At the Limits of Political Philosophy: From "Brilliant Errors" to Things of Uncommon Importance

Conclusion

Conclusion "To Those That Study Politicks" "The direction of Aristotle to those that study politicks, is, first to examine and understand what has been written by the ancients upon guvernment ; then to cast their eyes round upon the world, and consider by what causes the prosperity ofcommunities is visibly influenced, and why some are worse, and others better administered. "The same method must be pursued by him who hopes to become eminent in any otherpart ofknowledge. Thefirst task is to search books, the next to contemplate nature. He must first possess himselfofthe intellectual treasures which the diligence offormer ages has accumulated, and then endeavour to encrease them by his own collections." -SAMUEL JOHNSON, The Rambler, September 7,17511 This book is a discourse in political philosophy. It is addressed, in Johnson'S words, "to those that study politicks." The uniqueness of this discourse at the limits of political philosophy, its specific emphasis, is found in the particular way that certain basic questions in political philosophy, questions uncommonly important in themselves, lead to answers that are not specifically political . Strong souls recognize that such questions do exist even in ourselves. This higher side of political philosophy, both in academic courses and in the literature in the field, is frequently neglected or treated with a certain cautious embarrassment, if not methodological hostility. 1. SamuelJohnson, Rasselas, Poems and Selected Prose, ed. Bertrand H. Bronson (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1958), 106-7 (italics added). 239 Conclusion Yet such neglect of the higher philosophic reaches of political things deprives and lessens us. It dispossesses of their rightful heritage those young potential philosophers to whom the highest things ought to be most attractive. It also frustrates those mature and even aging thinkers who still ponder these ultimate things, mindful both of their dangers and of their fascination. The argument presented in this book has treated these ultimate issues as proper and legitimate concerns of political philosophy. The deepest disorders in human life arise initially in disagreements in the minds of the philosophers about the nature of what is. These disagreements seem like so many "brilliant errors" because they do strive to explain, however oddly, things that exist in ordinary human experience. Because they sense the danger in these errors without being able exactly to explain why they are dangerous, many honest citizens and politicians hesitate to consider political philosophy's ultimate reach. Small errors, they know with Aristotle, do lead to great ones. Modern political philosophy is grounded in a curious intellectual toleration that attempts to tame or even to coerce those philosophers and citizens who would take the ideas about the limits of the discipline and of the politician most seriously. Such profound and radical differences among philosophers and believers, it was feared in modern political philosophy, would erupt in the public order in the form of wars or strife or civic hostility. This eruption has no doubt happened. But in its reaction to the dangers of pursuing the highest things, modernity proposes a kind of weak-souled man, whose highest ethical norm is selfpreservation or gratification, a man who has somehow inured himself against the lure of the highest things themselves. The result has produced a kind of "bravery" against truth, against the argument that something in fact might be true and might be knowable by the human mind even amidst the multitude of "brilliant errors." Yet, the relativist principles on which this toleration in modernity was argued left unfaced the annoying fact that certain issues had to be thought out, beginning with the issue of whether relativism itself was true. The disturbing logical paradox that if relativism is true, it cannot, by that very fact, be true, goes unnoticed. In the pursuit of the truth, intellectual courage was required to Conclusion affirm that the weak-souled solution of modern relativism was seriously flawed. A second, more ominous, alternative philosophy turned these unresolved questions about human meaning and intellectual relativism over to antirational or antireligious forces such as fascism, positivism, Marxism, some forms of liberalism, or deconstructionism. Such forces presented themselves, however, as philosophically valid, as right ways to act and exist once granted that no truth existed. If truth did not exist, man evidently was free and obliged to will some order into being from his own resources if only for practical reasons. Political philosophy, in being true to its own questions, had a "defensive" purpose: to protect openness...