J. A. Colen
José A. Colen is now a PhD candidate at the University of Santiago de Compostela.He is doing research and writing on immigration ethics, religious freedom, and human rights philosophy. He previously published on Cold War political thought, namely Raymond Aron, Karl Popper, Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss, and recent analytical moral philosophy, namely Bernard Williams, Richard Rorty, and Thomas Nagel. Colen holds an MBA from IESE Business School (Barcelona) and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Institute for Political Studies (Lisboa) of the Universidade Católica Portuguesa. He was Permanent Researcher at CEPS and Professor at the School of Arts and Humanities (ELACH) of Minho University from 2018-25, after a period as Aster-Tocqueville Fellow at the ICS of the University of Navarra from 2017-2018. He has been a recurrent Guest Professor of the Institute for Political Studies at Portuguese Catholic University and Guest Researcher at the CESPRA of the École des Hautes études en Sciences Sociales (Paris). He was also Visiting Scholar at Notre Dame University (Indiana) in 2014 and for 2 years conducted studies at the Special Collections of the University of Chicago. He was Visiting Scholar or Guest Researcher at the University of Vienna (Fall 2105), and Universidad de Navarra (Winter-Spring 2016), James Madison Fellow at Princeton University (2016-2017).
Supervisors: João Cardoso Rosas, Pierre Manent, Catherine Zuckert, Michael Zuckert, Bradford Wilson, Robert P. George, and Luis Modesto Garcia Soto
Supervisors: João Cardoso Rosas, Pierre Manent, Catherine Zuckert, Michael Zuckert, Bradford Wilson, Robert P. George, and Luis Modesto Garcia Soto
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Questões de vida ou morte: para quê filosofia by J. A. Colen
Mais tarde ou mais cedo, é quase inevitável perguntarmo-nos sobre se há bem e mal, se a vida tem sentido, se a morte é o fim, como podemos ter certezas, porque sentimos tanta dor, como somos realmente. Estas são algumas das questões suscitadas pelo que chamamos (sem nenhum rigor) “inquietação filosófica”.
Books by J. A. Colen
Mais tarde ou mais cedo, é quase inevitável perguntarmo-nos sobre se há bem e mal, se a vida tem sentido, se a morte é o fim, como podemos ter certezas, porque sentimos tanta dor, como somos realmente. Estas são algumas das questões suscitadas pelo que chamamos (sem nenhum rigor) “inquietação filosófica”.
From Plato we have inherited the idea that justice is something we should aspire to. The central theme of classical philosophy is the development of a doctrine of “the best regime,” which in essence means the most just regime. There is, however, a chasm between ancient and modern political doctrines.
The “best regime”, for the ancients, doesn’t seem to be an ideal to be achieved, but rather a sort of “mental experience” which reveals the limits of what can be expected in political life. The goal of this experience is, according to Cicero, to make apparent the principles of political life, and not to give birth to an actual, real city. According to this interpretation, the most beautiful city, Calpollis—which Socrates proposes in the Republic and which raises countless objections from his interlocutors—isn’t a likely scenario, and perhaps not even a possible one. Socrates’ companions, among them Plato’s elder brothers, even ask themselves whether such a city would be desirable.
The most famous of Plato’s dialogues should, therefore, be interpreted more like a comedy, rather than a sort of intellectual debate which seeks to find principles for an actual society. Pascal stated that the work wasn’t to be seen as a serious one, but rather a sort of demonstration through a reduction to the absurd.
For the ancients, the best regime might not be contrary to nature, but it is extremely unlikely to be achieved. Justice is a virtue of the soul, but the systematic implementation of this standard in the city will always reveal itself to be paradoxical, in light of the ridiculous consequences that would result, such as the abolition of the family and of private property, the purging of the main Hellenic cultural works, the abolition of poetry, and a government by “philosophers”, who can’t even find their way around the public square (meaning that they lack practical experience). Even if their projects were implemented, they would meet so much resistance that it would be necessary to ban all persons older than ten years from the city.
The conclusion seems to be that it is not possible to formulate a theory of justice which stipulates the best political institutions and the best laws, without relying to a great extent on the virtue of the citizenry. This perspective strikes us as alien, and it is almost incomprehensible that Plato wouldn’t at least try to put the conjectures of his characters into practice.
The traditional view of the Republic in the twentieth century, on the contrary, is that Plato seriously proposes a reign by philosophers, equality between men and women in the military and in public life, shared property, and a communist totalitarian state, or at least a kind of kibbutz avant la lettre, which takes children from the family to ensure social equality. It is said, moreover, that in Plato’s opinion, philosophers should be the counselors of princes, prepared to manipulate the crowds with noble lies.
To understand Plato’s political teachings, we are required to read his works as dialogues, in their dramatic context, detecting irony, and without assuming that Plato agrees with what Socrates says to his interlocutors. Whichever way we interpret him, it is undeniable that no political theory since Plato has been able to dispense with the notions of justice and of an “ideal” political regime, one “in accordance with our prayers”—and it was Plato who placed these notions at the heart of political philosophy.
Aristotle’s “political science” is different from ours, first of all, because it sees politics as citizens or rulers facing concrete issues. His view is not essentially different from the commonsense view: it goes further, but in the same direction. It does not observe “political phenomena” from outside. There are no new technical words in his political books alien to the practical knowledge of Greek citizens, nor does he use “scientific” terminology (and even less inferences from a “theory”). His description of ethics and politics is certainly not intended to be neutral and begins precisely by studying what “good” means. In fact, politics has only recently become a theoretical science, moving radically away from the Aristotelian methods and perspective. We borrow from his vocabulary, but, as modern men, we try to make it precise and scientific.
One of the keywords we borrow is the concept of citizenship. We no longer live in self-governing cities, but the concept “civic” and the very word “politics” derive from civitas and polis. In translations of the works of Plato and Aristotle, polis is sometimes incorrectly translated as “State” (or at best, as “city-state”), but the difference between polis and State is very profound. The ancient city is different from the modern State because Greek politics did not consist, as it does today, in managing a population within a certain territory. The Greek “regime” is not opposed to “civil society,” as distinct from political organization. The ancient city is not spontaneously born out of anarchy, like the modern state. The city must be founded by men and ordered by legislators. The political authority of the ancient city, sometimes compared to a ship, does not seek to organize a sort of cruise, where passengers live their own private lives while everyone is taken along by the cruise. Neither is the ancient political authority a “sovereign” who manages everything that exists in a territory, like a guard who manages a forest park; the sovereign rules men and distributes offices.
In the polis, the free part of the population is called to participate actively in a special “institution” that is the city, with a view to the excellence and goodness of its members. Ethical inquiry aims at attaining nobility or good, and political inquiry aims at the good of all members of the city. None of these inquiries are “neutral” because neutrality would obscure the main object of the noble life and the place where virtue or excellence (arété) flourishes.
“Natural justice” is not about the right of man as man, but part of political right. What is just by nature is only understood and can only flourish in the environment of the polis. This thesis is diametrically opposed to the later theses of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, for whom the formation of civil society implies moving away from the state of nature and is, therefore, unnatural.
Only with Stoicism and Christianity did the good of man come to be understood as, if not alien or indifferent, much more important than, and “separable” from, political life, making citizenship infinitely less important. This is why today we think that a “merely” political question is somewhat less serious and profound than a moral one.
Even so, we have the feeling that Aristotle’s books Ethics and Politics are of great interest to us, both from the historical and philosophical viewpoints, and continue to be read today. They contain provocative discussions on issues that have not vanished nor been resolved such as: citizenship, or the relationship between the individual and political authority; distributive and commutative justice; political regimes; the causes and remedies for political change and revolutions; the importance of the moral education of the citizenry. But if we have this feeling of familiarity when approaching these sorts of questions, it is because the essential concepts that we use today are derived from the concepts that Aristotle took from commonsense vocabulary.
However different our political knowledge and political concepts are from Aristotle’s own, they are derived from his political science and notions.
Although this understanding of law presents many challenges and difficulties – which have motivated either strict legal positivism or great skepticism–it possesses a long history and dates back to antiquity. In the 5th century BC, in the context of sophistry, law (in the broad sense of nomos, which also includes customs and the way of looking at life in general) was often opposed to nature, since it was observed that different human communities had very different laws and customs. Nothing seemed to be naturally determined and, as such, universally valid. On the other hand, in Sophocles’ Antigone we find a contrast between human laws, which are temporally finite, and higher laws, i.e., the laws of the gods, which are unwritten and infallible. However, the expression “natural law” is not used in any of these cases.
One of the earliest occurrences of this notion appears in Plato’s Gorgias. According to the sophist Callicles, it is those that are the weakest (and most numerous) that, by convention, establish the laws of cities, in order to give each other limits and thereby protect themselves from the strongest. These laws are opposed to natural law, which requires each individual to obtain more and more things and impose his power on others (Gorgias 483b-484c). Socrates, however, seeks to refute Caulicles and show the importance of justice.
Aristotle, in discussing political justice in the Nicomachean Ethics, distinguishes between conventional justice and the justice that exists by nature, and he clearly states that natural justice is a part of political law. In the Rhetoric he in turn distinguishes between particular laws (of each city) and universal laws, based on nature–even though he is not expressing his opinion here, but suggesting plausible arguments for public debate.
The first to thoroughly develop the idea that there is a natural law and that the laws of cities (and even of human life in general) must be guided by or derived from these laws are the Stoics. This idea of natural law is intrinsically linked to cosmopolitanism – that is, the comparison between the cosmos and a city – and the true “city” of which all human beings are citizens, whether they are aware of it or not.
Although the Stoics are better known for some of the more practical aspects of their thinking (such as the rational control of emotions or the distinction between things that are in our power and things that are not), they ground their reflections about how we should live on a complex system that is divided into logic (which includes the theory of knowledge), physics (which encompasses metaphysical and theological questions), and ethics (which also includes politics).
Inspired by Heraclitus, they argued that the cosmos or universal nature has a rational order and that human reason, as the core of individual nature, is capable of identifying this order and living in accordance with it. Although this order is often identified with or derives from a deity (Zeus), this deity is not conceived as a personal god, but only as a pure rationality that governs everything and as such has (or should have) profound effects on human life and society.
In a certain sense, this observation seems to be motivated by reasons of an economic, technical or cultural nature—due to the universal applications of science, the increasing migrations and contacts between the different peoples of the earth, and so on. Some prefer to underline certain technological causes, while others underline the “moral” roots, but in any case, as twentieth-century French philosopher Raymond Aron once said “the unity of the planet is already complete, its vicissitudes are already integrated in universal history.” This unity exists regardless of what people think. However, contrary to what is sometimes said, this awareness of planetary unity is not exactly recent; it was a given at least since the end of World War II and has much older roots.
During the Cold War, this was expressed with great rhetorical force in Kennedy's famous words: “We all inhabit the same planet, we all breathe the same air, we are all afraid, we are all worried about the future of our children, we are all mortal.” We know that there is, beyond blood ties, family, culture or religion, a social and moral horizon that is common to all, and the question is precisely what the best organization is for living together despite the differences and incompatibilities between people and their worldviews. Like Kennedy’s speech went on to state: “So let us not be blinded by our differences – but let us direct our attention to our common interests and the means by which these differences can be resolved. And if we can't end our differences now, at least we can help make the world safe for this diversity.” A just order is global in scope.
The platonic Socrates corrected the “opinion” of the age according to which justice was simply favoring friends and allies well while inflicting harm on enemies and adversaries. But he never suggested that the ties that bind us, or that government itself, could be “worldwide.” Nor did historians of the Roman Empire pretend that its history was universal: it was, on the contrary, the history of the city to which citizens owed their first loyalty.
The opinion or feeling that we should favor our own people first and foremost has not disappeared but is now counterbalanced by the idea that such an opinion is parochial, if not based on mere prejudice, because we are all men, we all inhabit the earth, and we all share the same fate. The first philosophers who seriously defended the idea that humanity had a common destiny in the West were perhaps the Stoics.
But this idea was linked to the idea of divine Providence, as the cosmos is too big to be governed by any human regime or government. For the notion of a universal city of men, as distinct from the cosmos ruled by God, was introduced only by Augustine.
Aquinas is usually presented as a kind of “Christian disciple” of Aristotle: the concepts he uses, the questions he debates, the solutions he suggests, etc. are in constant reference to – and in dialogue with – Aristotle. To claim this does not mean, of course, that the relationship between Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas is one of pure continuity: it is consensual – and even almost a truism – that such a relationship involves important discontinuities, which are reflected not only in the different political proposals to which they lead, but also in the “resistance” that Aristotle’s philosophy had to overcome in medieval universities, given the evident differences between “The” Pagan Philosopher and Christianity.
In addition to the problem of reconciling Greek “ethical” and “political” ideas with biblical ideas, Aquinas' inquiries are marked by another order of tension: the tension between “reason” and “faith”. Such tension arises, above all, from the “canonical” interpretation of Aristotle that came from medieval philosophers, mainly Muslims and Jews, who maintained the incompatibility between the truths of reason and faith: either the world was eternal, or it had its beginning in Creation ex nihilo; either the highest virtue was magnanimity, or it was humility. Aristotle's “immovable mover” is not the providential Christian God who sees into men's hearts. It was necessary to choose between the humble blind obedience of Faith to what Reason cannot prove (and sometimes cannot even reveal), and the arguments of philosophy and science that rule out all non-rational truths. This was the prevailing feeling.
Faced with this tension, the solution of many medieval disciples of Aristotle was to defend that there were “two truths”, one spiritual and mystical, and the other rational, which corresponded to two irreconcilable attitudes. But Aristotle himself was only indirectly known in the West until Aquinas decided to commission William of Moerbeke to translate the text into Latin from the best Greek versions preserved in the Muslim world.
The essential problem with which Aquinas struggled was to understand whether – and to what extent – the teachings of Aristotelian philosophy were really incompatible with faith and should purely and simply be rejected as heretical, as most of the professors in Paris, who were disciples of Augustine, maintained; but also whether the elucidation of his own faith could benefit from the language and arguments of “The Philosopher”, which is what Aristotle was referred to as.
The favorable response to Aristotle – the “optimism” of Thomas Aquinas regarding trust in reason – which animates his philosophical and theological inquiry is reflected in his views on politics and ethics. Instead of there being incompatibility, reason is for him a kind of “ladder” that approaches the truths revealed by God and allows us to verify the truth of the teachings of faith.
So what distinguishes Aquinas's and Aristotle's investigations is something deeper than the clash of different theories. Indeed, in Aristotle the problem of the articulation between “ethics” and “politics” does not arise, since both are part of the same inquiry. For Aristotle, the full realization of the human being takes place in the polis (and what is good, just, etc. is not, at all, separable from the political sphere), while for Aquinas there is an essential difference (but not separation or incompatibility) between moral life and specifically political phenomena, which is rooted in the biblical injunction to "give to God what is God's and to Caesar what is Caesar's". So that the good of the human being and its fulfillment are no longer inseparably linked to the “political community”, in the classic sense of the term, but point towards transcendence and find in God their true source (in life ordered according to God).
Such a distinction does not mean that there is no relationship between ethical and political life and “religious” life; it means that, contrary to what we think today, politics does not have complete autonomy and cannot fail to be thought of with reference to morality and theology (or at least rational theology), which are rightly called to play a central role.
The paradoxical result of this view is the relative freedom of rational inquiry from theology, and of political government from faith and morality, which will henceforth define the west, and which is due mainly to the works of Thomas Aquinas. This is in great contrast to the profound distrust in reason that continued for centuries to mark eastern cultures.
Nowadays, however, if someone belonging to the latter group answered that his goal in life was to grow in virtue, he would be regarded with surprise and would be subject to harmless ridicule, because the notion of “virtue” has become alien to our moral and political vocabulary (except perhaps within the circles of Evangelical Americans and some Catholics). In fact, it would suspicious if the defense of virtue were to emerge in a conversation among statesmen, diplomats, etc. – in which case any mentions of a virtuous life would not merely raise eyebrows but suggest a hidden public agenda.
Of course, it is possible to speak about “virtue”, “honor”, “patriotism” and so forth without using such old-fashioned moral language. We could simply talk about things that appear to have the same meaning, without being considered unduly idealistic, or without raising suspicion—things such as “quality of life,” “prestigious profession,” “ethical concerns,” “decency” and so forth. Tuning down the language of “virtue” among politicians would be necessary to avoid them looking either very naïve or very dangerous.
Our current moral and political language was the subject of a surprising change: the notion of virtue, whose use now could make you raise an eyebrow, or laugh at its naïveté, was for millennia the key concept in both personal ethics and public life. Going back to the very beginnings of moral philosophy with Socrates, all he seemed to ask others was articulated in the language of virtue: the nature of courage, wisdom, piety and so forth. It doesn’t matter whether he received a clear answer in the end. Plato pursued the same inquiry and Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics, was maybe the first to give a clear-cut answer: for the individual, magnanimity was the highest virtue, and for the city, justice was the highest.
The aristocratic Greek view, for which humility was a flaw, stands in sharp contrast to Christian scripture, which tends to identify humility and accepting divine will out of charity as the central human virtues. However, when the Aristotelian tradition was recovered by Christian Medieval scholars, a critical appropriation of the virtues allowed them to reconcile both the classical Greek and Christian traditions.
How to explain a change of such magnitude, which sent to oblivion the key moral concept in our current moral and political language?
If we had to choose a single reason for that transformation, the answer to the question would be: the influential work of Niccolò Machiavelli.
For the classical utopian theorists the best regime was not necessarily a perfect society. It was not a blueprint to implement, a program to create a real city, but a thought experiment. These ancient “utopias” were indeed invented to reveal the outermost limits of what we could possibly expect from political life—at the very least, this was Cicero’s description of the genre.
Plato’s Republic, Aristotle’s ideal politeia in Politics VII-VIII and Cicero’s own Republic were instances of this genre—although in the latter case, the best regime is an idealized version of the Roman Republic of old. A kind of utopian dream was the very soul of their political philosophy, which had the primary and guiding purpose of revealing the nature of the best “regime.” They were searching for whatever civil order was most in accordance with the natural order and, at the same time, was fostered by and based on the virtue of its citizens.
A key point about this classical utopianism was that it had no illusions about the feasibility of its aim. It was a call to aiming politically for something very probably outside the reach of human achievement, but not impossible or contrary to human nature. It depended on contingent circumstances whether the political project could ever be produced—and even here, no wagers were cast. But insofar as this political ideal constituted a pinnacle of achievement and fulfillment, it was something to strive after by any virtuous person or anyone who was in pursuit of human perfection.
But this call required tempering confidence in the particulars of any political project, because none of the activities or institutions that were proposed for the city were without imperfection. The ancient utopia continually descends to earth, to the sometimes brutal, imperfectly just, “common justice” found in real cities. This is why common justice needs to be completed or corrected by considerations of equity or mercy.
Given the practical impossibility of achieving any sort of utopia, traditional philosophy resorted to giving advice, making exhortations and even delivering moving sermons, to move rulers to supplement harsh common justice with mercy—as is manifest in the “mirrors of princes” Genre. In light of this we can see how the ancient form of utopian thought was in conflict with Machiavelli’s new and less-than-rosy mirror of The Prince.
Given the fact that this genre thrived in Antiquity and Middle Ages, we can hardly find it surprising that someone of Machiavelli’s sensibilities would ridicule and mercilessly attack this ancient kind of utopianism as the work of useless dreamers. This great transformation catalyzed by Machiavelli’s writings was so radical that it changed utopianism; for later thinkers were no longer dreamers. They had the intention of designing perfect societies that could be implemented.
Henceforth, in order to be realistic, no political organization should be devised counting on the virtue of men, under penalty of being but “cities in the sky”. These cities did not require wholly virtuous men, for they were cities on the ground. The old morality was shorn from the new political reality, and the stage was set for something new.
Individuals are obviously different in some respects and similar in others, but today it seems inconceivable to us not to recognize that men are all equal, in a deep moral sense. As opposed to the classics that compared men in accordance with some ideal of excellence, it seems to us that the equality of men is more evident if we compare what they all share, a kind of lowest common denominator.
Indeed, all men have several fundamental characteristics, but the most basic seems to be the desire to live and thus a right to life, which cannot be waived under any circumstances (not even, as many think, because of a serious crime). This is a right that all individuals have regardless of gender, color, creed, age and merit, and with which an individual can morally rebut the claims of not only other human beings, but a political sovereign and society as a whole (and perhaps God himself). This approach centered on the basic moral equality of individuals appears with the formulation of the idea of the “state of nature,” that is, of an age of human life before the foundation of civil society.
In ancient literature there are reports of the state of nature in the sophists, or Lucretius, and late scholasticism, with Juan de Mariana in particular also mentioning it, but this type of state of nature never represented a moral reference. On the contrary, it is rather like the situation of the savage Cyclopes. The expression “state of nature” itself seems to derive from Christian theology, as opposed to both the “state of grace” and the state of man after the fall of Adam, with its corrupted nature.
However, the idea that the “natural man” is a solitary individual who at the same moment in time joins civil society implies replacing the biblical view of the origins of human history with an unbiblical, or ungodly, rational conception. The replacement of the state of nature / state of grace dichotomy by the state of nature / civil status distinction further reveals the novel idea that the cure for the defects and problems of the individual in the state of nature is not grace, but political government.
It is hard for us to imagine that man as such has not always been considered a subject of rights. The ancients, however, did not recognize the rights of man as a man, but only as a citizen. Medieval and even modern people throughout the Ancien Régime thought that rights depended on the body politic, the stance in office or “the corporation” to which one belonged; we can best describe them as “privileges.”
Obviously, there are great difficulties in explaining the basis and even the nature of the actual rights that man has as a man, as it may seem that, in the absence of some basic social institutions or civic framework, their content cannot be specified. This is why some think that without a minimum of social context these human rights are as mythical as witches and unicorns. Even these thinkers, however, do not deny that men are holders of rights; they just uphold that rights presuppose a historical and political framework.
How is it possible that, suddenly, man became an obvious subject of rights? To understand this, it is important to note that there was a radical shift in emphasis in seventeenth-century political philosophy. Before, citizens had, both in moral life and in civic life, certain natural duties, but from then onwards man was mostly the undeniable holder of certain rights.
Natural duties were those precepts of natural law that had been identified by the medievals. For example, when Thomas Aquinas considers what the precepts of natural law are, he begins by saying that they are found when, through practical reasoning about what is good for us, we realize that it is good to live rather than to die, or develop our capabilities instead of not doing so. There is thus a natural precept about the preservation of life and there are also various precepts concerning what is necessary for our well-being as human beings, such as living in harmony with others in our community. This is different from saying that we have a natural right to live rather than die, or a natural right to seek our own well-being.
It is, above all, very different from saying that the justification of political society is that political society safeguards our natural rights instead of merely allowing us – as social creatures by nature – to fulfill our natural duties to others and to God.
This difference is inaccurately described by those who qualify modern rights as “subjectivist” or “individualist”, as they are concerned with emphasizing the freedoms and entitlements of the individual against the rival forces of authority, other individuals and, ultimately, man’s natural state. It is one possible way of describing the difference between the moderns and the ancients, but not the most accurate. Not everyone recognizes the novelty of rights. Some find the idea so self-evident that they find it difficult to admit that it is not very ancient, not to say eternal, and retrospectively discover man’s natural rights where we find above all natural duties arising from natural law. Indeed, there are at least three ways of blurring the difference between natural duties arising from natural law and the new modern natural rights. The first consists in confusing a natural right with what is permissible and not punishable in certain circumstances, such as taking what is necessary for subsistence, or resisting aggressive forces. A second way is to judge that certain moral injunctions, such as giving alms or the prohibition against murder, correspond to a natural right, like the right to assistance or to life. A third confusion is to see natural rights in what are natural obligations—for example, as if the duty to obey God before men was a right to rebellion. This shift occurred in the seventeenth century.
However, rights and duties are very different and to better understand this difference we need, at the very least, a genealogy of the shift in emphasis from natural duties (which emerge from natural law) towards natural rights (which emerge from man’s natural state). When does this start? Was it already with the medievals, or even earlier, with the Roman jurists? Nothing is more difficult than dating a major change in ideas.
Whatever the case, the shift in emphasis from natural duties to natural rights can be said to be consummated when the role of political authority becomes that of securing the natural rights of man. It is obvious that the change took place during this process.
Currently, political discourse and even conversation among citizens proceed as if it was evident that human rights must be untouchable, or at least that they “trump” other considerations. We also assume that a political authority that systematically violates human rights is detestable and illegitimate and must be removed.
Hobbes is perhaps the originator of this shift in emphasis from duties to rights, but Locke is the first to argue that the new natural rights that man has as such by his nature are not lost in civil life. If we never lose them, this imposes severe limits on the scope of governmental action. Locke is therefore the first theorist in the modern tradition of limited government and the inalienable rights of man.
The Enlightenment or “Illustration” was a scientific, literary and artistic movement that dominated the European world of ideas during the 18th century and that was the result of an informal association of “men of letters” known as the French philosophes (among whom names like those of Voltaire, d’Alembert, Diderot and Montesquieu stand out). This association is publicly manifested in the project to gather a summary of all knowledge in the Encyclopedia, published between 1751 and 1772 in thirty-five thick volumes, with the collaboration of more than one hundred and fifty scientists and philosophers. However, the movement spread far beyond France, also flourishing in Scotland (with Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith, David Hume and Thomas Reid), and in Germany (the Aufklärung that includes names as Christian Wolff, Moses Mendelssohn, G. E. Lessing and, in its descending phase, Immanuel Kant).
The “Century of Enlightenment” or “of philosophy” is a period of euphoria and confidence in reason, progress and science, which roughly runs from 1715 until it dies at the turn of the century. Despite the enormous diversity of ideas and tendencies, loosely grouped around ideas such as Liberty or Progress, the Enlightenment is more profoundly defined by a fundamental conviction that is widely cherished, even today: the progress of knowledge and science will gradually lead to the moral progress of humanity, through a process of gradual diffusion that will eventually end all prejudices under the “magisterium” of philosophers, that is, thinkers, artists and scientists in general, and not merely philosophers in the current sense.
All the people, duly educated, will be able to understand science and philosophy as well as possible, and it will suffice to apply this knowledge to social and political life. Rhetoric – a persuasion technique that mediated the relationship between philosophers and opinion among the ancients and was part of the medieval curriculum – becomes unnecessary and even a little suspicious (it is still devalued today as “merely rhetorical”). To ensure that the inevitable path of progress is cleared, it is enough to uproot the deep-rooted prejudices of obscurantism (and, in some versions, religion).
Consequently, although provisionally new “enlightened” policies can be entrusted to a benevolent tyrant (the Enlightened despot), in the long run it is simply inconceivable that sovereignty does not belong to the people. Monarchical and aristocratic Europe, which was already on its knees at the end of the 18th century, disappears and there are great revolutions on both sides of the Atlantic. The “Century of Philosophy” is therefore that of the victory of philosophy over the throne and the altar. This new era is populated by free and equal individuals, endowed with inalienable rights, who no longer recognize any authority other than their own reason.
But if today we unhesitatingly subscribe to the idea of “popular sovereignty,” we do not fail to notice that any forms of government is not natural and involve a certain coercion or a more subtle use of power and violence that we deem suspicious. Government is something artificial and does not belong to the natural state of “man.” Due to asphyxiating conventions and the bourgeois ethos, man is not naturally free in any society.
As Rousseau states, many before him (especially Hobbes and Locke) looked for man in his natural state, without actually finding him. But when Rousseau strips man of everything man acquires with effort, he discovers a being that is not only solitary, but non-rational, lacking language (which is only born with the first associations) and not even fully human. It appears to be a sub-human or pre-human being that seems to possess unlimited perfectibility or malleability.
There is for us an obvious opposition between nature and government (or the “civil state”), but this opposition is closely linked to another, equally evident opposition, between nature and culture (or “the arts”). Nature, as portrayed by Rousseau and as we think of it today, can no longer serve as a standard for social and political behavior. How does this rupture occur?
While it seems clear enough that democracies can flourish in large countries, it is evident that we cannot ignore the problems characteristic of democracies with large territories – and especially when they have diverse populations. Canada, for example, struggles with the issue of the rights of certain minorities, such as French-speaking Quebec and Inuit Indians.
Perhaps the political organization closest to us in which this problem is most acute is the European Union: those in favor of a European federation tried to establish a quasi-federal constitution, which ended up being rejected by several countries, while the “Eurosceptics” tried to diminish the already existing links between countries, or even abandon the union. Even if there are problems and advantages that need to be carefully considered(weighed?), no one questions the possibility of democracy itself on a large scale like that of Europe, because there are other cases scattered around the world. Diversity, not just size, is the problem.
This possibility was unthinkable for the ancients, for whom the democratic regime and its system of governing and being governed “in turn” required political units that seem relatively small to us: the polis. According to Aristotle, there were great empires, but they were despotically governed; there were also free nations and tribes that shared language and customs but were not civilized. In the words of Aristotle, only the polis reconciled freedom and civilization.
His controversial assertion seemed to be confirmed by the facts. For example, the Roman Republic began as one of these civitas, but when it expanded it discarded republican government; even the Hellenistic kingdoms, which were of Greek origin, were never democracies. When the rule of feudal lords began to wane and national monarchies expanded at the beginning of the modern era, the republican cities that survived as independent units were not democracies.
The modern idea of democracy is sometimes conflated with Rousseau’s idea of popular sovereignty, but according to his explicit statements he rejects not only democracy but all forms of representation. And without representation, modern democracy, especially in large modern countries, would be unfeasible. Rousseau seems at times to suggest the possibility of bringing all the people of a nation together in the capital to reach an agreement on the social contract, but we are not sure that he even seriously upheld this idea – and it is clear that organizing an assembly of several million citizens in a public square in Paris would be practically impossible.
In fact, the existence and survival of democracy in a large country, as is obvious to any thoughtful modern person, depends on two very important political arrangements: first, a written constitution that establishes procedures for choosing representatives for those who live far away from--and do not have the opportunity to travel to--the nation's capital in order to participate in the national government; and, second, if in addition there are significant differences between populations or territories, something like a “federal” system is necessary.
By a “federal” system, we mean a constitution that stipulates which decisions are taken more or less locally and which are taken in the capital, and which determines how each federal state or autonomous region chooses its own representatives, and the procedures of local and central government. These procedures usually include a two-chamber parliament, one in which representatives are elected according to the “one man, one vote” principle and another in which representatives of regions, states, ethnic groups or “cultures” are elected regardless of the number of their inhabitants or members. In fact, almost all democracies whose population has surpassed, say, eighty million inhabitants, have a federal constitution (most exceptions are African countries that have adopted the so-called Westminster model of democracy and therefore face recurring ethnic problems).
Someone who wears a cloak of invisibility to evade these moral or political duties is clearly objectionable and even legally accountable, but not because these actions are less than noble, generous or humane. These are moral and political imperatives. We take it as given that rules apply to everyone equally, even if individuals find themselves in different situations, belong to different social conditions or political regimes, or have different emotional bonds. The judgment of a prudent man (in the Aristotelian sense) who decides on the correct action in concrete circumstances is not therefore necessary.
Moral duties and rights are universal and apply to all men equally, whether in Greece or China. Differences in rights and duties among men in accordance with class or nation should be progressively abolished, as they are unjustifiable and unfair. This ideal will lead to a kind of morality that we may say is “cosmopolitan” in scope.
At first sight, we might think that the principles of morality are universal and apply everywhere, insofar as men naturally belong to a society. Belonging to a society entails certain duties towards others, personal moral duties which also have consequences in the political sphere. However, since Machiavelli this link between virtue (or morality) and politics has been severed. On the contrary, the principles of morality (or the “doctrine of virtue”) and the principles of law (or “doctrine of right”) are considered different and separate parts of the moral life, which do not obey the same criteria, as Kant notes in the Metaphysics of Morals.
Nor are universal principles justified because all men have a similar basic nature and what makes them happy (or, in the modern formulation, what leads to their well-being) is fundamentally the same. Law and political authority should be based on freedom and not – as the ancients believed – on the well-being or happiness of citizens. In fact, a political authority that decides about happiness is seen as “paternalistic” and unacceptable, as it implicitly presupposes that individuals are incapable of choosing what is best for themselves and therefore need guardianship. The pursuit of happiness is thus a matter of private morals and a political authority should not meddle too much.
In the first wave of modernity – with Hobbes, Locke or even Hume (who wrote a Treatise of Human Nature) – human nature was the standard for evaluating what is good or bad for man. Nowadays, however, nature is no longer the criterion for morality and even less politics. Truth be told, the modern view of human nature has tended to be increasingly dark, but it is human nature nonetheless.
Hume still asserted that the virtues and vices are the same everywhere: if a traveler were to describe a man not moved by ambition, covetousness, self-love and vanity, and instead moved solely by friendship, generosity and public spiritedness “ we would immediately perceive the falsity of his account, and judge him a liar with the same confidence as we would if he had filled his account with tales of centaurs, dragons, miracles and prodigies.”
Today no one agrees with Locke – who bequeathed us a list of societies that fell into parricide, infanticide, cannibalism or “other monstrosities”, – when he says that “virtues and vices [...] [are] the same everywhere”. It is now evident that “the taste of Paris” is not “similar to that of Athens,” nor are the same the things that move to cry or laugh the inhabitants of Paris and Athens.
Moral laws, as laws of liberty, are surely not natural laws. Political and moral ideals are defined without reference to the nature of man, and, for this reason, the most recent declarations of rights speak of human rights and not of natural rights.
However, the philosopher who brought about this fundamental shift away from morality as constrained by nature (including its flaws) did not draw any relativistic consequences from the variety of conceptions of happiness. In fact, we might even describe him as one of the sterner moral philosophers. Indeed, according to him, not even a potential murderer can be lied to. Kant says that an action is good or right (richtig) only if it is compatible with everyone’s freedom and in accordance with a law or a universal maxim. A “maxim” is a principle or rule of action that indicates how one should act. All moral and political imperatives or duties follow rational maxims.
Kant’s moral doctrine implies that the test that confirms whether an action is good or right is the possibility of becoming a principle of universal legislation. Universality, which at bottom is nothing more than the “form” of rationality, has become the proof or criterion of the goodness of the “matter” or substance of the action. Freed from the guardianship of nature, man confers the rule of his own actions to himself.
This is the essence of true freedom or “autonomy.” The validity of arguments for or against a social and political ideal that are based on the nature of man is no longer recognized, however much they may have been tested by centuries of experience. What is called “nature” is only a stage in development, a moment in the past from which no valid lessons for the future can be drawn. From now on, the only guide to action is reason. Reason has replaced nature, and duty is no longer based on being. Values or what ought to be done are unrelated to facts or what is.
Although doubts often arise about “democracy” as a political solution, the truth is that there does not seem to be any legitimate alternative. The most ardent defenders of democracy in practice have often expressed doubts about the goodness and wisdom of the regime. Churchill famously declared that “Democracy is the worst of all regimes, except for all the others” and that “the best argument against democracy is fifteen minutes of conversation with the average voter.”
But even the most ardent defenders of democracy in theory recognize that it is an essentially imperfect regime, although sometimes they are quick to say that what is understood by democracy is different from what it is – and that today democracy needs to be rethought. Some judge, therefore, that the solution to the current problems of democracy is more democracy, and write books about how democracies die, against voting and in favour of a lottery, etc.; others, on the contrary, fear the excesses of democracy, and speak of the myth of the rational voter, illiberal democracies, minority rights, etc.
However, almost no one seriously questions political democracy anymore and for a long time now, even the opponents of democracy adopt at least the “appearances” or even simulate the “forms” of democracy, which include votes, periodic elections, parliaments, referenda, etc., which should guarantee the accountability of statesmen and politicians vis-à-vis citizens who are, today, mainly voters.
But what has made it possible for a specific political regime, “democracy” to become an inescapable moral and political horizon for us? This is even more perplexing since no great ancient political thinkers defended this regime, and the medieval and early modern thinkers only dared to defend it with many reservations and qualifications.
It can be said, of course, that there has been a fundamental transformation, and that ancient democracy or democracy in medieval republics designated something profoundly different from modern democracies. In a world where most didn’t have enough assets to be able to take the time to participate in the life of the city, and where few had formal education, the people demanded “bread and circuses” and the government of the many was, in practice, the rule of the wretched poor, the uneducated, the violent mob. This made these regimes inherently unstable, prone to sedition (stasis) and, almost always, very brief. Even in Athens, democracy from Pericles to Demosthenes survives less than a century before the return to municipal aristocratic rule, which is the rule before and after this brief episode that lasts throughout the Hellenistic and Roman period. It is true that direct democracy flourishes in medieval cities, but it is accompanied by the usual political instability, civil dissension, and sometime even armed revolts.
The difference between our democracy and the democracy of the ancients is therefore of a sociological nature: modern democracies are only possible in countries with a certain level of wealth, say a per capita income above a certain threshold, a certain level of education , low illiteracy, and even a certain “culture” of critical examination, let's say like the free interpretation of the Bible. Before the spread of enlightenment ways of thinking, democracies were not true forums for deliberation among citizens.
However, in addition to often being deficient, this sociological explanation fails to capture the essence of the difference between modern and ancient democracy. Even if few or none of the classic authors defended the democracy of their time, they were far from being blind to the defects of oligarchies and monarchies, as well as to the benefits of decisions shared by many, even if these many had few assets, little free time or little instruction. For example, Aristotle's conception of “regime” is only fully realized in a democracy, and Plato in certain passages speaks of a form of government of all that would not be an imperfect regime like the government of the democratic mob. Lincoln, when he speaks of the 'wisdom of the crowd', that it is not possible to deceive all the time, is echoing this classical philosophy.
The main change that is at the origin of the contemporary attitude is therefore not so much sociological as moral. The ancients considered that government belonged to those who deserved it for their wisdom, even if that wisdom had to be tempered by the consent of the many. We consider such a criterion morally unacceptable and reject even the temporary suspension of democracy.
According to the pre-modern conception, only wise (or at least reasonable) men are capable of discerning the best means to reach man's ultimate end, his happiness. This idea, followed to the ultimate consequences, leads to the acceptance of the "irresponsible" and unlimited government of the wise.
We moderns think exactly the opposite: the discernment and choice of the means to our ends, such as self-preservation and happiness, is up to each individual to decide, regardless of their wisdom or “folly”. The reason for this can be formulated as follows: although “madmen” may make foolish choices, they are more careful of themselves, more interested in what is theirs, than any wise adviser. Self-interest is an advantageous substitute for lack of wisdom. This idea, that for all practical or political purposes everyone is a better judge of their own interests than any guardian, results in the adoption of a democratic perspective. Moreover, this still seems to be the best moral argument in favour of democracy.
Statesmen and ordinary citizens often do not hesitate to choose the course of action that benefits the greatest number of individuals while harming as few as possible. It is better to provide or facilitate more well-being, better health, better wages and more education, than less well-being, less health, less income or education, and above all it is better than to cause or allow impoverishment, disease, worse incomes or illiteracy.
It therefore seems obvious to us that at least one of the criteria for evaluating the morality of actions or policies are the consequences, or the results, of these actions or policies. But to make such a comparison, politicians, economists, legislators, philosophers and citizens need a scale or a tape measure – explicit or implicit – that makes it possible to compare effects or consequences not only of the same kind, but also of different kinds. For example, it is necessary to compare income that is lost with education gained, or an increase in salary and a decrease in leisure. In some cases, this seems very easy: for example, poverty is bad for health and solving one helps to improve the other. But in other cases, it seems that we are faced with very difficult, if not heartbreaking choices.
Another generally accepted assumption is that the greater the number of individuals benefited and the smaller the number of individuals harmed, the better the action or policy. It doesn't matter if the beneficiary is a Mozart, or an Elvis, a Churchill or a grand General Patton, just as it doesn't matter if the injured party is a poor widow, or our own mother, because “each man counts as one and no more than one” .
None of these criteria would have been accepted without many reservations by the ancients and medievals. On the one hand, the nobility or justice of an action was a criterion in itself, irrespective of its consequences; on the other hand, ancients and medievals were in general profoundly inegalitarian and considered “numerical equality” profoundly unfair.
But the change, long under preparation from Hobbes to Kant, is now complete. Even those who suggest that morality or politics can depend on other principles are not insensitive to the appeal of the utilitarian view. At the heart of utilitarianism are these two ideas: that human actions should be evaluated on the basis of their consequences and that it is important to benefit the greatest possible number of individuals.
Utilitarians overcame the possible objections from the classics and, at the same time, provided experts with a powerful tool for deciding public policy.
The fundamental axiom of utilitarian morality stipulates that the greatest number must be provided with the greatest happiness, that is, the most positive balance between pleasure and pain. There is a scale that makes it possible to compare all the benefits, whatever their kind, and subtract(diminish?) the bad effects: the utility scale. If we multiply the value on this scale by the number of individuals, we arrive at the total utility produced. All that’s left to do is for government officials, economists and other experts to simply say: let's get calculating!
Utility theory is the work of Jeremy Bentham (1748-1838), an English philosopher and political reformer, together with his friend and colleague James Mill. Bentham looked down on the theories of Hobbes, Locke and other defenders of natural rights. He considered them nothing more than "nonsense upon stilts", and presented his novel, truly scientific theory as a better alternative.
According to him, we are all guided by these two “sovereign lords”, pleasure and pain. Not only do they govern our actions, but they determine what should be done. The gauge of good and evil was thus dethroned. Utility is the criterion for individuals and should also be that of legislators. Once we have the calculation of alternative utilities, there is no hesitation possible, there are no difficult choices, and disputes cease.
Bentham and James Mill did not limit themselves to giving a scientific basis to morality, but proposed a series of projects. One of these, designed to make penal policy more efficient and humane, is the “Panopticon” – a circular prison with a tower in the center where an observer watches the inmates without being watched by them. Bentham also presented a solution for managing the poor, providing them with a refuge that was supported by their labor without burdening taxpayers (which would diminish their utility).
The utilitarian spirit presided over all proposals, but utilitarianism, with its somewhat simplistic psychology, would not have had the projection it has today if not for the work of John Stuart Mill.
But, without realizing it, another idea creeps into our minds: that if men are indeed children of their one time, perhaps there are no “timeless truths” as regards individuals or societies (perhaps in mathematics, but who can even be sure?). In some centuries, slavery or the inferiority of women was evident, but fortunately we were born in a more enlightened century and region of the globe, and we no longer think that way. But, thinking through this, what sense does it make to censure the prejudices of other “civilizations,” if everything is relative to time and place, considering that a kind of blindfold – their “view of the world” – prevented them from seeing things differently and obviously from imagining problems that did not exist at that time and that they could not even conceive of.
Of course, it sometimes surprises us that, without microscopes or laboratories, these other civilizations managed to imagine that matter is made of “atoms,” just as it surprises us that Aristotle debates the morality of slavery or money and Antiphon debates equality among all men. However, the flawed nature of their analyses only confirms our inner conviction about their “blindness.”
Curiously, we are not more assertive in discarding them as inevitably outdated precisely because we now have the “historical sense” whose absence is the inherent flaw of all past philosophers – as Nietzsche complained. Indeed, it is difficult for us to understand how it is possible that ancient philosophers, who debated everything from repugnant worms to vast cosmologies, never wrote a page on the “philosophy of history.”
There are obviously great narrators of history, but the word “history”, which serves for example as the title of Herodotus’ works, rather designates the set of inquiries that he carried out both about the past and about exotic regions. The so-called ancient historians were seen as belonging to the same “family” as the rhetoricians and the tragedians. The inquiries, narratives and analyses of historians were a useful acquisition (ktema) for all times, whether for statesmen and orators who need to persuade others, or merely for entertainment, but sadly they are not very serious. History is, according to Aristotle, less serious than poetry. Poetry captures and communicates better than history the wisdom about what is timeless in man (for example, love, bravery, shame and magnanimity).
It is true that the Romans and medievals worked out a kind of “theology of History”, but when Cicero or Augustine speak of the history that Providence governs, it is the history of empires and nations that they are talking about (discussing, for example, whether the Roman conquest conforms to or is contrary to divine providence). It is something specific, and not whole “civilizations” or “cultures” that include everything that happened in the past. Even God himself cannot govern things that are mere hollow words (flatus vocis).
Nietzsche’s criticism may seem just the mere, somewhat outdated, restatement of a previous criticism made by Rousseau. But, in the meantime, a New Continent was discovered (much larger than what Columbus discovered) where the truth about man is revealed to us: History.
The most important philosopher of history is of course Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831). In Philosophy of Right (1820), which develops themes outlined previously in a subsection of his immense Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences (1817), Hegel argues that history is a rational (and reasonable) process that culminates in the Rational State . According to the traditional interpretation , for Hegel, the world is a vast conscious totality, whose spirit acts according to what he calls “dialectic.”
Contrary to what the ancient name suggests, dialectics is not a process of philosophical dispute, but a process of self-creation by reconciling opposites: thesis, antithesis and synthesis. This process is not continuous; it advances through leaps, with inevitable conflicts. Indeed, “history is not a stage for happiness; periods of happiness are blank pages in history”.
Hegel thus manufactures a post-factum historical account, which largely ignores ordinary events, to focus on fundamental changes in the “spirit” of the relationship between men. In this way, it is through “recognition” that the relationship between master and slave is transfigured, as it is through the emergence of the State that the individual, the family and “civil society” (which for the first time is conceived as something separate from the political regime, in contrast to both the ancients and Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau).
Since the historical process is rational and inevitable, there is therefore something absurd about praising or condemning certain practices in certain historical epochs, since they are all part of the inevitable march of history. Indeed, the criterion of what is moral is what history makes triumph.
Karl Marx inherited from Hegel this same vision of history as a process whose course is inevitable, thus developing so-called “dialectical materialism” (although this expression is not Marx’s own, but coined by the Russian socialist, Gregory Plekhanov, to designate the philosophy of orthodox communists, it is now current).
There is no moment in the past when the truth about man, morality and the world was revealed. We take for granted that each individual may have his or her own ethical, political and social “values”. Values, such as goodness, justice, equality, erudition, even mental health or education, are not something “given” by reality; rather, they are a historical human creation (something that may seem paradoxical, since, if man is a historical being, then the very idea that man is historical is itself historical and contingent).
This historicity of history can be better understood if we compare it with past ideas about history. In ancient times, history was conceived of as a set of inquiries about what happened or as a chronicle of journeys. Even thinkers like the Sophists or Plato, who recognized the importance of change, did not expressly reflect on the “historical process”. The Stoics and Medieval thinkers, on the contrary, believed in divine providence and reflected on history and eschatology, but for them time was only “the measure of change according to before and after,” and not the essence of things. Only with Hegel does history come to be seen as the innermost core of reality, something that determines all intellectual structures and all life. However, both Hegel and those who followed him (including Marx) still perceive history as a process moving towards an ending or a perfect state – be it the attainment of absolute knowledge and the realization of the spirit in history, or the classless society.
Today, however, we consider that all understanding is itself historical and related to a given cultural context. The idea of an end to history and of a “teleology” inscribed in reality appears to us as dated or outdated. We see the ideas in history as historical, and the historical process itself no longer appears to us as something we can grasp in its meaning (as if we saw it from the outside and knew where it comes from and where it is going); instead, we see it as something in the middle of which we find ourselves and whose dynamics we cannot fully understand. In fact, it would not even make sense to try to understand it, since this is not a process that occurs independently of us, but rather a process that we experience from within and for whose development we are responsible. In a sense, it is we who make history and determine it, and this making is open-ended as to its direction and purpose.
This change in perspective also applies to the motivations that underlie and determine the historical process. Such motivations are no longer seen as transcendent or latent, but rather as motivations that arise from life itself and that in many cases may not be entirely rational, or may even be constitutively irrational. In fact, the entire historical process is no longer seen as rational, so that the very idea of progress has become questionable. We no longer think that we are moving toward some perfect state and that each new stage brings us closer to that. We recognize that there may have been losses, and even significant losses. They are part of the process and may even become prevalent. This becomes particularly evident if we consider the fact that modern times are often experienced or seen as a period of decadence–an idea we find already in Romanticism and which has taken different forms throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. The oft-repeated thesis that today we live in the post-truth era is only one of its latest manifestations.
There is, then, no baseline from which we can understand history and obtain a secure orientation as to what we should do. As Jean-François Lyotard pointed out, it is no longer possible to think of any grand narrative or metanarrative, as was always the case up to this point. The future and future ways of understanding are therefore completely open and have to be constructed both individually and socially. Nietzsche is the first to develop this way of seeing the relationship between history and life, and takes it to its ultimate consequences. Indeed, when he criticizes philosophers for their lack of historical sense, he is not only criticizing the fact that philosophers have not realized that our way of seeing things changes over time. He is also criticizing the fact that philosophers have not understood that the historicity of ideas involves the very irrationality and incomprehensibility of the historical process.
This was the case not only in feudal regimes, but also in the absolutist regimes of many centuries ago, and in the historically closer fascist and communist regimes. Even today there are things that cannot be questioned without censorship and pressure (including coercion by the state apparatus). Rulers sometimes use censorship, permanent states of emergency, prisons, political police, and different forms of coercion such as the “protection” of national interest or the “laws of history”. They also stir up the dangers of “hate speech” or “fake news”, which can serve as a tool to avoid criticism by invoking the general good and protection of the nation, race, peace, progress, health, “genuine” democracy and even, paradoxically, tolerance.
For Popper, what characterizes the “open society” is critical freedom, as opposed to what he calls a “closed society”, where laws are seen as “magical taboos”, as unquestionable claims that derive their authority from a non-rational source, which may be God, the will of the king or the aristocracy, convention or tradition, or the trends of the future, the progress or inescapable march of history. “(...) [A] closed society is characterized by a belief in magical taboos, while the open society is one in which men have learned to be to some extent critical of taboos, and to base decisions on the authority of their own intelligence.”
In ancient Greece there was a “spiritual revolution”, says Popper; it was not an organized revolution, or a conscious one, or one that can be identified with a definitive initial event; but it was the genesis of the possibility of the open society. This revolution occurred with the appearance of critical thinking, free from the influence of magical taboos, stimulated by the weakening of the aristocracy of the time – which was tribalistic and owner of almost all property – which, in order to deal with the population growth and with the threat that this brought to its hegemony, initiated a process of “imperialist” colonization. The empire of Athens in turn brought about massive development in maritime navigation and, more importantly, in commerce. We may question the accuracy of this historical portrayal, and its causes, but it is hard to deny that a metamorphosis took place in ancient Greece, which is where philosophy, democracy and science originated.
This transformation came about when exposure to different cultures led some thinkers to realize that the laws, rites and conventions of their home cultures were “man-made” rather than the result of inescapable fate. Men thus began to question the conventions that governed them, and truly free and critical thinking was born. It is important to highlight the origins of the open society according to Popper, as we see that its “openness” is not something obvious, but something that emerged as a kind of “miracle” in the very specific conditions of ancient Greece.
But Popper does not limit himself to contrasting the open society with the closed society and to describing the historical emergence of the open society. He argues that the transition from the closed society to the open society is still ongoing. It had its beginnings with the Greeks and was inherited by Western civilization, but it is still important in our time, as there is a permanent temptation to return to the closed society. The closed society gives a sense of security, not allowing the questioning of laws or regimes, nor permitting the holding of different opinions, especially the most “repulsive” ones. This permanent temptation to turn back shows us how important an open society is, this fragile jewel that we inherited from the Greeks.
Popper conceived his work as a defence of the open society, which he described as his contribution to “the war effort” against communism, Nazism and, in general, against the attacks that it suffered in the middle of the twentieth century.