law and judgements pronounced without “fear or favour”. Discourse in the modern polis is not as free nor as responsible and enlightened as it was during these times. After the Golden Age of Greece came the dark ages steered by the spirit of humiliation and dogma of religious institutions. The Renaissance and the Enlightenment initiated a rebirth of critical inquiry which lasted as long as Hegel only to be cast us back into a second dark ages which we are currently enduring under the heading of “modernism” and “post-modernism”. The major shift responsible for this second dark age resides in the rejection of reason in favour of the imagination and the replacement of courage by fear.
Areté(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time) has no ethical meaning today and is viewed descriptively in terms of the concrete connection of consequences with one another . A position that fails to appeal to principle(arché) or law. Principle and law is rejected on the grounds of unnecessary abstraction, because the “concrete” is more tangible and less open to “interpretation”.
Judges do not quibble about the law unless it is an unjust law and are interested in the concrete only to the extent that it proves that someone did something “wrong”— a term which has a clear an unequivocal meaning for them. We expect our politicians to display the same conviction and knowledge of principles and the law, but unfortunately our expectations are constantly unfulfilled. Indeed a politicians life appears to be filled with both “fear and favour” and they are as likely as not these days to have a criminal record or to commit crimes and misdemeanors whilst in office. The ancient view of the phronimos, that great-souled political man possessed of all the “virtues”, is a thing of the past. The imagination has “pictured” this state of affairs in terms of “the absence of political heavyweights”
The “fear” of invoking a moral/political principle at a dinner-party was not shared by the Greeks. The “Symposium” is an account of the kind of conversation that could occur during the “recreation” time of Socrates. Every guest at the symposium dinner table was required to speak on the topic of whether “Eros” is a god or not, and everyone is aware of a possible critical response, but engages in the process without “fear or favour”, even if there is a Socrates present among the guests. It is difficult to imagine in this context the taking of offence because of something one said at this feast, but the virtue-system of that time also encouraged a form of self control that perhaps is not thought of as a virtue today,( but rather as something that has been “buttoned up”). There is no balancing of the virtues of courage and self control in the books of everyday modern life. Homeostasis is achieved at the dinner table by favouring differences and fearing the True and the Good.
What occurs at the dinner table has become the model for education which also fears defending the True and the Good and favours relativism and the religion of “differences”. It may be true that “we are all different individuals”(in some sense) and it may also be true that Cultures too “are all different”(in some sense), but Greek and Enlightenment questions remain hanging in the air, for example, the question of “Ask of everything what it is in its nature”. The need to answer this question in particular was of singular importance for the Greeks and Kant and their followers, but if someone raised this question at a modern dinner table or in a modern classroom it would be met with boredom and indifference at best and with hostility at worst.
Science and Art, are an important part of “Culture” insofar as they aim at the True and the Good, but to the extent that they also embody a sceptical attitude toward these defining and constitutive goals they serve the purposes of the modernist project well, especially if they focus on the use of the imagination and our sensory experiences(observation) of the world rather than our conceptual understanding and the principles and ideas of reason(noncontradiction, sufficient reason, epistemé, areté, freedom, equality ). Freud speaks of these as deflections and claims that they have failed to fulfil the promise of happiness that man expected from them. This is partly why Freud refuses to make the Kantian distinction between Civilisation and Culture and speaks of the discontentment that lies behind his question relating to whether all the effort we put into civilisation is worth the energy. We know from the terrible 20th century( Arendt) that science can be used for evil purposes (dropping atomic bombs on civilian populations, nazi experiments with children) and we also know from this century that modern art no longer saw any point in contributing to the progress of the humanistic project(e.g. by using the imagination to present and reveal what is true and what is good). The strategy of the “new men”(Arendt) for whom everything was possible in a context when the masses thought nothing was possible any longer, was the ancient Sophist technique of making the worse argument seem the better(denying the value of Truth and Justice).This technique lies behind prohibitionism and the general inversion of our belief in epistemé and areté, at the dinner table, in politics, the sciences and the arts. Techné is in the process of replacing epistemé, partly by the use of AI which is replacing our epistemé in relation to psuche(life, soul) with hidden algorithms and SEO formulas. We are now speaking to AI devices in our home and communicating with AI devices over the internet. Turing predicted that one day we would not be able to tell whether we are communicating with an AI device or a human and that day may be here or at least coming soon. The prohibition of souls talking across cultural boundaries about cultural conflicts has been one stage on the way to this end. Such a state of affairs indeed deserves the historical designation of “Technical Revolution” which in some sense is a chid of the “Industrial Revolution”. These are revolutions which the Historians need to evaluate in terms of overall global benefits and burdens. Freud with his eagle eye vision of what was to come, spoke of “Civilisation and its Discontents”. This might be an appropriate term to use for the Modern Age beginning with the Industrial Revolution, namely, the “Age of Discontentment”.