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The book begins by considering the geographical location of the hypothetically conceived polis of Magnesia. The Athenian proposes a land-locked location on the island of Crete with 10 miles to the nearest coastline. This choice of a land-locked location appears to be the result of a judgement relating to harbours and the vices one can encounter in such trading environments. We ought to recall here that Athens was a cosmopolitan trading port, exporting and importing a wide range of goods. Grain was the only product that was regulated by the Athenian state.
Aristotle, in contrast to the view of the Athenian, as might be expected, supported a middle position between free and regulated trade but like Socrates and the Athenian stranger was opposed to unnecessary luxury and unnecessary money lending. Aristotle’s idea of wealth was that it essentially consisted in the use of things rather than mere possession of them. Money lent for interest is unnecessary he argues because it is what he calls a “sterile element”, but money can be exchanged to facilitate necessary trading transactions. Money of course is a possession necessary for maintaining life-activity: it is an instrument, a means to an end and if it becomes an end in itself, it defies its essential nature (This is the view of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle , and Kant). Indeed if it is used, for example, to buy high office in a government this is, in Aristotle’s view, a problematic corrupt practice. For Aristotle, such a practice is not in accordance with areté which demands that they who rule shall be the most qualified to rule. It is interesting to note that given the criticism of both Plato’s Republic and “The Laws” by Aristotle, there is nevertheless much agreement over the principles associated with areté, diké, techné, and epistemé. The extreme frugality of the Socratic “healthy city”where one sleeps on straw, and the extreme of the “fevered city” of Plato which abolishes wealth, separates the warriors and rulers from their children, and believes Philosophers would make the best rulers, are extremes that are both avoided by Aristotle in accordance with his commitment to “The Many meanings of Good” and “The Golden Mean”. In other words, Aristotles account of wealth would not fear the vice one encounters in particular environments such as harbours or ports.
Socrates in the Republic, in an attempt to define the meaning of “justice”, argued for the position that justice is both good-in-its-consequences and good-in-itself. Kant took this line of thinking to a logical conclusion with his different formulations of a categorical imperative which commands us universally to treat people as ends-in-themselves. One alternative ethical position to that of Socrates or Kant is onethat focuses on the consequences of action, e.g. the utilitarianism of the English empiricists (Bentham and J.S. Mill) which allows one to conceptualise ethical action in a scientific “causal” framework. This in turn focuses on “effects” rather than the maxims, intentions and will of the agent. The causal nature of this argumentation also allowed the instrumental form of argumentation used by economists to occupy the centre of the stage, politically.
There have been many arguments against the ethical position of consequentialism. The double effect argument of Aquinas , for example, points out that most actions have chains of consequences (effects that have effects), and that in some circumstances one item in the chain might be good (the injured soldier diving on a live grenade to save his fellows) whilst the effect of the effect, might be bad (the loss of the heroes life). Is, then, the action good or bad? Right or wrong? Appealing to a general principle of happiness will not help here because we cannot straightforwardly say the hero was happy to have lost his life doing his duty or that his fellows were happy that he lost his life. The ethical value of this action seems rather to revolve around the intrinsic worthiness of the action—namely that it is both good-in its consequences and good-in-itself (it was what he freely chose to do).
Polemical debates over the rights and wrongs of Capitalism also seem to attempt to rest their case on the principle of happiness as conceived by the consequentialists. The point of referring to such debates is that they are related to the issue of the role of harbours and the trading process, which might seem like an environment of vice waiting for regulation by areté, diké, arché, and phronesis: an environment, to use Socratic expressions, where the secondary art of making money has usurped the primary arts associated with a state of affairs that is both good-in-its-consequences and good-in-itself. Plato’s tactic of situating Magnesia in a land-locked environment is, then, an attempt to avoid an environment where most people feel compelled to follow the rules and tactics of the art of earning money, an art they believe is so necessary to survive.
“Modern” theories of utilitarianism sometimes make the extreme claim that the only good is related to the ultimate good of happiness which we know Kant rejected on the grounds that happiness was the principle of self-love in disguise, and such a form of love is not worthy of the dignity of man who has a duty to be concerned with what is not just good-in-its-consequences, but what is also good-in-its-itself. Kant would certainly have agreed with Aquinas’ double-effect argument against all ethical consequentialist theories. Aquinas argues that many consequences have consequences of their own and each consequence can have a different ethical value. Take the example of the badly injured soldier sacrificing his life in an enclosed space with his fellows by shielding them from the effects of a live grenade with his own body. The immediate consequence is from an observers standpoint bad–the soldier lost his life—-but the ensuing consequence is good because his fellows live on to fight another day. So one consequence is bad and one consequence is good, making the action difficult to characterise categorically. There is also the additional consideration that consequences are notoriously difficult to predict. For example, another live grenade may be thrown into the enclosed space and kill everyone present in that space. What these examples illustrate is the justificatory importance of the intention in such circumstances. The good intention flowing from the good will is what we principally use to categorise this sacrifice as a good action. The journalist writing about this incidence would certainly not criticise the heroic action on the grounds that it resulted in the death of the agent or that the hero failed to take into account the ensuing consequence (of another grenade killing everyone) for his fellows. In a war, of course, it is often the case that actions have the consequences of life or death, but even here the activity of the hero, as Aristotle would have claimed, aims at the good—however complex that aim might be. This raises an important question, namely, whether “The Laws” are primarily formulated with a view to the consequences of action, or whether these too must be just, i.e. both good-in-themselves. and good-in their-consequences. The answer ought to be obvious. A law such as that which prohibits the sale of sex, risks treating the prostitutes, (who often have had their freedom removed, by either being made dependent on drugs, or more straightforwardly the threat of violence), as means to ends and not as ends-in-themselves. Sweden has relatively recently placed the onus of responsibility upon the purchaser of sex and the final justification of such a position has to be Kantian.
The positioning of the secondary art of economics at the centre of civilisation building or cultural activity resulted in the dialectical materialism of Marxism that focusses on an economically oppressed proletariat who are suffering at the hands of an oppressor class who own the means of production. Aristotelian reasoning would reject Marxism on the grounds that in such theorising no attention is being paid to the middle class and their potential for wise constitutional rule of the polis. This class will, in the future, Aristotle argues, embody a range of virtues that will have been communicated to them via their upbringing and education. Aristotle, confronted then, with these modern alternatives of Capitalism and Communism would see them to be extremes which required focussing on a middle class that was formed with the help of the operation of the Golden mean principle.
Marx, of course, was influenced by the work of the idealist Philosopher , Hegel, who provoked a discussion of the importance of historical law in relation to the march of Spirit. Marx’s conception of “The “laws” was one which Thrasymachus of the Republic would have shared. For Marx laws were an ideological instrument of oppression for the proletariat and false representations of reality: the strong, that is, were using the laws to serve their own selfish interests. Hegel also, incidentally inspired the phenomenologists and existentialists with his reflections upon being and nothingness that generated for example Sartre’s idea of Consciousness which was a modification of the Cartesian conception. Sartre, we recall promised his readers an ethics based on his existentialist Philosophy but delivered instead a Marxist document ( Critique of dialectical reason) produced against a background of a refusal to denounce Stalin and being arrested for selling Maoist newspapers on the streets of Paris. For later phenomenologists like Merleau-Ponty who was also a Marxist, reason and rationality was supplanted by the ideas of “meaning” and “negation” in the context of the operation of the powers of perception imagination, and consciousness. Science too, was criticized for its materialistic metaphysics thus creating a form of metaphysical dualism that was also present to some extent in Hegel, which as we know aimed to turn the work of Kant upside down. We ought to also recall in the context of this discussion that Kant, like Aristotle, provided decisive criticisms of both materialism and dualism and negotiated a middle way between these two positions retaining the truths of both positions: truths that could not rationally be denied. Nevertheless phenomenologists and Existentialists of the 20th century chose to focus on the power of consciousness which, for them, was not grounded on the instincts which Aristotle, Darwin, and Freud believed were the foundation for understanding the meaning of the definition “rational animal capable of discourse”. This focus was partly complemented by the interest in the progress of empirical science in many different fields of investigation. It was, in fact, the Hegelian concentration upon conceptual concretisation or actualisation, plus his anti-metaphysical idealism, that contributed to the growing momentum of the logical atomism and logical positivism movements that swept through Europe ad the US.
Wundt and the Structuralist psychologists chose to define Psychology as the “Science of Consciousness” and sought to “discover” and quantify those basic sensations and feelings which might ground human experience and behaviour. These experiments failed to achieve their purpose and the subsequent response of those active in this field was to question whether Consciousness was the appropriate “subject-matter” for those who wished to discover the building blocks of experience. The initial response to these failed experiments was to shift focus from consciousness to behaviour, because, it was maintained, behaviour can be observed in stimulus-response framework embedded in a context of habit-formation.
Phenomenologists, inheriting the Hegelian dialectical method, as well as the focus upon Consciousness, committed themselves to the “description” of experience rather than the defence of the principles underlying phenomena connected to psuché. The scientific concern with behaviour rejected all forms of metaphysics and much of the reasoning associated with answering the question “Why did agent A do X?” Kant’s Psychology (Anthropology) used many of the groundwork assumptions embedded in Aristotelian hylomorphic Theory, but it may well have been neutralised temporarily by Hegelian dialectical logic and the anti-Hegelian “logic” of atomists and positivists. What emerged from the combination of all these “influences” was a philosophical view of Science based on a methodology that firstly, conceptualised consciousness as essentially connected to “subjective”sensations and feelings, and secondly, conceptualised behaviour (reflexive behaviour and habitual behaviour) as objectively observable and measurable. Perhaps the principle of association emerged from such investigations but this was more like an explanatory “mechanism” than something that could explain the relation between a condition of experience and a phenomenon of experience.
Marxist theory was constructed, as we noted, in an environment in which instrumentalist economic theory served as the ground to reject both Hegelian idealism and all forms of essentially philosophical argumentation in the arena of Politics. During this period economics was used also to justify the movement of economic globalisation via trade. We ought in this context to remind ourselves that for the Ancient Greeks Oikonomous was merely a secondary art designed to provide us with goods from the external world and perhaps goods for the body, or in other words economic activity focussed upon what was merely good-in-its consequences. The Primary Cultural activities of Art, Philosophy, Politics and Religion for the Greeks concerned themselves primarily with what is good-in-itself and good-in-its-consequences: such goods extend over the entire range of goods including the goods of the body, the external world and the goods for the soul.
Hannah Arendt included Cecil Rhodes in her gallery of “new men” and noted how he yearned to colonise the planets for economic purposes. The planets, we ought to note in the context of this discussion had always been objects of awe and wonder and associated with the Gods, but there is no doubt that philosophically we can also legitimately view the heavenly bodies such as the moon, scientifically, as Anaxagoras did, when he noted that the moon was merely cold stone illuminated by the light of the sun. Economics had always been an important consideration during war, but with the advent of the Industrial Revolution and the continuation of the Cartesian project of inventing war machines, it was obviously going to play an even larger role in the First and Second World Wars where the conflict was no longer between individual countries over individual territories but rather a conflict where the issue became one of militarising the whole world for political and economic purposes.
Neither Stalin not Hitler would have responded positively to Human Rights arguments or humanistic arguments demanding respect for the freedom of individual countries or individuals. Both of these tyrants thought of themselves as world-historical leaders (to use a Hegelian term) marching to the music of the Spirit of the Times, perhaps claiming the support of both historical and economic laws. Both of these tyrants committed terrible crimes and are perfect illustrations of the picture of the tyrant presented by Socrates in the Republic: both are bloodthirsty and act in accordance with their many unlawful desires.
The new men of Hegelian Dialectical Philosophy, Analytical Philosophy, Popular Science, Empirical Psychology, Machiavellian Politics and Global Economics were building upon the foundations provided by Descartes and Hobbes and all of these influences together succeeded in inverting the world-view of the masses in the name of the new supplanting the old: in the name of progressivism.
Yet it is also interesting to note that most of these dangers were already present during the time of the Ancient Greeks. They were not, however, in the ascendancy, because there remained during this time a mass belief in the sanctity and importance of authority. This belief, however, was eclipsed in modern times because, on the populist view, authority revealed itself time and again to be imperfect and this sufficed for a comprehensive withdrawal of trust insofar as all authority was concerned. Part of this process included the secularisation of religious belief alongside the dissolution of belief in Government and its various institutions (including legal institutions). There are, however, several curious phenomena worth noting:
- The thought of Plato Aristotle, Kant, Freud and Wittgenstein live on in the “academies” of the universities and contribute to a kind of subterranean counter-reformation.
- The process of globalisation continues on several different fronts and political shifts in favour of the formation of a larger well educated middle class are ongoing, as well as attempts to deal with issues of human rights and global warming on the world-stage.
- The world has experienced peace for the last 75 years up until 2014 when Russia invaded Ukraine, violating both the country’s sovereignty and international law relating to human rights.
- Weapons of mass-destruction have as yet not been used since their last use on the civilian population of Japan at the end of the Second World War.
- The internet whilst favouring populist movements also provides a platform for the distribution of academic work to a wide audience.
So the news about our world is both good and bad and we await the next phase of our cultural development. Will the middle class be given the education and power they need to control the excesses and deficiencies of the state? Will, on the other hand, the new men succeed in marginalising knowledge, justice, and freedom and the other virtues necessary for most of us to lead good spirited flourishing lives? Will the Delphic challenge to “Know thyself!” be met by the middle class or will the prophecy of “everything created by humans is destined for ruin and destruction” become a reality?
Perhaps the most important Philosophical question posed by Kant was “What can we hope for?” Kant relates this religious question to the central question of his ethics, namely “What ought we to do?” These questions have not been of primary interest to modern phenomenologists and existentialists and neither the Philosophy of Religion nor ethics have featured as areas of concern. Sartre, Heidegger and Merleau -Ponty have all failed to produce an ethical theory of significance and they have retreated into either Marxism or in Heideggers case the National Socialism of Hitler. On the other hand, Kantian ethics and political Philosophy have resulted in the abstract grounding of human rights and the establishment of concrete institutions such as the United Nations which lies behind the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Kantian duty-based ethics is the ground for the claim that there is no such thing as a right, if there is no-one prepared to honour the duty to enforce that right. So Kantian Philosophy has resulted in concrete historical results in terms of restoring the authority of the law (international law) during a time when the new me were busy dismantling traditional authoritative institutions.
We see in the earlier books of this commentary that already during Plato’s time the process of dismantling the standards in the traditional arena of music was beginning. Perhaps the prosecution of Socrates may have been a reaction to more popular attempts to dismantle well intrenched traditional structures. Now whilst Human Rights may not have been as such present on the political agenda of the Athens of this time, the foundation, however, for these rights, namely the combination of the good-in-itself and the good-in-its-consequences, was being systematically explored by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.
A wave of Military and Economic global processes have swept over our modern world in the form of invasions and free trade. The form of our living has become permeated by technological inventions and unimagined luxuries in many regions of the world as a result of the free movement of goods and to a more limited extent, the fee movement of specialised competence. This from the Ancient Greek point of view, is a form of life that violates the oracles commandment of “Nothing too much”: a life filled with unnecessary desires. From the Kantian point of view these popular trends indicate an unnecessary concentration upon happiness or the principle of self-love in disguise.
In the continuing discussion of the geographical location of Magnesia in relation to the sea we encounter the following:
“For the country to have the sea nearby is pleasant enough for the purposes of everyday, but in fact it is a “salty-sharp and bitter neighbour” in more senses than one. It fills the world with wholesaling and retailing, breeds shifty and deceitful habits in a mans soul, nd makes the citizens distrustful and hostile not only among themselves, but also in their dealings with the world outside.”(P.159)
The Athenian continues his discourse on the conditions tied to the land if it produces more than the polis needs:
“the state would be swamped with the gold and silver money it received in return—and that if a state means to develop just and noble habits, is pretty nearly the worst thing that could happen to it, all things considered.” (P.159)
This builds upon a Socratic argument to the effect that earning money may be necessary to maintain a household but it is nevertheless a “secondary art” in relation to the primary art of helping others in need through the medium of our work. Socrates argues that the primary art of the shepherd is to tend his sheep but the shepherd also has an interest in the secondary art of earning money. Socrates also uses the example of the doctor who has a primary duty to heal his patients and this ought to override the secondary consideration of receiving payment for his work. Relevant to this discussion is the argument in The Republic against the oligarchic rule of the rich in the polis. The danger with such a form of rule is that the focus of government will centre around the unnecessary desire for the accumulation of wealth. Plato appears in The Republic to favour timocratic rule because of its focus upon the love of honour: a virtue which does not feed the polis with unnecessary desires for luxury. The Athenian, however, believes that timocratic rule is limited because it is founded only upon one virtue from the range of virtues necessary to lead a city along the road to eudaimonia (a good spirited flourishing life).
The Athenian continues his reasoning about the strategic importance of being landlocked and claims that forming a navy can in fact corrupt the fighting spirit of the polis. The Cretan is indirectly criticised for the Cretans use of their navy:
“sailors have the bad habit of dashing forward at frequent intervals and then beating a very rapid retreat.”(P.161)
Fighting at sea, the Athenian argues, is neither noble nor courageous. He continues his argument by claiming that the land battles against the Persians were more decisive and important than the sea-battles which he claims were fought by :
“a motley crew of ragamuffins” (P.162)
The argument being proposed here is that it was the fighting on land that improved the Greek character. Part of the strategy of the argument was to emphasis that the highest good for the polis is connected with a range of virtues rather than mere animal survival. The argument continues with:
“Thats all very well, but when we examine the natural features of a country and its legal system, our ultimate object of scrutiny is of course the quality of its social and political arrangements. We do not hold the common view that a mans highest good is to survive and simply to continue to exist. His highest good is to become as virtuous as possible and to continue to exist in that state as long as life lasts.” (P.162)
The setting up of the ideal state of Magnesia requires, of course, a population which in turn in this instance requires a migration of people from elsewhere. The Athenian points out that emigrant groups have the unity of a swarm of bees. The unity of Magnesia, however, will depend upon the extent to which there is a common language, a common view of law and a common religion: so presumably the emigrant population will come from other areas of Greece. It is also claimed that the history of the relation of this emigrant group to the political and social systems they left will be of importance to the new state. If their relation was rebellious this behaviour might continue in Magnesia and destabilise the new regime. Assimilation of this “swarm of bees” would obviously take a long period of time. This discussion contrasts with that in the Republic where it was claimed paradoxically that all members of the state over the age of 10 years old would have to leave the vicinity for the establishment of the new callipolis. The argument for this was that the ingrained vices of the older inhabitants might be too intractable for the required acquisition of the range of virtues that fell under “the Form of the Good”. We can see from the account given in “The “laws” how Plato changed his approach to the task of forming the callipolis. On the question of what form of rule ought to prevail at the beginning of this process, the Athenian states:
“The ideal starting point is dictatorship, the next best is constitutional kingship and the third is some sort of democracy. Oligarchy comes fourth because it has the largest number of powerful people, so that it admits the growth of a new order only with difficulty.” (P.167)
Plato in both “The Laws” and “The Republic” in spite of the different approaches, continues to believe that the passing of good laws in a sound legislative process is an important aspect of the creation of the new ideal callipolis. Religion was obviously important in both projects and we find the Athenian insisting that “God is the measure of all things” thus evoking the connection between holiness and justice that Socrates established in the dialogue “Euthyphro”.
Finally an analogy between healing and the legislative process is proposed and it is claimed that two types of doctor administer two different kinds of treatments to their patients: one prescribes their treatment dictatorially whilst the other operates more freely seeking to learn from his patients maladies and attempting to persuade the patients of the efficacy of the treatment. The interlocutors all agree that both methods of compulsion and persuasion have their respective places and both these methods ought to be used in legislative activity: i.e laws thrust upon the population ought to be accompanied by liberal persuasive preambles before the laws are finally passed. The Greek word for “law” is “nomos”, which also incidentally has the meaning of “melody”, and this reminds us of the earlier discussion relating to the dissolution of traditional standards in the creation and appreciation of music, song and dance.
The first laws that ought to be passed should, it is argued, focus upon the institution of marriage, and the well-being of children. The suggestion is that men should be pressured into marrying between the ages of 30-35. This starting point once again emphasises the importance of the social unit of the family in Ancient Greek Political Philosophy. This beginning point contrasts with that of Freud who claimed that the first laws ( instituted in the transition between living in a state of nature and living in a civilisation), ought to protect the life of the ruler.
If there is, as Kant maintains, a moral law commanding that we act toward people as ends-in-themselves, then, if there are states that use their own citizens as means to ends at best and at worst threaten the lives of their own citizens, then this moral law would appear to grant everyone that wanted to, the right to leave such a state. We, who have lived through the latter part of the 20th century, and the beginning of the 21st century, are familiar with the right of immigrants to asylum. There does not, however, seem to be any demands made upon these immigrants to speak the language of the country or share a similar cultural heritage. If asylum seekers come in large numbers from very different cultural backgrounds this would seem to threaten to destabilise the state during the assimilation phase of this process. The conclusion to be drawn from “The Laws”, is that large numbers of immigrants must meet certain conditions if the stability of the state is not to be jeopardised in the short term.
The Kantian emphasis upon the universal necessity of treating people as ends in themselves is merely an elaboration upon the the ideas of the Good we encountered in the views of Socrates/Plato/Aristotle which demanded that whatever is being praised or blamed must accord with what is both good-in-itself and good-in-its-consequences. Areté characterised as the capacity to do the right thing at the right time in the right way places the focus on action and on the idea of Right which Kant reflected upon in his work, “Metaphysics of Morals”.
“So act externally so that the free use of your choice can coexist with the freedom of everyone in accordance with a universal law.”(The Metaphysics of Morals, Trans., Gregor, M. Cambridge, CUP, 1991, P 10)
This, of course, presupposes that everyone human in the name of humanity possesses at least one innate right. The translator of the above work in his introduction elaborates:
“From the concept of a right, Kant immediately concludes that human beings, merely by virtue of their “humanity” has one and only one innate right: the right to freedom of action.” (P.11)
Applied to the idea of possession there appears to be two different forms of possession connected to the above right—the possession of a self and the possession of the objects one owns. Translated into the duties of the state, this right ensures that every state has the duty to preserve and protect the life of its citizens. This is a complex duty as witnessed by the action the Athenian state took against Socrates for philosophising in the agora. The right to the possession of the objects one owns, is of course important for economic activity of all kinds including the wholesaling and retailing activity of ports and harbours. We know that in the Athens of the time of Socrates, emigrants entered the city from the port of Piraeus. Presumably Plato perceived the form of life in the harbour to be problematic and ultimately destabilising. Presumably this was tied up with the single minded purpose of accumulating wealth at the expense of other more noble forms of life.
It is not clear exactly why Plato did not believe in gradual evolutionary political change over long periods. Was it because he felt vice was so intrenched in mans lives and Thanatos was the stronger of the battling giants so that he could not share the Aristotelian commitment to the victory of Eros? The deportation of everyone over the age of 10 years old from Plato’s ideal Republic must have appeared problematic for Aristotle from the point of view of his common good view of justice, which involved everyone getting what they deserve. No one deserves deportation after a lifetime of life and work in a state.The only way of viewing such a phenomenon is in terms of the state using its citizens as means to a highly speculative end. Aristotle’s approach to reaching the end of all citizens leading a good spirited flourishing life was to educate them over a long period of time and create an enlightened middle class that would steer clear of excesses and deficiencies. Aristotle might also have viewed the negative view of artists/composers , the cowardice of the navy, and the supposed concentration of vice around harbours with suspicion. Aristotle’s basis for his ethical and political positions can be found in his account of areté (virtue):
“Virtue (areté), then, is a state (hexis) concerned with choice (prohairetiké) being in the mean (mesoteti) relative to us (pros hemas), determined by reason (logoi), and as the man of practical wisdom (ho phronimos) would determine it. It is a mean state between two vices, one of excess, one of deficiency, and for this reason: whereas one group of vices falls short and the other exceeds what is needed, both in affections and actions, virtue finds and chooses the intermediate(to meson) (Nichomachean Ethics 2, b, 1106b36-1107ab)
Areté is, then used in relation to both doing and feeling and one can see the complexity of the formula for “The Good” above.The ideal standard is not just defined in terms of the judgement of the phronimos but also in terms of the criteria of excess and deficiency (the criteria for vice). Implied in this account is also how the phronimos might justify any action or feeling. If, for example the actions relied on complex scientific knowledge for its performance the assumption is that the phronimos will either have knowledge of the various forms of science ,or alternatively, know how to acquire it. The above formula would not be easily applicable to the circumstances envisaged by Plato insofar as starting a new ideal society from scratch was concerned. Finding a completely new territory would be marginally better than deporting the adult population, but it too has its problems when measured on Aristotelian and Kantian criteria. This latter scenario was, as we know, actually played out in the emigration of large numbers of people to America, but that required famines in Ireland and Sweden and generally miserable circumstances in the countries that were left behind. In the establishment of the USA, political Philosophy certainly played a role in forming the constitution of the country. By this time it had become evident that cities could not survive the onslaughts of nations. One can trace aspects of Plato’s “the Laws” , Aristotles political and ethical philosophy and Locke’s political philosophy, in this constitution, but it also did not meet the criteria of treating all humans as ends in themselves (e.g. the slaves), and it did not meet Kantian criteria either. This lack of attention to human rights in general meant that the indigenous populations rights were not taken spontaneously into consideration. The country was simply colonised on dubious English authority which was subsequently rejected by the early pioneering settlers bearing their Bibles and ideas of “the Good”.
Apart from this remarkable exception of the USA, most nation states were forced to adopt an evolutionary approach to social and political change (revolutions such as the French Revolution were merely instances of internal warfare that tore the country apart and appeared, for example, to Kant, as a mixed bag of the good and the bad.) Aristotles approach to Political change acknowledges the important role of education outlined in Plato’s “The Laws”. Aristotle however, in contrast, focuses on the principle of the Golden Mean and the formation of a “middle class” free of vice. It was to this class Aristotle looked for the change that was required in society: a change that was based on both the good-in-itself and the good-in-its-consequences. The Consequence of Kantian thinking and the growing middle class was the establishment of the idea of Human Rights in International Law. Kant’s thinking in turn was built upon the Aristotelian formula for Virtue in particular and hylomorphic thinking in general. Kant elaborates upon Aristotles ethics and political philosophy and created the basis for a conception of human rights based on his concepts of freedom and duty. He did this in a world that was preparing for an industrial and technical revolution that would place Economics on the agenda of every politician. The Watt Steam Engine( 1778), The Power Loom (1785) and The Cotton Gin ( 1794) were all invented during Kant’s lifetime. This industrial revolution also inspired Marx, using the dialectical method of Hegel, to construct a vision of a proletariat-based society that denied, or at least ignored, the Aristotelian idea of the Golden Middle Class.
For Marx, too, Economic Justice was high on his agenda, accusing as he did, the owners of the means of production for creating a divided society by exploiting the labour of the “working class”. The uneducated masses were seduced by the idea of being the victims in a historical process and this prepared the ground for a revolution in the name of this peculiar view of distributive justice. This Marxist form of dialectical materialism together with Hegelian idealism succeeded in temporary eclipsing the idea of human rights that was emerging from Kantian Critical Philosophy. The secondary art of economic instrumental action, i.e. eclipsed the primary issue of justice which required a categorical form of reasoning relying on moral-categorical premises. Kant’s analysis of reason acknowledged clearly the difference between the instrumental form of reasoning revered by Hegel and Marx and the categorical form of reasoning demanded by an understanding of the moral law. The ambiguous idea of happiness which for Kant was a pseudo-principle deceived us into thinking that reasoning about this ambiguous idea constituted the good-in-itself and the good-in-its-consequences.
We should recall in this context that the Existentialist Hannah Arendt, eventually after a period of flirtation, rejected Marxism on the grounds partly of its injustices and partly because of the positions relation to the right to freedom. Hannah Arendt’s contribution to political Philosophy was substantial given her commitments to existentialism. She saw clearly the emergence of the “new men” which is a judgement that could only make sense against the background of the Aristotelian/Kantian theories of “The Good”. In the context of this discussion her analysis of the character of Eichmann based on her research into the documentation associated with his trial as well as his testimony during the trial, caused considerable controversy in the Jewish community who were convinced that Eichmann was the very embodiment of evil. It was clear to Arendt, on the other hand, that what she witnessed was not an evil man but rather a man with no character– a man for whom the good was a relative matter and the lives of other people not a matter for careful consideration. Eichmann in fact invoked the moral theory of Kant as part of his defence but even in this context Eichmanns understanding was flawed and even if he appealed to duty he did so in essentially instrumental terms that ignored the rights and the lives of the Jews. As we know for the Nazis, the Jews were a problem requiring a solution. This is a way of thinking about human beings which does not acknowledge that they are essentially ends-in-themselves and ought to be treated as such, which is the fundamental message of the Kantian account. According to Arendt, Eichmann did not appear to possess the capacity to reason about his actions or think about them in categorical terms. Of course he had grown up during the worst of times when political parties were disintegrating, religion influence was waning, and philosophical thought was once again stranded on the sand banks of different forms of materialism. He grew up during the period when Psychology was attempting to reshape itself as a science and when science was attempting to persuade the masses that with the assistance of technology “Everything was possible”. He grew up during the time of Freud, the Jew who proved to be a thorn in the side of the Nazis. Freud, we know was discontent with his civilisation and its failures to to provide us with the long-promised good spirited flourishing life. In this work Freud’s eagle eye like the eyes of Janus turned westward to the USA and Eastward to the USSR and in both cases he did not like what he saw. Freud was a student of history and he could not have failed to notice that in the one case we were dealing with a nation with little History and in the other case we were dealing with a nation that had undergone a devastating revolution that rejected much of its previous history: in this latter case millions of citizens would be murdered. He was reflecting on these matters before the final solution to the Jewish problem was implemented and over 6 million Jews were murdered in cold blood.
We ought to once again recall in this context that Freud claimed that his Psychology was Kantian. Freud, of course, was not concerned with analysing the problems of philosophy but rather with the problems of his mental patients and perhaps the pathological problems of political figures and judges such as Woodrow Wilson and Schreber. In these analyses the trait of narcissism emerged and were connected with some of the characteristics of Eichmann such as the inability to understand facts, and propensity for unbridled aggression. The law, however, did not appreciate the defence Eichmann offered and he was sentenced to death for his role in the final solution to the Jewish problem.