Marcus Aurelius (121-180 A.D.) succeeded his adoptive father, Antoninus Pius, as Emperor of Rome in 161, reigning until his death in 180. As a young man, he was interested in sports and other activities, but was attracted to Stoic philosophers at an early age. He is the author of one of the most famous books of ancient wisdom, the Meditations.[1] At least a part of his Meditations was written during the last years of Marcus’ life, a period of almost constant military activity. He died in Austria during a military campaign in March 180 at the age of 58. He probably never dreamed that his little book of sayings, written for his own edification, would become a classic of ancient literature. As with Cicero, in Marcus Aurelius we experience the reflections of a person who is active in public life.

The Meditations are difficult to summarize because they consist a series of not always interconnected passages written over a long period of time. I am going to emphasize a few aspects of the thought of Marcus Aurelius important for political philosophy. Before launching into that task, it is important to begin by noting the humility of the writer. Marcus begins his Medications with a series of attributions, giving thanks for his parents, grandparents, teachers, friends, and others for all the gifts and the example they set for him. In particular, he gives thanks to his father for his character and to his brother Severus, from whom he learned that classics and “received the idea of a state in which there is the same law for all, a state administered with regard for the equal rights and equal freedom of speech, the idea of kingly government which respects most of all the freedom of the governed.” [2] Here we see the view that freedom is not only to be protected in democracies but in all wise forms of government.

A Rational World

For Marcus, as for Stoics generally, there is a rational order to the world. The world embodies a “universal nature,” and everything in the world exhibits and reflects that nature, “…for the universal nature is the nature of all things that are; and all things that are have a relation to all things that come into existence. And, further, this universal nature is named truth, and is the prime cause of all things that are true.” [3] The universe embodies a created rationality that is, and should be, reflected in both nature and society.

The universal nature has both moral and social significance. Those who act contrary to universal nature or reason act with impiety and irrationally, which is bound to be destructive either of the world or of human society, which participate in this universal nature. This aspect of Stoic thought was much criticized by Cynics, since there is a great diversity both in physical nature and in the human societies built upon that nature. However, to Marcus, the universe displays a kind of order that should not be violated, and the one who violates it “fights against the nature of the universe.” [4]

A World of Relationality

There are aspects of Marcus’ thought that are surprisingly “post-modern,” contrasting starkly with the mechanical world view of the modern era. Marcus sees that all things are related and part of a whole that cannot be dissected without loss. Thus:

This you must always bear in mind: what is the nature of the whole, and what is my nature, and how this is related to that, and what kind of part it is of what kind of whole, and there is no one who can hinder you from always doing and saying the things that are in accord with the whole of which you are a part. [5]

In this quotation we see much of the wisdom and understanding of the writer: First, there is an order to “nature,” defined as the system of being in which every individual is immersed. This nature is both physical and social. Second, the wise person has to understand the environment he or she is in, what makes up that environment, and what is his or her relationship to the whole.

Based on this insight, Aurelius urges his readers to;

Consider frequently the connection of all things in the universe and their relations to one another. For things are somehow implicated with one another, and all in a way friendly to one another, for one thing follows in order after another and this is by virtue of their active movement and mutual agreement and the unity of their substance. [6]

Our world is a world in which all things are related to one another, and the wise person constantly considers the nature and implications of these relationships. In addition, what will be is implicit in what already is. Present reality is constantly passing away into what will be and is implicit in the new reality to follow. Finally, there is a religious dimension to this, for “All parts of the world are interwoven with one another, and the bond is sacred.” [7] This notion that the world is relational and sacred is a part of the stoic belief that God is a part of all the entire universe.

A World of Constant Change

Another of Aurelius’ foundational ideas is found in the previous quote: the world is constantly changing. The universe and any society in which an individual finds his or herself is one of constant change. In this respect, Aurelius is an organic and process thinker as opposed to a mechanical thinker. Thus, he says:

Observe constantly that all things come about by change; accustom yourself to reflect that nature of the universe loves nothing so much as changing things that are and making new things from them. [8]

No one, not even an emperor, can be successful or wise without an awareness of the reality of constant change. One might say that for Aurelius, like modern process thinkers, the fundamental reality is change. The attempt, so common in the modern world, to achieve “an end to history,” i.e. some perfect state of political and social organization, is doomed. All that can be done is to live and govern faithfully within the boundaries of the circumstances in which one finds oneself.

For every individual, there is an arrow of time in this constant change—an arrow that leads from birth, through maturity, and onwards towards death. Just as the Psalmist urges God to “teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12), Aurelius urges his readers to recognize their mortality. The arrow of time for all men, Alexander the Great and the lowliest slave, is the same—an arrow of time that leads from birth to death.

A Social World

This infinitely complex and delicately interwoven world is designed for social relationships and cooperation as much as for conflict. This is true of nature and of society:

As it is with members of unified bodies, so it is with the rational beings that exist separate, but are designed for co-operation. You will realize this more if you say to yourself: ‘I am a member of a system of rational beings.” [9]

Marcus Aurelius would agree with Aristotle that human beings are by nature social. Thus, “The primary principle then in men’s constitution is the social.” [10] This insight is much different from the modern notion that the individual is primary, that society is made up of autonomous individuals, and that social life is fundamentally a constant conflict for power. Rational cooperation, not conflict, lies at the foundation of a sound social order.

The social order of the world is one of the foundations of wisdom and of morality. The wise and good person recognizes that all of his or her actions are a part of the order of the world and influence the world for good or ill:

As you yourself are a component part of the social system, so let every act of yours be a component part of social life. Whatever act of ours then has no reference either immediately or remotely to a social end, this tears asunder your life. [11]

Here is a relational principle that strikes at the root of the problem of the individualistic ethos of the modern era in which people see themselves as self-seeking and independent. The entire idea of the detached individual is irrational because we are all component parts of a social whole which involves our family, friends, co-workers, neighbors and fellow citizens. It is not enough to think of myself or my own advantage, for every act has a social impact and therefore a social end. The idea that I can seek my personal best interests and have a society that is stable, is simply wrong.

Universal Commonwealth of Humanity.

Marcus’ subscribes to the Stoic ideal of a universal commonwealth.  He expounds on this idea as follows:

If the faculty of understanding is common to us all, the reason also, through which we are rational beings, is common. If this is so, common also is that reason which tells us what to do and what not to do. If this is so, there is a law common to all men also. If this is so, we are fellow citizens and members of some political community, and thus the world is in a way one commonwealth. [12]

This is an important stoic principle that illustrates a difference between the thought of Cicero and Marcus Aurelius from Plato and Aristotle.  The world is not fundamentally divided into Greeks and Barbarians or Jews and Gentiles. There is a common humanity, bound together by one common nature that causes us to be part of one commonwealth, whatever commonwealth we happen to be a part of at any one time. In this, Marcus and Stoic thought in general is similar to the Christian notion of the brotherhood of the human race. In this insight we see a break with tribalism as the primary form of political organization.

Marcus does not identify this universal commonwealth with the Roman Empire, which as Emperor one might think he would. Instead, Marcus is aware that though we are a part of one human race and a commonwealth of rational people, we find ourselves as part of a local political unit to which we owe loyalty.

Serenity in a World of Constant Change

A world of constant change, the way to achieve wisdom and serenity begins with accepting what comes. The wise person is satisfied with their place in life and does not hurry from place to place or activity to activity. [13] There are limits to human striving, and the wise person respects those limits. As a general matter, Marcus urges human beings to do those things that it is their social duty to do and to avoid things that are not necessary, and which lie outside their social duties.

The serene person does not think too seriously or often about what others think, especially critics. “How much trouble he avoids who does not look to what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only what he does himself that he may be just and pure.” [14] Instead of constantly desiring more and different things, true serenity is found in retiring into one’s self and being happy with the circumstances in which one finds oneself: “Remember then to retire into this little realm of your own, above all do not distract or strain yourself, but be free and look at things as a man and as a citizen and as a mortal.”  [15]

Too often, we consider striving, success, and personal accomplishment as central to social life. Our political system is based on the notion that good policy decisions are made in an essentially conflictual process dominated by irreconcilable alternatives. The nature of the process created out such a notion traps politicians and political leaders in a process and life-style that excludes the search for serenity and personal wholeness. If anyone might be trapped in such a situation, it would be an emperor of Rome. Nevertheless, by embracing an essentially rational, relational, and social notion of political life, Aurelius seems to have found serenity and personal wholeness in the midst of a busy life.

Copyright 2020, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] Marcus Aurelius, “Meditations” in Marcus Aurelius and his Times; The Transition from Paganism to Christianity, tr. George Long (New York, NY: Walther J. Black, 1945), pp 11-133). All quotations are from this edition of the work.

[2] Id, at 14.

[3] Id, at 91.

[4] Id. I believe that this idea of a rational order to the universe and to a well-founded and ordered society is an important part of any project of reconstructing a wise and moral society.

[5] Id, at 22-23.

[6] Id, at 63.

[7] Id, at 69.

[8] Id, at 40.

[9] Id, at 69.

[10] Id, at 71.

[11] Id, at 96.

[12] Id, at 34.

[13] Id, at 58-9. This is the hardest part of this blog to write. The nature of Marcus’ work means that it is filled with many aphorisms that are applicable to everyday life.

[14] Id, at 38.

[15] Id, at 34.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-53 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, and scholar who played an active role in the politics of the late Roman Republic, including during the period of the First Triumvirate (Julius Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus) and the Second Triumvirate (Marc Anthony, Octavian, and Lepidus), both of which he resisted hoping to restore the Roman Republic. He was killed by supporters of Mark Anthony. Thus, Cicero was the most prominent defender republican principles during the series of crises that led to the establishment of the Roman Empire.

Cicero is included in this series because of his status as the foremost Roman philosophical and legal theorist. Having lived prior to the emergence of Christianity, he forms a bridge between the classical and Christian aspects of this series of blogs. Finally, Cicero is included because he was not only a theorist but an active politician, whose views are informed by practical experience. He attained high positions in the Roman Republic and was successful in his endeavors until the emergence of Caesar and the end of the Republic.

Cicero’s “On the Commonwealth” (hereinafter, “Commonwealth”) is a dialogue between Roman political intellectuals and leaders, all practical people of the world with strong intellectual qualities. [1] The Commonwealth is characterized by its organic look at the evolution of the Roman constitution through the time of Cicero, and its defense of this historical approach. In many ways, The Commonwealth shows that it is the reflection of a lawyer. This is seen in the sometimes tedious (to the modern reader) description of the intricacies of Roman law. Nevertheless, its approach reflects the methods of a practical lawyer, who meticulously builds his case with the evidence at hand, in this case Roman Constitutional history, as well as a person with philosophical training and capacity.

The Value of the Practical Man of Affairs

As might be expected in a book by a stateman, Cicero begins by a defense of the man of practical accomplishment. The art of politics is a practical art, and theoretical knowledge is of limited value if not put into practice. A statesman is greater than a teacher because he or she puts into practice in the affairs of a commonwealth the ideas of those who have only theoretical knowledge. This is a matter of risk, for in desperate times the people of a commonwealth will sometimes turn against the statesman, and the potential for failure and tragedy is ever-present. Cicero experienced this very fate.

In defending the art of the statesman, Cicero returns to a metaphor used by Plato in the Statesman: that of a pilot. The knowledge that a statesman needs is not the intricate knowledge of philosophy that a scholar must possess, but that level of knowledge that the pilot of a ship has as to the sciences involved in sailing, i.e. sufficient knowledge to guide the ship safely to its destination. In this regard, those with purely theoretical understanding may sometimes think that they are better qualified to guide the ship of state in a crisis than the person of practical experience. This is untrue, because:

You cannot aid a state in moment’s notice or when you wish, although she is faced with great danger, unless you are in a position to do so. It has always seemed especially strange to me in the discourses of the learned, that men who admit that they cannot pilot the ship when the sea is calm, because they have never learned how nor troubled about such knowledge, nevertheless declare that they will take the helm when the waves are highest. [2]

Thus, the statesman is a practical workman with the special skills of understanding the structure and functions of government as well as the means by which it can be maintained. In order to be successful, the statesman requires both knowledge and experience such that when the opportunity for leadership arises, the statesman is ready to serve the commonwealth.

The Nature of a Commonwealth

According to Cicero, a true commonwealth is not just a gathering of human beings, but a voluntary union of a great number of people as a result of a common understanding of how they might be governed. Commonwealths are formed because of the natural instinct of human beings to seek social bonds and intercourse with other human beings. In other words, Cicero agrees with Aristotle that human beings are social animals. [3] Government does not fundamentally arise as matter of the gaining of power over human beings with an eye to defense, but out of the natural human desire for social connection with others.

For a commonwealth to exist, it must have institutions of government that reflect the will of those who brought the commonwealth into existence. Some form of appropriate deliberative authority relevant to the people and circumstances that brought the commonwealth into existence in the first place must be created. The precise nature of this form of government can, and has throughout history, been different in different historical and cultural circumstances.

This leads Cicero to the adoption of the three-fold category of governments adopted by Plato and Aristotle: monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy with their three decadent forms, tyranny, oligarchy, and mob rule. So long as capable and just persons rule, each of these forms can be successful, though all are unstable. Thus, there is a natural tendency for monarchy to become tyranny, aristocracy oligarchy, and democracy mob rule.

The Mixed Form of Government

This leads Cicero to the recommendation that the best form of government is mixed in its form, having appropriate elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. Any other form is inherently unstable and degenerates into its own negative form. It is the mixed form in which the benefits of each primary form can be maximized, and the negative attributes of each form minimized, to the benefit of all citizens. Near the end of the dialogue, Cicero observes:

For you should master the principle that I set out at the beginning: Unless there is in the state such an equal distribution of legal rights, functions, and duties that the magistrates possess an adequate power, the council of the chief men an adequate influence, and the people an adequate measure of liberty, the balance of the commonwealth cannot be preserved unchanged. [4]

In other words, because all the primary forms of the state are essentially unstable, their needs to be a “fourth form of organization” (mixed government). Returning to the image of “statesman as ship pilot,” it is the business of the statesmen to for see the weaknesses of the constitution of the state and to remedy any weaknesses before they can become fatal:

It is the business of the philosopher to understand the order in which these changes occur; but to foresee the impending modifications, and at the same time to pilot the state, to direct its course, and to keep it under control, is the part of a great statesman and a man of all but godlike powers. [5]

The mixed state is the fourth form that can assist in maintaining the stability of the commonwealth.

In setting out the basis of a well-designed mixed form of government, Cicero begins in the place one might least expect of a Roman—with the consent of the people. There must be some representative function in the well-formed commonwealth because if the people have no say in their government it will be inherently unstable, vulnerable to tyranny and revolution. What makes monarchy and aristocracy so susceptible to corruption and ultimate revolution is the absence of real power in the hands of the common people.

Thus, a mixed form of government begins with some kind of representative democracy, because if the populace is involved in the choice of leaders and the development of policy, the state will be more stable than if the people have no say in the government—which is a form of tyranny. From this perspective, Cicero understands that democracy, with all its faults, is the foundation of any stable form of government. [6]

Despite its advantages, the democratic element cannot survive alone. For stable and wise government to exist, there needs to be a level of experience in those chosen to actively lead the state. There can be no haphazard or random choice of leaders. Those chosen must not be inexperienced or incompetent pilots, they must be capable and experienced. [7] There must be some level of experience, practical wisdom and moderation of conduct for leaders to wisely lead a commonwealth through the perils of history. While a monarchy is capable of providing such an executive function, Cicero believes that some kind of aristocracy is the best practical alternative for the wisest leaders to be chosen with the least danger of error. [8]

Times of danger are the most demanding and call for leadership of a different character than that which is necessary in normal times. In this situation, Cicero defends the practice of a constitutional dictator and the centralization of power in times of danger:

For you may play the fool as long as you have nothing to fear, as on a ship in calm weather and often in disease when it is not critical. But the passenger calls for a single skilled pilot when the seas begin suddenly to rise; and the invalid calls for a single doctor when his illness takes a turn for the worse. [9]

Democracy, in and of itself, is not stable and can and does degenerate into the worst form of government—the violent rule of the mob which has no respect for person or property. One is here reminded of the French revolution and its horrible excesses. [10] In the United States, from Lincoln through George W. Bush, wartime Presidents have often been “granted” powers that would not be given to a leader in other times. [11]

No form of government, not even a benevolent monarchy of the wise and just ruler, can provide the kind of balance and adaptability that a mixed form of government is capable of producing. Thus, Cicero concludes:

For I hold first that there should be a dominant and royal element in the commonwealth; second that some powers should be granted and assigned to the aristocracy; and third that certain matters should be reserved to the people for decision and judgement. Such a government insures at once an element of equality, without which the people can hardly be free, and an element of strength. [12]

A mixed form of government, wisely-formed under these principles has the best chance to remain strong and survive the fortunes of history. There is, however, once circumstance under which no form of government can survive: the degeneration of its leadership.

The Leadership of the Sound Commonwealth

As indicated at the beginning, one of the most attractive features of Cicero is his practical experience and lack of sympathy with some of Plato’s utopian and unworkable suggestions, such as the holding of all women and property in common, which he views as ridiculous. The best governments are not the creation of a single person, however gifted, but of the cooperative efforts and the experience of many capable people. [13] The slow generational evolution of Roman law and polity is one good example of this notion of generational cooperation. Cicero is suspicious of the innovations of a single person and inclined to trust the slow, organic evolution of governmental institutions.

Rome was made great not by individual genius but by the wisdom, discipline and cooperation of many people over a long period of time. This is a message that we, living in a “revolutionary cultural era” where the history and traditions of our own commonwealth are often denigrated in schools, in academia and in the popular media might well consider the value of the slow adaptation of fundamentally sound institutions over a long period of time. This cannot happen if we are led by the inexperienced in life, the unfaithful to our history and tradition, and the uninterested in the past and its lessons. This week, one of the major parties has been busily suggesting that massive changes might be needed in the form of our government if they do not win a particular political battle. [14]

Role of Justice in the Commonwealth

Finally, it would not be right to end this blog without emphasizing the role that justice plays in Cicero’s thought. He was well aware of the arguments of the sophists who did not think that any transcendent ideal such as justice exists. He was aware of those who thought that the ideal if justice was incompatible with the wise exercise of power by a leader to achieve goals. He was aware of the tendency to see justice as simply the utilitarian result of the balance of interests. Nevertheless, Cicero believes that justice is an important value. Because human beings are sociable, they are inevitably interested in being treated fairly, and a society based on injustice would be impossible to maintain. Self-interest is not a guarantee of a sound society. Indeed, if nothing but self-interest exists it is impossible to envision how a sound society can exist. Justice forms the basis of a sound society and is the basis upon which any sound polity is formed. [15]

Conclusion

It is impossible to summarize the depth and ingenuity of Cicero’s thought. He is one of the most important constitutional thinkers of world history and important to our founding fathers and to thinkers like John Locke who were important to the formation of the American democracy. His practical approach is a true “bottom up” approach to political thought.

Cicero is best remembered for his ultimately doomed attempt to save the Roman Republic from its demise under the pressure of the greed and lust for power of men like Julius Caesar, Mark Anthony, Octavian and the like. He was unsuccessful in his struggle against historical and political forces beyond the control of a single voice. Perhaps he simply could not see beyond the history and traditions of the Roman Republic, which he so loved, into a new era characterized by some kind of new political organization that would preserve the best of the old republican form of government while adjusting the political reality of Rome to the existence of its new empire. Nevertheless, he was one of the most important statesmen of history and a model for our day. Therefore, I will give him the last word in the explanation of his life and thought:

The pilots aim is a successful voyage; a doctor’s health; a general’s victory. Similarly, the goal set before the ideal ruler of the commonwealth is the happiness of his citizens; and he strives to make them secure in their resources, rich in wealth, great in renown, distinguished in virtue. This is the task—the greatest and noblest in human life—that I would have the governor carry through to completion. [16]

Copyright 2020, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] Cicero, On the Commonwealth tr. George Holland Sabine & Stanley Barney Library of the Liberal Arts, ed. (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1929). All quotes are from this edition.

[2] Id, at 111.

[3] Id, at 129.

[4] Id, at 185. This is the chief principle of the mixed state and of the separation of powers.

[5] Id, at 134.

[6] Id, at 135-6.

[7] Id, at 137.

[8] Id, at 139.

[9] Id, at 140. In the case of Rome, they obeyed their magistrates in times of danger and even appointed a single ruler I times of great emergency. One is reminded of the singular powers that Lincoln adopted during the American Civil War when the union was in mortal danger. At the time, he was even called a “dictator.”

[10] Id, at 148-149.

[11] The alleged misuse of the national security apparatus at the end of the Obama administration against an incoming President seems to have marked the end of the willingness of the public to grant the administrative state the relatively unlimited use certain powers which arose out of the aftermath of “9-11”. One can see in the way in which the Bush Presidency ended the historical antipathy of Americans to any kind of security apparatus that interferes with personal liberty. The recent changes in FBI and other agency policies with respect to “unmasking” citizens is a positive movement back towards some kind of “Pre 9-11” norm.

[12] Id, at 151.

[13] Id, at 155. He critiques Plato’s “arbitrary” creation of an “imaginary state.”

[14] Recently people like Nancy Pelosi, Alexandra Octavia-Cortez and others have used anti-democratic, revolutionary rhetoric in response to perceived political setbacks. The threat to impeach the President or pack the Supreme Court if the Democratic Party does not get to appoint the next Supreme Court Justice after the election  is a good example of  immature and dangerous speech and behavior. by elected officials in response to a potential political setback. The media is also responsible for this kind of immature behavior, as in Don Lemon’s recent comments on “Blowing up the entire elite” on CNN. For a stable society to exist there must be some agreed upon boundaries, especially among political contenders, that acts as a moral barrier against ultimately harmful speech and behavior. in a free society, this cannot be mandated, but it can be demanded by the public which desires to maintain free, democratic institutions.

[15] Id at 219.

[16] Id at 247.

This week, I want to share a few thoughts derived from Plato’s Statesman. [1] The Statesman is one of Plato’s later dialogues. Those who study the dialogue sometimes believe it reflects a decline in Plato’s dialogical style and intellectual capacity due to age. Nevertheless, the Statesman represents the fully-developed thought of Plato on matters of political philosophy. One explanation for the character of the Statesman is that it represents a mature Plato, disinclined to restate the utopian idealism of the Republic and perhaps disillusioned by the bitter experience of a long life.

Who is the Statesman?

The Greek title of the dialogue is, “Politikos,” which we might accurately translate “Politician,” except that the term as used by Plato is better translated, “Statesman,” for Plato does not mean by his analysis to talk about the technique of the politician but of the qualities of the experienced, practical and moral leader of a polity. Plato wants to talk about the ideal leader not about the run-of-the-mill politician.

In English, the term “politician” refers to anyone who is active in political life. In English, the term “politician” often has a derogatory connotation. A politician is frequently described as someone who is solely concerned with gaining public office without reference to political or moral principles. It can even mean one who in any kind of organization gains advancement in ways that are morally questionable.

The role of rhetoric in the character of the mere politician is dealt with by Plato:

STRANGER: The members of all these States, with the exception of the one which has knowledge, may be set aside as being not Statesmen but partisans, —upholders of the most monstrous idols, and themselves idols; and, being the greatest imitators and magicians, they are also the greatest of Sophists.

YOUNG SOCRATES: The name of Sophist after many windings in the argument appears to have been most justly fixed upon the politicians, as they are termed. [2]

The term “sophist” refers to a person who uses the art of rhetoric in a deceptive or misleading way without concern for the truth or accuracy of what is being said. Much of modern political thought is pure sophistry, made worse by the lack of concern for truth in the media and other institutions of society.

On the other hand, in English the term “statesman” refers to a politician who is also accomplished in matters of the state—someone with a particular kind of practical and theoretical wisdom, knowledge, ability and expertise in directing political affairs, and especially where important policy issues are concerned. For example, Abraham Lincoln was a politician with the ability to be elected President, but also demonstrated the capacities of a stateman in directing the United states though the American Civil War. A statesman is concerned with advancing the public good regardless of short-term political gain or loss. In the Statesman, Plato is concerned with the qualities that mark a true “statesman,” not a mere “politician.”

Qualities of the Statesman

As indicated above, for Plato, as for us, the defining quality of a statesman is practical wisdom in the achievement of the end of a political unit, an end which for Plato is assumed to be what we would call a well-constructed and led political unit that is able to achieve for its citizens the safety, affluence, and order that is the goal of a wise leader.

For Plato, the art of the statesman is the art of the architect and builder, that is the art of envisioning and constructing a good society. This metaphor of builder is not, however, the only metaphor Plato uses, for the statesman is also like a ship’s pilot guiding it safely through a long voyage, or like a physician that prescribes a cure for a sick patient, or like a weaver who weaves a piece of clothing. Each of these examples involve practical occupations requiring knowledge, skill and experience for their accomplishment. Thus, for Plato, the statesman is one who has the required understanding, technical ability to govern, and experience to wisely lead the state. [3]

Of the moral qualities of a statesman, Plato outlines two contrasting qualities that must find a balance in the life of a statesman: Courage and Temperance. Thus, Plato remarks:

In like manner, the royal science appears to me to be the mistress of all lawful educators and instructors, and having this queenly power, will not permit them to train men in what will produce characters unsuited to the political constitution which she desires to create, but only in what will produce such as are suitable. Those which have no share of manliness (active courage) and temperance (wise calmness in action), or any other virtuous inclination, and, from the necessity of an evil nature, are violently carried away to godlessness and insolence and injustice, she gets rid of by death and exile, and punishes them with the greatest of disgraces.[4]

The wise stateman has the capacity for courageous action and the ability to moderate action in order to achieve the harmonious goal of society. Going back to my earlier example of Lincoln, Carl Sandburg described Lincoln as a man of “steel and velvet,” a reference to his moral, intellectual, and political will and strength, as well as his compassion for those who he led.

The most famous metaphor used by Plato to describe the Greek statesmen is the metaphor of the “statesman as weaver.” This particular metaphor is developed by Plato as a way of showing the contrasting qualities of the statesman:

The rest of the citizens, out of whom, if they have education, something noble may be made, and who are capable of being united by the statesman, the kingly art blends and weaves together; taking on the one hand those whose natures tend rather to courage, which is the stronger element and may be regarded as the warp, and on the other hand those which incline to order and gentleness, and which are represented in the figure as spun thick and soft, after the manner of the woof—these, which are naturally opposed, she seeks to bind and weave together in the following manner:…” (emphasis added). [5]

According to Plato, this spinning and weaving is the activity of the divine muse in human nature guiding the statesman in his activity for the common good. [6]

The education of the stateman is fundamentally concerned with creating the proper character so that the state will be in good hands. Educators will seek to moderate in their pupils the active and the passive virtues:

I said that there would be no difficulty in creating them, if only both classes originally held the same opinion about the honorable and good;—indeed, in this single work, the whole process of royal weaving is comprised—never to allow temperate natures to be separated from the brave, but to weave them together, like the warp and the woof, by common sentiments and honors and reputation, and by the giving of pledges to one another; and out of them forming one smooth and even web, to entrust to them the offices of State. [7]

The Status of Law and the Statesman

There is no area of the Statesman in which the weaknesses of the Greek notion of the relationship between law and politics is more evident than in the critique that Plato makes of the relative importance of law and the political leader. It is this weakness that may underlie the end of the city/state and the inability of the unified Hellenist Empire to survive the death of Alexander. The Greek ideal of leaders and leadership undermined the role of law and of the maintenance of constitutional order in Greek thinking, a deficiency that was only remedied by the emergence of Roman leadership and Roman law.

Plato’s lack of sympathy for the rule of law is boldly stated in more than one place. For Example, in one interchange between the Stranger (who I take to be Plato) and Socrates it is plainly said:

“STRANGER: And any individual or any number of men, having fixed laws, in acting contrary to them with a view to something better, would only be acting, as far as they are able, like the true Statesman?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.” [8]

The ideal of the statesman who acts contrary to law is was a danger to Greek polity—and it is a danger in contemporary America.  It is no coincidence that the emergence of what is sometimes called the “Imperial Presidency” in the years after Roosevelt, and what is often called the “Activist” Supreme Court coordinates with the emergence of a willingness on the part of elites to ignore the plain wording of the Constitution and of the law to gain an advantage or address an issue. The willingness to be governed by the will of an elite as opposed to law was a threat to Athenian democracy and it is a danger to our own.

I have had other opportunities to critique the “great man” theory of history and the tendency of modern politics to revolve around a discussion of the qualities of a leader as opposed to policy matters. [9] Both the moral qualities of a leader and his or her commitment to the rule of law and the order of the political system are important. It is a mistake to think that a good leader can overcome systemic issues without great sacrifice and the constant danger of failure.

Types of Polity

Plato, like Aristotle, divides the forms of government into three types, with each type having a counter-type. The three main types are monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, with each type having a degenerate from: tyranny, oligarchy (plutocracy), and mob rule. Plato, like Aristotle, is tempted to seek the best form of government as the mean (aristocracy):

The government of the few, which is intermediate between that of the one and many, is also intermediate in good and evil; but the government of the many is in every respect weak and unable to do either any great good or any great evil, when compared with the others, because the offices are too minutely subdivided and too many hold them. [10]

Plato in the Statesman is still too tied to the ideal of a “philosopher king” that we will see when we look at the Republic, some time from now. This leads him to prefer an aristocratic form of government, ignoring the practical wisdom that is often not found in those born to privilege.

Limits of the Platonic Vision

The vision of Plato and Aristotle, as previously noted, was deeply formed by the Greek City/State and by the Greek ideal of the perfect “warrior king” exemplified in the Iliad. By the time of Aristotle, that ideal had simply come to an end, for by that time the city/state was a political form passing from history with the emergence of the Macedonian and then Alexandrian empires. The limitations of the Greek city/state as envisioned by Plato and Aristotle are a particular challenge for one who, like the author, is inclined towards a communitarian, “bottom up” polity. The fate of the city/state is a warning that local governmental units, as important as they may be, are not the only important units.  The proper construction and leadership of a nation such as the United States of America, which has a world-wide economy and a web of political and economic alliances that stretch around the world, is also a matter of supreme importance.

Just as the polity of the Greek city/state had to bend before the power of Rome, Macedonia, and the example of the great Eastern empires of the Middle East, local and regional governments must be adjusted for the reality of the post-modern world and the existence of the modern state. In the attempt to emphasize the importance of the family, neighborhood, city, region, state and national government does not mean that larger political unites are not important nor does it mean that international arrangements are unimportant. The point is that their health cannot be divorced from the health of smaller units of society.

I am not going directly on to deal with the Republic at this moment in time, but will return to it later on in this series of blogs. The next blog will be on Cicero.

Copyright 2020, G, Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] Plato, Statesman tr. Jowett (Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/statesman/id498684133, downloaded on September 16, 2020). All references to Statesman in this blog are to this edition.

[2] Plato. “Statesman” previously cited.

[3] This is a place where I think Plato can become confused, for he emphasizes the mental qualities of the statesman in the beginning of his dialogue, sometimes to the detriment of a focus on practical wisdom.

[4] Plato. “Statesman.” Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/statesman/id498684133 (downloaded September 16, 2020). I have added the parentheticals “courage” and “gentleness” which are in my mind better words to describe the qualities desired.

[5] Plato, “Statesman” Apple Books. Previously cited. I do not have the time to go into detail concerning this metaphor and how it is used by Plato, but it is one of the unique features of the dialogue and unique to the Greek weaving industry.

[6] “The meaning is, that the opinion about the honorable and the just and good and their opposites, which is true and confirmed by reason, is a divine principle, and when implanted in the soul, is implanted, as I maintain, in a nature of heavenly birth.” Plato, “Statesman” Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/statesman/id498684133

[7] Plato, “Statesman” Jowett tr. Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/statesman/id498684133 (downloaded September 17, 2020).

[8] Plato, “Stateman” previously cited.

[9] See, G. Christopher Scruggs, Centered Leading/Centered Living: The Way of Light and Love (The Tao Te Ching for Christ-Followers) rev. ed. (Cordova, TN: Booksurge, 2016), xxvi-xxvix, 114-119.

[10] Plato, “Statesman” previously cited.

 

This week, I am looking at Aristotle’s Politics, probably the most important book on political philosophy from the ancient world. Aristotle’s views are important, not only in their own right, but because they profoundly influenced the greatest of the Middle Age philosophers, St. Thomas Aquinas, through which Aristotle has continuing influence in Roman Catholic and other intellectual circles today. Pragmatists have appreciated Aristotle’s approach to politics when compared with the idealism of Plato. A generation of contemporary ethicists and political philosophers, such as Alister McIntyre, have been influenced by Aristotle’s virtue approach to politics and ethics in attempting to address modern nihilism. In other words, Aristotle is worth reading.

Aristotle was born in Macedonia. His father was a court physician for Alexander the Great’s father, Philip II of Macedonia. Aristotle lived beyond the reign of Alexander, who was his pupil for a time. When Alexander died, his empire was divided, and the parts were eventually incorporated into the Roman Empire. As a result of repercussions of Alexander’s death in Athens, Aristotle was forced to flee in order to avoid the same fate that overtook Socrates—an untimely death.

Aristotle’s work is the concluding achievement of Classical Greek civilization. Aristotle, unlike Plato, does not begin by attempting to outline a perfect society but by describing the various kinds and types of polities with which he is familiar. In this sense, Aristotle is a “bottom up” inductive thinker. His reasoning is careful and his recommendations measured. As a result of his approach, his politics is easier to follow than that of Plato.

A modern reader will find aspects of Aristotle’s thought troubling. He defends the institution of slavery, despite misgivings. His notion of the family places males in control of family life. He is dismissive about the capacities of women. Like Plato, Aristotle inherits the ancient martial Greek ideal from the Iliad that forms part of his understanding of politics differently than that of a modern person. Nevertheless, his work is illuminating and important.

Types of Governments

The most famous observation in Aristotle’s Politics is his division of governments into three basic types: the rule of one (monarchy), the rule of the few (oligarchy), and the rule of the many (democracy). Each of these types have a corresponding decadent form: tyranny for monarchy, oligarchy for aristocracy, and mob rule for democracy. Each form in its positive embodiment tends to deteriorate into its negative form. Historically, each of the six governments has existed and continues in some form to exist today.

Graphically, one might picture Aristotle’s description as follows: [1]

Good Form	Decadent form	Comment
Monarchy	Tyranny	Rule by one
Aristocracy	Oligarchy	Rule by the able
Moderate Democracy	Mob Rule	Rule by the many

The American founders, and especially Madison and the most important framers of our Constitution, were familiar with Aristotle and with his concerns for Tyranny, Oligarchy, and Mob Rule. One reason why the notion of Separation of Powers was important to them was the desire to block the emergence of tyranny, oligarchy, or mob rule.

On the other hand, the framers of the Constitution were aware of the need for a strong executive, wise and experienced counsel, and representation of all. Their initial way of assuring the positive aspects of Aristotle’s categories was the Presidency (strong executive), the Senate (wise counsel chosen by local leadership), and the House of Representatives (democratic representation). One might add that a wise federal court system is an aristocratic feature of almost every system of government, since all governments must have laws.

The Social Foundation of Government

Aristotle understood that the development of political structures is contextual and the precise nature of a sound polity will differ from city/state to city/state. Like Plato, Aristotle sees the family as the original political unit of society. After the family, small villages composed of the descendants of a single family evolved. In Aristotle’s mind, when villages gather together to form a single society, one has the best possible form of government. Such a society is on a human scale. In addition, such a society protects the family as the foundation of all healthy human society. The city/state and empires evolve from the smaller units that preceded them.

According to Aristotle, the family is the fundamental unit of any sound society. He thinks that natural parents are the best persons, indeed the only citizens who can and will properly raise their children. He thinks that those philosophers that advocate that all children in a society being in common are engaged in foolishness. As Aristotle aptly observes: “Let each citizen then in the state have a thousand children, but let none of them be considered as the children of that individual, but let the relation of father and child be common to them all, and they will all be neglected.” [2]

Aristotle believes that the evolution of the city/state was a natural result of the human social impulse. Human beings are by nature social animals. [3] Aristotle quotes Homer for the view that a human being who is without a society, without a social surrounding, without a family, is really not fully human. People who grow up without a healthy family influence are inevitably at least somewhat antisocial, quarrelsome, and socially  irrational. Those who grow up without a family or in seriously dysfunctional families lack the fundamental emotional and moral qualities needed for a sound society. Thus, it is important for to protect and properly structure human family relations. We might not agree with the precise way in which Aristotle suggests that families be structured, but his insight remains valid.

The Importance of the Middle Class

Although Aristotle appears to prefer a form of aristocracy, he actually speaks favorably about a mixed form of government containing elements of all three of his basic types. He recognizes that this kind of government is difficult to achieve without a strong, vibrant middle-class. Without a strong middle class, there is a tendency for governments to degenerate into either oligarchy or mob rule.

This is a feature of Aristotle’s thinking that contemporary Americans also need to consider carefully. Over recent decades, the American middle class has consistently shrunk as a percentage of the population. During this same period, American society has developed attributes of a kind of oligarchical rule. Under these circumstances, a vibrant democracy is difficult to maintain.

Moral Foundation of the City/State

Another feature of Aristotle’s thinking that deserves consideration is the importance of moral qualities in leaders and in society as a whole. Aristotle does not believe any form of government can succeed unless its leaders and citizens are properly educated and have the requisite skills to make wise decisions. Without literacy, judgment, and understanding of public policy, and a respect for the foundations of a society, a stable government is impossible to sustain.

Aristotle is a realist concerning human nature and human weaknesses. Human beings are flawed; and therefore, all human endeavors are flawed, including human governments. Therefore, it is not enough for those who would have a good government to concentrate of human potential. There must also be a dispassionate examination of the reality of the human situation.

Aristotle’s views of politics are related to his ethics in a fundamental way: ethics is related to politics, and politics related to ethics. Aristotle did not separate, as modern thinkers are inclined to do, the practical art of governing (“real politik”) and morality (“idealism”). Because human beings are social, there can be no division between politics and morality. As indicated earlier, the state exists because families gathered together to provide a kind of secure life impossible without social intercourse. Sound morals can only arise in sound families and societies, and sound government, can only arise where there are sound human beings. Governments, when they are good, make a good life possible for individuals. No government can endure if it is led by the violent, the immoral, or the unjust.

This is yet another aspect of Aristotle with contemporary relevance. As I have mentioned before, modern politics, and especially since Marx, has been dominated by the hope of an earthly paradise in which all the problems of human society and history are solved and a just society achieved once and for all. In this sense, modernity is platonic. Wisdom and attention to the reality of the human situation argues for another approach, embodied in Aristotle’s thought: slow, wise progress founded in an appreciation of human weaknesses as well as human potential.

The Role of Education in the Good Society

It logically flows from Aristotle’s views of the family, raising children, and the importance of character, that the education of citizens and leaders cannot be ignored. Aristotle does not believe, as moderns often do, that education is the be all and end all of human advancement. Education alone cannot create neither good citizens nor wise legislators. Thus, “…whosoever shall introduce any education, and think thereby to make his city excellent and respectable, will be absurd, while he expects to form it by such regulations, and not by manners, philosophy, and laws.” [4] Aristotle understood the limits of education, but nevertheless recognized its importance, especially for a functioning republic. [5]

The problem with relying upon education for the stability of society is that education alone cannot form character. This is particularly true for modern “value free” education. Unfortunately, our American system of education not only does a poor job of transmitting the history, traditions, and moral values of our society, it too frequently consciously or unconsciously undermines them. The problem of political violence in our culture is exacerbated by a kind of nihilist education, particularly prevalent in the liberal arts, that undermines all belief in the reality of love, beauty, truth, justice, goodness, courage and the other virtues. Aristotle, however, recognized that a stable state of whatever kind required leadership and citizenry educated in the history, traditions, virtues, and values of the society.

A Political System as Evolutionary and Adaptive

Plato, as mentioned in a previous blog, has a static view of the good society. His search is for an unchanging ideal. Aristotle has an “evolutionary” notion of society. He recognizes that change and adaptation is inevitable and necessary. Thus,

Nor is it, moreover, right to permit written laws always to remain without alteration; for as in all other sciences, so in politics, it is impossible to express everything in writing with perfect exactness; for when we commit anything to writing we must use general terms, but in every action there is something particular to itself, “which these may not comprehend; from whence it is evident, that certain laws will at certain times admit of alterations. [6]

Despite this acknowledgement of the need for laws to change because of changing circumstances, Aristotle does not think it wise to change existing laws without good cause:

“For a law derives all its strength from custom, and this requires long time to establish; so that, to make it an easy matter to pass from the established laws to other new ones, is to weaken the power of laws.” [7]

The wise legislator is both willing to change laws when necessary and reluctant to do so without good cause.

There is a balance to be drawn between the conservative impulse to maintain the status quo and the liberal impulse to change things. A wise leader and government manages the pace and degree of change with the goal of adapting the system to change as well as creating necessary and important change.

Teleology and Political Ideals

This aspect of Aristotle’s thought coordinates with his teleology. Aristotle believed that things tend towards their proper end, including human society. Modern thought tends to be interested only in material causes, powered by a kind of evolutionary faith that those who succeed are those favored by the path of survival of the fittest. Both ideas are important to consider and combine in one’s thinking.

However true in the arena of biological evolution, is a flawed approach to politics and human life. As I like to observe, “If the human race destroys itself in a nuclear holocaust, it will turn out that cockroaches and sharks are the fittest because they might survive.” Because we are conscious beings, created in the image of God, human beings have the capacity to create and form a future inspired by faith, hope, love, fortitude, truth, justice, and temperance. Thus, no purely mechanistic or evolutionary approach to human society can succeed—in fact it is doomed to create foolishness and suffering, as Communist and “Social Darwinist” regimes clearly show.

Aristotle’s approach to government begins with the “teleological” goal of a society in which people can achieve the ends for which they were naturally created—the good life. This aspect of his thought needs to be recovered in a post-modern form. Going back to an observation of a couple of weeks ago, C.S. Peirce divided evolutionary growth into three kinds: chance, order, and love. This love part he called, “agapistic” evolution. The notion that a kind of self-giving, justice-loving, truth-seeking, preserving and adapting, love may be part of the evolution of the world allows the observation that human societal evolution needs to be guided by a kind of agapistic search for a good society in which all can achieve their potential. This, however, is the subject of a future blog.

Copyright 2020, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] I have chosen “Moderate Democracy” for the good form of democracy that Aristotle calls, “Polity” and “Mob Rule” for the decadent form Democracy, because Aristotle’s language is so much different than modern language. He uses “Democracy” for the unbridled rule of the masses, often irrational, moved easily to violence, and imprudent. He uses “Polity” for the form of government we would call “Republican Democracy”

[2] Aristotle, Politics: A Treatise on Government Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/politics-a-treatise-on-government/id395545349(downloaded September 7, 2020). Aritotle is dismissive of Plato’s radical and unworkable ideas concerning marriage, family, and child-raising. The parts of the Politics in which this is discussed contains some of his most acerbic comments.

[3] If Aristotle’s most famous idea is the division of kinds of political systems, his most famous quote is, “Man is a social animal.”

[4] Aristotle, “Politics: A Treatise on Government.” Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/politics-a-treatise-on-government/id395545349(downloaded September 7, 2020).

[5] This aspect of Aristotle’s thinking is also relevant to the modern “regulatory state.” Regulations are necessary as a part of government, but they cannot by themselves create the character and circumstances in which a good society develops and endures.

[6] Aristotle, “Politics: A Treatise on Government.” Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/politics-a-treatise-on-government/id395545349(downloaded September 7, 2020).

[7] Excerpt From: Aristoteles. “Politics: A Treatise on Government.” Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/politics-a-treatise-on-government/id395545349 (downloaded September 7, 2020).

This week, I am taking a trip into history to look at Plato’s Laws, Plato’s last work in the area of political philosophy, which may have been incomplete at his death. I am leaving his more famous work, “The Republic,” until later in this series. The Laws is not considered one of Plato’s best works, perhaps as a result of age and declining powers of concentration. (I can relate.) It is set as a dialogue between three men, a Spartan, a Cretan, and an Athenian walking from Cnosis to the Temple of Zeus on a hot summer day. As with a reading of any ancient writer, while there is much in the book to ignore or object to, there are also insights as applicable today as in the time of Plato.

Virtues and the State

As a result of the Enlightenment and the development of modern “Political Science,” there has been a tendency to ignore or push to the sidelines the moral basis of a sound political system. If one were to write a book of”scientific” political philosophy today, one would not spend  time listing virtues, and especially not on the virtues of war. However, in Plato’s day, the development of physical and emotional skills for the conduct of war and the maintenances of a state were necessary to be discussed.

We are probably very near the end of the period of history. in which the moral qualities of leaders (as opposed to development of a  “politically correct character”) of leaders can be ignored.  The decline of Western democracies, accompanied by the decline of the societies that have adopted a “morally neutral” approach to education and politics, gives every indication that the secular project is coming to its end.

The Spartan state was designed to endure a perpetual state of war. In the dialogue, the Cretan state is similarly focused. The Athenian city/state, on the other hand, was concerned with all the virtues, and not just with the virtues of war. Peace and the virtues of human society rank first in the Athenian hope for political life. Thus,

Every legislator will aim at the greatest good, and the greatest good is not victory in war, whether civil or external, but mutual peace and good-will, as in the body health is preferable to “the purgation of disease.” He who makes war his object instead of peace, or who pursues war except for the sake of peace, is not a true statesman. [1]

The modern ideal of “moral free” education, in which children choose their own “lifestyles” is far from Plato’s ideal. For Plato, the first duty of the state is to provide an education and environment in which children honor God, their parents, and the laws of their society. Education is not to create radicals inclined to defy laws and tradition, but to nurture citizens who “naturally” follow the laws, support society, and upheld the traditions of their city/sate. Moral education, together with reading, writing, music, mathematics, and gymnastics are all part of the education of a good Greek citizen. The ultimate goal of the education of the future leadership of a nation was, in Plato’s mind, the cultivation of wisdom, temperance, justice and courage, without which no state can endure.

We might make a pause to contemplate the difference between the Platonic ideal and American reality. We tend to think that education should create “independent individuals.” Often public schools, colleges, universities, and graduate schools do not consider it their responsibility to form the character of their students.  Plato, however, regards the first and primary duty of educators to be the creation of good citizens. Plato’s vision, to which I will return in analyzing The Republic, emphasizes the social and moral aspect of education in the development of the individual as a citizen, and thereby places less emphasis on individual development of the private “self,” modern education may not pay enough attention to an education that develops a good citizen.

Perhaps the there is a balance to be found between individual self-development and social cohesion. Modern “value free” education is unlikely to create citizens with the virtues of wisdom, temperance, a sense of justice, and courage. We need a new and different, “constructive post-modern” theory of education. This is also a theme to which I intend to return.

The Community of the Polis

A second aspect of the Laws that immediately interests a contemporary reader has to do with the kind of overt social engineering in which Plato engages. Once again, a critique of this method will come later when I look at The Republic, but for now, it is enough to observe that a good deal of the Laws concerns a detailed description of an ideal state in which everything is regulated by law and law provides an order for property allocation, marriage, holidays, social intercourse, public and private property, education, music, drama, and all of cultural life—and all of it regulated with a view towards creating a society that is stable, unchanging, and healthy for its human inhabitants. Plato does not give enough emphasis to freedom, change, the evolution of social institutions and the adaptation of such institutions to changing reality. [2]

While the Laws does not have the same focus on the creation of an ideal state as does The Republic, Plato is still trying to logically outline a completely structured society from first principles. This is very much unlike Aristotle, whose Politics is more oriented towards the observation of actual human societies and commentary on them. It is this part of Plato that one finds most irritating, unless one is inclined towards social engineering by elites, which I am not.

Some of Plato’s ideas were ludicrous when developed, as Aristotle observes. Others have been seen to be foolish over the long history of the human race since Plato. Most surprisingly, Plato often fails to see the value of the slow, incremental evolution of a society and polity. He is often seeking a “once forever” organization of society, which is a fool’s pursuit. This is surprising, because as is seen below, he is well aware of the gradual evolution of Greek political systems.

The Origin of the State

Plato understood that human history extends far back into time and political organizations have changed and differed from place to place and time to time. Unlike modern Americans, who tend to think of democracy as a given, Plato understands that there have been various forms of government throughout human history. Democracy is only one, and not the most common.

The first governments were those of familial, usually patriarchal rule. Plato understood that all of the splendor of Hellenist politics evolved from the family, which is the first form of human government. Generally, their laws were the customs of their ancestors, but adaptation to changing circumstances required chieftains and laws. The original, small local political units s arose out of the union of single families, who survived into larger and larger units.

As people increased in number, and agriculture developed, families joined together against danger, human and animal. Out of this primitive organization, the city/state gradually emerged. In other words, unlike the modern mind that sees a social contract and individual assent at the foundation of political entities, Plato sees that governments are organic. They have evolved from the demands of circumstances and human necessity. Although he fails to see that they will continue to evolve beyond what he sees as the best Greek model, he does see that what is has an antecedent that must be understood. Here too, Americans may have a lot to learn from Plato.

In the earliest states there was both an element of compulsion (parents, the strong and the militarily gifted ruled) and democracy (good parents are never tyrants and kings were subject to being over thrown). Thus, the fundamental forms of government are rule by the one and rule by the many, monarchy and democracy. [3] No actual government has been fully one or the other, and the attempt to create a pure form of one of the primary forms of government is unwise due to human flaws.

Interestingly, the Founders debated the issue of how much democracy and how much monarchy they desired for the new nation they were forming. Many thought Washington should, or inevitably would, become their king. Washington, however, was committed to the republican ideals of English thinkers such as Locke. At the constitutional convention, he supported, and the delegates adopted, an executive branch with a strong President, having independent powers. The President would be both the head of state and the chief executive of the nation, with all the powers of the executive branch of government, while the legislative power belonged to Congress. In this way, the Founders hoped to overcome the weaknesses of both democracy and monarchy. [4]

A Balanced Polity

Having said that there is and excessive idealistic quality about Plato’s Laws, he does have insight into the human condition and the problems of human society. Plato is aware of the defects of human nature. He outlines a theory of balance of powers based upon the tendencies he sees in human nature and in those who have access to political power. While Plato is not a democrat, or fond of democracy, he sees the need for the common people to have a say in their own destiny. On the other hand, like Aristotle (and the Founding Fathers), he is concerned about the tendency of democracy to deteriorate into mob rule and the oppression of the minority.

This is a warning we can easily apply to contemporary politics. In America, there is nothing more popular than the notion that the majority should rule. However, those who drafted our Constitution were careful to create structural impediments to the tyranny of a majority. The founders lived close to the experience of the French Revolution, and they were concerned that American not follow its example. They had read deeply in history and in political philosophy and understood that democratic majorities could often be moved by emotion and fear with terrible consequences.

One interesting facet of contemporary American political life is the emergence of a group of people who did not live through the Second World War, what is called the “Cold War,” and who have no memory of the deaths of millions and millions of people under Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pot Pol, and others. In each of these cases, a majority came to power and simply obliterated anyone who stood in their way. Unfortunately, the rhetoric far-left politicians and groups today is identical to the rhetoric that brought misery and death to millions upon millions of people.

Balanced Leadership

Plato was the inheritor of the virtues of the Iliad, where the courage of the martial life was an assumed good. Nevertheless, the virtues of an Achilles were not the sole goal of Plato in the creation of a leader. Plato believed that to be a good statesman requires sober prudence, and a depth of understanding, with the goal of maintaining the peace of society. Such a person does not automatically emerge. A sound education is necessary to create the kind of character fit to lead a sound polity. The goal is “a perfect citizen who knows how to rule and how to obey” not “wealth or strength or mere cleverness.” [5] Such a person embodies the virtues necessary for a sound polity.

As becomes clearer in The Republic, Plato is inclined to see a kind of monarchy as the best form of government, in his case a “tyranny of the wise.” The problem, which Plato sees, is that power easily corrupts the virtues of prudence, practical wisdom, courage, teachability, temperance, love of justice, and the other virtues good leaders need, even among the wise and well-educated. Plato recognizes that no human leader embodies the virtues of the perfect leader—only God, he says can rule wisely and finally cleanse the human race of the evil of bad government. In this, Plato anticipates a Christian view of the secular state.

Plato also warns against a danger to which all forms of government, but particularly democracy, are subject (which is why he desires power to be separated and appropriately limited): If a faction or small group gains a monopoly on power, and refuses to share power with those they rule, there is no check up on what such a group of people can do. In Nazi Germany, in Soviet Russia, and communist China, and in other places we’ve seen the consequences of “factional rule.” According to Plato, such a government is not a polity at all, and the laws or not for the benefit of all people, instead it’s a kind of class or mob rule.

Religion and the State

Plato understands that  religion is essential to the state. It is religion that creates the virtues upon which a stable state must rest. It is only in the service of the gods, for Plato assumes the existence of many guards, that’s a good can be found for society. Thus,

God holds in His hand the beginning, middle, and end of all things, and He moves in a straight line towards the accomplishment of His will. Justice always bears Him company, and punishes those who fall short of His laws. He who would be happy follows humbly in her train; but he who is lifted up with pride, or wealth, or honor, or beauty, is soon deserted by God, and, being deserted, he lives in confusion and disorder. [6]

While no serious American thinker would want a kind of state established religion designed solely for the maintenance of the state, Plato’s ideas support the notion that religion has a place to play in the modern state—not as ruler but as a servant of the society (not necessarily the state) in nurturing the virtues of humility, love of truth, goodness and beauty, and the creation of a meaningful life. This is a matter to which I will return in a later blog.

Copyright 2020, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] Plato, Laws tr. Jowett, https://books.apple.com/us/book/laws/id501268153 (downloaded August 28, 2020).

[2] I am preparing a blog on Aristotle’s Politics, in which he critiques this aspect of Plato and has a great deal less patience with social engineering as even potentially successful. In addition, when I discuss The Republic I intend to also look at Carl Poppers, “The Free Society and Its Enemies,” which is a critique of Plato.

[3] By the end of the  Laws, Plato has recognized the Aristotelean outline of the kinds of polities as monarchy, tyranny, democracy oligarchy, and aristocracy, though he does not develop his thought in the way Aristotle does.

[4] In an interesting aside, Plato, after discussing the figure of Cyrus of Persia and the way in which his government deteriorated into tyranny in the hands of those who followed him, says “The Persians have lost their liberty in absolute slavery and we in absolute freedom.”

[5] Laws, previously cited.

[6] Laws, previously cited.

Years ago, I was part of the leadership team of an organization in crisis. A strategic decision had to be made. The organization was divided up into essentially three camps:

• The first camp included a small minority of the leadership of the organization but a large number of passive stakeholders. This group generally acknowledged the organizational facts, but did not feel there was a necessity to change strategic direction. They believed that the current situation should continue and would work out for the best.
• The second group, which was a majority of the leadership of the organization, believed that there was a strategic problem, but no fundamental change in strategic direction was needed for the organization to reach its goals. They urged an enhancement of current tactics, but no change of strategic direction.
• The third group, which was made up of a large minority of the leadership group as well as many active stakeholders, believed that a fundamental strategic change needed to be made.

Eventually a crisis was reached, and a decision had to be made. The organization had six-months to decide. From the beginning of the debate, the first group supported the second group, almost certainly guaranteeing the second group would continue to define the strategic direction of the organization. These two groups were not necessary aligned in their interpretation of the situation the organization faced, but they were united in opposing any fundamental change. This placed the third group in an uncomfortable position of needing to persuade a substantial percentage of the first and second group to support their cause, which they almost certainly could not do.

After months of debate, the organization made its decision by a narrow margin. As expected the second group’s vision continued to guide the organization. A large number of people left the organization, including a minority of leaders who desired strategic change. The organization entered into a period of recovery that lasted for some years.

During the entire time that the organization was making its decision, there were a number of debates. There were a great number of flyers, mailings, and other communication efforts to recruit support. The directors debated the issue, sometimes violently, at leadership meetings. There were many acrimonious meetings. Old friendships were ruined. The process was highly dysfunctional.

What was lacking was any serious conversation among the leadership groups concerning the strategic situation, the presuppositions that were driving various groups, their differing interpretations of the facts, the ways in which the various parties might compromise, or other potential alternatives to constant strife and division. There was little openness by any of the leaders of either side to the perspectives of the others. There was no consideration of the needs of those who opposed either position. There was no openness to any mediation.

Many years later, the organization faced exactly the same strategic decision. After another failed attempt to adopt a different strategic direction, a final vote was held, and the organization voted to do what it had not done over many years earlier. I view the entire episode as a failure of strategic decision-making by the leadership teams involved (of which I was a part).[1]

The Consequences of a Failure of Reason

This organization’s failure to find a reasonable and peaceful way of making a difficult decision is identical in its essential characteristics to the situation our political system faces in a number of areas. For example, the United States of America is deeply in debt. No serious analyst believes that the current rate of federal borrowing can continue forever. The debt level is so high that the debt service threatens to undermine the ability of the national government to fund important priorities. The government has a large commitment to domestic social welfare programs, many of which don’t work and are counterproductive. Much of Federal spending is “pork barrel” in nature. Strategically, the United States is overextended militarily and diplomatically. Finally, in recent years there’s been such a decline in confidence in government that the fundamental unity of the nation is sometimes question.

In the face of obvious need for important strategic decisions to be made and change embraced, one party remains captive to a policy of ever-increasing taxes on the rich and the shrinking middle class, while the other party is captive to a philosophy of cutting taxes without commensurate spending cuts. Both parties are incapable of addressing the deficit. There is a great deal of acrimonious debate in Washington, but little attempt to craft solutions. Our democratic system is in a crisis, frozen in a “winner take all” mentality and a vicious kind of electoral politics. How can we get out of the trap? The answer is, “Change the way we relate and govern.”

Signs, Conversation, and Interpretation

For the last several weeks I’ve been involved in a series of blogs reflecting on Josiah Royce’s work. Royce, in turn, was influenced by C. S. Peirce, the father of modern semiotics, or the study of signs. Peirce had the insight that all communication involves a communicator, a sign by which the message is transmitted, and a recipient, who interprets its meaning. Royce adapted Peirce’s insight and developed the notion that all communication involves the person who is communicating, signs by which the communication is made, and an interpreter who interprets the meaning. Since all thinking is done through sigs, there is always a need for an interpreter—someone who interprets the meaning of the communication. This interpreter often is the person who is receiving the communication, but there is a difference between the perception received, the conceptual content of the communication, and the meaning of the communication.

Royce uses a series of examples to show how this process works. For example, suppose I am walking home one night and see something moving in the bushes near my home. I perceive the movement and perhaps a shadow (the communication). Immediately, I suspect it is my neighbor’s dog running through the bushes near our hoses. I think to myself (the interpretation), “I need to talk to him about letting that dog run free.” Then, I think to myself, “There have been some burglaries in our neighborhood recently. I wonder of it is a burglar?” My heart begins to beat quickly. As I grow closer, I see another movement and recognize my neighbor’s children playing in their yard. I breathe a sigh of relief. My internal conversation constitutes my continual interpretation of the perceptions and conceptual results of my walk home.

This process is a universal experience. A communicator and the person to whom the communication is addressed, need the mediating event of external and internal dialogue and reason for important and difficult matters to be interpreted accurately wisely. In larger groups, the process of discernment involves at least one and often many interpreters.  Royce puts it this way:

“If, then, I am worthy to be an interpreter at all, we three, —You, my neighbor, whose mind I would fain interpret, —you, my kindly listener, to whom I am to address my interpretation, —we three constitute a Community. Let us give to this sort of community a technical name. Let us call it a Community of Interpretation. (Emphasis added). [2]

Where larger communities, like the Congress of the United States, are involved, the interpretation of events is an activity of the entire community and all of its members. It is a presupposition of the community that there are enough shared values and loyalty that the community can discuss and interpret important matters through in the context of shared values and goals. For example, in the United States of America historically shared goals included the promotion of individual liberty, protection of rights to private property, defense of religious and personal freedom, and other commonly held values. It was this cultural unity of shared life and values that enabled our political system to work.

When perceptions of the facts and interpretations of them differ, there often must be many interpreters at work, each with their own perceptions and conceptions of what ought to be done in response to a problem.

Once again, a quote from Royce:

I can at present aim to approach that goal through plans, through hypotheses regarding you which can be inductively tested. I can view that goal as a common future event. We can agree upon that goal. And herewith I interpret not only you as the being whom I am to interpret, but also myself as in ideal the interpreter who aims to approach the vision of the unity of precisely this community. And you, and my other neighbor to whom I address my interpretation, can also interpret yourselves accordingly. The conditions of the definition of our community will thus be perfectly satisfied. We shall be many selves with a common ideal future event at which we aim. [3]

In other words, when faced with difficult decisions, a healthy political community engages in the process of factual analysis, conceptual development, and interpretation while searching for the best possible solution to problems or the best theoretical understanding in order to move forward. It is this process, which Royce calls “Interpretation,” that is seriously lacking in our political discussions and debate. The Republican and Democratic parties, ideologically defined by extremes from within, endlessly continue repeat their arguments in debate after debate without any attempt to understand or compromise with the other side. The debate is both negative and destructive of the national community. Every election, one party defeats the other party, and the dysfunctional process begins again. The result has been a series of policy disasters.

A Failures of Proper Interpretation

In a prior blog, I discuss the way in which the debate over what is now called “Obamacare” was handled. It is a classic case of ideological excess with no real attempt to understand and interpret the facts, sympathetically listen to the other side, understand the important points about the dispute, adjust policy preferences, compromise, and come to a wise solution. The result was that one party pushed its agenda through, despite warnings that it was actuarily and economically unsound. The program failed dramatically and was unpopular. The party with the majority that pushed it through experienced the political consequences of a poor decision, billions of dollars in the taxpayer’s money wasted, and a continuation of the problem the program was designed to address. In the case of certain recent military escapades, the other party has been led into the same kind of failure by an inability to listen, dialogue, discuss, and reach a compromise in then strategic interest of the nation.

Increasingly, in academia and in the political arena certain voices are being silenced. In particular, on college campuses and elsewhere conservative and religious voices are being silenced, often violently. This is a great mistake. It reflects the same inability to listen and interpret information in the public interest.

The Endless Process of Interpretation

Another implication of the work of Peirce and Royce is an understanding that the processing interpretation is endless and requires various perspectives. One important development of postmodern philosophy has been an understanding that no one voice is privileged in the search for truth. There are many levels and kinds of truth, all of which form an inexhaustible web of meaning. Each interpretation brings with it the need for new interpretation and adjustment to the new state of affairs the new interpretation created.  Every interpretation creates a new perception, which in turn must be interpreted. Therefore, wisdom is found in the open search for truth involving the voices of many interpreters of the facts and concepts by which we define problems.

An Example of the National Debt.

Let’s take the national debt as an example. Legislators may have no particular expertise in how balanced budget might be arranged, but need to have the capacity to listen, understand, and interpret the facts from a policy perspective. The may listen to economists analyze the problem, and from an economic perspective, project that a certain amount of tax increases or spending cuts that will be necessary to achieve a reasonable balance.

From a religious perspective, religious leaders might issue a warning that the Scriptures teach that borrowing is a dangerous activity and should be held to a minimum. In fact, from a policy perspective, the religious leaders can warn that massive amounts of debt placed United States government in the hands of its lenders, some of them are also enemies of the nation (Proverbs 22:7). At this point, other religious leaders warned that their views are that the poor should not have important services cut in order to balance the budget. They will point out that a nation is judged by how it treats its poorest and least powerful members. Most of the arguments they will bring the beer will be religious or moral in nature.

Political leaders, from their perspective, may warn that it’s going to be difficult to be reelected unless the economy grows in a sufficient manner to overcome the deflationary impact of lowering federal spending. Theirs is pragmatic view about what Congress can actually do under the circumstances. The other hand, if they’re listening to the economist in the religious leader, they understand that they have to do something. Perhaps, the budget might be brought in the balance over a period of years under the pressure of a Constitutional Amendment to balance the budget. Perhaps some mixture of spending cuts and tax increases is the best tactic to solve the problem.

In the end, a multitude of voices should be heard by the decision-makers in Congress. All views should be considered careful, not just by those who agree with those views but also by those who find those views politically or otherwise inconvenient. In the end, Congress will have to decide. This will require debate and compromise because it is likely no firm consensus will be gathered as a result of the conversation itself.  In the process of compromise, there will have to be dialogue among the members of Congress and debates in the halls of Congress. However, if the members of Congress see themselves as stewards of a community of law and interpretation, which is trying to solve a serious political problem, there is the hope that they can a wise choice.

The art of statesmanship is the art of compromise. The art of winning election is the art of politics. The statesperson goes beyond the work of a politician. The art of the statesperson is the art of compromise and decision-making in the midst of confusing, contradictory, and sometimes in adequate information. Faced with the political fact that not everyone will be happy with a compromise, the statesperson acts reasonably and rationally to resolve public problems. In so doing, our representatives act as interpreters of the national will and the national best interest. The United States has no shortage of politicians, but a serious shortage of statesmen who can wisely interpret and respond to national problems.

Copyright 2020, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] The basic facts of this example are accurate, I have changed certain facts and given no names so that the organization itself could not be identified.

[2] Excerpt From: Josiah Royce. The Problem of Christianity, Volume 2 (Barnes & Noble Digital Library).” Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/problem-christianity-volume-2-barnes-noble-digital/id1280399789 (downloaded August 24, 2020).

[3] Excerpt From: Josiah Royce. “The Problem of Christianity, Volume 2 (Barnes & Noble Digital Library).” Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/problem-christianity-volume-2-barnes-noble-digital/id1280399789 (downloaded August 24, 2020).

 

As mentioned in my last blog, the term “Beloved Community” rose to popularity in late 20^th Century America, due to the influence of Martin Luther King, Jr. While in graduate school, King was influenced by Royce, and particularly by the notion of “Beloved Community,” which King developed and used in various ways and in various contexts during the remainder of this life. For example, one of his most beloved quotes reads, “Our goal is to create a beloved community and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives.” [1] This particular quote identifies two distinct uses for the term  “Beloved Community” that must be clearly understood, one spiritual and the other practical. For King, the Beloved Community was both a transcendent ideal and a concrete program followed in his efforts to promote racial equality.

The Dangers of a Purely Secular Use of Beloved Community

The use of “Beloved Community” as a guide to political activity has both usefulness and dangers. Its usefulness is in seeing society as an evolving reality on a pilgrimage towards a more loving, equitable, just and fair society. The danger comes in seeing what is finally an eschatological reality as capable of final realization within history. The danger of Marxism, Nazism, and certain forms of Laisse-Faire Capitalism, is that they seek a solution to the human problem and the end of history as achievable within history, as opposed to as history’s final goal and purpose. This inevitably leads to violence, cruelty, terror, and demonic pride, things that Dr. King steadfastly resisted and opposed during his life. Seeking the goal of a Beloved Community inside of history means both seeking the future, and seeking that future with love, wisdom, peaceableness, and patience, as social problems gradually give way to the search for a more just society.

The Heavenly City and Beloved Community

The Beloved Community is, however, partially realizable within society within history by the “obedience of faith, hope, and love” (See, Roand mans 1:5). The hope of the Beloved Community, in the sense that Royce conceived it, is the ideal of a universal community for which human beings hope, but do not and cannot fully realized within history.

The writer of Revelation, living in a time of religious persecution has a vision of a heavenly city coming down from heaven at the end of the trials of human history:

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Revelation 21:1-4).

A close reading of Revelation discloses that the heavenly city is the church, the Universal Community of those who have been called into the Beloved Community of God built on faith, hope, and sacrificial love. This Beloved Community is revealed, not in the heaven and earth we inhabit, but in a “new heaven and new earth” (21:1). It is a community that exists when the old order of things passes away (v. 4). The origin of the ideal of the Beloved Community is not secular or political, but religious and eschatological.

In the hands of St. Augustine, the vision of John became a vision of the “City of God,” an eschatological reality, imperfectly realized in the church during world history. The Heavenly City is never seen in the same way as the earthly city of Rome (and all other polities) are seen, for the Heavenly City is formed and ruled by love, but earthly cities are founded and ruled by force and human ambition. [2]

From Augustine to Marx, this distinction between the heavenly and earthly city was fundamental to how Western regimes, whose history looked back into the Judeo-Christian past, were formed. In the hands of a Luther, this hard division between the heavenly and earthly city became the so-called “Two Kingdoms” doctrine that freed earthly kings to become and be a separate “sphere of influence” from the earthly and heavenly kingdoms of the church. [3]

The Modern World and the Dream of an Earthly Heavenly City

With the Enlightenment, there developed the hope of a “realized eschatological kingdom,” as the progress of science and human knowledge created an expectation of a “new heaven and new earth” within and not at the end of history, as John’s vision implied. When bourgeoisie capitalism failed to bring in the perfect world, Marxism arose, which implied that the eschatological hope of humanity for a perfect society (the universal community) would be created by the operation of mechanistic, historical, economic forces. The cruel, heartless, cold dystopias of Communist Russia, Nazi Germany Communist China, and contemporary Venezuela (to give but a few examples of the phenomena) are the results of the misguided  20th Century  attempts to bring an eschatological (and by definition not historical) hope into the present of human history. We are still not at the end of the false modern expectation of the perfect world within history. [4]

Unfolding Transcendent Ideals in Continuing History

The cruelty and evil of Communist Regimes, and the leftist violence we are now experiencing, are the result of the demonic form of the eschatological impulse prevalent in the modern world, and so dangerous in the postmodern world set free of all traditional norms. Such regimes feel justified in seeking a “kingdom of peace and plenty” by means that are incapable of doing so. Lenin’s words “You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet,” while killing thousands upon thousands of Russians, are the inevitable result of the madness of the misplaced hope that is the modern ideal of a perfect world within human history.

Royce never speaks of the Beloved Community in such terms. Thus he says:

“In order to be thus lovable to the critical and naturally rebellious soul, the Beloved Community must be, quite unlike a natural social group, whose life consists of laws and quarrels, of a collective will, and of individual rebellion. This community must be a union of members who first love it. The unity of love must pervade it, before the individual member can find it lovable. Yet unless the individuals first love it, how can the unity of love come to pervade it?” [5]

Royce realized that the Beloved Community of which he spoke was imperfectly realized in the church, which is based upon voluntary love of the community,  but could not ever be perfectly realized within human history among nations formed and maintained by force. Within human history fallible human beings seek the attainment of these ideals, but the fact of human nature, with its propensity to darkness and fallibility, make the full attainment of  Beloved Community impossible within history.

Concepts like that of the “Beloved Community” represent transcendent ideals, such Truth, Beauty, Goodness, and Justice, that are not fully achievable within history. Attainment of these ideals can only be approximated by progressive realization as human beings in a free society seek to solve the concrete problems of their day and time,  holding these values always before them while progressively unfolding their undisclosed content and meaning in each era of human history.

Transcendent ideals can be progressively unfolded within a society and among its members as part of the disciplined search for justice. Until the end of the history of the human race, the content of Transcendent Ideals, such as those mentioned above, will continue to be unfolded in a continual process of unfolding their content and meaning. Contrary to the modern ideal, there can be no “End of History” until the end of history. The content of Transcendent Ideals can and will  be approximated in a slow, patient, wise and peaceful process of progressive realization that will continue until their are no human societies remaining to unfold them.

Copyright, 2020, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] See, https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7240105-our-goal-is-to-create-a-beloved-community-and-this (Downloaded August 13, 2020.) Dr. King had a very nuanced and complex understanding of this term. There are many places where he is quoted and in which he uses and gives flavor to this notion of the meaning of the notion of “Beloved Community.” I expect to devote a blog this fall to Dr. King and his non-violent search for the Beloved Community in the 1960’s. It seems to me that his life and ministry has much to teach contemporary American society.

[2] St. Augustine, City of God tr. John O’Meara (New York, NY: Penguin Classics, 1972)

[3] This is not the place for a fair exposition Luther’s two kingdom’s doctrine, which will be the focus of a future essay. For a brief introduction, seeAnders Nygren, Luther’s Doctrine of the Two Kingdom, ECLA website 08/01/2002,  https://www.elca.org/JLE/Articles/931 (downloaded August 14, 2020).

[4] While human experience now amply refutes any expectation of an end to history within history, the burning embers of modernity, together with the moral inversion mentioned in a prior blog create a violent expectation among some, usually leftist, but not always, that the Marxist expectation fan be realized. This may be one of the last aspects of the limited metanarrative of modernity that withers away in the new era now dawning.

[5] Excerpt From: Josiah Royce. “The Problem of Christianity, Volume 1 (Barnes & Noble Digital Library).” Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/problem-christianity-volume-1-barnes-noble-digital/id1280398775 (downloaded August 12, 2020).

[6] This is not the place to discuss the problem of Transcendent Ideals, and their exact content and status, which will also be the subject of a later blog. In my unfolding thought, however, there is a similarity between the notion of “Transcendent Ideals” and the traditional notion of Universals and Whitehead’s notion of “Eternal Objects.” Readers of David Bohm will also recognize that I am seeking to understand his notions of “enfold” and “unfolded” realities as I seek to understand this aspect of political theology and philosophy.

C. S. Pierce, Josiah Royce, and Alfred North Whitehead are three American philosophers who understood the implications of then-current science for the future of philosophy. Each developed a distinctive philosophical position that transcended simple mechanical materialism. Each accounted for the impact of evolutionary theory, and later for Whitehead, relativistic and early quantum physics. Interestingly, each were sympathetic to Christianity and religion in general. Last week, I focused on Royce’s notion of the importance of individuals in the formation of community. This week, the focus is on his understanding of the central importance of communities, and especially on his notion of “Beloved Community,” which has continuing relevance.’

Communities of Interpretation

Royce, more than any other American philosopher, emphasize the role of community for human society, human individuals, and human knowledge. Following C. S. Pierce, Royce held a theory of knowledge that emphasized the social nature and source of truth. The necessity of a sign, an interpreter, and an interpretation of experience drove Pierce (who was the source of this line of thinking) and Royce to an essentially social theory of how truth emerges from human investigation and is verified by human community. Both understood that, while science was a paradigmatic community in search for truth, are were other such communities searching for truth in their own domains. [1] In fact, any kind of human knowledge is developed within a community of inquiry.

The notion of community appears in nearly every aspect of Royce’s thought. In science, and religion, and all other forms of reasoning, Royce emphasizes the need for a community of interpretation within which rational thinking and progress in human understanding occurs. For community to exist, there must be what Royce terms “loyalty,” a common commitment to the enterprise at hand, a love for the subject matter and for the community, and a disciplined search for a proper interpretation. As seen below, healthy community cannot be forced, but is the choice of free individuals to give of themselves to a community that embraces goals larger than a single human life.

From Individuals to Community

Peirce saw that individualistic self-centeredness, selfish tendencies, and the human propensity to error had to be tempered and checked by community bonds. Peirce was especially critical of social Darwinism and what he called, the “Gospel of Greed” that Social Darwinism engendered. [2] Instead, Peirce believed that the universe, though involving chance and regularities, also involved a social, “agapistic” (love) component. This is a part of Pierce’s thought that we might need to reinternalize in an age of media and other billionaires. 

Human individuals are inevitably self-centered. Each of us tends to see the world through the physical, perceptual and interpretive center of our own self. As outlined last week, this unique “self” is the product of all of our life experiences, lessons and learning. This historically constructed, evolving self is inevitably trapped in a kind of isolation. No one else shares exactly the same perception or interpretation of reality we possess. More importantly, we do not have the same kind of access to the hopes, dreams, and knowledge of others that we have of our own hopes, dreams and knowledge. Our communication with others, even others to whom we are close, is distorted by the inevitable differences between what we intend to communicate and what another person believes we have communicated.

How do human beings overcome this natural solitude and the danger of misunderstanding and misinterpretation? The answer for Royce lies in the constant need for interpretation, correction, and reinterpretation, all of which are social enterprises. This is not just true in intellectual life, but every area of life. Human beings need the sympathetic correction of others in order to perceive the world clearly. Sympathetic correction and reinterpretation require communities of interpretation where any kind of complex subject matter is involved. Royce puts it in this way:

“In this world of interpretation, of whose most general structure we have now obtained a glimpse at how, selves and communities may exist, past and future can be defined, and the realms of the spirit may find a place which neither barren conception nor the chaotic flow of interpenetrating perceptions could ever render significant.” [3]

Both Royce and Pierce (as well as others) often use science as the paradigm of a truth-seeking community. At any given point in time, there are always things scientists believe they understand, other matters which they do not yet understand, and matters about which there are disputes within the scientific community. Eventually, someone discovers new facts or develops a new theory and publishes the results to the scientific community at large. Other scientists will do the same. Still others examine and either verify or critique the new experimental results or theory. Out of this process of research, interpretation, theorizing and publication eventually a consensus emerges concerning the best interpretation. This process, in the case of science has been going on for centuries, with many changes and improvements in our understanding of the world. This is how, over time scientific understanding grows and develops.

Communities of Interpretation and Political Practice

Where a political community is concerned, there is a similar process. For example, after the Revolutionary War, the original states were bound together by the Articles of Confederation. There were deficiencies in the system of government this agreement instituted. There was no ability of the central government to tax, and so it was constantly near bankruptcy. There was no guarantee of freedom of commerce between the states, and some states used their own state powers to prevent competition. There was no central military command structure, and so the nation was weak. Eventually, the Constitution Convention was held. In the beginning, there were vast differences of opinion about what should be done. Through a series of compromises and accommodations, the original Constitution was drafted and submitted to the states, followed by the original Bill of Rights. This process is often criticized, in my view mistakenly. What is often missed are the first words of the Constitution: “We the People of the United States.” The thirteen original states already viewed themselves as one “People,” and therefore were willing to compromise, even give up important points.  Some states e joined the union, even though they disagreed with aspects of the Constitution. The Constitutional Convention, the various state conventions that ratified the constitution, and the process followed reveals various communities of people, all gathered with a common purpose searching for a common and better solution than the current state of affairs permits. Since its original adoption, the Constitution has had to be revised on several occasions to meet the demands of the times.

Royce especially, understood that American life took for granted a certain amount of attention, struggle, search for power, differences of opinion, and jockeying for position. Left to themselves, this aspect of American life could lead to the dissolution of our national community. In fact, during the Civil War, it did. The only solution to the problem of warring factions is found in the idea of a community made out of many individuals who join together in the common search for a just, fair, and orderly society. Without the willingness to debate, discuss, dialogue, and compromise, eventually there has to be a solution imposed by force. The Civil War was an event of this exact kind.

The impulse we see at work in the violence in our politics and some of our cities today reflects a lack of trust in the American community and in its fundamental values and structures. We’ve lost our sense of being in a national community in which we do not always get exactly what we want, but are willing to join with others in the search for a solution that is as reasonable and fair as possible to all.

Royce understood that’s such a community can only be formed and maintained through a committed form of mutual respect and love he called “loyalty.” Loyalty exists when an individual voluntarily participates in a community and seeks the common good of the community with and above his or her personal preferences in an act of self-giving to the community. Loyalty involves personal sacrifice for the common good and a willingness to explore the best solution to the problem of human progress.

Community and Beloved Community

Royce sees that communities are not all alike, though they have certain features in common. For example, a community is not a melding or absorption of individuals. In any true community individuals retain their uniqueness, individuality, and perspective. A community is bound together by loyalty and love, not by absolute identity or merging of individuals. Communities look backward (and, therefore, have traditions) and all living communities look forward (and therefore are somewhat oriented towards the future. To take a simple example, a fraternity or sorority has both a tradition into which members are initiated and a fraternity or sorority is always taking in new pledges as it looks to sustain itself into the future. Royce calls these two aspects of communities, “Communities of Tradition” and “Communities of Hope. 

The search for truthful, just, and life enhancing community finds its ultimate symbol in the notion of a “Beloved Community.” There is no question but which Royce sees in the church, and perhaps in John’s vision of the Heavenly City” the root and ground of the Beloved Community and a kind of eschatological realization of the hopes and dreams of all lesser communities. In the case of Christianity, the community looks back through the Scriptures to the beginning of the world. Its tradition goes all the way back to the beginning. And, as a community of hope, it looks forward to the end of history and the renewal of all things. Thus, members of the Beloved Community look infinitely backwards and forwards in time, in both tradition and hope, to a future that encompasses all of humanity and human history. This is why Royce sometimes calls the “Beloved Community” the “Universal Community”—all people are invited to pledge their loyalty to and find meaning and purpose in the Beloved Community.

The hope of the Beloved Community is the hope of a place of perfect individuality and perfect community joined in a kind of perfect self-giving love—a love that, for Christians, mirrors the love that constitutes and characterizes the divine Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each maintaining perfect individuality and joined in perfect community. This universal hope of the reconciliation of the human race, heaven, and earth is an eschatological not historical hope. As I return to the Beloved Community in my next blog, I will talk about the dangers and impossibility of the undisciplined attempt to bring in the Universal Community that Royce envisioned by the means of violence.

In a previous blog, I briefly outlined the way in which, from conception through adulthood, human beings are the creation of community. Human beings are intimately connected to the life of other people from the moment of conception. This connectedness is physical, emotional, and mental. There is, however, another side to the story that is the subject of this blog: No Christian political philosophy or theology can ignore the individual and his or her intrinsic value.

The Social Individual

Already at the moment of conception, an individual both exists and begins to emerge in his or her uniqueness. Although intimately connected to the body of the mother, the child is a genetically distinct person with components from both mother the father. The child in utero is a unique individual carrying a genetic makeup unlike any other person, and through the mother an emerging part of the human community. This uniqueness continues to develop in the womb. The mother’s emotional state, the food the mother eats, the music the mother listens to, and other factors will continually work to create the growing human person.

After birth, the child continues to develop his or her uniqueness. Eventually, every child begins to say, “Yes” and “No,” choosing some life-experiences and rejecting others. Although profoundly impacted by his or her family of origin, the child differentiates his or herself within the family and community. This process of self-differentiation and growth continues for the rest of the person’s life.

Slowly but surely, the sense of individuality develops. Once a creature of his or her parents, the child develops his or her own unique life-history. Every drop of experience, every moment of learning, every decision, makes the child the unique individual he or she is and will become. As the child goes through adolescence and young adulthood, it further develops its own unique personality, now as an individual who does and is expected to make his or her own life-decisions. As an adult, decisions regarding career, spouse, life-style, religion, etc. continue to form the unique person, unlike any other and creates a “life trajectory” as the person moves into the future.

There is a social element in all this: each human person reacts with and against the family, neighborhood, city, state, culture, religious history (or lack thereof) society, and the like, in the formation of the human person he or she is called to be. As philosopher Josiah Royce put it, “This self is known to each one of us through its social contrasts with other selves, and with the will of the community.” [1] Yet, the person is a unique individual, who is, as the psalmist says, “Fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14)

Communities and Selves

Understanding the “individual self” is important to the notion of community. The word “community” indicates a “communion of individuals.” Every community is a community of more than one individual. Complex communities, like the United States of America, are communities of many, many individuals. This notion of individuals as both emerging from communities and creating communities has great importance in understanding what is profoundly problematic about our current divisive, “winner take all” American politics. We are trying to create a polity of individuals in abstraction from communities. On the other hand, socialist and collectivist nations have the reverse problem: they are trying to submerge individuals for the sake of community in abstraction of the individual. One of the most disturbing trends in American politics is a division that reflects both a hyper-individualism and a collectivist communalism that is contrary to the nature of the human person, which is both individual and communal

The Danger of American Excessive Individualism

It has been recognized for some time that “American Individualism” carries with it dangers to the common good. Where there is little or no communal loyalty, there will inevitably be chaos or a strong regulatory state. Excessive individualism empowers the central state, which becomes the only means of social control. The recent upsets in some American cities is illustrative. America today shows the signs of a defective sense of both community and the place of the individual within the community. The best response is to build both healthy individuals who have the skills and experience to maintain freedom and a sense of communal bonding.

There is also the danger of the destruction of the many small, private communities that make up and provide the foundation for both sound individualism and our democratic republic. A nation without strong families, neighborhoods, cities, and states, without strong churches, synagogues, temples and mosques, without strong neighborhood associations and political parties that are all part of and committed to the maintenance and growth of the common community, as well as respectful of the rights of the members of those communities, simply cannot be a strong polity—it is based upon an unsound foundation of socially deformed individuals and an inadequate and truncated communal nexus.

Loyalty and Love; Individuals and Communities

Near the turn of the last century, the philosopher Josiah Royce wrote a number of works in which he discussed the relationship between individuals and communities. [2] Without individuals there can be no community. Without healthy individuals there cannot be healthy community. Therefore, healthy community require healthy individuals who freely chose to be a part of the community and who serve the community out of love of and loyalty to its ideals and purposes. Coercion, physical or legal, can create a collective, but not a community.

It may well be that our current problems as a society result from a government that has become too reliant upon force, albeit legal force, and which has neglected to nurture the voluntary bonds of love of country and of its history and ideals upon which a free society depends. Leaders, Christian and non-Christian, might ponder the need to restore the social and historical bonds of our heritage and people. The vicious behavior seen recently and the tearing down of statues of national heroes and the like, is destructive of freedom, democracy and the very ideals for which demonstrators seemingly wish to stand.

“Mobs” vs. “Beloved Community”

This leads to a final aspect of Royce’s thought with which I want to end this blog: Royce points out that a “mob” is not a “community”. [3] A mob is a destructive anti-community. There can be and are demonic forms of community of which people and leaders should be aware and wary. These sorts of communities, which we see evident in America today.. This includes demagoguery, incitement to violence and destruction, shallow advertising, and simplistic and emotional political rhetoric conducive to mob behavior, are not conducive e to healthy community, as we have recently seen.

On the other hand, there is an ideal form of community, what Royce calls the “Beloved Community.” In his works on Christianity, he developed the notion of the church as a kind of eschatological community, a community of perfect loyalty and love among members. This Beloved Community is a kind of “lure” drawing existing imperfect communities towards greater wholeness. Thus, Royce says,

“The beloved community embodies, for its lover, values which no human individual, viewed as a detached being, could even remotely approach. And in a corresponding way, the love which inspires the loyal soul has been transformed; and is not such as could be given to a detached human individual.” [4]

The Beloved Community, unlike a mob, is created by reason and love, sustained by reason and love, and motivated to extend reason and love. It can only be created imperfectly in this world, but it stands as the ideal community for which the human soul longs. It is made up of, and only of, those who have freely chosen its history, tradition, values, and common life.

Interestingly, if people know anything about Royce, it is this term “Beloved Community”. Martin Luther King Jr. came across the work of Royce in his doctoral studies and adopted the term for his moral and ethical vision. His vision of a Beloved Community continues to impact American politics to this day. Some Catholic charities and other groups use this term in their literature. What is important for us to remember is that a Beloved Community, or any approach to the Beloved Community, cannot be formed or sustained by violence. Only the loyalty and love of free individuals can form any kind of Beloved Community,

Next week (or whenever I finish it), more on Community and the Beloved Community.

God bless you all,

Chris

Copyright 2020, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1]  Josiah Royce The Problem of Christianity, Volume 1 (Barnes & Noble Digital Library) https://books.apple.com/us/book/problem-christianity-volume-1-barnes-noble-digital/id1280398775 (Downloaded July 20, 2020).

[2] See Josiah Royce and such works as The Philosophy of Loyalty (Sophia Omni Publisher, 2017) and The Problem of Christianity (Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 2001). The notion of community and its relationship to individuals is central to Royce’s thought.

[3] See, John E. Smith, The Spirit of American Philosophy: Pierce, James, Royce, Dewey, and Whitehead (Oxford, ENG: Oxford University Press, 1963), 95.

[4] Josiah Royce. “The Problem of Christianity, Volume 2 (Barnes & Noble Digital Library).” Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/problem-christianity-volume-2-barnes-noble-digital/id1280399789 (downloaded July 27, 2020).

 

The paradigm for visualizing the world and human society Newton created, thought of the universe as made up of matter, and of society as being made up of isolated individuals, both of which were bound together by forces. Reason was mental power servicing the goal of modifying the world. In the realm of industry this meant technology. In the political realm this meant the power of mind put to the service of gaining political and economic power. In the hands of Nietzsche this became a recipe for disaster, because all that mattered was raw power and the desire to dominate (Will to Power).

Basing Politics on an Outdated Model of the World.

Philosopher’s use a big word “ontology” to describe the ultimate nature of reality. [1] The modern world viewed reality as ultimately materialistic. The “Real” were material things joined together by different kinds of forces.  In this way of thinking, the universe, including the human race, is visualized as a big, complicated machine made up of matter and energy.

In recent years, this materialistic model of the world has been superseded by a model of the world that assumes deep interconnectedness, relationality, freedom, and inner sensitivity. It is an “organic model” that sees the universe not as a machine but as an organism or a process. In my view, and in the view of others, the older way of thinking has led modern politicians, policy-makers, and intellectuals into many errors. Henry Sapp puts it as follows:

[We] are faced today with the spectacle of our society being built increasingly upon a conception of reality erected upon a mechanical conception of nature now known to be fundamentally false. … As a consequence of this widely disseminated misinformation, “well informed” officials, administrators, legislators, judges, educators, and medical professionals who guide the development of our society are encouraged to shape our lives in ways predicated on known-to-be-false premises about “nature and nature’s laws.” [2]

A Relational World

If the world is not solely, or fundamentally, made up of forces and matter, the way is open for a new and different kind of ontology, one that is not materialistic. From a physical perspective, quantum physics indicates that the ultimate reality (the “ultimate being” from a scientific point of view), is that particles not material bodies, but disturbances in a universal field. There are even physicists who believe that the ultimate reality is information. In the famous words of John Wheeler, “The ‘it’ is a’ bit’.” [3] In whatever way ultimate reality is to be visualized, science no longer supports a purely materialistic approach to solving basic problems, because reality is not fundamentally material at all.

Einstein’s Relativity Theory describes a universe that is deeply relational, in which time and space, ultimate attributes of reality in Newtonian physics, are known to be related to one another, and in fact cannot be separated. There is one “Space/Time Continuum.” At a quantum level of reality, there is a deep interconnectedness that is revealed and symbolized by so-called, “spooky action at a distance,” or what physicists call, “entanglement.” Reality is deeply connected at a subatomic level. Even at the level of everyday reality, there is a deep interconnectedness that is evident in so-called open systems and their tendency toward self-organizing activity—the so-called “butterfly effect.” [4]

Finally, it is the insight of quantum physics that it is ultimately not possible to disengage the observer from the event being examined as was the model of investigation dominant in the modern world. This insight, first discovered at the subatomic level of physical reality, has implications in other areas. The American philosopher Charles S. Pearce foresaw this insight in his relational theory of signs, in which he spoke of the relationship between reality (an object under observation), an interpreter (observer), and the sign used to understand the reality observed. [5]

A World Imbedded with Love

Pierce, who was the founder of Pragmatism, had a fundamentally organic, or process, view of reality. Of particular interest is his view that the reality is characterized by freedom (or chance), law (or regular order), and love (or a harmonizing principle). [6] In other words, the world is constantly evolving in a kind of interplay between chance, order, and love. What Pierce calls “Evolutionary Love” is essentially a cosmic principle of cherishing love, what I have elsewhere called, “Deep Love,” that operates throughout the created universe. [7]This love is a cherishing form of love, because it recognizes that which is lovely in another being and sympathetically supports its existence. [8]

It is by no mistake that Pierce begins his discussion of Agapistic love quoting from John, where the author says:

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us (I John 4:7-12). [9]

At a deep level, at the level of the ultimate nature of the universe, Peirce posits a harmonizing force that can only be described as love, a disinterested relational love at seeks the best for that which is loved. If the universe is in fact characterized by a kind of Deep Love or Deep Relationality, then it is at least possible that our economics and politics do not have to be, and should not be built on force alone: for that goes against the fundamental nature of the universe itself. [10] This insight of Pierce is consistent with Christian faith and with a Christian political theology. [11]

If we believe that the world is finally relational, and that a kind of “deep love”—a deep relationality that is the physical and spiritual ground of all created loves—is the final reality of the universe, then one might believe that our overly-competitive, power-based, winner-take-all politics needs to be supplanted by a different approach, for the approach we have taken goes against the grain of the universe itself and the ultimate nature of human being and human society. The new approach I suggest is what we might call, “a politics that takes account of love.”

A Subtle, Multifaceted Politics

As mentioned before, the founder of modern pragmatism viewed reality as characterized by freedom (or chance), law (or regular order), and love (or a harmonizing principle). Love, or a harmonizing principal, it’s not the only feature of the universe at work at any moment in time. From a political perspective, for example, chance or freedom plays a role. The recent COVID-19 pandemic is an excellent example of a chance happening in history that both shapes and constricts political realities. Given the emergence of COVID-19, policymakers could not ignore this chance occurrence. Other priorities had to be put on the back burner as policymakers focused on the crisis at hand. A good bit of the time political realities are shaped by the factor of chance. Some of these chairs factors are also the results of the activity of free human beings. Once again, COVID-19 is a good example. The decisions made by policymakers early on in another nation, freely chosen by them as a response to the problem, shaped the crisis and constrained but American policymakers could do.

Secondly, although policymakers have some freedom, and although chance his operative in history, a good bit of the time historical forces are at work. In the case of Coved 9, by the time the United States learned of the danger, the disease existed, had escaped from the place where it originated, and was spreading across the globe. US policy makers had to act within the boundaries of the situation as they found it. In addition, policy makers had to operate within the Constitution of the United States, the two-party system which we have, the medical and political system that already existed. These are historical constraints.

Finally, policy makers had the freedom to choose those results which had the best chance of saving lives and doing minimal damage to the economy. Within the boundaries of our legal system and the administrative and other resources available, the administration and others provided temporary hospitals, medical supplies, testing, and other responses. In so doing, they were motivated by the desire to save lives, limit suffering, and encourage the best possible outcome for the nation.

Copyright 2020, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] The word, “ontology” describes the branch of philosophy that analyzes the nature of being.

[2] Henry F. Sapp, “Whitehead, James, and the Ontology of Quantum Theory” 5(1) Mind and Matter (2007) downloaded at https://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/WJQO.pdf (June 16, 2020), 85. In this quote, Sapp is not speaking of the exact phenomena that I am concerned with here—the tendency to view all reality as a machine—but his quote is equally applicable to what I am saying in this essay. Sapp is concerned with the assumption of materialistic theory that our experience of human freedom and the efficacy of human thought is an illusion.

[3] See, Paul Davies, Niels Henrik Gregerse, Information and the Nature of Reality – From Physics to Metaphysics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011). The term was coined by renowned physicist, John Wheeler.

[4] This is not the place for a discussion of these phenomena. For those who would like a deeper discussion, see John Polkinghorne, ed, “The Trinity and an Entangled World: Relationality in Physical Science and Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2010).

[5] See, C.S. Pierce, “Questions Concerning Certain Faculties” in The Essential Charles S. Peirce Edward C. Moore, ed (New York, NY: Harper & Row), 1972.

[6] Pierce has technical words that describe his three principles.  In his view, there are three modes of: evolution by fortuitous variation, evolution by mechanical necessity, and evolution by creative love. He refers to them as tychastic evolution, or tychasm, anancastic evolution, or anancasm, and agapastic evolution, or agapasm. The doctrines which represent these as severally of principal importance we may term tychasticism, anancasticism, and agapasticism. The mere propositions that absolute chance, mechanical necessity, and the law of love are severally operative in the cosmos may receive the names of tychism, anancism, and agapism.

[7] G. Christopher Scruggs, Centered Living/Centered Leading: The Way of Light and Love rev. ed. (Cordova, TN: BookSurge, 2016).

[8] See, “Evolutionary Love, at  https://scrcexhibits.omeka.net/exhibits/show/charles-s-peirce-open-court/-evolutionary-love- (Downloaded June 29, 2020). The role of “Evolutionary Love” in Pierce is similar to the role of love as an eternal object in the philosophy of A.N. Whitehead.

[9] I have quoted a bit more than Pierce quotes in his essay. The reason for this is that Pierce discusses an element of political philosophy relevant to my interests here in his essay, what Pierce calls “the Gospel of Greed” that is inevitably tied up in a purely evolutionary and mechanical view of creation.

[10] I think that this is exactly the point that Pierce was attempting to make. The universe is characterized by (1) chance, and therefore by fortuitous evolution; (2) by laws of nature and regular order, and therefore by forces that have great control over the future; but however (3) a deep, cherishing agapistic love also has a role to play in the evolution of the world. This kind of approach can also be applied to our political, economic and social systems.

[11] See, Centered Living/Centered Living: The Way of Light and Love for Christ-followers, previously cited.

One cold winter night, I left my office in Bay Village, Ohio to eat pizza with some volunteers. As I walked into Auburn Hall, expecting to see just a few people, I saw over 200 volunteers in yellow T-shirts eating together, having fellowship, and getting last-minute instructions for a ministry called “Respite.” Several times a year, Bay Presbyterian Church keeps special needs children so that their parents can have a break from caregiving. It takes about 200 volunteers to take care of about eighty children for a few hours. The night is designed to include fun activities, movies, music, and a variety of experiences for the guests. There is a worship time led by young people at the end of the evening. This ministry has been a part of building the reputation of the church as a loving place for children and families.

In my former church in Memphis, there is a retired member who is a wonderful Christian disciple. He is at an age when many people are “slowing down.” This particular person, his family, and his small groups within the church are not slowing down much at all. Instead, he is active in an inner-city ministry led by a congregation in another denomination. Every week, at least once and sometimes more often, he is at the food pantry, the clothes closet, the Sunday feeding, or another ministry to the poor of Memphis. Much of the time, a few other members are with him. Very few, if any, of the persons they serve could make the almost twenty-mile journey to attend our church. Their ministry is an act of love and service to the poor and outcast. Their Christian action is a witness to Christ to every person who experiences or knows of the ministries.

We have already had the opportunity to share that post-modern people are cynical. They are cynical about religion in general and Christianity in particular. In such a situation, people are watching to see if we actually live like Jesus, not just talk about him.  This means it is just as important to share the Gospel by deed as to share by word in our culture.

Jesus and Love for the Lost

Jesus did not just preach good news. Jesus was constantly serving others. He healed the physically sick. He cast out demons. He confronted hypocrites. He helped people overcome sin and its effects. He confronted injustice. In Jesus, faith and works were fully-combined in one human life. Near the end of his gospel, Matthew records the following words of Jesus:

When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

Then the King will say to those on his right, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, ³⁶ I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”

Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?” The King will reply, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

Then he will say to those on his left, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.” They also will answer, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?” He will reply, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.” Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life (Matthew 25:31-43).

This parable indicates that a life of discipleship under grace is not a life without responsibilities to serve others. We are saved for good works (Ephesians 2:10). God cares what we do after our conversion. In this passage Jesus is speaking to his disciples, as well unbelievers. He is not giving a teaching for those outside the people of God but for those already inside the people of God. [1] He is warning that God expects something from us—to share the self-giving love of God with others, just as Jesus shared that love for us on the Cross. Service to the “least of these” is a critical part of the life of a disciple.

The Call to Care

In the last part of Matthew preceding Jesus’ arrest, crucifixion and death, Jesus tells three important stories: the Parable of the Ten Virgins, in which he encourages believers to continue to be filled with the Holy Spirit, the Parable of the Ten Talents, in which he encourages believers to put the gifts, talents and abilities they possess to good use, and the  Parable of the Last Judgment in which he encourages believers to remember that, when he returns, the human race will be held accountable for their actions in this world, and especially their actions towards the least, the lost and the outcast.

In the parable, the time between Jesus’ ascension and return is over. God graciously provides time for the human race to care for his creation and grow in likeness to God. Now, that time is complete. It is time for accountability. Jesus is revealed as the Exalted One, before whom every knee rightfully bows and every tongue confesses (Philippians 2:10-11).  All the people groups in the world appear for a final judgment (25:2). It is time for a review of the actual beliefs and behavior of the human race. And so, Jesus separates the peoples of the world who are massed before him as the shepherd separates sheep and the goats (25:32).

When we think of the final judgment, we think of a court of law. During the trial, evidence is presented by both sides. No one is sure exactly what happened, so there is a lot of testimony to establish the facts. The judge must work hard to decide. He or she must sift through the facts, weigh the evidence, determine who is telling the truth, and the like. At least, that is the way I thought of this parable until I learned about sheep and goats.

In the Holy Land at the time of Jesus, sheep were generally white and goats were black. It was easy to tell them apart. Any listener of Jesus would have known that fact. The image is not one of a difficult decision by a judge hearing testimony and weighing evidence. The decision image is of a judge who already knows the facts deciding. You see, God knows our hearts. He knows what we have done and not done during our time on earth. He does not need to ask a lot of questions or review a lot of evidence. He knows.

Jesus begins by telling the sheep, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me” (Matt. 25:34-36). The sheep are those who have done the things that Jesus did while here on earth by loving service to others.

The scene resembles less a judgment in a trial than a reading of a will in a probate court! God is saying to those who behave as his children, “Come right now and collect your inheritance as Children of God.” The sheep, of course, being humble, hardly know what to say, because they can’t even remember what they’ve done and are not sure that they deserve such an inheritance.

Then, Jesus turns to the goats and says, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.” (Matt. 25:41-43). These people, right away begin to make excuses: They also answer, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you” (v. 41).

Jesus answers these excuses with the words, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me” (v. 45). Once again, God does not need a lot of testimony because God knows. Jesus is saying, “Either you believe and live out the Gospel of Love or you don’t. Either you believe I am God, and try to live as I lived or you don’t. Either you see the world through my eyes or you don’t.”

The World is a Place of Great Need

You see, the world is full of obvious need. There are tens of millions of people, starving, without food, water, without schools, jobs, shelter, adequate income, and hope. There are many people in prison. Those who travel to very poor mission fields see the need in obvious ways in poor nations. But, the need is not just at the end of the earth. There is a lot of need close at hand, right before our eyes. All we must do is read the newspapers, watch TV, look at the Internet, or drive around our city. Everywhere we go, if we open our eyes, we see need. Human need is all around us.

I could pick any city in our nation or around the world, but because we lived in Memphis for a long time, Memphis is a good example. Memphis is one of the poorest cities in America. There are at least 178,000 Memphians who live in poverty. A good many more live pretty close to the poverty line. Fifty percent of workers qualify as “low wage workers”. That is to say, they have family incomes that put them just over the poverty line. These people often have jobs where they do not receive medical insurance and other benefits. Any setback results in poverty.

Despite all the efforts of governments and private charities, over the last few years, Memphis has been getting poorer at a rate of about one percent a year. Poverty in Memphis is not just located in the inner city. Increasingly, it is found in the suburbs. [2] Memphis also has one of the highest crime rates in the United States, and has many citizens in jail or prison. There is a lot of substandard housing. In other words, need is right before the eyes of everyone in Memphis. If you live in a major metropolitan area your city is probably not much different.

Wherever We Go, We See

The problem of human need is everywhere. Wherever we go, we are bound to see it. We can’t say to God, “I’m sorry, I never saw the problem.” Jesus won’t let us off that easy. We just can’t be like the people in the parable who say, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?” (v. 41). The parable said to those in Jesus’ day, and says to us today, “Don’t believe for one moment that God does not know what we’ve seen and not seen, where we’ve been and not been, what television news we’ve watched and not watched, etc.” God knows everything and is aware of the depths of our hearts. He knows when we are avoiding doing what we know is right. He is not going to let us get away with a lame excuse: “I just never saw it.”

Will we see the World Through the Eyes of Jesus?

The question we face is not “Can we see the world around us through the eyes of Jesus?” but “Will we see the world around us through the eyes of Jesus?” What exactly God calls us to be and to do is largely determined by where he takes us in life. Wherever he takes us, there are needs. Some of those needs involve problems we could, if we would, work on. One of the most important things we can do as Christians is simply be aware of needs around us and respond. In the Parable, Jesus assumes that people see needs and alerts us to the fact that, as God, he is present in suffering love for those in need.

Small Discipling Groups and Mission

One of the most important churches of the 20^th century was a small congregation in Washington DC, known as the “Church of the Savior.” The Church of the Savior never had a large membership. It was made up of a series of small missional congregations, which themselves function as churches. Each group had a mission focus. Over the years, the small groups have instrumental in creating, developing, and sustaining many, many important ministries. Its example was so powerful, that there are similar churches and groups all over the nation. Mainline and other churches have studied the Church of the Savior in designing their ministries and missions.

The Church of the Savior was the brainchild of Gordon and Mary Cosby. Gordon Cosby, the founder and pastor of the congregation until his death, was an Army chaplain during the Second World War. By the time he returned home, he had seen how shallow the religious faith of many people could be. He experienced how easy it was for people to behave in non-Christian ways during wartime, and began experiments in discipling the soldiers he served during the war. He also came to believe that the church had failed, not just men whom he served during the war, but also those who remained back home. He dreamt of forming a different kind of church. The church he dreamed of founding became a reality in the Church of the Savior. [3]

Soon after its formation, the Church of the Savior determined to conduct its ongoing ministry through small mission groups. These were originally small groups focused on Bible study and learning about Christian faith and practice. Then, Cosby and the members of Church of the Savior changed their form and intention. The groups at Church of the Savior were groups specifically designed to conduct missions in and around the Washington, D.C. area. These groups formed the core ministry of Church of the Savior for most of the last part of the 20^th century. Finally, the Church of the Savior itself became a community of churches.  When Gordon Cosby died, he was lauded by Christians and on-Christians alike for his work. [4]

Building an Action-Oriented Discipleship Strategy.

The founders of American pragmatism famously suggested that, when developing an idea or theory, its truth was to be judged on the basis of its likely practical impacts. Whatever the academic truth of such a theory might be, biblically speaking, there is a great truth in the notion that truth and action are inseparably intertwined. Jesus was the Way, the Truth and the Life. It was not what he taught that was the truth; he embodied the truth. This means that Christ-followers cannot be content with mere head knowledge, nor is it enough for a disciple-maker to instruct a new disciple by teaching abstract principles of Christian discipleship. In the exact words of the Great Commission, we are not just teaching concepts, we are teaching new believers to obey (Matthew 28:20). Obedience is not a concept; it is an action.

Whenever one learns a skill, one learns some information. However, one cannot learn a skill without watching someone else and modeling one’s actions after theirs. This means that disciple-making programs have to be characterized by “learning while doing” and “doing while learning”. The question is, “How do we learn while doing?”  Here are just a few suggestions:

• From the beginning of the formation of a discipling relationship, it is important to remember that discipling relationships, whether personal or in a small discipleship group, do not exist primarily for the benefit and comfort of the group or its members. The purpose is to reach the world with the love and wisdom of God. Many small groups forget this fact.
• In meeting the needs of people, the gospel itself, God’s love for the world and desire to draw people out of selfish, self-centeredness and into a relationship of loving community with God and others remains central. As a friend reminds me often, “Keep the main thing the main thing.” The main thing is faith reaching out in love.
• Take advantage of opportunities that naturally develop to share God’s love. In other words, since the need for God’s love is all around us, our most effective way of sharing God’s love in tangible ways can be that which is closest to us. This requires keeping eyes open where they might be closed.
• Although God does equip the willing and often uses us in surprising ways, a good bit of the time, God uses the talents and the gifts we already possess. When confronted with an opportunity to serve others, a good question to ask is, “Am I or my group equipped to meet this need?”
• The value of planning cannot be overemphasized. Occasionally, under the impact of an obvious need, people and groups impulsively reach out without planning and end up doing something that is counter-productive. The best way to avoid failure is to plan.
• Finally, the leader of the group must personally be involved for the project to actually promote growth of discipleship. People, like children, do what they see leaders doing, not what leaders tell them they should be doing. Leaders do not have to lead mission projects, in fact it may be counter-productive if they do. However, they do need to be involved.

An Example.

As I was writing he above list, an example from the past came to my mind. Our church had an extensive foreign mission’s program. Unfortunately, only relatively few people could be involved. Over time, members of the congregation felt that we should be doing more local mission. In the beginning, a few people looked at supporting a public school in a distant neighborhood. We began well, but over time the distance and danger of the neighborhood became an impediment to success. We simply did not have the resources to meet the need.

Our church was in an area of great economic disparity. There were affluent areas and areas of poverty. One day, some of our members were passing a nearby elementary school. It was in a very nice neighborhood, and the school was brand new. In the beginning, the group felt it would not be a good idea for us to adopt the school because they didn’t need us. Then, we discovered that the vast majority of the children that attend the school came from a poor area included in the district and were receiving various forms of assistance from the school. Many of the students came from an apartment project near our physical worship center to which we had attempted an outreach, but had been rebuffed by the owner. Therefore, we adopted the school to reach children we had already attempted to reach.

I was a part of a group of folks that had the initial idea for the project. Many of the leaders had been in a discipleship class with me. Therefore, as busy as I was, I volunteered on periodic basis, including some of the situations in which it was difficult to get enough help. Often, I spent the morning of my day off with one or more members of the group, and not infrequently with an elder or other leader of the congregation. These were great opportunities to build on an already existing discipling relationship. [5]

The project was a success. Many more of our members participated. Several small groups under took various projects to help the school in areas as diverse as reading to children, repairing and building facilities for certain programs, participating in science fairs, helping with annual testing, and other activities. We had been concerned that there would be resistance to a Christian organization helping a public school. In fact, there was absolutely no resistance. They were glad to have us. In the process, a few people that ordinarily would not have attended our church began to attend.

This mission opportunity reveals the importance of keeping your eyes open, see the need around you, and being sure you have the right spiritual gifts to meet the need. We did not have the right spiritual gifts to meet the first need, but we did the second. We were far more successful because we chose a need we could meet with the resources we had. In our first project, we had bitten off more than we could chew. In our second project, we met a need we had the ability to meet.

Conclusion

In discipleship, there is an intimate connection between learning and doing. Discipleship is a lifestyle not a course we take in order to graduate. The wise disciple-maker never forgets that fact. In the late 1970s I became a Christian. For most of the 1970s nine and 1980s, I was a lay person in Houston Texas. One thing I did was preach at a homeless shelter in the city. In 1991, I went off to seminary. In seminary, I had a small ministry to seminary students. When I left seminary, I went to a poor town in West Tennessee. On the first day I was introduced to an extremely poor, violent, and drug infested neighborhood. Eventually, we helped begin a community center in that neighborhood with other churches.

Then, I went to Memphis. Eventually, our church became involved in an international mission project called “Living Waters for the World.” The project began in an interesting way. A small group of which I was a member was praying that God would open up the door for us to do a foreign mission in the agricultural area.

One day, a man from another city that I knew slightly called. This was not a person I knew well, and we had been on different sides of disagreements in the past. He asked if our church would help with a mission project called, “Living Waters for the World.”  Be honest, I didn’t really want to get involved. I was unnecessarily afraid becoming involved would harm the project at one of my closest friends wanted to begin. However, I didn’t feel like I should say “No,” and so we invited him to come to our Session and give a presentation. To my great surprise, the Session was enthusiastic, and many people became involved almost over-night.

Our church became deeply involved in the ministry. One of our members, without being asked, gave substantial funds to underwrite many of the expenses. My friend eventually went on and led mission projects in Africa, Mexico, Honduras, and the Philippines. He, his wife, and many other members became national leaders in the ministry and helped train people to install small water treatment facilities. It was a Holy Spirit adventure from beginning to end.

One evening just before dusk, sitting on the top of a small mountain in the middle of Ghana in West Africa, I stood looking at an installation our congregation had just completed. I was thinking about Jesus’ last word, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Suddenly, as I stood looking at that project in the center of a West African nation, I thought to myself, “Son of Gun, you made it.” Chills went through my spine, chills I remember to this very day. God had taken me from Houston to the ends of the earth.

The life of a disciple is to be a life of action. Nothing in this world can be more wonderful and joyful than those moments when we join in God’s mission to the least and the lost with other disciples of the Risen Lord. He may take us a few blocks away or to the ends of the earth.

Copyright 2020, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] This parable is a part of Matthew’s gospel that contains what is often called his eschatological discourses. The section contains a series of stories and parables designed to encourage faithfulness among his disciples, including the lesson of the fig tree (24:32-35) and the description of faithful and unfaithful servants (vv. 36-51),

[2] Eyewitness News, January 20, 2008. www.myeyewitnessnews.com/news/local/Memphis-Povery-Level-Rises (March 17, 2010); Poverty Rate Up in Shelby County www.commercialappeal.com/news/2008/aug/27 (March 17, 2010).

[3] The story of the formation of Church of the Savior is told by Elizabeth O’Connor in her Book, Call to Commitment (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1963). My trip to see the Church of the Savior, meet Gordon Cosby, and tour the school of servant leadership that Church of the Savior created as well as many of their ongoing ministries was a highlight of my pastoral life.

[4] This essay is not the place to tell the entire story of the Church of the Savior, which in any case would take a historian with a great deal more talent and time than I possess. For those who wish to know more and study the church and its ministries more deeply, a good place to begin is Call to Commitment, previously cited. However, Call to Commitment is only one of many books and monographs published about Church of the Savior. There are also a wealth of articles and other information about the church, some of which is available on its website.

[5] It is important to note that I did not attend every event or every weekly program. That would have been too much for my schedule. But I did attend when asked and available to show support and build relationships.

Last week, I concluded this blog concerning the violence of our society, which is endemic to the notion of “politics and business as war” that dominates so much of the actual leadership of institutions in our society, with a call to a “politics of love.” This week, I hope to expand more deeply concerning what I meant by a “politics of love.”

The Big Nature of Love

Because English has only one word for love, it is often hard for people to rid themselves of the romantic connotations of the term. There is a Greek word, “Eros,” used to describe romantic love. Eros is a love driven by the desire of the lover. C. S. Lewis, in his book “The Four Loves” refers to “Eros” as a need love—the erotic desire is to fulfil a lack in the lover and a desire for the beauty of what is loved. [1] I call eros an “evoked love,” because it involves something in the object of our love that draws us to the person or thing we love. We can desire a person, a painting, a kind of knowledge, better health, and a number of goods that fill a need in us.

There are, however, other forms of love—and these forms of love are just as important for a sound political life. For example, if on a purely biological basis, eros is foundational to family life (for without the natural desire males and females possess to reproduce there would be no families), out of family life there emerges another love— “philios” or “philia,” literally “brother or sister love.” [2] Philios broader than just that love between brothers and sisters, for it includes the love among family members. It is also used to describe relationships that do not involve genetic connection. Men and women both describe close friendships using these words. Church members often use this word to describe the relationship of mutual belonging within the family of God. Soldiers use this term as describing the relationship among them, immortalized in our time by the book and series, “Band of Brothers.” [3] Therefore, we might call this word, “Common Relationship Love.” Interestingly, the Greeks felt that this love was a higher and more important love than eros, which can too frequently be characterized by a passion beyond reason, as every lover has experienced.

Another of the four loves is “Storge.”  This love is a natural form of affection experienced between family members. When I teach on this love I describe storge as that kind of love that couples have for one another after many years of marriage, when years of familiarity and commitment have bred acceptance, commitment and a deep affection. This love is also commonly seen between parents and their children, and children for their parents, especially as the relationship grows and matures in adulthood. Interestingly, storge was also used to describe a sense of patriotism toward a country or allegiance to the same team. If I love the group I work for or the country I live in, storge can be used to describe that love.

Finally, there is agape. C.S. Lewis refers to agape as “gift love.” Agape is highest form of Christian love. But it also appears in other religious traditions, such as the idea of “universal loving kindness” in Buddhism. [4] In Latin, agape it is translated “charitis,” from which we get our word, “charity.”  The term “gift love” used by C.S. Lewis points to the difference between eros and agape: Eros is a love evoked by something in the beloved that the lover needs., agape is a love as an act of the lover. This is not a love evoked by desire but bestowed upon its recipient.

The word ‘agape” was used before Christians began to use it for the love of God. Agape describes a limitless, vulnerable, self-giving love. Agape is the word used in the Bible when it says, “God is love” (1 John 4:8). The love of God patiently bears with us, even as we presume upon the mercy of God. The love of God endures our sin, our shortcomings, and our brokenness, as the Spirit works patiently and in love to redeem and restore.

In Christ, Christians believe God serves the greatest need of human beings and creation by emptying himself of overt power in order to create the world as an independent entity and redeem what he has created in an act of sheer self-giving passion. God gives himself without limit, without restriction, without any holding back for the sake of his creation. [5] This kind of love is necessary to undergird freedom, because this love does not seek overt control, but nurtures the object of love without the exercise of overt power.

As the Apostles, New Testament writers, and early Christians meditated on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, they came to understand Jesus as God in human form—embodied agape in human form. There is a technical word for God’s willingness to serve creation at its deepest point of need. The word is kenosis, which means “to empty.” It comes from the words of Paul:

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross! (Philippians 2:5-8, NIV).

In the older translations, the phrase “made himself nothing” (ekenosen) is translated “emptied himself.” This is the classic testimony to God’s self-giving nature. Agape is a love that empties itself for the beloved as a pure, selfless, unearned, and underserved gift.

Love and Political Reality

It would be easy to simplistically conclude society needs to be founded on selfless agape love, but that is not what is meant by saying that we need to have a politics of love. It is also not realistic. All the loves are to be found in a healthy society, and the absence of any of the loves indicate a flaw or weakness in a culture.

What can be missed is that all the different kinds of love are directed toward the formation and maintenance of a community or relationship. All the loves are personal, and bind persons with each other, an object, or an institution. The marriage of lovers, the family that begets children, the community that is drawn together for mutual defense, the business that draws people together as a community for economic reasons, the government that draws people together for their own common interest, all these must be both founded and nurtured and sustained by all of the loves. All the loves erase barriers and create community.

There is one other love in Greek that is important to what I am saying, “pragma,” or what we might call “pragmatic love.” In the Greek it is translated, “longstanding love.” This is a love that compromises to help the relationship work over time, shows patience in failure, defeat and disappointment, and tolerates the differences among people for the common good of a family or community. Pragma recognizes that society requires its members to be patient and to be loyal, even when there are times of stress. [6] Pragma is pragmatic in the sense that it accepts the other and nurtures the other in order to maintain a relationship of worth to the lover.

For a community to exist over time, there must be pragma—and it is pragma that is so obviously lacking in our public debates today. The riots in our cities over the imperfections of our society, the nit-picking of political parties over feigned differences, the constant criticism of imperfections in our leaders, the intolerance showed on our college campuses and other places for differing views, these and other problems reflect a lack of pragma: of tolerance, faith in the ultimate victory of the best opinion in a public debate and other “love virtues” of a free society. These virtues need to be recovered, renewed, and reestablished at the center of our public life.

Conclusion

The kind of love required in politics is a love that desires, seeks, and is committed to the lover’s (citizen’s) fullest development by acting in such a way as to result in the best development of the community of which the lover (citizen) is a part and those who are part of that community. It is a love that recognizes the social nature of human beings and seeks the fullest community possible under the circumstances, even at the cost of secondary goods for the lover (citizen). Finally, as one sees in times of war, it is a love that is willing to suffer to secure the best interests of the lover (citizen), the community, and its members.

Copyright 2020, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (San Francisco, Harper Collins, 1960).

[2] This is not the place to discuss emergent phenomenon, but the notion embedded in this statement is important to understand. Modern science is reductive—it attempts to reduce everything to matter and force. In the case of community life, it is tempted to reduce all human lives to forms or eros. This is an error. The other loves emerge as self-existent realities with properties that cannot be reduced to a lower form. Agape cannot be “reduced” to a form of eros. In fact, from a Christin perspective one might be tempted to say that eros emerges as one of the created forms of agape, the love of God.

[3] Stephen L. Ambrose, Band of Brothers (New York, NY: Simon and Shuster, 1992-2001). There is also a PBS series taken from the book.

[4] Roman Krznaric, “The Ancient Greeks’ 6 Words for Love (And Why Knowing Them Can Change Your Life)” in Solutions Journalism ( December 28, 2013), downloaded June 19, 2020, at www.yesmagazine.org/health-happiness/2013/12/28/the-ancient-greeks-6-words-for-love-and-why-knowing-them-can-change-your-life/,

[5] See, W. H. Vanstone, Love’s Endeavor, Love’s Expense: The Response of Being to the Love of God (London, UK: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1977). See also, John Polkinghorne, ed, The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosis (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans 2001) for a deep analysis of how creation reflects the One who is love and became love incarnate to redeem and restore his handiwork.

[6] See, Krznaric, previously cited, who outlines this love in his article.

If you are like me, you watch the nightly news with a sense of horror and foreboding. The riots on the streets, the antics of nihilist anarchists, the tactics of the Marxist left seeking the ever illusive “end of history” and institution of a proletarian dictatorship, the complicity of left-wing politicians, and worst of all, the egging-on by the liberal media, without the slightest reflection on where this is all heading. For those who want to know the end-game of all this, my suggestion is that the end game will not be not pretty—or what its proponents desire.

When I was a young lawyer, I worked for a time with one of those brilliant people who work by day in a practical job, but whose sheer mental ability drives them to a deeper thought pattern. I was a young and inexperienced Christian reading my Bible. He was a mature lawyer reading a history of the French Revolution. The Enlightenment, with its hostility to religion, began in France among a group of philosophers, the most famous of which was Voltaire. They envisioned a perfect, humanistic state. They created a dictatorship in which thousands died in an orgy of madness. The result was not a perfect state, but a perfectly demonic state. What finally emerged was not a paradise of reason, but Napoleon.

If American intellectuals, left-wing politicians, and the plutocrats that control much of our wealth are wise, they will take a break from radical politics, political calculations, and cultural accommodation and study the French Revolution. Those that egged on the French mob were ultimately destroyed by the mob. This same kind of senseless evil was characteristic of the 20^th century, from Lenin, to Hitler, to Mao, and beyond. Venezuela is the latest example.

There is a kind of naïve utopianism that discounts human brokenness and our capacity for evil, that believes that a different sort of ruler (me or my group) would mean change for the better, and that impatient for change. In the case of modern revolutions, people seek a secular Messiah who will usher in a golden age of peace and plenty, but most often get Stalin. “Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!” (Matthew 18:7, KJV).

Will to Power

As I have mentioned in this blog before, it is characteristic of modern political science to be consumed by politics as the acquisition and use of power, as John Milbank notes in his book, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason. [1] Contemporary politics and political thinking are dominated by two underlying political ideologies in which this endeavor manifests itself: first in what might be called “materialistic, laisse faire capitalist liberalism,” and second in “Marxist dialectical materialism.” In the end, both extremes see politics and economics as subject to universal rules of reason that act in the material world without reference any transcendental moral or religious ideal. Both ideologies are fundamentally materialistic and tend to discount moral and spiritual values as important to political or economic life

The philosopher Nietzsche instituted a program of seeing all moral claims, and all truth claims as simple bids for power, a program that finds its current home in deconstructive social theory. Nietzsche effectively “deconstructed” the foundations of Enlightenment liberalism, reducing all truth claims, all moral claims, and all aesthetic claims to bids for power. Nietzsche’s hostility towards Christianity as a “slave religion,” reflecting the attempt the weak to gain power over the strong, the “Ubermench” (“overman” or “superman,” who has the vitality to impose his or her will on others) is well known. In practice, the results of Nietzschean thought has inevitably been some kind of Nazism. [2] This Nietzschean notion of the will to power embeds in contemporary politics an innate tenancy towards violence. [3] The truth and reality of this observation is seen in Antifa and in the events in major U.S. cities over the past several weeks.

Will to Healthy Relationality

Over and against the Nietzschean notion of the “will to power” as ultimate, Christians posit that the universe is ultimately relational carrying in its very being the vestiges of the self-giving love of its Trinitarian source. In holding this view, Christian social thinking is consistent with the insights of modern science. If the modern world view is founded on Newtonian physics and its reduction of reality to matter and force, a positive post-modern world view is based on the relativistic and quantum view of reality as ultimately relational and not material.

Beginning with the insides of Einstein and extending into the insides of quantum theory and chaos theory, a picture has developed of the universe as deeply relational. The ultimate reality is not material at all. The fundamental units of our universe appear to be potentialities that exist in fields. These fields, and indeed the universe itself, are deeply related at a fundamental level. Even at a “macro level” (the level of our ordinary life) open systems are so delicate that slight changes in many systems can result in unpredictable and impressive effects (the so-called “butterfly effect.”

Our universe does not seem to be the kind of universe that Nietzsche believed existed. Instead, the universe seems to be a delicate web of relations that must be maintained with a kind of wise and careful honor. One example of this way of thinking is contemporary environmentalism, which flows from an understanding of the way in which the elements of our environment are related and impacted by foolish or uncaring interventions.

A Preference for Peace

Back to Antifa and the nihilistic radicals that are damaging our social fabric. It’s a picture of reality that I am painting is accurate, then human preference should be for peaceful, wise, and careful changes in our political structure over time. Obviously, as in the case of slavery, there are social evils so large and so deeply in bedded into a society that major changes may have to be made. However, most of the time a society is better served by small, incremental changes that maintain social peace. A kind of politics that depends upon ultimately irrational appeals to human prejudice, human fear, and violence in an impatient search for a perfect world is unlikely to produce the kind of social peace and progress that our society, and every wise society, desires.

A Christian view of society views conflict as a symptom of our human brokenness, not a fundamental element in any human society. Love it turns out, that love seen on the Cross, is the most fundamental reality of all—and a reality that can and should be embedded in our social interactions.

We cannot know how the events of the most recent weeks will end. We can hope that our society will step away from the brink and begin the slow process of developing a political process that assumes that love is more powerful than violence and wise decision-making more valuable than shrewdness,  power-seeking, or political victory. If we do, then our society has a bright future. If not, then we shall see….

Copyright 2020, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason 2^nd ed. (Oxford, UK.: Blackwell, 2006). This is a very difficult, postmodern analysis of contemporary social theory, which I am almost loath to cite because I find it so difficult to read and understand. Nevertheless, it is enlightening.

[2] Milbank would not agree with all my conclusions, nor I with his. In my view, contemporary Communist China is a national socialist state masquerading as a communist state. Modern Russia under Putin is clearly a kind of national socialist state, in which very wealthy oligarchs and the state control every element of human life. Milbank believes as do I that Nietzschean nihilism always leads to some form of Nazism. Unfortunately, we see elements of this kind of government in American and Western European society.

[3] Id, at xiii, and chapter 10, “Ontological Violence or the Postmodern Problematic” pp. 278-326

Last week, I sketched out some main points of Michael Polanyi’s Science, Faith, and Society. [1] One aspect of his thought I neglected was his notion of “moral inversion.” This past week, Americans have seen the impact of the way in which the materialistic, power-orientation of our society causes a moral inversion in many people in which terrible acts of violence seem justified to a rootless moral conscience. As last week progressed, we saw nationwide riots, causing unbelievable damage based upon moral outrage concerning the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. In the mind of the rioters, and those who have supplied the funds and encouragement for the riots, they are justified as a response to perceived American racism.

In his writing, Polanyi outlines a process he terms “moral inversion,” which he believes is a common characteristic of totalitarian régimes on the right and the left. Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, and Communist China all were powered by an extreme moral energy unconnected with any form of traditional morality. Moral inversion, Polanyi believes, is the demonic power behind dehumanizing and violently social movements and the oppressive governments they create. For all the destruction they create, the leaders of these movements they understood themselves utopian visions of the common good. [2] Moral inversion is not limited to totalitarian regimes.

Moral Inversion

What is moral inversion? Polanyi believes that the strong demand for moral perfection characteristic of Christianity, when combined with the materialist reductionism of modern thought that ends in an objective moral nihilism, results in reason and morality that works in a destructive way. [3] In his book, Logic of Liberty, Polanyi describes the phenomenon (speaking of Russian Marxists and German Nazi’s) as follows:

“In such men, the traditional forms for holding moral ideals had been shattered and their moral passions diverted into the only channels which a strictly mechanistic conception of man and society left open to them. We may call this the process of moral inversion. The morally inverted person has not merely performed a philosophic substitution of moral aims by material purposes, but is acting with the whole force of his homeless moral passions within a purely materialistic framework of purposes.” [4]

Human beings are by nature  motivated by moral passions. When by education or training they are denied an intellectual ground for their moral passions, these passions, like a river that has run out of its banks, flow in an uncontrolled flood into whatever channel lies conveniently at hand. In modern, materialistic societies, that channel has been revolutionary action designed to create a new society along strictly materialistic notions. Communism or some form of national socialism has been the preferred channel. The disasters of the 21^st Century have been powered by a moral energy resulting from this rechanneling of moral passions in a destructive way.

Moral Inversion and Hypocrisy

There is no critique of Christianity more common than the complaint that Christians are hypocrites—that is to say the Christians do not live up to the high moral ideals of Christ which they profess to admire. This is, of course, true. One only needs to read the Beatitudes to see that Christ upholds a moral standard to which we may aspire, but will not ever obtain. The perfectionistic impulse of Christian faith is responsible for a great deal of the moral progress of Western Civilization. Nevertheless, among those afflicted with a loss of faith, or no faith in moral ideals at all, this inability of Christians to achieve their ideals, can become a breeding ground for moral inversion powered by a feeling that traditional morality is hypocritical. This is made more dangerous by the postmodern charge that all moral claims are merely bids for power.

With the Enlightenment, and its exaltation of critical reason, Christian faith and morals were placed under the dissolving power of reductionistic, critical thinking. The materialism of the modern world, with its reduction of all reality to material particles and forces acting upon that reality eventually led to the critique of Nietzsche, that God  (spirit) was an illusion, that Christianity was a slave religion, and that the Will to Power was the final characteristic of all sound moral reasoning. This leads directly to the terrible irrational immorality of contemporary politics where winning is everything and any action however immoral is justified if it is in furtherance of a moral ideal held by a particular group.

Morality as Preference

The reductionist character of modern thought is seen in the tendency of the left (public morals) and the right (private morals) to reduce and constrict moral thinking to personal preferences. It is a short step from this position to a decision for a single moral good to the detriment of other, seemingly less important moral goods. [5] On the evening news this week, we have seen played out the view that eliminating racism is the supreme moral good, and other moral duties, such as protecting the rights of the accused to a fair trial, the duty of the prosecutors to investigate carefully before bringing charges, the rights of businesspersons to their property and businesses, the rights of the public to safe streets, etc. can and should be abandoned in the search for one single moral good. [6]

A Society Characterized by Moral Inversion is Unstable

It should be obvious that the views of Antifa, the violent looters, and the media egging them on are incompatible with the freedoms they purport to be advancing. A society built on terror will simply be a terror to everyone, good, bad, rich, poor, powerful, and powerless.  I was able to travel in Russia just after the fall of Communism. Communism was physically, morally, and spiritually impoverishing to everyone. What we see playing out on the streets of our cities in America is exactly the phenomena that lead to millions of deaths under Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pot Pol, all of whom played upon the moral sentiments of their people and created unmitigated horror and suffering for all.

This past week, I had the opportunity to visit my parents grave in the Missouri Veterans Cemetery in Springfield Missouri. Just across from their urn is a bronze copy of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. One single line caught my eye:

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. [7]

As I stood at my father’s grave and pondered his leaving home for World War II, and the sacrifices he and my grandfather made in the defense of our freedom, the words “we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain” rang through my mind. If we do not defend freedom and a free society in our time—not parts of it, but all of it—then our parents’ and grandparents’ generations, and all those that preceded them, who sacrificed for the freedoms we enjoy will have been in vain—and a government of the people, by the people, and for the people will perish from the earth.

The moral outrage of the left, and the constant charge of “Nazism” against those who resist them betrays the deranged nature of their thinking. As I reminded a friend this week: from the beginning of the Trump Inauguration, the violence, the burning of cars in Washington, the deceitful bringing of charges that were privately known to be untrue against the President and his administration, the fiasco of the impeachment, the dishonesty of the Justice Department and other agencies, the conniving of the last administration instead of organizing a peaceful and honest transfer of power,  the refusal of college campuses to allow Christian and Conservative thinkers to speak, even the trivial fact that my neighbor can safely wear her Biden button in public, but other friends are in physical danger if they wear a “Make America Great Hat,” are telling. These, are not the acts of people who love our country and are seeking to maintain its institutions. They are the actions of a twisted and inverted morality, lacking in a moral ground and acting with an unhinged passion. They are the actions of New Brown Shirts and their morally bankrupt leadership.

Copyright 2020, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] Science Faith and Society: A Searching Examination of the Meaning and Nature of Scientific Inquiry (Chicago, Ill: University of Chicago Press, 1946).

[2] D. M. Yeager, Confronting the Minotaur: Moral Inversion and Polanyi’s Moral Philosophy http://www.polanyisociety.org/TAD%20WEB%20ARCHIVE/TAD29-1/TAD29-1-pg22-48-pdf.pdf (downloaded June 1, 2020). This is article is a critical examination of the Polanyi’s ideas.

[3] This is not the place for me to outline the long line of moral reductionism that ends in a Marxist denial of any morality unconnected to material process. Nor is it the place to discuss the movement of the Enlightenmnet towards nihilism, first fully exposed by Nietzsche and his concept of the Will to Power. Suffice it to observe that modern Western Society, lacking a transcendent faith in the reality of moral values has entered a period of moral nihilism, that can impact even those who deny that they accept it. The power orientation of our culture is a part of its plausibility structure. See,  Lesslie Newbigin, Truth to Tell: The Gospel as Public Truth (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1991)

[4] Michael Polanyi, The Logic of Liberty (Indianapolis Indiana, Liberty Fund, 1998), 131.

[5] The Christian author, C. S. Lewis speaks of this tendency for contemporary people, to discount the vast interlocking web of morality, which he sometimes calls the Tao, to exalt one moral principle to the detriment of the moral law as a whole. On the right, this has led to a preference for public morality, and on the right a preference for private morality. See, David Rozema, “Lewis’s Rejection of Nihilism: The Tao and the Problem of Moral Knowledge” in  Pursuit of Truth | A Journal of Christian Scholarship http://www.cslewis.org/journal/lewiss-rejection-of-nihilism-the-tao-and-the-problem-of-moral-knowledge/ (September 28, 2007, downloaded June 4, 2020).

[6] I do not by this want to be seen as not believing that moral protest against racism is wrong. It is not. I also do not minimize the activities of political opportunists and terror groups that may have contributed to the problems we are currently experiencing. These groups use the moral inversion of others for purely selfish purposes.

[7] Abraham Lincoln, “Gettysburg Address” November 19, 1863.

 

 

I mentioned last week that Lesslie Newbigin was important to my development as a Christian thinker, and it was Newbigin who introduced me to one of the most important figures in 20^th Century philosophy of science, Michael Polanyi. Polanyi was born in 1891 Eventually, he received doctoral degrees in medicine and science. He worked as a research chemist, making important discoveries as a practicing scientist. He later turned his attention to philosophical pursuits. With the Hitler’s rise to power, Polanyi emigrated to Britain and became Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Manchester (1933-1948). Because of his interest in and contribution to the literature of the social sciences and philosophy, Polanyi was made Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Manchester (1948-58). He also lectured as visiting professor or senior fellow at the universities of Chicago, Aberdeen, Virginia, Stanford and Merton College, Oxford. [1]

The overt politicization of science in Nazi Germany, and also in Communist Russia, made a deep impact on Polanyi. He observed first-hand the distortions of science that totalitarian regimes create. In his little book, Science Faith, and Society: A Searching Examination of the meaning and nature of Scientific Inquiry, [2] Polanyi outlines the problem of a politicized science and his proposal for the freedom of science from political manipulation. In so doing, he sets out the fundamentals of his ideal of a free society. Given the loss of belief in the truth in Western societies, which Polanyi experienced in Germany and Eastern Europe, his work is of contemporary relevance.

The Marxist Agenda

In the Soviet Union, all science was conducted in an atmosphere of what we would call, “Political Correctness.” It was an article of faith that Marxist dialectical materialism embodied the ultimate scientific explanation for, and guidance, to society. There was no such thing as “pure science,” for all scientific endeavor, indeed all endeavors, had to serve the state as the embodiment of the will of the people and of the revolution. Eventually most scientific endeavors were brought under the control of Communist ideology. In the process, the Soviet Union devastated their scientific community, and especially in the areas of biology and what we would call the “human sciences.” [3]

It is hard to overestimate the impact of Marx upon modern Western society, even among intellectuals who would disclaim that they are “Marxist.” Marxist ideology, based upon the world being governed by impersonal material forces, lies deep in the modern intellectual psyche. The notion that history is governed by such forces of inevitability comes out in political discussion when politicians right and left use the phrase, “the right side of history” to defend their views and motivate their followers. (I like to comment that, if we destroy ourselves in a nuclear holocaust, it will turn out the roaches and sharks were the ones on the right side of history.)

The notion that history has an inevitable, materially-determined conclusion is a remnant of Marx, even among those who have never read him. Such a view is destructive of both human reason and freedom. For Christians human beings are morally responsible for the societies they create, the decisions they make, and the future they bring about by their actions. One reason for these essays is to restore a human as opposed to materialistic vision of human society and political action.

What it Means to Say Something Real has been Discovered

In response to totalitarian and materialistic visions of human progress, Polanyi set as his goal the defense of human freedom, political, scientific, and religious. In so doing, he carefully walks a path between the objective pole of human knowledge and the inevitable subjective or personal elements in human knowing. He begins by examining what it means to “know the truth.” For Polanyi, human beings believe something to be true when we believe that an order we have discovered will manifest itself in future observations. The first thing to be noted about this definition is that it does not restrict itself to materialistic phenomena. Polanyi believes that we expect many unseen things to reveal themselves. Truth, Justice, Beauty, God, and all the values which make human life worth living, exhibit an immaterial reality that is expected to reveal itself in the future by those who have dedicated themselves to the search for truth.

The scientist in the laboratory, the painter in his studio, the moral philosopher at his computer screen, the physicist in his laboratory, the judge writing his decision, the priest praying at his alter, all these serve an invisible reality they believe will reveal itself to the seeker, Each one believes that new truth and new discovery will be revealed, and that discovery will lead to further discoveries and a further expansion of our experience and knowledge of Truth, Beauty, Justice and God. In this way, scientific knowledge is no different than, or superior to, other forms of knowledge. This ideal of a community dedicated to the search for truth can be applied to political communities as well. [4] These immaterial realities have the power to guide people, communities, nations and societies into a brighter future, and will continue to manifest themselves as emergent realities to those who diligently seek them. [5]

Seekers after Truth Beauty Goodness and Justice as Members of a Community.

Here we get to a second feature of knowledge: all knowing is dependent upon a prior communal act of faith. Scientists, lawyers, artists, philosophers, pastors, and the like are a part of communities of people who believe in scientific truth, justice, beauty, God, wisdom, and other values. In each case, members of their community undergo preparation by which they become a part of a community of those who believe in its values, are skilled in its techniques and disciplines, and who act as role models for newer members. Whether we are speaking of Isaac Newton (Science), Oliver Wendell Holmes (Law), Picasso (Art), Pope John Paul II (Religion), Michael Polanyi (Philosophy), or others in various fields, there is always a community seeking the kind of knowledge the community exists to further. In each case, there is a process by which a person who wishes to become part of the community gains the skills needed to make contributions to it.

Well-formed communities of inquiry are self-policing. They do not require any external governance. [6] For example, in science, theology, law, and other areas of inquiry there are respected journals. Not everyone is able to write for them. There is a process of gaining credibility. In addition, in controversial areas, it is quite likely that those journals will print articles exposing readers to more than one view. For example, in quantum physics there are several possible interpretations that have very well-known backers. While most scientists support something like the Copenhagen Interpretation, there are those who think that the Bohm (Hidden Variable) Interpretation is the better explanation. Both receive space in well-respected journals and are the subject of articles, seminars, discussions and the like.

In all cases, traditions can take steps down what turns out to be blind alleys. In law, some decisions breed more and better decisions in an area, while others breed inconsistencies, unforeseen injustices, and incoherencies. When a precedent is overturned it is because judges become convinced that there must be a better or different rule that would promote justice to parties and society as a whole. Frequently, this occurs after a long period of discussion in journals, seminars, educational events, political writings, etc. In other areas, research projects may change as certain avenues of research turn out to be less fruitful than others.

Personal Responsibility for the True, Beautiful, Good, or Just.

Having spoken of the communal nature of the search for Truth, Beauty, Goodness and Justice, there is also a personal aspect. Every discovery, every new work of art, every new moral intuition is the product of a human person. Over and over again in science, men and women have struggled in an area to remove some inconsistency or problem in a theory, only to await the insight of a single mind. Such was the case with Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and the discoveries of modern quantum physics. In each case, after a long period of struggle with conflicting data that could not be easily reconciled with the current theory, a new discovery was made through an act of personal insight. [7] When this insight was reached, the scientist, in this case Albert Einstein, published his results to the rest of the community, expecting both criticism and support.

When a scientist publishes his results, he is making a public declaration to his or her community of inquiry of what he or she has come to believe is true about the world. In a similar way, when a lawyer finishes a brief, when a painter finishes a painting, when a writer finishes a novel, when pastor finishes a sermon, he or she publishes to the world their work—for which they will be held personally accountable. If progress has been made, if some aspect of truth, justice, beauty, goodness or God has been revealed, he or she receives praise. If a mistake has been made, it will be pointed out. It is in the publishing of a work in any area that a person submits his or her work to the critical judgement of the community as a whole and takes personal responsibility for it.

The Body Politic as a Self-Policing Community

As mentioned earlier, Polanyi was concerned about the way in which Western intellectuals had become seduced by various totalitarian ideologies, left and right, and the descent into nihilism, so evident in our politics and so prevalent among intellectuals. His goal was to provide an intellectual foundation not just for scientific freedom, but for political freedom as well. [8] Polanyi believes a free society requires that a community practice free speech (discussion and dialogue) with a common faith that (i) there is such a thing as truth; (ii) the members of the community love the truth and are committed to search for it; (iii) the members have internalized a personal obligation to pursue the truth; and (iv) that the members of the community have the ability needed to undertake the search. [9]

In the search for the truth, the members of the community must practice two virtues: Fairness and Tolerance. Fairness is the ability to listen to the opinions of the members of the community with an open mind, attempting to be objective in judging the merits of the argument. Tolerance is the ability to hear sympathetically other, and even hostile, views and to grant those views the respect they deserve. No free society can endure without dedication to the pursuit of truth, justice and the other ideals of the human heart—a pursuit that engages the best qualities of its citizens, who have been prepared by their upbringing and education to have the character needed to be free citizens of a free society.

Why Religion is a Part of the Search for Justice

I must conclude this post, which is already too long. However, I cannot do so without making a point concerning why religious people and religious views are important to public debate and why these views should be tolerated heard in the public arena. There is more to the search for God and for religious truth than the search for justice.  However, the search for God inevitably involves the search for justice. The transcendent search for the One who is the ultimate source of Truth, Goodness, Beauty, and Justice cannot but impact the search for justice by a society.

Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and other people of religious conviction are on a search for the ultimate ground of justice and other values in a society. Like all searchers, they may be wrong. There are times, such as the defenses of slavery, when some religious people have gone in a wrong direction. Nevertheless, there are times, and the elimination of slavery is one of them, when religious people were among the first and more ardent spokespersons for the end of a social evil. To silence them, is to silence our society’s movement towards a more just, true, beautiful, good, and humane social order.

Near the end of Science, Faith, and Society, Polanyi makes the following observation, which is terrifying in its application to early 21^st Century America:

[If] the citizens are dedicated to certain transcendent obligations and particularly to such general ideals as truth, justice, charity, and these are in embodied in the tradition of the community to which allegiance is maintained, a great many issues between citizens, and all to some extent, can be left—and are necessarily left—for the individual consciences to decide. The moment, however, a community ceases to be dedicated, through its members to transcendent ideals, it can continue to exist undisrupted only by submission to a single center of unlimited power. Nor can citizens who have radically abandoned belief in spiritual realities—on the obligations to which their consciences would have been entitled and in duty bound to take a stand—raise any objection to being totally directed by the state. In fact, their love of truth and justice turn then automatically, as I have shown, to a love of state power. [10]

It is my belief that we see signs of this very phenomenon in our contemporary politics.

Copyright 2020, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] There are many good articles on the internet about Polanyi and his life. See for example, Michael Polanyi and Tacit Knowledge at https://infed.org/mobi/michael-polanyi-and-tacit-knowledge/ (downloaded May 27, 2020). For those wanting the best introduction to his thinking, see, Drucilla Scott, Everyman Revisited: The Common Sense of Michael Polanyi (Sussex, ENG: The Book Guild Limited, 1985). His major work is Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (Chicago, Ill: University of Chicago Press, 1958).

[2] Science Faith and Society: A Searching Examination of the Meaning and Nature of Scientific Inquiry (Chicago, Ill: University of Chicago Press, 1946)

[3] It is impossible to overestimate the moral and intellectual damage Marxism does to a society. I traveled to Russia in 1995 and saw personally the moral, political and economic devastation that 70 years of socialism wreaked on Russian society. One reason for the current regime is the moral and political consequences of this period and the lack of the moral, spiritual, intellectual, and political foundations for democracy.

[4] Science Faith and Society, 17.

[5] Thus, Polanyi subscribes to the Aristotelian notion that the real is that which has power. Goodness, truth, beauty, and other immaterial values have an unseen reality, in that they fruitfully guide action and continue to reveal themselves to those who seek them.

[6] Science, Faith and Society, at 47ff. The subject of self-governance is very broad. A host of policing measures exist in any discipline. The competition for academic posts is normally intense; and, in every institution, faculty look for the best possible candidate for openings. Academic societies are prevalent, and entrance at the highest level is not automatic. Journals have boards to advise them on which articles should be published. Of course, all of these safeguards are subject to failure and even corruption, which is why some disciplines can go into long periods of decline.

[7] Of course, the fact that many minds have examined a problem before singular acts of insight indicates the importance of the community to the success of even the most singular genius.

[8] In a later post, I intend to review his work, The Logic of Liberty (Indianapolis Indiana, Liberty Fund, 1998). In this book, Polanyi outlined his views on a free social order.

[9] Science, Faith and Society, 71.

[10] Science Faith and Society, 78-79.