Abstract
The paper examines the concepts of philosophy, politics and education. It also delineates the meaning of political democracy, tracing it historically to ancient Greece by pointing out that in ancient Greece, to be a citizen was to be ready to be involved, through service to the state. In addition, the paper examined nine principles necessary for the survival of political democracy. Finally, the paper discusses democratic education and its relationship to Nigerian philosophy of Education. It is argued that a democratic state can survive without all the citizens being formally educated, hence that universal education, though a lofty ideal, for various reasons, is not a desiderata for a political democracy.
Introduction
The cordial and cherished relationship between politics and democracy cannot be overstated. But the Nigerian people would have been happier had the same been extended to education and Nigerian philosophy of Education. Politics, education and indeed some form of democracy have been with us for a long time. However, their proper understanding, application and extension have deluded us. Nevertheless, one must not waste time trying to narrate why Nigerian citizens have not profited more from either political democracy or formal Western education. In this paper we examine and highlight the concepts of politics and democracy and how they affect the Nigerian philosophy of education. We argue that clear thinking is necessary for education to benefit Nigerians so as to facilitate development materially, culturally, and politically. But we are mindful of the implications of the impulse to link democracy to universal education, and are of the view that though desirable, and a long time goal, democracy flourishes on proper information flow rather than on everyone having formal education.
Philosophy, Politics and Education
Philosophy, as a social and political enterprise, can be viewed in two important ways (Cohen, 2003). Firstly, it is conceived in terms of practice. Philosophy is thus a group of activities and this further conveys that philosophy is interpersonal and not solitary. Because philosophy is a group of activities, it requires rules to function and the question of what is proper philosophical methodology becomes political (Cohen, 2003).
Secondly, and more importantly, according to Cohen (2003), philosophy is conceived in terms of its product. When philosophizing takes place in the public realm, it works to establish the values of the entire society not just those activities of philosophers. It is then clear that philosophy is the ultimate form of politics. Taylor (1976) maintains that Plato’s Republic, though a plan of an actual utopian society, can be seen as outlining a deeper sense of political activity for philosophers.
Cohen (2003) further stresses that philosophy and politics are linked and are in turn linked with education. Education, in virtue of its inextricable links with both philosophy and politics makes its dependence on them even stronger. Education is explicitly present in the methodology passage. Frede (1992) claims that education not only allows for inequality – for people will surely be of different abilities in terms of learning – but indeed assumes inequality for its leaders. In Calais’ (1995) laissez-faire view, education is conceived as an haphazard affair and it seems to have been like this in ancient Athens, in which all learn at their own pace. In consequence as in political version, this means there is no social cohesion derivable from Western educational theoria and praxis if individual capabilities are not to be sacrificed on the alter of political populism. To Hippias (1995) education should be common to all, but this will be at the cost of high quality in the type of education provided. He believes that enforcing equality of education will keep everybody together but it will also keep the best students from moving ahead. This last view is in line with an industrial-era vision of state schooling. Socrates’ view about education looks like that of Dewey (1997). Dewey’s (1966) conception of education is that of collaborative education. He stresses that the best students must be involved in the enterprise in such a way that their ability benefits the group.
According to Cohen, (2003) philosophy searches for wisdom and is indeed synonymous with education in the sense of individual’s search for learning. But philosophy as noted above does not only search for wisdom but it also conveys the wisdom to others. This corresponds to education as teaching. Dewey (1966) goes so far to define philosophy as the general theory of education. This double sense of education as either a reflexive or transitive activity helps at the same time to reveal its essential interconnection with politics. Politics too can be seen as a matter of either governing oneself or governing others. At best governing others is a matter of educating them. Thus in Plato’s (1945) understanding, the law is often spoken of as an educational tool. In the same sense, to be educated means to be autonomous, as education makes one understand why certain laws are binding and deserving of obedience.
Political Democracy
Historically, the ancient Athenians regarded and viewed democracy as the involvement of all free-born citizens of the polis as the rulers over their joint affairs. This goes to substantiate the primordial definition of democracy as the government of the people for the people by the people. According to Entwistle (1971), in the chapter “A Concept of Democracy and the Implementation for Education”, “the concept of political equality is part of the justification of democracy”. The assumption that democracy requires the continuous and active participation of citizens in governmental affairs of the community is subscribed to by Aristotle in his argument that the citizen is one because he does a certain job in the city, and this constitutes his right to be a citizen. In the ancient Athenian society, for one to claim citizenship, one had to be prepared to accept to undertake certain responsibility in government. Thus Pericles (cited in Entwistle 1971) suggested in Athens that a man who holds aloof from the affairs of state should not be regarded as quiet but as useless.
Also, according to Glotz (1926) in the Greeks at Work . The emphasis upon the democratic man “was upon responsibility rather than upon rights, upon activity and work”. Such procedural words as responsibility, participation, work, activity and sharing were frequently employed in the discussion of political democracy. Thus a democratic person was expected to be prepared to be responsible to the state as he accepted whatever task the state assigned to him. He had to be ready to participate actively in government affairs, as his citizenship depended on this. He had to be ready to work for the good of the society. The democratic Athenian was active and expressed profound delight as he should in the responsibility of the affairs of the community. An Athenian whose right was based upon the work he performed realized that he was only sharing in the monumental governmental tasks. No one felt and arrogated the work of the community to himself or his family alone. It was shared responsibility.
The meaning of political democracy could be further enhanced through the understanding that the Athenian assembly relied heavily on the participation of the free-born members through debate and discussion. They believed that policies had to be debated and discussed before an approval was given. Discussion was however regarded as most paramount since it was believed that sound judgments could not be reached without the thorough discussion of the issues at hand. Pericles (cited in Entunstle 1971) asserted that the people were not bored by prolonged discussion (Filibuster). According to him, “far from believing that prolonged discussion might blunt the appetite for action… the Athenians were bolder in action for having paused for reflection.”
According to Lindsay (1929), in The Essentials of Democracy, discussion was not for its own sake or merely a means of criticizing the established authority. Rather, democratic discussion was believed to have a worthwhile product; it was a means for the people to know what concerned them in relationship to their government (p.76). A corollary to achieving democracy in discussion is to be engaged in responsible discussion. This simply means that those thus engaged should be attentive and participate actively since any of them could be called upon to implement the decisions emanating from the discussions. It was also envisaged that the measure of one’s responsibility in such discussion dictated the willingness to accept the responsibility of an office and to participate in the affairs of the state. This responsibility to participate in discussion is essential, especially in Nigeria where politicians seek rotational method in assuming the affairs of governance.
Political Democracy and Education
We will now examine a) the ideas of classical political democracy and b) the roles of education in relationship to democracy. It does not seem appropriate to merely say what democracy means without attempting to examine its general principles, at least, as it is understood and operated by the United State of America as the champion and one of the most stable democracies in the world. Kneller (1971), a distinguished American educator, in his edited book, Foundations of Education, examined nine ideals underscoring the practice of democracy in the United States of America. It is not being suggested here that other cultures must embrace and practice democracy in either the Athenian or the American way only. The world has become more civilized scientifically and technologically than during the times of the ancient Greece and when the Americans embraced democratic constitution. Nigerians generally must practice and embrace democracy the best way culturally adaptable. We revert to ideals, principles and history in this matter because of the international nature of the world and its embrace of democracy as a reasonable political system of governance.
The following democratic principles as suggested by Kneller (1971) endorsed by us as guiding signposts for the Nigerian polity.
1. “The state is not an end in itself but a means to the attainment of human ends”
The suggestion here is that the state established by human ingenuity and creativity should always seek the interest of the majority of its citizens. The responsibility is placed on the shoulders of those elected to run the affairs of the state. The state managers, therefore, should not relent in their efforts to cater for the welfare and other needs of the majority of the populace. This is what Mill (1979) referred to as the summon bonum (the greatest good) in his utilitarian exposition. Each member of the state should also be given the encouragement to develop his or her potentialities and be prepared to serve the state responsibly.
2. “All men possess certain inalienable rights”
One’s inalienable rights are his human rights to life, freedom and the pursuit of happiness. In other words, anyone who attempts to deprive a person of her rights does not recognize that person as a human being. These universal rights, arising from the nature of our humanity, aim at the continuity of the human race. They call for corresponding responsibility, commitment and service. This is because politics should be understood as the science and art of helping others towards the development of the community. These inalienable rights challenge us to be prepared to participate directly and actively in the political life of the community.
3. “Democracy preserves and enhances individual freedom”
The individuals’ freedom that is at stake is the type that allows one ample opportunities for choices out of available alternatives. It is the freedom to be vigorously guarded as in a situation when an individual is being coerced out of his volition. Just as it is in the case of the endowment of certain inalienable rights, to be free is to be responsible and generous in one’s readiness to participate in the affairs of the welfare of the people.
4. “All humans are to be regarded equal in certain respects”
Obviously to be regarded as equal does not mean total equality in all respect. But at the same time, one should be treated as if equal in certain respects such as educational opportunities, equality to participate in political endeavours, equality before the law etc. It is realized that at some point or another, people have been deprived of their equal rights in certain of these respects. This should be resisted even though one realizes that nature itself is not a democrat. However, nature has endowed each person with certain unique characteristics. We are not the same in character; neither are we the same in intelligence nor are we equally physically built. These are understandable aberrations. According to Kneller (1971), “however widely men may differ in their attributes, they are the same in their common humanity, which differentiate them from other living things”.
5. “Democracy implies faith in human intelligence”
As stated above, we are not equally endowed intellectually. This not withstanding, each person must be accorded the respect and given equal opportunity to realize himself within the limits of his intellectual capacities. The state is in the best position to assist the individuals to develop their intellectual capacities by providing avenues for equal educational opportunities.
6. “Democracy grants the right to peaceful dissent”
As pointed out above, to criticize should not be regarded as an act of rebellion but rather as an attempt to contribute for the purpose of changing the society for the better through peaceful and persistent intellectual discussion and consultation. Also to criticize is to seek the truth and government is in the best position to protect the rights of those dissenting in their efforts to seek the truth.
7. “Democracy requires a party system”
It is envisaged that through political associations, individuals have ample opportunities to express their ideas which may lead to the improvement of the welfare of the people. There is no political agreement regarding whether a multi-party system is more democratic than a single party one. What is important is that there be avenues provided for the free expression of views and debating of issues to facilitate the attainment of better life and existence in society. We must recognize that each political party system has its own merits and demerits. For example, in a multi-party arrangement, it may be a problem for one of the parties to form a government on its own. But the resultant coalition provides opportunities for a wider range of political attitudes. Kneller (1971) however, taking as norm the American and British tow party experiences felt that a two party system “may lead to greater governmental stability at the cost of expressing fewer shades of opinion.
8. “Modern democracy is widely representative”
Unlike ancient Greece and Roman city-states, where, due to the nature of the communities, people participated directly in the affairs of government, modern democracies are more inclined to representative systems of government. In other words, the people or, in some cases, the parties nominate their representative candidates. Those nominated are therefore permitted to campaign and run for elections and if successful become the mouthpiece of the people.
9. “Democracy involves the separation of powers”
Separation of powers, as it is canvassed in American system of government, involves the separation of the functions of the various organs of government. These are the legislative, executive and judicial functions, so that on single individual or body controls more than one function or organ of state apparatus. This separation of powers is advocated in order to protect the legitimate rights of individual citizens from the powerful influences of any of the arms of government.
Democratic Education and the Nigerian Philosophy of Education
It has often been asked whether Nigeria has and indeed operates a philosophy of education. The Nigerian National Policy on Education (1981) states categorically thus:
“Nigeria’s philosophy of education therefore, is based on the integration of the individual into a sound and effective citizen and equal educational opportunities for all citizens of the nation at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels, both inside and outside the formal school system”.
From the declaration and assertion above, Nigeria has a philosophy of education. It is however, something else whether the philosophy is practised or not.
In addition to the declaration above the document asserted that there are five main objectives which serve as foundations for the National Policy upon which the philosophy is built. These are:
“a free and democratic society;
a just and egalitarian society;
a united, strong and self-reliant nation;
a great and dynamic economy; and
a land of bright and full opportunities for all citizens”.
In an article, “What is Philosophy of Education” (1990), Aladejana quoted in Uba et.al. pointed out thus: “these are not the philosophy of Nigerian education but aims or objectives necessary for the identification and appreciation of the philosophy of education”(p.33). However, if Nigeria wishes to adopt the same ideology for both its politics and education, it is subject to debate, since politics and democracy do not necessarily connote the same things nor have similar implications. Thus, the principles which form the foundations of democratic education should be known for proper guidance.
According to Kneller (1971) in Foundations of Education: “the conduct of education in a democracy is guided by a number of generally accepted principles”. Since Nigeria has wisely or unwisely adopted democracy as her form of government, there is nothing fundamentally wrong if her philosophy of Education is based on democratic principles. There are seven principles which are generally regarded as the cornerstones of education and democracy, viz:
“Since the people elect their government, they should be educated to do so responsibly;
through education, every individual is expected to develop his own talents to the full;
men must be educated to be free;
education should train the open mind;
education should develop the habit of productive co-operation as well as healthy competition;
wherever possible, we should adopt democratic practices in school behaviour; and
political control over education must be kept to the minimum”. (Kneller 1971)
There is no doubt that these are necessary principles and they can be pursued to their logical conclusions in a disciplined and democratic country. It may be interesting to find out whether the education of all the citizens is a condition for democracy in Nigeria. Thus the hypothesis: Is the formal education of all the citizens a logically necessary condition for the success of a democracy? For a democratic setting to be successful, at least the majority of the people need to be educated. One of the strongest arguments for contending that education is a logical and necessary condition for democracy goes like this: “Since the people themselves elect their government, they should be educated to do so responsibly”.
On the other hand, to claim that one only makes a responsible choice through education sounds naïve. The claim does not say anything about the type (formal or informal, descriptive or normative) and standard of such education. In other words, it cannot and should not be taken for granted that such education should normally be formal. It may be asked, who sets the limits and standard of education needed for a political choice? If one is aware of what voting is as a political act and right, which can be acquired through reasoning and participation (which is not alien to an informal educational system), can such a person not make a responsible choice by at least putting some marks on a ballot paper?
One of the issues at stake is the role of education in making political decisions. It does not mean that possessing a special competence such as formal education to a first degree level is necessary and compatible with the success of the endeavours of a government. There is no doubt that certain aspects of political decisions, such as economic decisions need expert knowledge, but it is assumed that no one can claim sole competence in the entire political process as a result of education.
A strong case can be made for education as being capable of assisting in the process of a viable democratic existence; that is, that education is desirable in fostering the healthy existence of a democratic society. According to Dewey (1966) democracy becomes “a mode of associated living, a conjoint communicated experience.” In this vein, that education is a desirable characteristic of democracy does not imply that it is logically necessary. It is merely desirable, not a necessary or a sufficient condition for democracy.
Education can of course serve democracy in a number of ways. It can contribute, according to Crittenden (1973), to the necessary “forms of understanding” which assist the public in the attempt to learn “to perceive, think, feel, imagine, desire, choose and act in a way that is fully and distinctively human”(p.136). If the above forms of understanding are necessary for the survival and sustenance of democracy of democracy and if they can only be supplied by education, formal or informal, how then can one say that education is not logically necessary for democracy. The point being stressed in this section of the paper is not just whether education is a logically necessary condition for democracy but whether the education of all the citizens is a necessarily logical condition. So far, the argument has been in favour of education not being logically necessary for the survival of democracy. In fact, it could be stated that it is an unnecessary emphasis to claim that the education of all the citizens will contribute to the survival of democracy. If not so, democracy would have to be understood as the only ideal form of government and a way of life that no society has ever attempted. We know of course, that some countries have practiced and are still practicing democracy as a form of government. And all their citizens were not and are not educated.
Nigeria, in-spite of several obstacles can achieve and make the above principles a reality. However, certain conditions must be met and these conditions can be taught. It is the task of philosophers of education to teach such habits as tolerance, fairness, respect for others’ views, liberty and so on. If not, democracy, in the words of Peters (1966) may “degenerate into propaganda and abuse”.
Implementation of the Concept of Democracy in the Nigerian Educational System
Nigeria’s aspiration to practice a democratic form of government is now a reality since May 29, 1999. Similarly, as found elsewhere in the world, Nigeria also aspires to implement the concept of democracy in its education by recommending free education to certain levels and by actually establishing comprehensive schools that intend to promote social integration, social unity, intellectual reflection, as well as the development of the various abilities in the citizenry-physical, emotional, moral, scientific, technological, commercial etc. These educational designs are found in the National Policy on Education to usher into our educational system the 6:3:3:4 rigour.
As it is being recommended now, if the free education in sight is really to produce an individual with equal opportunity, for critical functions in the society, then the education would not only be expected to be free but realistically compulsory at the primary and secondary levels of schooling. This will enable the Nigerian children to receive equal education up to the time that they would be matured enough to make political decisions about their representations in a representative democracy (i.e. up to he age of about eighteen years when the Nigerian child is deemed matured enough to take personal and political decisions). Besides, equal education should qualify the child to enter in the Nigerian job market almost directly, if he wants to, and this would be impossible without the necessary educational background. It should be pointed out that Universal Primary Education will not really be universal if the learner has still to pay any form of fees in any guise and buy books and other educational materials. For a child to be fully democratized and educated and become loyal to the government, he must have been endowed with certain inalienable ingredients for survival in life. Therefore, free education up to the level of political maturity and decision-making in a democracy is very important.
The comprehensive schools become admirable due to the nature of their curricula. They encourage equal educational opportunity for all citizens to develop their various talents, they promote equality in self-realization and embrace the democratic principle of freedom of the child to develop along his own line and talent. The comprehensive schools also promote the democratic principle of sharing experiences among the various members and groups (religious, socio-cultural) in the school and society. The shared interests promote interaction and communication which lead to continuous reconstruction of the societal experiences in the democracy.
Conclusion
In this essay we have examined the concepts of philosophy, politics, education and the meaning of political democracy. It is pointed out that for political democracy to thrive, certain principles must be put in place for effective political understanding and implementation. Also the paper discussed democratic education as it affects Nigerian philosophy of education. In the ensuing argument, it was pointed out that all the citizens of a state do not need to be formally educated for the survival of the state’s democratic endeavours, but that, however, education is a “sine qua non” in a democracy.
References
Aladejana, T.I. (1995) Philosophical Foundations of Education – Lagos: Macmillan Nigeria Publishers Ltd.
Calais. B. (1995) Cited in J. Cohen, Curd, and Reeve (1995) (eds.) Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy from Thales to Aristotle. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co.
Cohen, J. (2003). Philosophy is Education, is Politics. A Somewhat aggressive reading of Protagoras 334d – 338e IIAIAEI Ancient Philosophy available at http://www.bu.edu/wcp/papers/Ancicohe.htm
Critenden, B. (1973) Education and Social Ideals. A Study in Philosophy of Education Canada: Longman Ltd.
Dewey, J. (1966). Democracy and Education. New York: Free Press.
Dewey, J. (1997). Democracy and Education. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education. New York: Free Press.
Entwistle, H. (1958). A Concept of Democracy and Its Implementation for Education M.Ed. Thesis, University of Manchester.
Entwistle, H. (1971). Political Education in a Democracy. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Federal Republic of Nigeria (1981). National Policy on Education. Lagos: NERC Press.
Frede, M. (1992). Introduction to the Lombardo and Bell Translation of Protagoras. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co.
Glotz, G. (1926). The Greeks at Work London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Hippias (1995). Cited in J. Cohen, Curd & Reeve (1995) (eds.) Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy from Thales to Aristotle. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co.
Kneller, G.F. (1971). Foundations of Education New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
Lindsay, A.D. (1929). The Essentials of Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mill, J.S. (1979). Utilitarianism Great Britain: Fount Paperbacks.
Oyo State Ministry of Education. (Implementation Section on National Policy on Education) (Dec. 1988) Post Junior Secondary School System in Oyo State. Ibadan: Ministry of Education.
Pericles, cited in H. Entwistle (1971) Political Education in a Democracy. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Peters, R.S. (1966). Ethics and Education London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Plato, A. (1945). Republic New York: Oxford University Press.
Socrates, S. cited in J. Cohen, Curd, Reeves (1995) (eds.) Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy from Thales to Aristotle. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co.
Sunday Sketch, March 18, 1990, 2 also see The Guardian, October 11, 1990, 9 and The Guardian, April 9, 1991, 9.
Taylor, C.C.W. (1976) Plato Series on Protagoras Oxford: Clarendon.
Uba, et al (Eds). (1990) Essentials of Educational Foundations and Counselling. Ibadan: Claverianum Press.
Friday, February 12, 2010
THE CENTER FOR CONSCIOUSNESS STUDIES
THE CENTER FOR CONSCIOUSNESS STUDIES
presents
TOWARD A SCIENCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Tucson Convention Center April 13-17, 2010
Registration at the Leo Rich Theater
MONDAY April 12 Pre-Conference Workshops
9:00 am - 6:00 pm Session 1, Session 2
TUESDAY April 13 Pre-Conference Workshops
9:00 am -1:00 pm Session 3
TUESDAY Conference opening
April 13 Plenary Program
1:45-4:10 pm PLENARY 1 William James Centennial
Taylor, Baars, Mangan
4:30-6:35 pm CONCURRENT SESSIONS 1 - 7
6:30-7:30 pm Welcome Reception
7:00-9:00 pm ART-TECH 1
9:30-11:30pm Club Consciousness 1
WEDNESDAY
April 14
8:30 -10:40 am PLENARY 2 DOUBLE KEYNOTE
Marcus Raichle Brain dark matter and default networks Robert G. Shulman Brain energy supporting the state of consciousness
11:10 - 11:40 am, Break
11:40 am-12:35 pm PLENARY 3 Body Consciousness
DeVignemont, Ehrsson
12:35-2:00 pm, Lunch
2:00-4:10 pm PLENARY 4 Machine Consciousness
Modha, Chalmers, Goertzel,
4:30-6:35 pm CONCURRENT SESSIONS 8 - 15
7:00-10:00 pm POSTER SESSION 1 ART-TECH 2
9:30-11:30 pm Club Consciousness 2
THURSDAY
April 15
8:30-10:40 am PLENARY 5 Multimodal experience
Duffy, Stein, O'Callaghan, Prouix
11:10-11:40 am, Break
11:40 -12:35 pm PLENARY 6 Keynote
Karl Deisseroth Circuits of the mind
Thursday afternoon Side trips
free
Thursday evening Conference Banquet
6-10 pm
FRIDAY
April 16
8:30-10:40 am PLENARY 7 Consciousness & Transformation
Vieten, Martin, Za Rinpoche
11:10-11:40 am, Break
11:40- 12:35 pm PLENARY8 Keynote
Antonio Damasio The conscious self
12:35-2:00 pm, Lunch
2:00- 4:10 pm PLENARY 9 Theories of Consciousness
Kouider, Ebner, Strawson
4:30- 6:35 pm CONCURRENT SESSIONS 16 - 21
7:00- 9:30 pm POSTER SESSION 2 ART-TECH 3
10:00-11:30 pm Club Consciousness 3
Saturday
April 17
8:30-10:40 am PLENARY 10 Theories of Consciousness - NCC 2
Gruberger, Bhandyophady, Cerf, Prettyman
11:10-11:40 am, Break
11:40 am - 12:35 pm Plenary 11 Keynote
Robert J Sawyer Consciousness and science fiction
12:35- 2:00 pm, Lunch
2:00-4:10 pm PLENARY 12
Evening
8:00 pm till ??? End of Consciousness Party
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SPRING 2010
2 W E B C O U R S E S Registrations starting Feb. 5
MARCH 13 - MAY 16, 2010
Dr. Bernard J. Baars
live weekend classes
1. Science and Positive Conscious Experiences: An introduction.
2. Advanced WebSeminar on Mind, Brain and Consciousness.
CLICK HERE: REGISTRATION FORM SPRING 2010
CLICK HERE: TAKE OUR CONSCIOUSNESS STUDIES S U R V E Y
EMAIL US: to put you on the notification list-- --> center@u.arizona.edu
Attn: Webcourse Notification)
CLICK HERE: iTunes - Univ of AZ PODCAST
with Dr. Bernard Baars
Weekend Discussion Schedule ReCap:
a) Science and Positive Conscious Experiences
Discussions on Saturday and Sunday 10-12 PST
b) Advanced Seminar
Discussions on Sundays 2-4 PST
B. Baars: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Baars
Call the Center: 520-621-9317 - Email the Center: center@u.arizona.edu
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
JUST COMPLETED
WINTER 2009-2010
2 Webcourses on Consciousness
CLICK HERE: iTunes - Univ of AZ PODCAST with Dr. Bernard Baars
1) Consciousness: The Webcourse
2) Advanced Seminar - Mind Brain
CONSCIOUSNESS: THE WEBCOURSE WINTER - 2009-2010
DESCRIPTION, SYLLABUS, REGISTRATION FORMS
B. Baars: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Baars
Call the Center: 520-621-9317 - Email the Center: center@u.arizona.edu
presents
TOWARD A SCIENCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Tucson Convention Center April 13-17, 2010
Registration at the Leo Rich Theater
MONDAY April 12 Pre-Conference Workshops
9:00 am - 6:00 pm Session 1, Session 2
TUESDAY April 13 Pre-Conference Workshops
9:00 am -1:00 pm Session 3
TUESDAY Conference opening
April 13 Plenary Program
1:45-4:10 pm PLENARY 1 William James Centennial
Taylor, Baars, Mangan
4:30-6:35 pm CONCURRENT SESSIONS 1 - 7
6:30-7:30 pm Welcome Reception
7:00-9:00 pm ART-TECH 1
9:30-11:30pm Club Consciousness 1
WEDNESDAY
April 14
8:30 -10:40 am PLENARY 2 DOUBLE KEYNOTE
Marcus Raichle Brain dark matter and default networks Robert G. Shulman Brain energy supporting the state of consciousness
11:10 - 11:40 am, Break
11:40 am-12:35 pm PLENARY 3 Body Consciousness
DeVignemont, Ehrsson
12:35-2:00 pm, Lunch
2:00-4:10 pm PLENARY 4 Machine Consciousness
Modha, Chalmers, Goertzel,
4:30-6:35 pm CONCURRENT SESSIONS 8 - 15
7:00-10:00 pm POSTER SESSION 1 ART-TECH 2
9:30-11:30 pm Club Consciousness 2
THURSDAY
April 15
8:30-10:40 am PLENARY 5 Multimodal experience
Duffy, Stein, O'Callaghan, Prouix
11:10-11:40 am, Break
11:40 -12:35 pm PLENARY 6 Keynote
Karl Deisseroth Circuits of the mind
Thursday afternoon Side trips
free
Thursday evening Conference Banquet
6-10 pm
FRIDAY
April 16
8:30-10:40 am PLENARY 7 Consciousness & Transformation
Vieten, Martin, Za Rinpoche
11:10-11:40 am, Break
11:40- 12:35 pm PLENARY8 Keynote
Antonio Damasio The conscious self
12:35-2:00 pm, Lunch
2:00- 4:10 pm PLENARY 9 Theories of Consciousness
Kouider, Ebner, Strawson
4:30- 6:35 pm CONCURRENT SESSIONS 16 - 21
7:00- 9:30 pm POSTER SESSION 2 ART-TECH 3
10:00-11:30 pm Club Consciousness 3
Saturday
April 17
8:30-10:40 am PLENARY 10 Theories of Consciousness - NCC 2
Gruberger, Bhandyophady, Cerf, Prettyman
11:10-11:40 am, Break
11:40 am - 12:35 pm Plenary 11 Keynote
Robert J Sawyer Consciousness and science fiction
12:35- 2:00 pm, Lunch
2:00-4:10 pm PLENARY 12
Evening
8:00 pm till ??? End of Consciousness Party
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SPRING 2010
2 W E B C O U R S E S Registrations starting Feb. 5
MARCH 13 - MAY 16, 2010
Dr. Bernard J. Baars
live weekend classes
1. Science and Positive Conscious Experiences: An introduction.
2. Advanced WebSeminar on Mind, Brain and Consciousness.
CLICK HERE: REGISTRATION FORM SPRING 2010
CLICK HERE: TAKE OUR CONSCIOUSNESS STUDIES S U R V E Y
EMAIL US: to put you on the notification list-- --> center@u.arizona.edu
Attn: Webcourse Notification)
CLICK HERE: iTunes - Univ of AZ PODCAST
with Dr. Bernard Baars
Weekend Discussion Schedule ReCap:
a) Science and Positive Conscious Experiences
Discussions on Saturday and Sunday 10-12 PST
b) Advanced Seminar
Discussions on Sundays 2-4 PST
B. Baars: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Baars
Call the Center: 520-621-9317 - Email the Center: center@u.arizona.edu
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
JUST COMPLETED
WINTER 2009-2010
2 Webcourses on Consciousness
CLICK HERE: iTunes - Univ of AZ PODCAST with Dr. Bernard Baars
1) Consciousness: The Webcourse
2) Advanced Seminar - Mind Brain
CONSCIOUSNESS: THE WEBCOURSE WINTER - 2009-2010
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Machiavelli and the Moral Dilemma of Statecraft
The liberal ideal of Locke, and the basis of morality for Kant, is the individual. The moral basis of the government of the United States is set out in the Declaration of Independence, where Thomas Jefferson affirms the existence of natural, individual rights and then says, "That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed..." Thus, the state is not an end in itself but merely the means to "secure these Rights." If a government fails to do that, Jefferson says, as Locke said earlier, "it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it." Nothing could be further from the statism, and state worship, of Hegel, let alone Napoleon, Lenin, Hitler, and Stalin.
"Necessity" is itself written into the Constitution of the United States, since Article I, Section 8 says that "The Congress shall have Power... To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper to carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States..." Now, this "necessary and proper clause" was viewed with suspicion by the Anti-Federalists, and reasonably so, since it was suspected as a device for improperly expanding the power of the federal government. Indeed, I do not think that any law has ever been voided for not being "proper." The greatest damage, however, was effected by the word "necessary" itself being misconstrued by John Marshall, who denied that it meant "without which not," the proper logical meaning of necessity, and decided that a "necessary" means is "any means calculated to produce the end." The sophistry and dishonesty of this has been examined elsewhere. The danger then became, not that the federal government would do what was necessary, but that it could do anything "calculated to produce the end." That is a prescription, not for preserving the life and freedom of the nation, but for implementing the kind of tyrannies that we see now.
In addition to these legal and institutional usurpations of liberty, the attacks on individualism itself by socialism and communism have continued under the guise of "communitarianism," and trendy thinkers now like to say that only as much freedom as "possible" should be allowed given the fundamental priority of the state, of "society as a collective unit" (they know that they will sound like Nazis if they start talking about "the state," so they say "society" instead). It is not, indeed, that freedom must never be abridged, but it is a very different matter to see this as a choice by necessity in a moral dilemma rather than as an unproblematic pursuit of a fundamental "collective" good. If the abstract entity (the "state," "society," or the "collective") has the moral priority, then the even permanent abridgment of any amount of freedom is no moral wrong. What the state giveth, the state taketh away.
What about Machiavelli? He lived prior to when the debate between statism and individualism started and so does not articulate its terms, though the idea of the subordination of the individual to the state already existed in Classical political thought (the sort of thing we find in Plato's Crito). Machiavelli could have insensibly gone along with that, or he may have given more thought to what even a Classical state was supposed to accomplish for its citizens. Although not clearly delineated, Machiavelli often does speak as though the worthy and glorious state is the one, not only of secure and substantial dominion, but one where the lives, property, and prosperity of its citizens are secured.
Still it cannot be called virtue to slay one's fellow citizens, to betray one's friends, to act without faith, without pity, without religion. By such methods one may win dominion but not glory. [The Prince, op.cit., p.36]
Thus, although Cesare Borgia is often thought of as the archetype of the amoral opportunist, Machiavelli's praise of him (The Prince, Chapter VII) in great measure depends on his judgment that he had secured "the good will of all the inhabitants of Romagna, who were beginning to get a taste of good government" [ibid., p.31]. Borgia is contrasted with the previous rulers of Romagna, who were "impotent lords who had been more inclined to despoil than to govern their subjects" [ibid.].
Machiavelli's advice on the treatment of one's citizens is the most revealing:
A prince...ought to encourage his citizens peaceably to pursue their affairs, whether in trade, in agriculture, or in any other human acitivity, so that no one will hesitate to improve his possessions for fear that they will be taken from him, and no one will hesitate to open a new avenue of trade for fear of taxes. [ibid., p.79]
Even in America, much investment is daunted by the fear of taxes. Elsewhere it is altogether halted. Indeed, it is the hallmark of tyranny in the 20th century that the property, let alone the persons, of citizens is not secure. But a ruler who is basically a robber, or who uses his power to take women, will come to be hated. Hatred and contempt, says Machiavelli, are the worst things that can happen to a ruler, the former because nothing else be needed to motivate opposition, even assassination, while the latter means that few will fear to act in opposition. Machiavelli is famous for claiming that it is better for a ruler to be feared than loved by the people (cf. ibid., Chapter XVII), but this is for the very sensible reason that in times of crisis, it is essential that a ruler be obeyed. A ruler who is loved but not feared may not be obeyed in need, which could spell disaster for all. A ruler need not be loved to rule well, but he must be feared to the extent that he will be obeyed.
Still a prince should make himself feared in such a way that, though he does not gain love, he escapes hatred; for being feared but not hated go readily together. Such a condition he may always attain if he will not touch the property of his citizens and subjects, nor their women. [ibid., p. 60]
A ruler who is both feared and hated may be successful -- as Machiavelli says, "one may win dominion" -- but the foundations of success will be unsound: Shihuangdi died unchallenged in power and dominion, but his son reigned only two years before universal rebellion overthrew the Qin Dynasty. Stalin had achieved similar status, but three years after his death he was denounced by Khrushchev for his crimes (the "secret" speech of 1956), and the legitimacy of the Soviet regime was shaken in the minds of many who had been true believers. Many Russians now remember Stalin fondly because it is easy to forget the murders and tortures but comforting to remember his strength, making him fearful in Machiavelli's sense but not hateful.
One way in which a ruler can avoid hatred is for him to give the citizens some sense that he respects and depends on them. There is no clearer way that this can be done than to trust them with arms.
This is an issue that has become increasingly important in modern democracies, where the forms of police state authority that have been increasingly put into place are inherently hostile to armed citizens. Large segments of the population, not just in European democracies but now even in America, are deceived by this tyrannical program, under the influence of a press and intelligentsia that has long been dominated by statists, who have always sought to deny to citizens the means of resisting the state. In this case, Machiavelli's observations and recommendations are the most revealing for the nature of government and the purpose of the state. There is nothing more necessary for the preservation of the state than the military, which is why Machiavelli says:
A prince must have no other objective, no other thought, not take up any profession but that of war, its methods and its discipline, for that is the only art expected of a ruler. [ibid., pp. 53-54]
So what is the proper relation of a citizen to the military power of his country? a power that can be used to oppress him, as well as to effect the necessary and proper defense of the nation? This may even be the very essence of the dilemma of statecraft, wherein the existence of the state may contradict the freedom of the individual. How are "necessity" and freedom to be reconciled? This must be examined in some detail, beginning with Machiavelli's advice to a prince:
For by arming your subjects, you make their arms your own. Those among them who are suspicious become loyal, while those who are already loyal remain so, and from subjects they are transformed into partisans. [ibid., p. 73]
There is no more telling hallmark of tyranny and malevolence than a ruler or a government that sets about to disarm the citizens. In Germany and Russia, the policy was to put the people at the mercy of the government. And when the Nazis wanted to massacre the Jews, or the Soviets their "class enemies," resistance was no longer possible. Nor were totalitarian governments alone in this. The democracies of Europe and America now pursue their project of dependent and helpless citizens with relentless attacks on the right of citizens to bear arms or defend themselves.
When you disarm your subjects, however, you offend them by showing that, either from cowardliness or from lack of faith, you distrust them; and either conlcusion will induce them to hate you. [ibid., p. 73]
Democratic governments get away with this by telling the public "you are the government" and buying them off with "benefits," even while people are systematically looted and subjugated for the sake of rent-seeking political and bureaucratic interest groups. As Jefferson wisely said, "they will purchase the voices of the people, and make them pay the price." Although the Founders of the country were on the watch for this, people are now dumbed-down and indoctrinated by "public education" not to notice. Stupified with their "benefits," people now do not appreciate this "Machiavellian" principle:
There can be no proper relation between one who is armed and one who is not... [ibid., p. 54]
But even dictatorial governments have gotten away with disarming citizens through a sufficiently dense ideological smokescreen.
What Machiavelli wanted, like the Founding Fathers of the United States, for the defense of the state was a citizen militia. The alternative in the Italy of Machiavelli's day was an army of mercenaries, which he recognized as worthless.
Anyone searching for the first cause of the ruin of the Roman Empire will find that it began with the hiring of mercenaries. From that point the strength of the Roman Empire started to decline, and all the valor it lost was transferred to the Goths. [ibid., p. 53]
Although Machiavelli was quite right about mercenaries, militias have often not worked out well, since they tend to be insufficiently disciplined or hardened as fighting forces. That was the case when the citizens of Renaissance Italian cities attempted to resist foreign armies (French and Spanish), and it was the case in American history, mainly in the War of 1812, when Militia forces often performed badly. By the time of the Civil War, units were raised and trained specifically for the war. Although the Militia Act of 1792 made every "free able-bodied white male citizen" of 18 a member of the Militia, in time, the idea lapsed that the Militia should be the actual body of the citizenry, especially when the Southern States did not want new color-blind Federal civil rights principles, enforced by the Fourteenth Amendment, arming the mass of freed slaves. So in 1903 the Dick Act established the National Guard as a volunteer organization on a much more restricted basis than the old Militia. Indeed, it must be emphasized and remembered that the motivation for this was, in great measure, racism: an extension of the Segregationist regime that intended to crush the means of resistance among Southern blacks.
Those who now prefer to see the "right of the people to keep and bear arms" of the Second Amendment as discharged by the National Guard, however, must overlook (or explain away) the circumstance that National Guardsmen are in fact not allowed to "keep" their arms. Weapons are kept in National Guard Armories, and Guardsmen bear them only in service, under military discipline. Nor are officers elected, as they usually were in Militias, or even in many Civil War regiments. The National Guard, like the Regular Army, is now part of the establishment of a Standing Army, which the Founders feared as a threat to freedom (they would have called it merely a "select militia"). Even worse, the lapse of the Militia has meant that armed citizens are no longer available for the posse comitatus, where ordinary citizens become deputy sheriffs of their county to enforce the law. This means that increasingly para-military police departments (which orginally were prohibited from carrying arms) have become virtual armies of occupation in American cities, vulnerable to many of the abuses practiced by any such armies.
This is where the dilemma of statecraft emerges in a fundamental way. Militias are too weak for the security of the state, while standing armies are dangerous temptations to tyranny and foreign adventures -- Americans will have noticed that several undeclared wars have been fought since the United States began to maintain a large standing army and that recent involvements -- Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and the continuous bombing of Iraq -- have been undertaken without any clear idea of how the involvement was to be wrapped up. This is a degree of foolishness that the Founders thought they were preventing by giving Congress the power to declare war. A President, as Commander-in-Chief, with an army already in existence, can send it into battle without a declaration of war.
Clearly, a regular army is necessary for the security of a state; but it cannot be so big as to represent a temptation to foreign adventures or internal repression. Indeed, after the Civil War, Congress prohibited the use of the regular army for internal police matters. A militia, however, cannot provide a ready or reliable enough back-up for the regular army in case of emergencies. Reserves of some form, whether as adjuncts of the regular army or as national guard units, or both, are essential. But there still must be a militia, which would stand to the national guard in the same sense that Army Reserves stand to the regular army. The "weekend warriors," a derisive term for National Guardsmen, would be just a rather more organized and trained fraction of an armed citizenry, which also means that they would keep their own basic military weapon with them. More basic members of the militia would be more like "vacation warriors."
Nothing is so essential to the legitimate purpose of the state than the protection of its citizens, both from conquest and from tyranny. The dilemma is how we maintain an effective military force, which must be as disciplined and hardened as possible, that will consist of free citizens and not pose a danger to a free civil society. These seem like incompatible purposes, though they are simply of a piece with having a state whose purpose is the protection of individual rights but whose requirements are often, of necessity, abridgement of those rights and the sacrifice of some individuals. This incompatibility seems nowhere clearer than when it comes to conscription, by which "involuntary servitude" is imposed on citizens in order to use them, in the judgment of generals and politicians, for the preservation of the state. Although many people fled Europe for the United States in order to avoid conscription, it has now been put in force several times in America on the principal that it is "necessary" for the preservation of the individual freedom that would otherwise be permanently endangered by foreign conquest. It can even be argued that a conscript army, full of men resentful of their loss of freedom, will constantly remind the generals and politicians that there are limits to what the men will tolerate, both in terms of their treatment and in terms of the use to which they are put.
Conscription, however, is a device that is meaningful only in the absence of a militia. By the Militia Act of 1792, the male citizens of the era (or at least the white ones), were already in the military. If that is the case, then it cannot happen that individual civilians are drafted into the military. 1 Regular Army Federal
2 Army Reserve
3 National Guard State
4 County Militia
5 Unorganized Militia
Instead, in need, it is the Reserve, the National Guard, and the Militia units that are called up, in turn, as the gravity of a situation increases [note]. This gives us a system of checks and balances, by which here, as elsewhere, alone there is a hope of restraining the power of government in any form. It is a system based on the natural right of self-defense and then degrees of voluntary association with government; for every citizen has the right to keep and bear arms as part of the "unorganized" militia, but any citizen also, with a minimum of commitment and training, can formally join an organized militia at the County level. That should also make them reserve sheriff's deputies, as an official part of the posse comitatus, the only armed police force that should be allowed, and reserve members of the National Guard, which of course is organized at the State level. Such a system keeps in place a small but professional, volunteer regular army (and professional sheriff's deputies) but has behind it a very broad citizen's army, trained to varying degrees in case of national need. It also keeps in place the means of resistance for ordinary citizens against the usurpations of tyranny and statism. A few years ago, when the officials of Nye County, Nevada, wanted to enforce the Tenth Amendment against the Federal Government, which of course unconstitutionally owns most of the land in Nevada and now all but ignores the Tenth Amendment, they backed down simply when threatened by a Federal judge. This goes to show how far what Jefferson called the "spirit of resistance" has been broken among us. If they had the armed body of their own citizens behind them, in the reasonably organized and official form of the County Militia, they might have had more leverage and more courage.
There is no more sobering a corrective for the false path upon which the democracies have entered than to realize that the replacement of the Militia by the National Guard in America was probably motivated in part by racism and the desire to oppress freed slaves, and that the advice that Machiavelli himself gives even to autocrats is to arm their own citizens. The tyrannical, statist purposes behind the "gun control" movement are thus revealed, as are the principles of Machiavelli's viewpoint, where the most successful rulers must be those who achieve good government, while good government is that which fosters the liberty, security, and prosperity of the citizens.
...nor is it reasonable to expect that one who is armed will voluntarily obey one who is not, or that the latter will feel secure among servants who are armed. [ibid., p. 54]
Thus, Machiavelli expects disarmed citizens to be vulnerable and insecure, which is precisely what statists and tyrants wish.
These reflections began above with one man who, out of his responsibility for the many, thought it necessary to sacrifice another innocent man for their sake -- a sacrifice, ironically, that Christianity interprets as willingly accepted by the victim in order to morally and religiously redeem all of humanity. By an examination of Machiavelli's theory about this, we have come to the theory of such institutional arragements as would preserve the proper purpose of the state, to serve the liberty of its citizens, and to protect citizens who might be targeted, either by unjust rulers or by the tyranny of the majority, for oppression and unnecessary, improper sacrifice. If the only force that a ruler, or any government, can muster is the voluntary mass of the citizens, then no policy can be pursued to which the mass of the citizens does not consent. Thus, the military adventures, and social enginnering within the military, of the Clinton Presidency have resulted in poor retention and recruitment rates. In the voluntary military, this indicates that something is wrong. The fear that it endangers national security leads many to think that conscription should be reintroduced. This, however, treats one evil with another evil. The truth is that the regular military is too large anyway, but that even so it could be easily maintained without the discouraging actions into which the military has been sent and the oppressive social policies for which the military was made a laboratory.
The voluntary military is therefore a check and a balance against foolish government. At the same time, good government sometimes requires that the people be led rather than just followed. When Neville Chamberlain decided to sacrifice Czechoslovakia to Hitler, ridiculously hoping to satisfy all his desires, public opinion, equally foolish, was behind him completely. But the appeasement of Hitler violated one of Machiavelli's wisest precepts:
...one should never permit a disorder to persist in order to avoid a war, for war is not avoided thereby but merely deferred to one's own disadvantage. [ibid., p. 20]
The disadvantage of deferring war against Hitler was bitter and substantial. But, although we could blame this case on the sentiment of the people, rather than just on Chamberlain, Machiavelli himself said, "Government by the populace is better than government by princes" [Discourses, op.cit., p. 256]. One reason for this is stated thus:
For a licentious and turbulent populace, when a good man can obtain a hearing, can easily be brought to behave itself; but there is no one to talk to a bad prince, nor is there any remedy except the sword. [ibid., p. 256].
In the same way that a misbehaving crowd can be calmed, a foolish and ill advised populace can be directed towards wisdom by the proper leadership. This, to be sure, calls for great gifts. A Churchill or a Reagan who can rally a nation to the wise and prudent path is rare, while a demagogue who can urge the people down a foolish and improper path by pandering, like a Roosevelt or a Clinton, is more common. Which kind of leader becomes available is unfortunately left to the happenstance of history, where demagogues definitely are in greater supply.
Machiavelli's own explanation for why the righteous do not succeed as rulers is of interest.
...for a man who strives after goodness in all his acts is sure to come to ruin, since there are so many men who are not good. [The Prince, op.cit., p. 56]
Similarly,
It follows, then, that a wise prince cannot and should not keep his pledge when it is against his interest to do so and when his reasons for making the pledge are no longer operative. If all men were good, this would be a bad precept, but since they are evil and would not keep a pledge to you, then you need not keep yours to them. [ibid., p. 62]
Now, if a prince knew that an ally was not evil, but good and faithful, it would certainly be foolish to break faith and estrange such a one, except in extraordinary circumstances. The assumption that most princes, and men, however, will simply act out of self-interest is not likely to lead one too far astray. Interestingly, a determination to break faith with those who break faith sounds very much like the "tit for tat" strategy in game theory, where good faith is rewarded with good faith, and bad faith with bad faith. That approach makes for a prince, or a leader, who is neither treacherous nor a sucker, who is faithful to the faithful but on guard and prepared against the unfaithful. It was one of the most painful aspects of Neville Chamberlain's naivety that he actually perceived Adolf Hitler as a man of good faith. His disillusionment came far too late to catch Hitler before he had acquired such advantages as made the war as desperate a business as it proved to be.
There is nothing easy or happy about the dilemmas of statecraft. Desperate times call for desperate measures, but it often demands uncommon wisdom to recognize a desperate situation and to know what actually is necessary. Caiaphas cannot be expected to have believed that Jesus was the Son of God. What he can be expected to appreciate is the overwhelming force of Roman power and the danger of the rebellion that was always simmering just below the surface in Judea, urged on by many Messianic figures much like Jesus. His reasons and actions in that respect are not open to serious reproach. Nor can the comparable actions of any political figure. Churchill was right that Bolshevism should have been "strangled in its cradle." That the means and will were not available for that is one thing, that the Soviet Union was accepted by Roosevelt as a progressive and democratic regime, which could be trusted to occupy Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe, is another thing -- a foolish and idiotic thing, which condemned thousands to hopeless torture and death and many more to poverty and tyranny for decades. Only Truman awakened to the danger, to the continuing disgust of the Left. Similarly disillusioned, somewhat too late again, was Jimmy Carter.
The hardest thing to accept may be that there are moral dilemmas and that often choices must be made between good ends and what otherwise would be the dictates of justice and righteousness. A naive gullibility, like that of Wilson, Roosevelt, or Carter, is ultimately of no benefit to justice, when those who are treacherous by preference triumph over those who would rather lose than respond in kind. Machiavelli is still supreme as the sage and theorist of what is required in such real, unforgiving historical situations.
"Necessity" is itself written into the Constitution of the United States, since Article I, Section 8 says that "The Congress shall have Power... To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper to carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States..." Now, this "necessary and proper clause" was viewed with suspicion by the Anti-Federalists, and reasonably so, since it was suspected as a device for improperly expanding the power of the federal government. Indeed, I do not think that any law has ever been voided for not being "proper." The greatest damage, however, was effected by the word "necessary" itself being misconstrued by John Marshall, who denied that it meant "without which not," the proper logical meaning of necessity, and decided that a "necessary" means is "any means calculated to produce the end." The sophistry and dishonesty of this has been examined elsewhere. The danger then became, not that the federal government would do what was necessary, but that it could do anything "calculated to produce the end." That is a prescription, not for preserving the life and freedom of the nation, but for implementing the kind of tyrannies that we see now.
In addition to these legal and institutional usurpations of liberty, the attacks on individualism itself by socialism and communism have continued under the guise of "communitarianism," and trendy thinkers now like to say that only as much freedom as "possible" should be allowed given the fundamental priority of the state, of "society as a collective unit" (they know that they will sound like Nazis if they start talking about "the state," so they say "society" instead). It is not, indeed, that freedom must never be abridged, but it is a very different matter to see this as a choice by necessity in a moral dilemma rather than as an unproblematic pursuit of a fundamental "collective" good. If the abstract entity (the "state," "society," or the "collective") has the moral priority, then the even permanent abridgment of any amount of freedom is no moral wrong. What the state giveth, the state taketh away.
What about Machiavelli? He lived prior to when the debate between statism and individualism started and so does not articulate its terms, though the idea of the subordination of the individual to the state already existed in Classical political thought (the sort of thing we find in Plato's Crito). Machiavelli could have insensibly gone along with that, or he may have given more thought to what even a Classical state was supposed to accomplish for its citizens. Although not clearly delineated, Machiavelli often does speak as though the worthy and glorious state is the one, not only of secure and substantial dominion, but one where the lives, property, and prosperity of its citizens are secured.
Still it cannot be called virtue to slay one's fellow citizens, to betray one's friends, to act without faith, without pity, without religion. By such methods one may win dominion but not glory. [The Prince, op.cit., p.36]
Thus, although Cesare Borgia is often thought of as the archetype of the amoral opportunist, Machiavelli's praise of him (The Prince, Chapter VII) in great measure depends on his judgment that he had secured "the good will of all the inhabitants of Romagna, who were beginning to get a taste of good government" [ibid., p.31]. Borgia is contrasted with the previous rulers of Romagna, who were "impotent lords who had been more inclined to despoil than to govern their subjects" [ibid.].
Machiavelli's advice on the treatment of one's citizens is the most revealing:
A prince...ought to encourage his citizens peaceably to pursue their affairs, whether in trade, in agriculture, or in any other human acitivity, so that no one will hesitate to improve his possessions for fear that they will be taken from him, and no one will hesitate to open a new avenue of trade for fear of taxes. [ibid., p.79]
Even in America, much investment is daunted by the fear of taxes. Elsewhere it is altogether halted. Indeed, it is the hallmark of tyranny in the 20th century that the property, let alone the persons, of citizens is not secure. But a ruler who is basically a robber, or who uses his power to take women, will come to be hated. Hatred and contempt, says Machiavelli, are the worst things that can happen to a ruler, the former because nothing else be needed to motivate opposition, even assassination, while the latter means that few will fear to act in opposition. Machiavelli is famous for claiming that it is better for a ruler to be feared than loved by the people (cf. ibid., Chapter XVII), but this is for the very sensible reason that in times of crisis, it is essential that a ruler be obeyed. A ruler who is loved but not feared may not be obeyed in need, which could spell disaster for all. A ruler need not be loved to rule well, but he must be feared to the extent that he will be obeyed.
Still a prince should make himself feared in such a way that, though he does not gain love, he escapes hatred; for being feared but not hated go readily together. Such a condition he may always attain if he will not touch the property of his citizens and subjects, nor their women. [ibid., p. 60]
A ruler who is both feared and hated may be successful -- as Machiavelli says, "one may win dominion" -- but the foundations of success will be unsound: Shihuangdi died unchallenged in power and dominion, but his son reigned only two years before universal rebellion overthrew the Qin Dynasty. Stalin had achieved similar status, but three years after his death he was denounced by Khrushchev for his crimes (the "secret" speech of 1956), and the legitimacy of the Soviet regime was shaken in the minds of many who had been true believers. Many Russians now remember Stalin fondly because it is easy to forget the murders and tortures but comforting to remember his strength, making him fearful in Machiavelli's sense but not hateful.
One way in which a ruler can avoid hatred is for him to give the citizens some sense that he respects and depends on them. There is no clearer way that this can be done than to trust them with arms.
This is an issue that has become increasingly important in modern democracies, where the forms of police state authority that have been increasingly put into place are inherently hostile to armed citizens. Large segments of the population, not just in European democracies but now even in America, are deceived by this tyrannical program, under the influence of a press and intelligentsia that has long been dominated by statists, who have always sought to deny to citizens the means of resisting the state. In this case, Machiavelli's observations and recommendations are the most revealing for the nature of government and the purpose of the state. There is nothing more necessary for the preservation of the state than the military, which is why Machiavelli says:
A prince must have no other objective, no other thought, not take up any profession but that of war, its methods and its discipline, for that is the only art expected of a ruler. [ibid., pp. 53-54]
So what is the proper relation of a citizen to the military power of his country? a power that can be used to oppress him, as well as to effect the necessary and proper defense of the nation? This may even be the very essence of the dilemma of statecraft, wherein the existence of the state may contradict the freedom of the individual. How are "necessity" and freedom to be reconciled? This must be examined in some detail, beginning with Machiavelli's advice to a prince:
For by arming your subjects, you make their arms your own. Those among them who are suspicious become loyal, while those who are already loyal remain so, and from subjects they are transformed into partisans. [ibid., p. 73]
There is no more telling hallmark of tyranny and malevolence than a ruler or a government that sets about to disarm the citizens. In Germany and Russia, the policy was to put the people at the mercy of the government. And when the Nazis wanted to massacre the Jews, or the Soviets their "class enemies," resistance was no longer possible. Nor were totalitarian governments alone in this. The democracies of Europe and America now pursue their project of dependent and helpless citizens with relentless attacks on the right of citizens to bear arms or defend themselves.
When you disarm your subjects, however, you offend them by showing that, either from cowardliness or from lack of faith, you distrust them; and either conlcusion will induce them to hate you. [ibid., p. 73]
Democratic governments get away with this by telling the public "you are the government" and buying them off with "benefits," even while people are systematically looted and subjugated for the sake of rent-seeking political and bureaucratic interest groups. As Jefferson wisely said, "they will purchase the voices of the people, and make them pay the price." Although the Founders of the country were on the watch for this, people are now dumbed-down and indoctrinated by "public education" not to notice. Stupified with their "benefits," people now do not appreciate this "Machiavellian" principle:
There can be no proper relation between one who is armed and one who is not... [ibid., p. 54]
But even dictatorial governments have gotten away with disarming citizens through a sufficiently dense ideological smokescreen.
What Machiavelli wanted, like the Founding Fathers of the United States, for the defense of the state was a citizen militia. The alternative in the Italy of Machiavelli's day was an army of mercenaries, which he recognized as worthless.
Anyone searching for the first cause of the ruin of the Roman Empire will find that it began with the hiring of mercenaries. From that point the strength of the Roman Empire started to decline, and all the valor it lost was transferred to the Goths. [ibid., p. 53]
Although Machiavelli was quite right about mercenaries, militias have often not worked out well, since they tend to be insufficiently disciplined or hardened as fighting forces. That was the case when the citizens of Renaissance Italian cities attempted to resist foreign armies (French and Spanish), and it was the case in American history, mainly in the War of 1812, when Militia forces often performed badly. By the time of the Civil War, units were raised and trained specifically for the war. Although the Militia Act of 1792 made every "free able-bodied white male citizen" of 18 a member of the Militia, in time, the idea lapsed that the Militia should be the actual body of the citizenry, especially when the Southern States did not want new color-blind Federal civil rights principles, enforced by the Fourteenth Amendment, arming the mass of freed slaves. So in 1903 the Dick Act established the National Guard as a volunteer organization on a much more restricted basis than the old Militia. Indeed, it must be emphasized and remembered that the motivation for this was, in great measure, racism: an extension of the Segregationist regime that intended to crush the means of resistance among Southern blacks.
Those who now prefer to see the "right of the people to keep and bear arms" of the Second Amendment as discharged by the National Guard, however, must overlook (or explain away) the circumstance that National Guardsmen are in fact not allowed to "keep" their arms. Weapons are kept in National Guard Armories, and Guardsmen bear them only in service, under military discipline. Nor are officers elected, as they usually were in Militias, or even in many Civil War regiments. The National Guard, like the Regular Army, is now part of the establishment of a Standing Army, which the Founders feared as a threat to freedom (they would have called it merely a "select militia"). Even worse, the lapse of the Militia has meant that armed citizens are no longer available for the posse comitatus, where ordinary citizens become deputy sheriffs of their county to enforce the law. This means that increasingly para-military police departments (which orginally were prohibited from carrying arms) have become virtual armies of occupation in American cities, vulnerable to many of the abuses practiced by any such armies.
This is where the dilemma of statecraft emerges in a fundamental way. Militias are too weak for the security of the state, while standing armies are dangerous temptations to tyranny and foreign adventures -- Americans will have noticed that several undeclared wars have been fought since the United States began to maintain a large standing army and that recent involvements -- Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and the continuous bombing of Iraq -- have been undertaken without any clear idea of how the involvement was to be wrapped up. This is a degree of foolishness that the Founders thought they were preventing by giving Congress the power to declare war. A President, as Commander-in-Chief, with an army already in existence, can send it into battle without a declaration of war.
Clearly, a regular army is necessary for the security of a state; but it cannot be so big as to represent a temptation to foreign adventures or internal repression. Indeed, after the Civil War, Congress prohibited the use of the regular army for internal police matters. A militia, however, cannot provide a ready or reliable enough back-up for the regular army in case of emergencies. Reserves of some form, whether as adjuncts of the regular army or as national guard units, or both, are essential. But there still must be a militia, which would stand to the national guard in the same sense that Army Reserves stand to the regular army. The "weekend warriors," a derisive term for National Guardsmen, would be just a rather more organized and trained fraction of an armed citizenry, which also means that they would keep their own basic military weapon with them. More basic members of the militia would be more like "vacation warriors."
Nothing is so essential to the legitimate purpose of the state than the protection of its citizens, both from conquest and from tyranny. The dilemma is how we maintain an effective military force, which must be as disciplined and hardened as possible, that will consist of free citizens and not pose a danger to a free civil society. These seem like incompatible purposes, though they are simply of a piece with having a state whose purpose is the protection of individual rights but whose requirements are often, of necessity, abridgement of those rights and the sacrifice of some individuals. This incompatibility seems nowhere clearer than when it comes to conscription, by which "involuntary servitude" is imposed on citizens in order to use them, in the judgment of generals and politicians, for the preservation of the state. Although many people fled Europe for the United States in order to avoid conscription, it has now been put in force several times in America on the principal that it is "necessary" for the preservation of the individual freedom that would otherwise be permanently endangered by foreign conquest. It can even be argued that a conscript army, full of men resentful of their loss of freedom, will constantly remind the generals and politicians that there are limits to what the men will tolerate, both in terms of their treatment and in terms of the use to which they are put.
Conscription, however, is a device that is meaningful only in the absence of a militia. By the Militia Act of 1792, the male citizens of the era (or at least the white ones), were already in the military. If that is the case, then it cannot happen that individual civilians are drafted into the military. 1 Regular Army Federal
2 Army Reserve
3 National Guard State
4 County Militia
5 Unorganized Militia
Instead, in need, it is the Reserve, the National Guard, and the Militia units that are called up, in turn, as the gravity of a situation increases [note]. This gives us a system of checks and balances, by which here, as elsewhere, alone there is a hope of restraining the power of government in any form. It is a system based on the natural right of self-defense and then degrees of voluntary association with government; for every citizen has the right to keep and bear arms as part of the "unorganized" militia, but any citizen also, with a minimum of commitment and training, can formally join an organized militia at the County level. That should also make them reserve sheriff's deputies, as an official part of the posse comitatus, the only armed police force that should be allowed, and reserve members of the National Guard, which of course is organized at the State level. Such a system keeps in place a small but professional, volunteer regular army (and professional sheriff's deputies) but has behind it a very broad citizen's army, trained to varying degrees in case of national need. It also keeps in place the means of resistance for ordinary citizens against the usurpations of tyranny and statism. A few years ago, when the officials of Nye County, Nevada, wanted to enforce the Tenth Amendment against the Federal Government, which of course unconstitutionally owns most of the land in Nevada and now all but ignores the Tenth Amendment, they backed down simply when threatened by a Federal judge. This goes to show how far what Jefferson called the "spirit of resistance" has been broken among us. If they had the armed body of their own citizens behind them, in the reasonably organized and official form of the County Militia, they might have had more leverage and more courage.
There is no more sobering a corrective for the false path upon which the democracies have entered than to realize that the replacement of the Militia by the National Guard in America was probably motivated in part by racism and the desire to oppress freed slaves, and that the advice that Machiavelli himself gives even to autocrats is to arm their own citizens. The tyrannical, statist purposes behind the "gun control" movement are thus revealed, as are the principles of Machiavelli's viewpoint, where the most successful rulers must be those who achieve good government, while good government is that which fosters the liberty, security, and prosperity of the citizens.
...nor is it reasonable to expect that one who is armed will voluntarily obey one who is not, or that the latter will feel secure among servants who are armed. [ibid., p. 54]
Thus, Machiavelli expects disarmed citizens to be vulnerable and insecure, which is precisely what statists and tyrants wish.
These reflections began above with one man who, out of his responsibility for the many, thought it necessary to sacrifice another innocent man for their sake -- a sacrifice, ironically, that Christianity interprets as willingly accepted by the victim in order to morally and religiously redeem all of humanity. By an examination of Machiavelli's theory about this, we have come to the theory of such institutional arragements as would preserve the proper purpose of the state, to serve the liberty of its citizens, and to protect citizens who might be targeted, either by unjust rulers or by the tyranny of the majority, for oppression and unnecessary, improper sacrifice. If the only force that a ruler, or any government, can muster is the voluntary mass of the citizens, then no policy can be pursued to which the mass of the citizens does not consent. Thus, the military adventures, and social enginnering within the military, of the Clinton Presidency have resulted in poor retention and recruitment rates. In the voluntary military, this indicates that something is wrong. The fear that it endangers national security leads many to think that conscription should be reintroduced. This, however, treats one evil with another evil. The truth is that the regular military is too large anyway, but that even so it could be easily maintained without the discouraging actions into which the military has been sent and the oppressive social policies for which the military was made a laboratory.
The voluntary military is therefore a check and a balance against foolish government. At the same time, good government sometimes requires that the people be led rather than just followed. When Neville Chamberlain decided to sacrifice Czechoslovakia to Hitler, ridiculously hoping to satisfy all his desires, public opinion, equally foolish, was behind him completely. But the appeasement of Hitler violated one of Machiavelli's wisest precepts:
...one should never permit a disorder to persist in order to avoid a war, for war is not avoided thereby but merely deferred to one's own disadvantage. [ibid., p. 20]
The disadvantage of deferring war against Hitler was bitter and substantial. But, although we could blame this case on the sentiment of the people, rather than just on Chamberlain, Machiavelli himself said, "Government by the populace is better than government by princes" [Discourses, op.cit., p. 256]. One reason for this is stated thus:
For a licentious and turbulent populace, when a good man can obtain a hearing, can easily be brought to behave itself; but there is no one to talk to a bad prince, nor is there any remedy except the sword. [ibid., p. 256].
In the same way that a misbehaving crowd can be calmed, a foolish and ill advised populace can be directed towards wisdom by the proper leadership. This, to be sure, calls for great gifts. A Churchill or a Reagan who can rally a nation to the wise and prudent path is rare, while a demagogue who can urge the people down a foolish and improper path by pandering, like a Roosevelt or a Clinton, is more common. Which kind of leader becomes available is unfortunately left to the happenstance of history, where demagogues definitely are in greater supply.
Machiavelli's own explanation for why the righteous do not succeed as rulers is of interest.
...for a man who strives after goodness in all his acts is sure to come to ruin, since there are so many men who are not good. [The Prince, op.cit., p. 56]
Similarly,
It follows, then, that a wise prince cannot and should not keep his pledge when it is against his interest to do so and when his reasons for making the pledge are no longer operative. If all men were good, this would be a bad precept, but since they are evil and would not keep a pledge to you, then you need not keep yours to them. [ibid., p. 62]
Now, if a prince knew that an ally was not evil, but good and faithful, it would certainly be foolish to break faith and estrange such a one, except in extraordinary circumstances. The assumption that most princes, and men, however, will simply act out of self-interest is not likely to lead one too far astray. Interestingly, a determination to break faith with those who break faith sounds very much like the "tit for tat" strategy in game theory, where good faith is rewarded with good faith, and bad faith with bad faith. That approach makes for a prince, or a leader, who is neither treacherous nor a sucker, who is faithful to the faithful but on guard and prepared against the unfaithful. It was one of the most painful aspects of Neville Chamberlain's naivety that he actually perceived Adolf Hitler as a man of good faith. His disillusionment came far too late to catch Hitler before he had acquired such advantages as made the war as desperate a business as it proved to be.
There is nothing easy or happy about the dilemmas of statecraft. Desperate times call for desperate measures, but it often demands uncommon wisdom to recognize a desperate situation and to know what actually is necessary. Caiaphas cannot be expected to have believed that Jesus was the Son of God. What he can be expected to appreciate is the overwhelming force of Roman power and the danger of the rebellion that was always simmering just below the surface in Judea, urged on by many Messianic figures much like Jesus. His reasons and actions in that respect are not open to serious reproach. Nor can the comparable actions of any political figure. Churchill was right that Bolshevism should have been "strangled in its cradle." That the means and will were not available for that is one thing, that the Soviet Union was accepted by Roosevelt as a progressive and democratic regime, which could be trusted to occupy Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe, is another thing -- a foolish and idiotic thing, which condemned thousands to hopeless torture and death and many more to poverty and tyranny for decades. Only Truman awakened to the danger, to the continuing disgust of the Left. Similarly disillusioned, somewhat too late again, was Jimmy Carter.
The hardest thing to accept may be that there are moral dilemmas and that often choices must be made between good ends and what otherwise would be the dictates of justice and righteousness. A naive gullibility, like that of Wilson, Roosevelt, or Carter, is ultimately of no benefit to justice, when those who are treacherous by preference triumph over those who would rather lose than respond in kind. Machiavelli is still supreme as the sage and theorist of what is required in such real, unforgiving historical situations.
THE "SIX SCHOOLS" OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY
S.ad.darshana, the "Six Schools" or "Six Doctrines" of "orthodox" Indian philosophy are the schools that accept the authority of the Vedas and thus religiously are considered part of Hinduism. Accepting the authority of the Vedas, however, does not mean actually using them. Mîmâm.sâ and Vedânta are specially the schools of interpretation of the Vedas; the other four are based on independent reasoning. "Heterodox" schools, which reject the authority of the Vedas, are found in separate religions, like Buddhism and Jainism, or with the rare, reviled "materialists," whose own texts have all been lost. The treatment follows P. T. Raju's The Philosophical Traditions of India [University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971, p. 35].
1.Mîmâm.sâ, "Interpretation," or Pûrva Mîmâm.sâ, "Prior Interpretation," the School of Interpretation of the Karmakân.d.a, the "action part," or first half, of the Vedas. Mîmâm.sâ originates fairly early, perhaps the 2nd century BC, since it is no more than a extension of the task of explaining the Vedas, a project that started in the Vedas themselves with the Brâhman.as. The doctrine of the eternity of the Vedas was argued by this school, and the theory of karma may have originated here; but it mostly confined itself to promoting the sanctity and power of the Vedas. The school later was practically absorbed into Vedânta.
2.Vedânta, "End of the Vedas," or the Uttara Mîmâm.sâ, "Posterior Interpretation," the School of Interpretation of the Jñanakân.d.a, the "knowledge part," or second half, of the Vedas, i.e. the Forest Treatises and especially the Upanis.ads. Vedânta starts relatively late, since it picks up where the Upanis.ads leave off, and there may be Upanis.ads as late as 200 AD. Vedânta then sets down to interpret its fundamental texts, which include the Upanis.ads, the Bhagavad Gîta, and the Brahma Sûtras of Bâdarâyan.a. The Brahma Sûtras were themselves written in the 1st or 2nd century AD and might be regarded as the first document of Vedânta itself. The variety of schools in Vedânta is indicated elsewhere, but it is worth noting that the influence of Buddhism still seems very strong in the classic expression of Advaita Vedânta in Shan.kara (c.788-820). Later forms of Vedânta became steadily more theistic and dualistic and thus approximated to Islâm rather than to Buddhism.
3.Sânkhya, "Counting, Reckoning, Reasoning, Knowledge," the School of Theoretical Knowledge. Sânkhya may well be the oldest school independent of the Vedas, growing up contemporaneously with the Upanis.ads themselves. It is argued by some that the Bhagavad Gîta was originally a popular exposition of the doctrine of the Sânkhya School, although the text is later dominated by theistic and devotionalistic additions. For our purposes, the salient features of Sânkhya doctrine are the theory of the gun.as, which was later accepted by all orthodox philosophy, and the principle that the self (or soul, the âtman or, in Sânkhya terminology, the purus.a) neither affects nor is affected by the world of nature (called prakr.ti in Sânkhya terminology). Sânkhya was originally atheistic, with an infinite number of souls, like Jainism. In the Gîta we see the role of Sânkhya changing from the theoretical counterpart to Yoga (in Chapter 2) to an independent yoga in its own right, jñanayoga (in Chapter 3). Jñanayoga in effect becomes simply Yoga, as follows; and historically the role of Sânkhya as the theoretical counterpart to Yoga is effectively taken over by Vedânta.
4.Yoga, "Yoking, Vehicle, Equipment, Discipline," the School of the Discipline of Achieving Liberation. The Yoga School is to be carefully distinguished from disciplines that are yogas in the general sense of the word yoga, which is any means of achieving salvation, or a major elements of such means. Thus, there are the three yogas of the Bhagavad Gîta (jñânayoga, karmayoga, bhaktiyoga), which are meant as classifications of all yogas, and also various yogas that are usually part of some higher order yoga: dhyânayoga, meditation (mentioned in the Gîta); hat.hayoga, yogic exercises; prân.ayoga, yogic breathing; aus.adhayoga, taking drugs (not a common or esteemed method); mantrayoga, chanting sacred words or phrases; layayoga, the yoga of "dissolution"; etc. Tantrism employs sexual practices for yogic purposes. The method of the Yoga School in particular is sometimes called Râjayoga, the "royal yoga." The Yoga School based its practice on the doctrine of the Sânkhya School, and the aim of its methods (hat.hayoga, etc.) was to quiet prakr.ti, nature as it exists in the body, so that, like a calm body of water, the body can reflect the true remote and detached nature of the purus.a, effecting liberation. The definitive and most famous statement of Yoga doctrine was in the Yoga Sûtras of Patañjali, perhaps in the 2nd century BC. Patañjali added a personal God to Sânkhya doctrine; but the system is not devotionalistic, and the God exists only as an exemplar of detachment, not as an active or creative Deity after the manner of Vis.n.u or Shiva.
5.Nyâya, "Analysis," the School of Logic, and
6.Vaishes.ika, "Individual Characteristics," the School of Pluralistic Metaphysics, are closely related minor schools. The relation of the doctrine of these schools to salvation is obscure and secondary. They concerned themselves much more with abstract issues of logic, epistemology, and metaphysics. Vaishes.ika in particular held that reality was an infinite number of atom-like entities, although these were then distinct from souls. This pluralism is similar to the teaching of two early schools of Buddhist philosophy, the Sautrântikas and Vaibhâs.ikas, who held that reality consists of an infinite number of momentary entities, the dharmas.
1.Mîmâm.sâ, "Interpretation," or Pûrva Mîmâm.sâ, "Prior Interpretation," the School of Interpretation of the Karmakân.d.a, the "action part," or first half, of the Vedas. Mîmâm.sâ originates fairly early, perhaps the 2nd century BC, since it is no more than a extension of the task of explaining the Vedas, a project that started in the Vedas themselves with the Brâhman.as. The doctrine of the eternity of the Vedas was argued by this school, and the theory of karma may have originated here; but it mostly confined itself to promoting the sanctity and power of the Vedas. The school later was practically absorbed into Vedânta.
2.Vedânta, "End of the Vedas," or the Uttara Mîmâm.sâ, "Posterior Interpretation," the School of Interpretation of the Jñanakân.d.a, the "knowledge part," or second half, of the Vedas, i.e. the Forest Treatises and especially the Upanis.ads. Vedânta starts relatively late, since it picks up where the Upanis.ads leave off, and there may be Upanis.ads as late as 200 AD. Vedânta then sets down to interpret its fundamental texts, which include the Upanis.ads, the Bhagavad Gîta, and the Brahma Sûtras of Bâdarâyan.a. The Brahma Sûtras were themselves written in the 1st or 2nd century AD and might be regarded as the first document of Vedânta itself. The variety of schools in Vedânta is indicated elsewhere, but it is worth noting that the influence of Buddhism still seems very strong in the classic expression of Advaita Vedânta in Shan.kara (c.788-820). Later forms of Vedânta became steadily more theistic and dualistic and thus approximated to Islâm rather than to Buddhism.
3.Sânkhya, "Counting, Reckoning, Reasoning, Knowledge," the School of Theoretical Knowledge. Sânkhya may well be the oldest school independent of the Vedas, growing up contemporaneously with the Upanis.ads themselves. It is argued by some that the Bhagavad Gîta was originally a popular exposition of the doctrine of the Sânkhya School, although the text is later dominated by theistic and devotionalistic additions. For our purposes, the salient features of Sânkhya doctrine are the theory of the gun.as, which was later accepted by all orthodox philosophy, and the principle that the self (or soul, the âtman or, in Sânkhya terminology, the purus.a) neither affects nor is affected by the world of nature (called prakr.ti in Sânkhya terminology). Sânkhya was originally atheistic, with an infinite number of souls, like Jainism. In the Gîta we see the role of Sânkhya changing from the theoretical counterpart to Yoga (in Chapter 2) to an independent yoga in its own right, jñanayoga (in Chapter 3). Jñanayoga in effect becomes simply Yoga, as follows; and historically the role of Sânkhya as the theoretical counterpart to Yoga is effectively taken over by Vedânta.
4.Yoga, "Yoking, Vehicle, Equipment, Discipline," the School of the Discipline of Achieving Liberation. The Yoga School is to be carefully distinguished from disciplines that are yogas in the general sense of the word yoga, which is any means of achieving salvation, or a major elements of such means. Thus, there are the three yogas of the Bhagavad Gîta (jñânayoga, karmayoga, bhaktiyoga), which are meant as classifications of all yogas, and also various yogas that are usually part of some higher order yoga: dhyânayoga, meditation (mentioned in the Gîta); hat.hayoga, yogic exercises; prân.ayoga, yogic breathing; aus.adhayoga, taking drugs (not a common or esteemed method); mantrayoga, chanting sacred words or phrases; layayoga, the yoga of "dissolution"; etc. Tantrism employs sexual practices for yogic purposes. The method of the Yoga School in particular is sometimes called Râjayoga, the "royal yoga." The Yoga School based its practice on the doctrine of the Sânkhya School, and the aim of its methods (hat.hayoga, etc.) was to quiet prakr.ti, nature as it exists in the body, so that, like a calm body of water, the body can reflect the true remote and detached nature of the purus.a, effecting liberation. The definitive and most famous statement of Yoga doctrine was in the Yoga Sûtras of Patañjali, perhaps in the 2nd century BC. Patañjali added a personal God to Sânkhya doctrine; but the system is not devotionalistic, and the God exists only as an exemplar of detachment, not as an active or creative Deity after the manner of Vis.n.u or Shiva.
5.Nyâya, "Analysis," the School of Logic, and
6.Vaishes.ika, "Individual Characteristics," the School of Pluralistic Metaphysics, are closely related minor schools. The relation of the doctrine of these schools to salvation is obscure and secondary. They concerned themselves much more with abstract issues of logic, epistemology, and metaphysics. Vaishes.ika in particular held that reality was an infinite number of atom-like entities, although these were then distinct from souls. This pluralism is similar to the teaching of two early schools of Buddhist philosophy, the Sautrântikas and Vaibhâs.ikas, who held that reality consists of an infinite number of momentary entities, the dharmas.
Socratic Ignorance in Democracy,the Free Market, and Science
Democracy
Much controversy continues over Socrates's attitude towards democracy. I.F. Stone, embarrassed that the first democracy should have killed a man for exercising freedom of speech and freedom of religion, attempted to justify this by going after Socrates as an enemy of democracy (The Trial of Socrates); but since Stone was busy defending Josef Stalin back in the Thirties, and even wrote a book in 1952, the Hidden History of the Korean War, defending the communist invasion of South Korea, his own democratic credentials are suspect. [Now we know, indeed, that Stone had dealings with the KGB, though how far it went, whether he was a paid agent of the Soviet Union, is unclear.] Indeed, an evaluation of Socrates essentially depends on the question of what democracy is supposed to be. That can be answered in due course.
There are three places in the Apology that provide evidence about Socrates's attitude towards the democracy in Athens. The first is at 20e, where Socrates relates the story of Chaerephon asking Delphi if anyone was wiser than Socrates. He says that Chaerephon was his friend and the friend of many of the jury, sharing their exile and their return. Exile and return? Well, of course, the exile of the democrats from Athens, after the fall of the city in 404, and during the Spartan occupation and the regime of the Thirty Tyrants. That makes Chaerephon sound like a pretty serious partisan of the democracy. Would such a one think of Socrates as the wisest man, to the point of asking Delphi about it, if Socrates were conspicuously against the democracy? Not likely. That is not decisive evidence, naturally, but it is suggestive in connection with other things.
The next point, logically, is at 32c, where Socrates relates his experience under the Thirty Tyrants. An enemy of the democracy, and a sympathizer of the Spartans, should have been in seventh heaven after Sparta had actually conquered Athens and installed its sympathizers. But Socrates didn't want to have anything to do with that government and crossed them to the extent that his life might have been in danger if they had not been overthrown. That complements the positive impression from the side of Chaerephon. The logically final point, however, occurs previously at 32b, where Socrates relates his actual clash with the power of the Assembly, over the question of trying the admirals from the battle of Arginusae. Socrates was the only one of the prytanes (in office through lot) to refuse to do anything contrary to the laws (parà toùs nómous). In his view it was his duty to stand for the law and for justice despite the wishes of the Assembly. So he did so, at risk of prosecution or death.
To foil the will of the Assembly doesn't sound very democratic, but then the will of the Assembly was often arbitrary and vicious. The will of the Assembly discredited the very idea of democracy for centuries. In Federalist Paper #10, James Madison comments on the problem of democracy to be overcome:
From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert results from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.
Socrates himself was among the original type of "obnoxious individual" against whom a pure democracy may turn. A fine statement about the danger of the tyranny of the majority comes from Alexis de Tocqueville:
If it be admitted that a man, possessing absolute power, may misuse that power by wronging his adversaries, why should a majority not be liable to the same reproach? Men are not apt to change their characters by agglomeration; nor does their patience in the presence of obstacles increase with the consciousness of their strength. And for these reasons I can never willingly invest any number of my fellow creatures with that unlimited authority which I should refuse to any one of them.
James Fenimore Cooper, the author of classic American novels like The Last of the Mohicans, said in his political statement, The American Democrat, in 1838:
The common axiom of democracies, however, which says that "the majority must rule," is to be received with many limitations. Were the majority of a country to rule without restraint, it is probable as much injustice and oppression would follow, as are found under the dominion of one.
By James Madison's day some notion of a workable democracy returned only with an eye to the very kind of criticism that Socrates implies in the Apology: that even the Will of the People must be subject to the Rule of Law. That is already implicit in the idea of democracy as Thucydides (in The Peloponnesian War) expresses it in the funeral oration delivered by the great Athenian leader Pericles:
We are free and tolerant in our private lives; but in public affairs we keep to the law. This is because it commands our deep respect.
We give our obedience to those whom we put in positions of authority, and we obey the laws themselves, especially those which are for the protection of the oppressed, and those unwritten laws which it is an acknowledged shame to break.
The rule of law means that it is not left to the discretion of those in executive power to decide what actions to approve and what actions to condemn. They must follow the standards laid down in the law. Just as important, however, the rule of law does not mean that any actions can be approved or condemned just because some legislative authority happens to pass a law about them. Pericles's reference to "unwritten laws" is consistent with the views of John Locke (The Second Treatise of Civil Government), Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and even Martin Luther King Jr. [1] that the fundamental basis of positive law is the unwritten natural law dictated by reason itself (ultimately by God, as far as they were concerned), and that the fundamental protection of the individual is not in some positive grant of rights by legislative authority but in the natural rights which are part of the unwritten natural law. Thus, the Ninth Amendment of the United States Constitution says:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
The "others" are clearly natural rights. Yet it is now common for people, even lawyers and judges, to "deny or disparage" certain rights, like privacy, just because they are not mentioned in the Constitution. Perhaps such people would do well to actually read the Bill of Rights.
Those who "disparage" unwritten laws and rights often defend the rule of law as a principle of blind obedience; and they use it to argue that people must obey written laws whether they agree with them or not [2]. Indeed, that conception of the rule of law would have forbidden the American Revolution, or any acts of civil disobedience--which were justified by Martin Luther King by quoting St. Augustine that, "An unjust law is no law at all." But how, one might ask, can people just go around judging for themselves whether a law is just or not? The answer is that they have to, and that is the principle of freedom of conscience--as when Socrates tells the jury, "I will obey the god rather than you," or when Martin Luther himself told the Imperial Diet and the Emperor Charles V at Worms in 1521, "Here I stand; I can do no other; God help me!" ("Hier stände ich, ich kann nicht andres, so hilf ich Gott!"). The rule of law is not contrary to that; for the rule of law is not an injunction to blind obedience.
To be "ruled by laws, not by men," is the old expression. Now, American colonies declaring independence, or a jury nullifying a law to find a defendant innocent, or a protester practicing civil disobedience, are not engaged in ruling. Instead, they are doing the precise opposite: negating the instructions and actions of government. The principle of the rule of law does the same kind of thing, for it means that the authority and power of government and of individuals in office is limited to those spheres, those issues, and those actions that are specified by the law. The rule of law denies to government unlimited or discretionary power and authority. The rule of law is thus part of a system of checks and balances to prevent dictatorship and despotism. Civil disobedience, etc. is simply to say that the authority of government has gone too far and must be further limited.
Whether it is properly understood or not, much talk about democracy holds the rule of law in contempt, either because it contravenes the Will of the People or because it also denies power to those who would rule according to Jean Jacques Rousseau's idea of the "General Will": The "General Will" of the people is what they would want if they knew what was best for themselves. Such a theory could justify, and has justified, the worst tyranny, like the Soviet Union, as in fact a "democracy." It is a theory implicit in Marx's notion of "false consciousness": that people have "false" desires and don't really know what they want--but we can know for them. Karl Popper (in The Open Society and Its Enemies) traces all that sort of thing to Plato: the problem Plato has with democracy in the Republic is not the absence of the rule of law but just the fact that the wrong people are in power--people without the proper virtues. With the philosophers in power, ex hypothese, the wise will rule--although Plato himself, like Socrates, elsewhere (as in the Symposium) defines the philosophers as those who are not wise but are simply aware of that.
The rule of law represents one aspect of living with limited knowledge, the ouk oîda, "I do not know," of Socrates, that neither the People nor selected rulers can be trusted to know the good well enough to rule at their discretion or to abridge the principles and rights that exist in natural law and can be set down in fundamental law like the Bill of Rights. Without hoi sophoí, "the wise," no one can be trusted with too much power. The rule of law is the shield of every honest person against those who want to claim superior power out of their supposed superior understanding. That was the principle of the Constitution, though, as Jefferson anticipated, it has been steadily eroded by the natural power-seeking of government, the craven accommodations of the courts, and the constant quest of those pursuing their own interests through the authority, agency, and coercion of government.
Thus, Socrates may be seen not merely as a partisan of democracy, but as a partisan of a proper and true democracy, a constitutional democracy, where the People and the government cannot be trusted with absolute and arbitrary authority any more than a king or dictator can be. Such a democracy is a compromise and is accepted, not because the majority can be always trusted to be morally superior, but because it may be less susceptible to abuse than other forms of government. Thus Winston Churchill said that democracy is the "worst form of government," just better than all the others. Churchill echoes an earlier statement by James Fenimore Cooper again, that "We do not adopt the popular polity because it is perfect, but because it is less imperfect than any other." That, indeed, is the democracy of Locke, Jefferson, and Madison: the Liberal Democracy of the 19th century. But it is not democracy as many people refer to it today. If the Law is whatever some court (even the Supreme Court) happens to interpret it to be, then none of us can rely on it not to be interpreted away as a protection. This is much of what has happened, just as Thomas Jefferson anticipated that the Supreme Court, although a check on the other branches of the federal government, would not impose a check on the federal government as a whole, to which the Court itself belongs. That is why the federal government, with zero authority from the enumerated powers of the Constitution (violating the Tenth Amendment), can seize your house (violating the Eighth Amendment) and put you in jail just for growing a marijuana plant in your yard--because, I suppose, it is bad for you. This would have appalled and astonished most Americans living before this century. It would have outraged the likes of Jefferson. It is greater tyranny than King George III ever dared exercise. And it is justified, not by the principles of Liberal Democracy, but by the principles of Social Democracy: which abridges freedom for the purpose of the "social good," as that is determined, naturally, through political power and the majority.
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The Free Market
The Socratic principle of the limitation of our knowledge may also be seen as a fundamental ground for capitalism and the functioning of the free market as understood by Ludwig von Mises (Socialism), F.A. Hayek (The Road to Serfdom and The Fatal Conceit), and, currently, Milton Friedman (Free to Choose) and Thomas Sowell (Knowledge and Decisions, Markets and Minorities, Race and Culture, etc.). One of the basic principles of all of them--a basic principle of the whole Austrian School of economics--is that individuals, or special organizations, cannot have all the knowledge that would be necessary to calculate the value, as a relationship of supply and demand, and so the proper prices, of things in the market. There is just too much to know for it to be rapidly acquired and continually updated, especially when demand depends on what people want, and this changes and generally cannot be known at all until people actually spend their money. Only the free market itself can serve to coordinate the dispersed knowledge of multitudes of producers and consumers into the determination of a market clearing price. Anything else will not clear the market--i.e. it will produce surpluses (e.g. unemployment--a surplus of labor) or shortages (e.g. rental housing in New York City under rent control)--waste and inefficiency.
Thus, in 1920 von Mises began to argue that, since the knowledge of the needs, desires, and abilities of people is too vast to acquire, and so, since thereby prices cannot be calculated, an economy without a free market, i.e. socialism, cannot succeed. This is a lesson well illustrated by the Soviet block states that boasted for decades about the rationality and efficiency of their "planned" economies. They were neither rational nor efficient--relying instead on Marxist pseudo-science bolstered by tyranny. In fact they were almost unbelievably wasteful and inefficient, leaving shortages of nearly everything, poor quality, etc. Equally important to economic calculation is the fact that anybody anywhere can dream up some new innovation that changes production and the quality of life. That is radically non-predictable and led Karl Popper to contend that there cannot be a predictive "science" of history, or of science itself, the way Hegel or Marx wanted. Today the theory of chaotic events puts the stamp of mathematical description on non-predictiveness. But all this is a lesson poorly learned by many still pushing "industrial policy" and economic planning in the West.
Without a free market, somebody else must decide what kinds of good things will be produced for us. Even if there is some way for us to communicate our desires to them, that is not good enough. They will decide whether our desires are "socially worthy" of being satisfied. The same goes for new products. The entrepreneur who proposes a new product must run the gamut of bureaucrats who will decide whether the product is worthy of being produced. In the Soviet Union, the result of a setup like that was that what people wanted was pretty much irrelevant. There were shortages even of things that were regarded by one and all as necessities. And nothing new ever got produced. Even technological innovations in production that were regarded by higher authorities as brilliant and necessary often took decades to be implemented, if ever. In the free market, an entrepreneur produces a new product without asking anyone's permission, offers it on the market, and then sees if people will buy it. What people then want is evident in what gets bought. Audio cassette tapes, CD's, and VHS machines get bought; Edsels, 8-Track tapes, and Beta machines don't. People go see Terminator II, Jurassic Park, and The Fugitive; they don't go see Super Mario Brothers or The Last Action Hero. The result of this is a system damned as "commercialism" by the authoritarian Left and as "permissiveness" by the authoritarian Right: Each, of course, regards the things that people are willing to buy as unworthy. What they want is the power to prohibit people from producing what might be wanted and from buying what is wanted. Each see people as victims either of false consciousness produced by advertising (the Left) or simply of moral depravity, of whatever source (the Right).
At the same time each might claim to be implementing the democratic will of the people. Sometimes they are. Often they are not. Even if they are, their prohibitions are usually an example of the tyranny of the majority. A majority of Americans believe that mood or mind altering drugs are unworthy. Because it took more than a century for the clear understanding of the role of American government to be eroded, it was not until 1914 that any drugs were actually prohibited (opium first); but since then it has gradually come to be the case that every drug is prohibited until it is approved by the FDA--which now wants to extend its power to vitamins as well. And if you are found in unauthorized possession of a "controlled substance," you can be put in prison, your property seized, and your life deliberately ruined. All to persuade you either that such drugs are unworthy or that you don't have the right to decide on your own. But force and terror have never been persuasive as arguments--especially when they involve blatant violations of the Constitution as any literate person with a copy of it can discover.
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Science
Aristotle reasoned that not everything can be proven. If we ask that everything be proven, then nothing would ever get proven, since we can demand a new proof for each answer we can give. But if not everything can be proven, then there must be some propositions that don't need to be proven. Those propositions are called, by definition, the "first principles of demonstration." The classic example of first principles of demonstration are the axioms of geometry. The question then is, How are first principles known to be true? How are they verified? That is the "Problem of First Principles." Aristotle thought that first principles are self-evident: He said that their truth is intuitively known through noûs, "mind". But to get to the point where we can understand first principles and get that intuitive insight, Aristotle thought that we relied on experience and used the logic of induction: An inductive inference is the generalization that results from counting individual objects or events. The "Problem of Induction" is the realization that we can never know how many individuals or events we need to count before we are justified in making the generalization. That is why Aristotle introduced noûs; for as soon as we reach the point where first principles are seen to be self-evident, then it is no longer necessary to answer the Problem of Induction.
Francis Bacon believed that empirical science uses induction, and his views influenced everyone's view of science until this century. But Bacon didn't believe in self-evident first principles and couldn't answer the objection that induction never proves anything. Nor could anybody else. Aristotle, of course, understood the difficulty that would create, but it finally wasn't until David Hume that the point was really driven home in modern philosophy. Finally, in The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Karl Popper shattered the conundra of verification and induction by just dismissing them. Induction never had proven anything. Aristotle's problem of verifying first principles is resolved by Popper with the observation that deductive arguments can go in two directions: ponendo ponens ["affirming by affirming": if P implies Q, and P is true, then Q is true] held out the mirage of verification, but a deductive argument can also use tollendo tollens ["denying by denying": if P implies Q, and Q is not true, then P is not true], which means that premises can be falsified even if they cannot be verified [3]. Replacing verification with falsification explains many peculiarities in the history of science and is, indeed, the "logic of scientific discovery," although people like Thomas Kuhn, in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, have muddied the waters with other issues (some of them legitimate, some not).
In relation to the Apology, the matter of interest is how Socratic Method uses falsification. The form of Socratic discourse is that the interlocutor cities belief X (e.g. Euthyphro, that the pious is what is loved by gods). Socrates then asks if the interlocutor also happens to believe Y (e.g. Euthyphro, that the gods fight among themselves). With assent, Socrates then leads the interlocutor through to agreement that Y implies not-X (that the pious is both loved by the gods and hated by them). The interlocutor then must decide whether he prefers X or Y. That doesn't prove anything, but one or the other is falsified: just as in science a falsifying observation may be itself rejected instead of the theory it discredits. Although Y often has more prima facie credibility, the heat of the argument is liable to lead the interlocutor into rejecting Y for the sake of maintaining their argument for X. Socrates then, of course, finds belief Z, which also implies not-X. After enough of that, X starts looking pretty bad; and the bystanders and readers, at least, are in no doubt about the outcome of the examination.
Why it was always possible to find another belief that would imply not-X is a good question. The late Plato and Socrates scholar Gregory Vlastos thought that Socrates already believed, and Plato certainly believed, that it was because not only did everyone already know the truth, but that they were really unable to consistently function in life without it. The principle of inquiry, then, was that only the truth allows for a completely consistent system of belief. That is not because of the inherent logical qualities of the beliefs (as though they were all self-evidently true), but just because people will always use them. As Hume said, whatever our philosophical doubts, we leave the room by the door and not by the window--the same Hume who ruled out, not just miracles, but also free will and chance because he thought they all violated the same principle of causality that he so famously doubted. That still, in sense, doesn't prove anything positive, but it does give Socrates, and us, an endless opportunity to pursue the inquiry.
Socratic Method thus shares the logic of falsification with Popper's philosophy of science and thereby avoids the pitfalls that Aristotle encountered after he formulated the theory of deduction and faced the problem of first principles and of induction. Both Socrates and Popper are left in a certain condition of ignorance because the weeding process of falsification never leaves us in a final and absolute cognitive state: we always may discover some inconsistency (or some observation) that will require us to sort things out again. Our ignorance, however, may be of a peculiar kind. We may actually know something that is true, but the limitation will be in our understanding of it. Galileo was in a position to know that the sun was a star, but his understanding of what a star was still was most rudimentary. Isaac Newton had a theory of gravity that still works just fine for moderate velocities and masses--the force of gravity still declines as the square of the distance--but Einstein provided a deeper theory that encompassed and explained more. When it comes to matters of value that scientific method cannot touch, Plato had a theory of Recollection to explain our access to knowledge apart from experience, and his theory was actually true in the sense that we do have access to knowledge apart from experience; but Immanuel Kant ultimately provides a much deeper, more subtle, and less metaphysically speculative theory that does the same thing.
Much controversy continues over Socrates's attitude towards democracy. I.F. Stone, embarrassed that the first democracy should have killed a man for exercising freedom of speech and freedom of religion, attempted to justify this by going after Socrates as an enemy of democracy (The Trial of Socrates); but since Stone was busy defending Josef Stalin back in the Thirties, and even wrote a book in 1952, the Hidden History of the Korean War, defending the communist invasion of South Korea, his own democratic credentials are suspect. [Now we know, indeed, that Stone had dealings with the KGB, though how far it went, whether he was a paid agent of the Soviet Union, is unclear.] Indeed, an evaluation of Socrates essentially depends on the question of what democracy is supposed to be. That can be answered in due course.
There are three places in the Apology that provide evidence about Socrates's attitude towards the democracy in Athens. The first is at 20e, where Socrates relates the story of Chaerephon asking Delphi if anyone was wiser than Socrates. He says that Chaerephon was his friend and the friend of many of the jury, sharing their exile and their return. Exile and return? Well, of course, the exile of the democrats from Athens, after the fall of the city in 404, and during the Spartan occupation and the regime of the Thirty Tyrants. That makes Chaerephon sound like a pretty serious partisan of the democracy. Would such a one think of Socrates as the wisest man, to the point of asking Delphi about it, if Socrates were conspicuously against the democracy? Not likely. That is not decisive evidence, naturally, but it is suggestive in connection with other things.
The next point, logically, is at 32c, where Socrates relates his experience under the Thirty Tyrants. An enemy of the democracy, and a sympathizer of the Spartans, should have been in seventh heaven after Sparta had actually conquered Athens and installed its sympathizers. But Socrates didn't want to have anything to do with that government and crossed them to the extent that his life might have been in danger if they had not been overthrown. That complements the positive impression from the side of Chaerephon. The logically final point, however, occurs previously at 32b, where Socrates relates his actual clash with the power of the Assembly, over the question of trying the admirals from the battle of Arginusae. Socrates was the only one of the prytanes (in office through lot) to refuse to do anything contrary to the laws (parà toùs nómous). In his view it was his duty to stand for the law and for justice despite the wishes of the Assembly. So he did so, at risk of prosecution or death.
To foil the will of the Assembly doesn't sound very democratic, but then the will of the Assembly was often arbitrary and vicious. The will of the Assembly discredited the very idea of democracy for centuries. In Federalist Paper #10, James Madison comments on the problem of democracy to be overcome:
From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert results from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.
Socrates himself was among the original type of "obnoxious individual" against whom a pure democracy may turn. A fine statement about the danger of the tyranny of the majority comes from Alexis de Tocqueville:
If it be admitted that a man, possessing absolute power, may misuse that power by wronging his adversaries, why should a majority not be liable to the same reproach? Men are not apt to change their characters by agglomeration; nor does their patience in the presence of obstacles increase with the consciousness of their strength. And for these reasons I can never willingly invest any number of my fellow creatures with that unlimited authority which I should refuse to any one of them.
James Fenimore Cooper, the author of classic American novels like The Last of the Mohicans, said in his political statement, The American Democrat, in 1838:
The common axiom of democracies, however, which says that "the majority must rule," is to be received with many limitations. Were the majority of a country to rule without restraint, it is probable as much injustice and oppression would follow, as are found under the dominion of one.
By James Madison's day some notion of a workable democracy returned only with an eye to the very kind of criticism that Socrates implies in the Apology: that even the Will of the People must be subject to the Rule of Law. That is already implicit in the idea of democracy as Thucydides (in The Peloponnesian War) expresses it in the funeral oration delivered by the great Athenian leader Pericles:
We are free and tolerant in our private lives; but in public affairs we keep to the law. This is because it commands our deep respect.
We give our obedience to those whom we put in positions of authority, and we obey the laws themselves, especially those which are for the protection of the oppressed, and those unwritten laws which it is an acknowledged shame to break.
The rule of law means that it is not left to the discretion of those in executive power to decide what actions to approve and what actions to condemn. They must follow the standards laid down in the law. Just as important, however, the rule of law does not mean that any actions can be approved or condemned just because some legislative authority happens to pass a law about them. Pericles's reference to "unwritten laws" is consistent with the views of John Locke (The Second Treatise of Civil Government), Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and even Martin Luther King Jr. [1] that the fundamental basis of positive law is the unwritten natural law dictated by reason itself (ultimately by God, as far as they were concerned), and that the fundamental protection of the individual is not in some positive grant of rights by legislative authority but in the natural rights which are part of the unwritten natural law. Thus, the Ninth Amendment of the United States Constitution says:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
The "others" are clearly natural rights. Yet it is now common for people, even lawyers and judges, to "deny or disparage" certain rights, like privacy, just because they are not mentioned in the Constitution. Perhaps such people would do well to actually read the Bill of Rights.
Those who "disparage" unwritten laws and rights often defend the rule of law as a principle of blind obedience; and they use it to argue that people must obey written laws whether they agree with them or not [2]. Indeed, that conception of the rule of law would have forbidden the American Revolution, or any acts of civil disobedience--which were justified by Martin Luther King by quoting St. Augustine that, "An unjust law is no law at all." But how, one might ask, can people just go around judging for themselves whether a law is just or not? The answer is that they have to, and that is the principle of freedom of conscience--as when Socrates tells the jury, "I will obey the god rather than you," or when Martin Luther himself told the Imperial Diet and the Emperor Charles V at Worms in 1521, "Here I stand; I can do no other; God help me!" ("Hier stände ich, ich kann nicht andres, so hilf ich Gott!"). The rule of law is not contrary to that; for the rule of law is not an injunction to blind obedience.
To be "ruled by laws, not by men," is the old expression. Now, American colonies declaring independence, or a jury nullifying a law to find a defendant innocent, or a protester practicing civil disobedience, are not engaged in ruling. Instead, they are doing the precise opposite: negating the instructions and actions of government. The principle of the rule of law does the same kind of thing, for it means that the authority and power of government and of individuals in office is limited to those spheres, those issues, and those actions that are specified by the law. The rule of law denies to government unlimited or discretionary power and authority. The rule of law is thus part of a system of checks and balances to prevent dictatorship and despotism. Civil disobedience, etc. is simply to say that the authority of government has gone too far and must be further limited.
Whether it is properly understood or not, much talk about democracy holds the rule of law in contempt, either because it contravenes the Will of the People or because it also denies power to those who would rule according to Jean Jacques Rousseau's idea of the "General Will": The "General Will" of the people is what they would want if they knew what was best for themselves. Such a theory could justify, and has justified, the worst tyranny, like the Soviet Union, as in fact a "democracy." It is a theory implicit in Marx's notion of "false consciousness": that people have "false" desires and don't really know what they want--but we can know for them. Karl Popper (in The Open Society and Its Enemies) traces all that sort of thing to Plato: the problem Plato has with democracy in the Republic is not the absence of the rule of law but just the fact that the wrong people are in power--people without the proper virtues. With the philosophers in power, ex hypothese, the wise will rule--although Plato himself, like Socrates, elsewhere (as in the Symposium) defines the philosophers as those who are not wise but are simply aware of that.
The rule of law represents one aspect of living with limited knowledge, the ouk oîda, "I do not know," of Socrates, that neither the People nor selected rulers can be trusted to know the good well enough to rule at their discretion or to abridge the principles and rights that exist in natural law and can be set down in fundamental law like the Bill of Rights. Without hoi sophoí, "the wise," no one can be trusted with too much power. The rule of law is the shield of every honest person against those who want to claim superior power out of their supposed superior understanding. That was the principle of the Constitution, though, as Jefferson anticipated, it has been steadily eroded by the natural power-seeking of government, the craven accommodations of the courts, and the constant quest of those pursuing their own interests through the authority, agency, and coercion of government.
Thus, Socrates may be seen not merely as a partisan of democracy, but as a partisan of a proper and true democracy, a constitutional democracy, where the People and the government cannot be trusted with absolute and arbitrary authority any more than a king or dictator can be. Such a democracy is a compromise and is accepted, not because the majority can be always trusted to be morally superior, but because it may be less susceptible to abuse than other forms of government. Thus Winston Churchill said that democracy is the "worst form of government," just better than all the others. Churchill echoes an earlier statement by James Fenimore Cooper again, that "We do not adopt the popular polity because it is perfect, but because it is less imperfect than any other." That, indeed, is the democracy of Locke, Jefferson, and Madison: the Liberal Democracy of the 19th century. But it is not democracy as many people refer to it today. If the Law is whatever some court (even the Supreme Court) happens to interpret it to be, then none of us can rely on it not to be interpreted away as a protection. This is much of what has happened, just as Thomas Jefferson anticipated that the Supreme Court, although a check on the other branches of the federal government, would not impose a check on the federal government as a whole, to which the Court itself belongs. That is why the federal government, with zero authority from the enumerated powers of the Constitution (violating the Tenth Amendment), can seize your house (violating the Eighth Amendment) and put you in jail just for growing a marijuana plant in your yard--because, I suppose, it is bad for you. This would have appalled and astonished most Americans living before this century. It would have outraged the likes of Jefferson. It is greater tyranny than King George III ever dared exercise. And it is justified, not by the principles of Liberal Democracy, but by the principles of Social Democracy: which abridges freedom for the purpose of the "social good," as that is determined, naturally, through political power and the majority.
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The Free Market
The Socratic principle of the limitation of our knowledge may also be seen as a fundamental ground for capitalism and the functioning of the free market as understood by Ludwig von Mises (Socialism), F.A. Hayek (The Road to Serfdom and The Fatal Conceit), and, currently, Milton Friedman (Free to Choose) and Thomas Sowell (Knowledge and Decisions, Markets and Minorities, Race and Culture, etc.). One of the basic principles of all of them--a basic principle of the whole Austrian School of economics--is that individuals, or special organizations, cannot have all the knowledge that would be necessary to calculate the value, as a relationship of supply and demand, and so the proper prices, of things in the market. There is just too much to know for it to be rapidly acquired and continually updated, especially when demand depends on what people want, and this changes and generally cannot be known at all until people actually spend their money. Only the free market itself can serve to coordinate the dispersed knowledge of multitudes of producers and consumers into the determination of a market clearing price. Anything else will not clear the market--i.e. it will produce surpluses (e.g. unemployment--a surplus of labor) or shortages (e.g. rental housing in New York City under rent control)--waste and inefficiency.
Thus, in 1920 von Mises began to argue that, since the knowledge of the needs, desires, and abilities of people is too vast to acquire, and so, since thereby prices cannot be calculated, an economy without a free market, i.e. socialism, cannot succeed. This is a lesson well illustrated by the Soviet block states that boasted for decades about the rationality and efficiency of their "planned" economies. They were neither rational nor efficient--relying instead on Marxist pseudo-science bolstered by tyranny. In fact they were almost unbelievably wasteful and inefficient, leaving shortages of nearly everything, poor quality, etc. Equally important to economic calculation is the fact that anybody anywhere can dream up some new innovation that changes production and the quality of life. That is radically non-predictable and led Karl Popper to contend that there cannot be a predictive "science" of history, or of science itself, the way Hegel or Marx wanted. Today the theory of chaotic events puts the stamp of mathematical description on non-predictiveness. But all this is a lesson poorly learned by many still pushing "industrial policy" and economic planning in the West.
Without a free market, somebody else must decide what kinds of good things will be produced for us. Even if there is some way for us to communicate our desires to them, that is not good enough. They will decide whether our desires are "socially worthy" of being satisfied. The same goes for new products. The entrepreneur who proposes a new product must run the gamut of bureaucrats who will decide whether the product is worthy of being produced. In the Soviet Union, the result of a setup like that was that what people wanted was pretty much irrelevant. There were shortages even of things that were regarded by one and all as necessities. And nothing new ever got produced. Even technological innovations in production that were regarded by higher authorities as brilliant and necessary often took decades to be implemented, if ever. In the free market, an entrepreneur produces a new product without asking anyone's permission, offers it on the market, and then sees if people will buy it. What people then want is evident in what gets bought. Audio cassette tapes, CD's, and VHS machines get bought; Edsels, 8-Track tapes, and Beta machines don't. People go see Terminator II, Jurassic Park, and The Fugitive; they don't go see Super Mario Brothers or The Last Action Hero. The result of this is a system damned as "commercialism" by the authoritarian Left and as "permissiveness" by the authoritarian Right: Each, of course, regards the things that people are willing to buy as unworthy. What they want is the power to prohibit people from producing what might be wanted and from buying what is wanted. Each see people as victims either of false consciousness produced by advertising (the Left) or simply of moral depravity, of whatever source (the Right).
At the same time each might claim to be implementing the democratic will of the people. Sometimes they are. Often they are not. Even if they are, their prohibitions are usually an example of the tyranny of the majority. A majority of Americans believe that mood or mind altering drugs are unworthy. Because it took more than a century for the clear understanding of the role of American government to be eroded, it was not until 1914 that any drugs were actually prohibited (opium first); but since then it has gradually come to be the case that every drug is prohibited until it is approved by the FDA--which now wants to extend its power to vitamins as well. And if you are found in unauthorized possession of a "controlled substance," you can be put in prison, your property seized, and your life deliberately ruined. All to persuade you either that such drugs are unworthy or that you don't have the right to decide on your own. But force and terror have never been persuasive as arguments--especially when they involve blatant violations of the Constitution as any literate person with a copy of it can discover.
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Science
Aristotle reasoned that not everything can be proven. If we ask that everything be proven, then nothing would ever get proven, since we can demand a new proof for each answer we can give. But if not everything can be proven, then there must be some propositions that don't need to be proven. Those propositions are called, by definition, the "first principles of demonstration." The classic example of first principles of demonstration are the axioms of geometry. The question then is, How are first principles known to be true? How are they verified? That is the "Problem of First Principles." Aristotle thought that first principles are self-evident: He said that their truth is intuitively known through noûs, "mind". But to get to the point where we can understand first principles and get that intuitive insight, Aristotle thought that we relied on experience and used the logic of induction: An inductive inference is the generalization that results from counting individual objects or events. The "Problem of Induction" is the realization that we can never know how many individuals or events we need to count before we are justified in making the generalization. That is why Aristotle introduced noûs; for as soon as we reach the point where first principles are seen to be self-evident, then it is no longer necessary to answer the Problem of Induction.
Francis Bacon believed that empirical science uses induction, and his views influenced everyone's view of science until this century. But Bacon didn't believe in self-evident first principles and couldn't answer the objection that induction never proves anything. Nor could anybody else. Aristotle, of course, understood the difficulty that would create, but it finally wasn't until David Hume that the point was really driven home in modern philosophy. Finally, in The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Karl Popper shattered the conundra of verification and induction by just dismissing them. Induction never had proven anything. Aristotle's problem of verifying first principles is resolved by Popper with the observation that deductive arguments can go in two directions: ponendo ponens ["affirming by affirming": if P implies Q, and P is true, then Q is true] held out the mirage of verification, but a deductive argument can also use tollendo tollens ["denying by denying": if P implies Q, and Q is not true, then P is not true], which means that premises can be falsified even if they cannot be verified [3]. Replacing verification with falsification explains many peculiarities in the history of science and is, indeed, the "logic of scientific discovery," although people like Thomas Kuhn, in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, have muddied the waters with other issues (some of them legitimate, some not).
In relation to the Apology, the matter of interest is how Socratic Method uses falsification. The form of Socratic discourse is that the interlocutor cities belief X (e.g. Euthyphro, that the pious is what is loved by gods). Socrates then asks if the interlocutor also happens to believe Y (e.g. Euthyphro, that the gods fight among themselves). With assent, Socrates then leads the interlocutor through to agreement that Y implies not-X (that the pious is both loved by the gods and hated by them). The interlocutor then must decide whether he prefers X or Y. That doesn't prove anything, but one or the other is falsified: just as in science a falsifying observation may be itself rejected instead of the theory it discredits. Although Y often has more prima facie credibility, the heat of the argument is liable to lead the interlocutor into rejecting Y for the sake of maintaining their argument for X. Socrates then, of course, finds belief Z, which also implies not-X. After enough of that, X starts looking pretty bad; and the bystanders and readers, at least, are in no doubt about the outcome of the examination.
Why it was always possible to find another belief that would imply not-X is a good question. The late Plato and Socrates scholar Gregory Vlastos thought that Socrates already believed, and Plato certainly believed, that it was because not only did everyone already know the truth, but that they were really unable to consistently function in life without it. The principle of inquiry, then, was that only the truth allows for a completely consistent system of belief. That is not because of the inherent logical qualities of the beliefs (as though they were all self-evidently true), but just because people will always use them. As Hume said, whatever our philosophical doubts, we leave the room by the door and not by the window--the same Hume who ruled out, not just miracles, but also free will and chance because he thought they all violated the same principle of causality that he so famously doubted. That still, in sense, doesn't prove anything positive, but it does give Socrates, and us, an endless opportunity to pursue the inquiry.
Socratic Method thus shares the logic of falsification with Popper's philosophy of science and thereby avoids the pitfalls that Aristotle encountered after he formulated the theory of deduction and faced the problem of first principles and of induction. Both Socrates and Popper are left in a certain condition of ignorance because the weeding process of falsification never leaves us in a final and absolute cognitive state: we always may discover some inconsistency (or some observation) that will require us to sort things out again. Our ignorance, however, may be of a peculiar kind. We may actually know something that is true, but the limitation will be in our understanding of it. Galileo was in a position to know that the sun was a star, but his understanding of what a star was still was most rudimentary. Isaac Newton had a theory of gravity that still works just fine for moderate velocities and masses--the force of gravity still declines as the square of the distance--but Einstein provided a deeper theory that encompassed and explained more. When it comes to matters of value that scientific method cannot touch, Plato had a theory of Recollection to explain our access to knowledge apart from experience, and his theory was actually true in the sense that we do have access to knowledge apart from experience; but Immanuel Kant ultimately provides a much deeper, more subtle, and less metaphysically speculative theory that does the same thing.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
EXPOSITION ON WITTGENSTEIN'S LANGUAGE THEORY
INTRODUCTION
The quest to provide an acceptable method through which reality could be known has been one of the contentions of some philosophers for several centuries. This dates back to the renaissance era after philosophy was liberated from the hands of theology, and science took the centre stage. The foremost contending philosophers during this period were Francis Bacon and Galileo Galilei. Bacon believed strongly on the power of knowledge, because it is through it that man can conquer and dominate. But he commended the best way upon which this task can be achieved. “Bacon strongly believes … that … to be able to understand and control nature … we must employ the inductive method which is based on empirical observation of particular thing.” 1 This is because, experience is all there is for there to be an objective knowledge of reality.
Galileo took a contrary opinion on this issue of the knowledge of reality. He based his method on mathematics and deduction. This, for him, is the only way reality could be known. Owing to the high-handedness of the view of Bacon and Galileo, philosophy ended up in skepticism. This situation gave birth to Rene Descartes’ foundationalism. The basis for his foundationalism was to find certainty for philosophy. This task became paramount because the philosophical presupposition of science of his day was apparently built on shaky foundation. 2
Although Descartes was not a skeptic, but he used skepticism as a starting point so as to ascertain which method could guarantee certainty. “Hence, his strategy for finding certainty could be called methodological skepticism. Descartes’ method was to bathe everyone of his beliefs in an acid bath of doubt to see if any survived” 3 Through his method of doubt Descartes found succour on mathematical-deductive method. The method of mathematics was basically indubitable unlike the process of inductive and experience which were merely probable and deceptive. Even though he accepted mathematical method, he still subjected it to further skeptical scrutiny. This was because “Descartes … hoped to use this method (of doubt) to distinguish beliefs that were certain from those that could be doubted.” 4
In the course of doubting everything, Descartes found out he could not doubt that he was doubting. To doubt, for him was to think, and to think one must existence. At this juncture, Descartes believed that he has arrived at the only thing which is certain, and that is, that he exist – “ Cogito ergo sum – I think therefore I am.” Through this philosophical rigour, Descartes believed so much in the powers of reason because through reason reality can be objectively known. Owing to the emphasis on reason over sense experience, Descartes philosophy and rationalism in general was swallowed up by dogmatism.
Edmund Husserl, overwhelmed by mathematics like his predecessor (Descartes) tried to put life once again on the quest for rigorous philosophy. Owing to the fact that Descartes’ philosophy missed the mark by only laying emphasis on metaphysics, while relegating concrete reality to the background, Husserl felt that he can put aright the flaws made by the Cartesian Foundationalism. So, in the course to establishing a solid foundation for philosophy, where objectivity of reality and philosophical truth could be sought in a clear and distinct ground, as in the methods of mathematics, Husserl formulated a method, which he felt could achieve this. This method was what he referred to as ‘phenomenology.’
Husserl maintains, especially in his early work and his master-piece on phenomenology called Ideen, that only the phenomenological approach with its specific method of bracketing, can give certitude to philosophical inquiry. Phenomenology is the guarantee to the scientificity of ontology. 5
The basic task of phenomenology, according to Husserl, was to get at reality beginning from the concrete reality. As a way of definition, Omoregbe defined Husserl’s phenomenology as “that whose aim is simply to analyze and describe experience exactly as it occurs without the prejudice of any prior assumption or presupposition. Thus the objects of phenomenology are essences understood as the meaning of a given fact of experience.” 6 In order to have a clear and distinct knowledge of reality, Husserl divided his phenomenological method into three, namely; phenomenological epoche, Eidetic reduction and transcendental reduction. In phenomenological epoche, Husserl believed that to get at the essence of reality, we must bracket all our presuppositions, beliefs and assumptions about the object which we want to know. By eidetic reduction, Husserl means the essence if a thing. At the level of phenomenological reduction, the inquirer becomes conscious of the real and essential features of the object of investigation. At the point of transcendental reduction, the world and all the objects in it now derive their existence and meaning from the transcendental ego.
As a transcendental ego, I have become a pure observer of myself …. In it I become the disinterested spectator of my natural and worldly ego and its life …. I am detached in as much as I suspend all worldly interests …. The transcendental spectator places himself above himself, and sees himself as the previously world – immersed ego. 7
In the course of investigating existential reality in a presuppositionless manner, and his claim that the transcendental reduction was the highest stage upon which the essence of reality could be known in its clarity and certainty, Husserl led philosophy into transcendental idealism.8 Owing to the inability of his predecessors to really establish a solid ground upon which philosophy could be placed, Wittgenstein (influenced with the philosophical postulations of Logical atomism of Russell and Frege) felt that the best way upon which philosophy could be carried out is on an analytic grounds, because for him, the problems which philosophy has encountered for several centuries are nothing but grammatical problems. The philosophical theories which he expounded thus, in order to advance his philosophical claims, were his Picture and Game theories, which are contained in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations, respectively.
WITTGENSTEIN’S BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
“Brooding, brilliant, and enigmatic Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein …, arguably the most influential and controversial philosopher of the contemporary period,” 9 was born into the family of Karl and Leopoldine Wittgenstein on April 26th , 1889 in Vienna, Austria. He was the youngest of the eight children of his parents, and of his four brothers, three committed suicide.
Wittgenstein’s family was one of the wealthiest families in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father, who was a Jew by birth and was later converted into protestanism, was one of the most successful businessmen in iron and steel industry. Owing to the influential and affluent nature of the family, the Wittgenstein’s home attracted people of culture, especially musicians, including the composer Johannes Brahms, who was a friend to the family.
In this family of flashing geniuses, Ludwig was thought to be the dullest; he had no obvious talent for music, art, poetry, or anything else. (This was only relatively true, for in mid life he learned to play the clarinet, did research on musical rhythms ….10
Wittgenstein began his educational career at home. He was tutored at home till he was fourteen. In 1903, he was sent to the Realschule at Linz, Upper Austria, a school where Adolf Hitler also attended as a student. After three successful years of his study at Linz, and owing to his interest in engineering,
“Ludwig proceeded to the Technische Hochshule in Berlin. In the spring of 1908 he went to England, where he experimented with the dynamics of Kites in Derbyshire and later enrolled into the University of Manchester as an engineering student.”11
For three years, he went into research in Acronautics, windflow, and designs for propellers and jet engines. Owing to the difficulties he encountered in his research, Wittgenstein switched from engineering and aeronautics to mathematics. His major quest on mathematics was basically to enquire into the philosophical foundations of mathematics. He also developed keen interest in logic. As a result of this, and through the advice of Gottlob Frege, he went to Cambridge to study under Bertrand Russell in 1912, beginning a life – long association with the University there, however, he discovered his time vocation and quickly demonstrated his philosophical brilliance to Russell. In his autobiography, Russell described Wittgenstein the following words: “Wittgenstein is perhaps the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived, passionate, profound, intense and dominating.”12 Wittgenstein studied under Russell until 1914.
When his father died in 1913, Wittgenstein inherited a fortune, which was later given away due to his new desire for a solitary and ascetic life. When the First World War broke out the next year, he voluntarily joined the Austrian Army. He fought bravely during the war. In 1918 he was captured by the Italians as a Prisoner Of War. His eight month in prison was very fruitful in that he used the period to finish his first work, ‘Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus’, which was later published in 1922. After the war, Wittgenstein worked as an elementary school teacher in one of the remote areas in Austria. He also worked as a Gardener. He also played an important role in the design and construction of a house for one of his sisters.
In the late 1920s Wittgenstein engaged in intensive philosophical discussions with the Vienna circle, which developed interest in his philosophical postulations. In 1929, he retired to Cambridge to resume his philosophical career. After teaching for several years he was appointed Professor of Philosophy in 1939. At the outbreak of the Second World War in that year, and horrified by the absorption of Austria into Nazi Germany, he became a British citizen. During the war, he worked as a porter and later as a laboratory Assistant in a research project into wound shock based in Newcastle. In 1947 he finally resigned his chair and led a nomadic life for several years.
Apart from his Tractatus Logico – philosophical, Wittgenstein wrote other books, namely: Philosophical Investigation (1963) and On Certainty (1979). All these were published posthumously. Nothing much was said about the marital life of Wittgenstein, except that he was suspected of being a gay, as he spent all his life with male friends. Nevertheless, in 1949, he was diagnosed as having prostate cancer. This was an illness “he has long feared since there was a family history of death from cancer.” 13. He later died in Cambridge on April 29, 1951. “Dying alone in a garret … he said to his LandLady - tell them it’s been wonderful.”14
INFLUENCES ON WITTGENSTEIN
Every philosophical postulation has been influenced by one thought or the other and by one factor or the other. This is not far from the case of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein’s philosophical development has been based on certain influences, one of which is his father’s profession. Karl Wittgenstein, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s father, was one of the most outstanding and influential engineers in the Austro- Hungarian Empire. He was particularly specialized in mechanical engineering. He was working with an iron and steel industry in Austria. Young Wittgenstein (Ludwig) was engrossed with this engineering profession of his father. This led him to enroll into the University of Berlin to study mechanical engineering in 1908.
Wittgenstein, after his brief stay in Berlin, later went to Manchester University for a research programme in aeronautics, designs for propeller, windflow, and so on. The difficulties which this research posed to him made him to find his answers in mathematics, but as fate may have it, he completely abandoned engineering to pursue a career in philosophy of mathematics and Logic. 15
More significant influences on the intellectual develop of Wittgenstein were the philosophical thoughts of Frege and Russell. Wittgenstein acknowledged this in the following parlance:
How far my efforts agree with those of other philosophers I cannot judge. Indeed what I have here written makes no claim to novelty in points of detail, and therefore I give no sources, because it makes no difference to me whether what I have thought has already been thought before me by someone else. I will only mention that to the great works of Frege and the writings of my friend Bertrand Russell I own fore much of the stimulations of my thoughts.16
Basically, Frege influenced Wittgenstein with his philosophy of mathematics and Logic. One fundamental influence of Frege on Wittgenstein was the subjection of all propositions or sentences to truth-value. By truth-value, Frege says it is the circumstance of a sentence being true or false. The truth value of a sentence, basically, constitutes what a sentence means. To buttress this fact, Frege noted that “every assertoric sentence concerned with what its words mean is therefore to be regarded as a proper name, and its meaning, if it has one, is either the true or the false.” 17 This fact of truth-value influenced Wittgenstein a lot in his Tractatus. Re-echoing Frege’s words, Wittgenstein stated thus, “sentences can be true or false …. 18
Russell, however, had a greater impact on Wittgenstein following his philosophy of Logical Atomism. This theory basically claims that reality or what he called ‘the existing world’ is made up of facts, so, what language does is to express these facts. According to him, “when I speak of a ‘facts,’ I do not mean one of the simple things in the world; I mean that a certain thing has a certain quality, or that certain things have a certain relation.” 19. Every proposition, thus, expresses these fact. This emphasis on fact was essentially what Wittgenstein’s Tractatus tried to prove. According to Wittgenstein, the world is a totality of facts not of things. The world is determined by the facts, these facts are pictured by language. Whereas Russell noted that what constitute basic facts that represent reality are atomic facts, for Wittgenstein, it is “elementary fact,”20 a replacement of Russell’s atomic facts. Both of them mean one and the same thing.
Although Wittgenstein did not acknowledge Schopenhauer in the development of his philosophical thought, he was still influenced by Schopenhauer’s notion of solipsism. In this theory of solipsism, Schopenhauer believed that what constitute the world or reality is the subjective will of the individual. In fact, the only thing that is, is the subjective will of the individual. By definition, solipsism implies the doctrine which holds that only I exist. The only thing we can truly know is our own experience. 21 The world, thus, according to Schopenhauer is the representation of the individual subject. By this, Schopenhauer sees the world as a mental or individual representation of the mind of the individual. “This powerful claim was not far from the articulated view of the young and early Wittgenstein.”22 According to Wittgenstein, “The boundary of my language is the boundary of my world.… This thought itself shows how much truth there is in solipsism…. The world and life are one. I am my world.” 23
St. Augustine book titled ‘Confession’ influenced Wittgenstein’s philosophical investigation, that was why Wittgenstein used an excerpt from the book as a background to his postulations in his philosophical investigation. Based on that excerpt, Wittgenstein stated that “Augustine … does describe a system of communication; only not everything that we call language is this system…. Is this an appropriate description or not? The answer is: Yes, it is appropriate….”24 Amidst all the influences enunciated and elaborated above, Wittgenstein still maintain somewhat originality in the major part of his work, particularly in his philosophical investigation.
WITTGENSTEIN’S EARLY THOUGHT: THE PICTURE THEORY OF MEANING.
Wittgenstein’s early philosophical postulation was advanced in his first book, Tractatus Logico-philosophicus. In this book, he strived to bring to end the problem which philosophy has been into, which is, “the misunderstanding of the logic of our language.”25 To achieve this fact he began by analyzing the relations of language to the world, showing the boundaries of what can be said intelligibly or clearly, and how thought can be clarified in its simplest form. He upheld to this claim because he believed that what must be said must be said clearly and when we cannot clear say anything the best thing is to stay silent. All these he established in his first theory of meaning, usually referred to as the picture theory.
Basically, Wittgenstein began his picture theory by noting that the world is all that is to say, the only thing that exist is the empirical and experiential reality. He also noted that what constitute the world are facts and not things.
The world is the totality of facts, not of things. The world is determined by the facts, and by these being all the facts. For the totality of facts determine all that is the case, and also all that is not the case. The facts in logical space are the world. The world can be broken down into facts.26
These facts which constitute reality are broken into elementary facts. Wittgenstein, however, defined elementary facts as the combinations of objects. Emphatically, he stated that there is nothing accidental in logic, because if something can be a constituent of elementary facts, it must also include within itself the possibility of elementary facts. In other words, “if I know an object, I also know all the possibilities of its occurrence in elementary facts.”27 What makes it possible for an object to be part of an elementary fact is the form of the object. So, it could be said that objects are the substance of the world.
Furthermore, Wittgenstein went on to note that the way a fact is made is dependent on the structure of its elementary facts. Since the world is the totality of all the elementary facts, it thus determines those elementary facts which are not in existence. “The existence and nonexistence of elementary facts is reality.”28 So, the world is the sum total of reality.
Wittgenstein, however, stated that the structure of language corresponds to the structure of reality, and it is pictured for us by language. A sentence is a model of reality as we think it is. A sentence, basically pictures reality because if it is understood, then the fact which it represents or pictures is thus known. “A sentence determines reality to the degree that one only needs to say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to it and nothing more to make it agree with reality.” 29 He also added that a sentence or language in general constitutes reality “with the help of logical scaffolding, so that one can actually see in the sentence all the logical features of reality if it is true…. One understands the sentence if one understands its expression.”30
When language pictures reality, it pictures is in their elementary facts. If the elementary proposition is true then the elementary facts exist, and if the elementary proposition is false, the elementary facts does not exist.31 In addition, Wittgenstein went on to say that elementary proposition provides the foundation to understanding other kinds of proposition. Elementary proposition could be tautologous or empirical. When it pictures mathematical approve facts, it is tantologous, but when it pictures concrete facts, it is empirical. The truth or falsity of a proposition could be based on how it pictures reality both in its tautologous and existential form. So, any proposition that is not classified under any of the above cannot be said to be true. That is to say that metaphysical and ethical propositions, since they are neither tautologous nor empirical, they are thus, false and apparently nonsensical. They cannot be put into words or propositions because they are transcendent.32 He also noted that metaphysical postulations failed to give any meaning to certain signs in their sentences.
To wrap up his philosophical postulations in his Tractatus, Wittgenstein posited that the only right method for every philosophical investigation is to say nothing except that which can be said with the usage of sentences of natural sciences. This is because, according to him, to understand whatever someone has said, one must understand the sentences. It is only through this we can really capture correctly the reality which the sentences tried to picture.
WITTGENSTEIN’S LATER THOUGHT: THE GAME THEORY OF MEANING.
About 1933 Wittgenstein experienced what might be called an Intellectual break through that led to a philosophical about-face. The most basic assumption of his great work now seemed to him wrong, not just slightly wrong, but entirely wrong. He under went a complete reaction against his own ideas as well as against the Logical atomism and guruship of his mentor, Bertrand Russell.33
Having rejected his early philosophical thought in his Tractatus as non-sensical, Wittgenstein gave a new philosophical postulation as a replacement to his previous thought. This new thought he expounded in his book titled ‘Philosophical Investigation’.
The basic thought in Wittgenstein’s philosophical investigation is his game theory of meaning. In this theory, Wittgenstein laid much emphasis on how language is used in our everyday life. He likened language to tools in a toolbox. According to him, “think of the tools in a toolbox; there is a hammer, pliers a saw, a screw driver, a mile, a glue pot, glue, nails and screws. – The functions of words are as diverse as the functions of these objects.”34
Accordingly, Wittgenstein asserted that every language is like a game. As every game has a rule which governs how it is to be played so also language. Wittgenstein made it glaring that Wittgenstein outlined several usages of language, for instance;
Giving orders, and obeying them – Describing the appearance of an object, or giving its measurements…. Reporting an event-speculating about an event – forming and testing hypothesis…. Making up a story and reading it …. Translating from one language into another – Asking, thanking, curing, greeting, praying. 35
Accordingly Wittgenstein classified the ways in which languages are used under the term ‘Language-Game’. According to him, “… the term language-game is meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life.”36 He also made it glaring that just as there are different kinds of games with distinct rules so also, there are different kinds of languages with rules governing them. He, however, noted that although we have games like card, board, ball, Olympic, and so on, there must be something common to all these which make them to be called ‘games’. Although there is no visible denominator of the above things which are called games, they only have similarities or relationships. Some of the similarities he identified are that in each of the games, they are played by skill and luck, there is always winning and losing, there is amusement or entertainment, and so on. For him, there is no better to characterize these similarities than family resemblances; for the various resemblances between of a family; build, features, colour of eyes, gait, temperament, etc. over lap and crisscross in the same way. “And I shall say: ‘game’ form family.37
As there are similarities in game so also there are similarities in language that is why they are called language. Since there is no game which is private so also there is no private language. Every word has meaning within the context in which it is used in language. To understand how a word is used in language, however, requires understanding the rules of that particular language. Our knowledge of anything, thus, is how it is expressed in our everyday usage of language.
Wittgenstein further stated that it is non-sensible to put all the various usage of language into one absolute structure as he did in the Tractatus. Language cannot be understood from its abstract natures because to say that language pictures reality is to make a metaphysical assertion. The main task of language is
….to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use …. When philosophers use a word – ‘knowledge; “being, object, “” I, “” proposition, “name” – and try to grasp the essence of the thing, one must ask oneself: is the word ever actually used in this way in the language-game which is its original home?38
From the above, Wittgenstein clearly pointed out the basic function of philosophy as it concerns our everyday use of language. For him, philosophy should never in any way interfere with the actual use of language nor claim any foundation for it. Philosophy neither gives us any absolute knowledge of the world nor does it add new knowledge to what is already known. The basic task of philosophy is to describe how we use language in our everyday activity, that is to say, “To show the fly the way out of the fly bottle.”39 What this means is that philosophy helps in describing our everyday use of language so as to end the misuse of language.
REFERENCES
1Joseph Omoregbe, A Simplified History of Western Philosophy:Modern
Philosophy, Vol. 11, (Lagos: Soja Press Limited, 1991,) p.2
2Rene Descartes, “D B course on The Method “in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Vol. 1, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p 115
3 William F. Law head, The Philosophical Journey:An Interactive Approach, 2nd ed., (New York: McGraw – Hill 2003), p.59
4 William F. Law head, The Philosophical Jouney: An Interactive Approach, p.63
5 Pantaleon Ireegbu, Metaphysics: The Kpim of Philosophy, (Owerri: International University Pree LTD, 1995), p.205
6 Joseph Onuregbe, A Simplified History of Western Philosophy: Contemporary Philosophy, Vol. 111(Lagos: Soja Press Limited, 1991), p.29
7 Edmund Husserl, The Paris Lectures, Trans Peter Roesten Baum, (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970), pp. 14-15.
8 Joseph Omoregbe, A Simplified History of Western Philosophy; Contemporary Philosophy, pp. 36-37.
9 Jordam J. Lindberg, Analytic Philosophy: Beginnings to the Present, (California: Mayfield Publishing Company, 2001), p. 107.
10 James L. Christian, Philosophy: An Introduction to the Art of
Wondering, 8th ed., (Canada: Wadworth, 2003), p. 294.
11 James L. Christian, Philosophy: An Introduction to the Art of Wondering, p. 295.
12 Bertrand Russell, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, 3 Vol., (London: (George Allen & Union, 1967), p.
13 James L. Christian, p. 295.
14 Luding Wittgenstein,
15 Jordan J. Lindberg, Analytic Philosophy: Beginnings to the Present, p. 108.
16 Luding Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico - Philosophicus, trans. By Daniel Kolak, (London: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1998), p.
17 Gottlob Frege, On Sense and Meaning, trans. By p. T. Geachh and Max Black, 3rd ed., Lamham: Ronman and Little field Publishers, Inc., 1980), p.
18 Luding Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico – Philosophicus, p.
19 Bertrand Russell, “Logic as the Essence of Philosphy,” in Our Knowledge of the External World as a field for scientific Method in Philosophy, (London and New York; Routledge, 1993), p.
20 Luding Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico – Philosophicus, p.
21 James L. Christian, p. 649.
22 John Gibson and Welfgang Huemer, The Literany Wittgenstein, (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 228.
23 Luding Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico – Philosophicus, p.
24 Luding Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico – Philosophicus, p.
25 Lunding Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico – Philosophicus, p.
26 Luding Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico – Philosophicus, p.
27 Luding Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico – Philosophicus,
28 Luding Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico – Philosophicus, p.
29 Luding Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico – Philosophicus p.
30 Luding Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico – Philosophicus p.
31 Luding Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico – Philosophicus p.
32 Luding Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico – Philosophicus p.
33 James L. Christian, p. 297.
34 Luding Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigation, 3rd ed. Trans. By Elizabeth Anscombe, Oxford. Prentice – Hall, 1953), p.
35 Luding Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigation p.
36 Luding Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigation p.
37 Luding Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigation p.
38 Luding Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigation p.
39 Luding Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigation p. 309.
The quest to provide an acceptable method through which reality could be known has been one of the contentions of some philosophers for several centuries. This dates back to the renaissance era after philosophy was liberated from the hands of theology, and science took the centre stage. The foremost contending philosophers during this period were Francis Bacon and Galileo Galilei. Bacon believed strongly on the power of knowledge, because it is through it that man can conquer and dominate. But he commended the best way upon which this task can be achieved. “Bacon strongly believes … that … to be able to understand and control nature … we must employ the inductive method which is based on empirical observation of particular thing.” 1 This is because, experience is all there is for there to be an objective knowledge of reality.
Galileo took a contrary opinion on this issue of the knowledge of reality. He based his method on mathematics and deduction. This, for him, is the only way reality could be known. Owing to the high-handedness of the view of Bacon and Galileo, philosophy ended up in skepticism. This situation gave birth to Rene Descartes’ foundationalism. The basis for his foundationalism was to find certainty for philosophy. This task became paramount because the philosophical presupposition of science of his day was apparently built on shaky foundation. 2
Although Descartes was not a skeptic, but he used skepticism as a starting point so as to ascertain which method could guarantee certainty. “Hence, his strategy for finding certainty could be called methodological skepticism. Descartes’ method was to bathe everyone of his beliefs in an acid bath of doubt to see if any survived” 3 Through his method of doubt Descartes found succour on mathematical-deductive method. The method of mathematics was basically indubitable unlike the process of inductive and experience which were merely probable and deceptive. Even though he accepted mathematical method, he still subjected it to further skeptical scrutiny. This was because “Descartes … hoped to use this method (of doubt) to distinguish beliefs that were certain from those that could be doubted.” 4
In the course of doubting everything, Descartes found out he could not doubt that he was doubting. To doubt, for him was to think, and to think one must existence. At this juncture, Descartes believed that he has arrived at the only thing which is certain, and that is, that he exist – “ Cogito ergo sum – I think therefore I am.” Through this philosophical rigour, Descartes believed so much in the powers of reason because through reason reality can be objectively known. Owing to the emphasis on reason over sense experience, Descartes philosophy and rationalism in general was swallowed up by dogmatism.
Edmund Husserl, overwhelmed by mathematics like his predecessor (Descartes) tried to put life once again on the quest for rigorous philosophy. Owing to the fact that Descartes’ philosophy missed the mark by only laying emphasis on metaphysics, while relegating concrete reality to the background, Husserl felt that he can put aright the flaws made by the Cartesian Foundationalism. So, in the course to establishing a solid foundation for philosophy, where objectivity of reality and philosophical truth could be sought in a clear and distinct ground, as in the methods of mathematics, Husserl formulated a method, which he felt could achieve this. This method was what he referred to as ‘phenomenology.’
Husserl maintains, especially in his early work and his master-piece on phenomenology called Ideen, that only the phenomenological approach with its specific method of bracketing, can give certitude to philosophical inquiry. Phenomenology is the guarantee to the scientificity of ontology. 5
The basic task of phenomenology, according to Husserl, was to get at reality beginning from the concrete reality. As a way of definition, Omoregbe defined Husserl’s phenomenology as “that whose aim is simply to analyze and describe experience exactly as it occurs without the prejudice of any prior assumption or presupposition. Thus the objects of phenomenology are essences understood as the meaning of a given fact of experience.” 6 In order to have a clear and distinct knowledge of reality, Husserl divided his phenomenological method into three, namely; phenomenological epoche, Eidetic reduction and transcendental reduction. In phenomenological epoche, Husserl believed that to get at the essence of reality, we must bracket all our presuppositions, beliefs and assumptions about the object which we want to know. By eidetic reduction, Husserl means the essence if a thing. At the level of phenomenological reduction, the inquirer becomes conscious of the real and essential features of the object of investigation. At the point of transcendental reduction, the world and all the objects in it now derive their existence and meaning from the transcendental ego.
As a transcendental ego, I have become a pure observer of myself …. In it I become the disinterested spectator of my natural and worldly ego and its life …. I am detached in as much as I suspend all worldly interests …. The transcendental spectator places himself above himself, and sees himself as the previously world – immersed ego. 7
In the course of investigating existential reality in a presuppositionless manner, and his claim that the transcendental reduction was the highest stage upon which the essence of reality could be known in its clarity and certainty, Husserl led philosophy into transcendental idealism.8 Owing to the inability of his predecessors to really establish a solid ground upon which philosophy could be placed, Wittgenstein (influenced with the philosophical postulations of Logical atomism of Russell and Frege) felt that the best way upon which philosophy could be carried out is on an analytic grounds, because for him, the problems which philosophy has encountered for several centuries are nothing but grammatical problems. The philosophical theories which he expounded thus, in order to advance his philosophical claims, were his Picture and Game theories, which are contained in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations, respectively.
WITTGENSTEIN’S BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
“Brooding, brilliant, and enigmatic Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein …, arguably the most influential and controversial philosopher of the contemporary period,” 9 was born into the family of Karl and Leopoldine Wittgenstein on April 26th , 1889 in Vienna, Austria. He was the youngest of the eight children of his parents, and of his four brothers, three committed suicide.
Wittgenstein’s family was one of the wealthiest families in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father, who was a Jew by birth and was later converted into protestanism, was one of the most successful businessmen in iron and steel industry. Owing to the influential and affluent nature of the family, the Wittgenstein’s home attracted people of culture, especially musicians, including the composer Johannes Brahms, who was a friend to the family.
In this family of flashing geniuses, Ludwig was thought to be the dullest; he had no obvious talent for music, art, poetry, or anything else. (This was only relatively true, for in mid life he learned to play the clarinet, did research on musical rhythms ….10
Wittgenstein began his educational career at home. He was tutored at home till he was fourteen. In 1903, he was sent to the Realschule at Linz, Upper Austria, a school where Adolf Hitler also attended as a student. After three successful years of his study at Linz, and owing to his interest in engineering,
“Ludwig proceeded to the Technische Hochshule in Berlin. In the spring of 1908 he went to England, where he experimented with the dynamics of Kites in Derbyshire and later enrolled into the University of Manchester as an engineering student.”11
For three years, he went into research in Acronautics, windflow, and designs for propellers and jet engines. Owing to the difficulties he encountered in his research, Wittgenstein switched from engineering and aeronautics to mathematics. His major quest on mathematics was basically to enquire into the philosophical foundations of mathematics. He also developed keen interest in logic. As a result of this, and through the advice of Gottlob Frege, he went to Cambridge to study under Bertrand Russell in 1912, beginning a life – long association with the University there, however, he discovered his time vocation and quickly demonstrated his philosophical brilliance to Russell. In his autobiography, Russell described Wittgenstein the following words: “Wittgenstein is perhaps the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived, passionate, profound, intense and dominating.”12 Wittgenstein studied under Russell until 1914.
When his father died in 1913, Wittgenstein inherited a fortune, which was later given away due to his new desire for a solitary and ascetic life. When the First World War broke out the next year, he voluntarily joined the Austrian Army. He fought bravely during the war. In 1918 he was captured by the Italians as a Prisoner Of War. His eight month in prison was very fruitful in that he used the period to finish his first work, ‘Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus’, which was later published in 1922. After the war, Wittgenstein worked as an elementary school teacher in one of the remote areas in Austria. He also worked as a Gardener. He also played an important role in the design and construction of a house for one of his sisters.
In the late 1920s Wittgenstein engaged in intensive philosophical discussions with the Vienna circle, which developed interest in his philosophical postulations. In 1929, he retired to Cambridge to resume his philosophical career. After teaching for several years he was appointed Professor of Philosophy in 1939. At the outbreak of the Second World War in that year, and horrified by the absorption of Austria into Nazi Germany, he became a British citizen. During the war, he worked as a porter and later as a laboratory Assistant in a research project into wound shock based in Newcastle. In 1947 he finally resigned his chair and led a nomadic life for several years.
Apart from his Tractatus Logico – philosophical, Wittgenstein wrote other books, namely: Philosophical Investigation (1963) and On Certainty (1979). All these were published posthumously. Nothing much was said about the marital life of Wittgenstein, except that he was suspected of being a gay, as he spent all his life with male friends. Nevertheless, in 1949, he was diagnosed as having prostate cancer. This was an illness “he has long feared since there was a family history of death from cancer.” 13. He later died in Cambridge on April 29, 1951. “Dying alone in a garret … he said to his LandLady - tell them it’s been wonderful.”14
INFLUENCES ON WITTGENSTEIN
Every philosophical postulation has been influenced by one thought or the other and by one factor or the other. This is not far from the case of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein’s philosophical development has been based on certain influences, one of which is his father’s profession. Karl Wittgenstein, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s father, was one of the most outstanding and influential engineers in the Austro- Hungarian Empire. He was particularly specialized in mechanical engineering. He was working with an iron and steel industry in Austria. Young Wittgenstein (Ludwig) was engrossed with this engineering profession of his father. This led him to enroll into the University of Berlin to study mechanical engineering in 1908.
Wittgenstein, after his brief stay in Berlin, later went to Manchester University for a research programme in aeronautics, designs for propeller, windflow, and so on. The difficulties which this research posed to him made him to find his answers in mathematics, but as fate may have it, he completely abandoned engineering to pursue a career in philosophy of mathematics and Logic. 15
More significant influences on the intellectual develop of Wittgenstein were the philosophical thoughts of Frege and Russell. Wittgenstein acknowledged this in the following parlance:
How far my efforts agree with those of other philosophers I cannot judge. Indeed what I have here written makes no claim to novelty in points of detail, and therefore I give no sources, because it makes no difference to me whether what I have thought has already been thought before me by someone else. I will only mention that to the great works of Frege and the writings of my friend Bertrand Russell I own fore much of the stimulations of my thoughts.16
Basically, Frege influenced Wittgenstein with his philosophy of mathematics and Logic. One fundamental influence of Frege on Wittgenstein was the subjection of all propositions or sentences to truth-value. By truth-value, Frege says it is the circumstance of a sentence being true or false. The truth value of a sentence, basically, constitutes what a sentence means. To buttress this fact, Frege noted that “every assertoric sentence concerned with what its words mean is therefore to be regarded as a proper name, and its meaning, if it has one, is either the true or the false.” 17 This fact of truth-value influenced Wittgenstein a lot in his Tractatus. Re-echoing Frege’s words, Wittgenstein stated thus, “sentences can be true or false …. 18
Russell, however, had a greater impact on Wittgenstein following his philosophy of Logical Atomism. This theory basically claims that reality or what he called ‘the existing world’ is made up of facts, so, what language does is to express these facts. According to him, “when I speak of a ‘facts,’ I do not mean one of the simple things in the world; I mean that a certain thing has a certain quality, or that certain things have a certain relation.” 19. Every proposition, thus, expresses these fact. This emphasis on fact was essentially what Wittgenstein’s Tractatus tried to prove. According to Wittgenstein, the world is a totality of facts not of things. The world is determined by the facts, these facts are pictured by language. Whereas Russell noted that what constitute basic facts that represent reality are atomic facts, for Wittgenstein, it is “elementary fact,”20 a replacement of Russell’s atomic facts. Both of them mean one and the same thing.
Although Wittgenstein did not acknowledge Schopenhauer in the development of his philosophical thought, he was still influenced by Schopenhauer’s notion of solipsism. In this theory of solipsism, Schopenhauer believed that what constitute the world or reality is the subjective will of the individual. In fact, the only thing that is, is the subjective will of the individual. By definition, solipsism implies the doctrine which holds that only I exist. The only thing we can truly know is our own experience. 21 The world, thus, according to Schopenhauer is the representation of the individual subject. By this, Schopenhauer sees the world as a mental or individual representation of the mind of the individual. “This powerful claim was not far from the articulated view of the young and early Wittgenstein.”22 According to Wittgenstein, “The boundary of my language is the boundary of my world.… This thought itself shows how much truth there is in solipsism…. The world and life are one. I am my world.” 23
St. Augustine book titled ‘Confession’ influenced Wittgenstein’s philosophical investigation, that was why Wittgenstein used an excerpt from the book as a background to his postulations in his philosophical investigation. Based on that excerpt, Wittgenstein stated that “Augustine … does describe a system of communication; only not everything that we call language is this system…. Is this an appropriate description or not? The answer is: Yes, it is appropriate….”24 Amidst all the influences enunciated and elaborated above, Wittgenstein still maintain somewhat originality in the major part of his work, particularly in his philosophical investigation.
WITTGENSTEIN’S EARLY THOUGHT: THE PICTURE THEORY OF MEANING.
Wittgenstein’s early philosophical postulation was advanced in his first book, Tractatus Logico-philosophicus. In this book, he strived to bring to end the problem which philosophy has been into, which is, “the misunderstanding of the logic of our language.”25 To achieve this fact he began by analyzing the relations of language to the world, showing the boundaries of what can be said intelligibly or clearly, and how thought can be clarified in its simplest form. He upheld to this claim because he believed that what must be said must be said clearly and when we cannot clear say anything the best thing is to stay silent. All these he established in his first theory of meaning, usually referred to as the picture theory.
Basically, Wittgenstein began his picture theory by noting that the world is all that is to say, the only thing that exist is the empirical and experiential reality. He also noted that what constitute the world are facts and not things.
The world is the totality of facts, not of things. The world is determined by the facts, and by these being all the facts. For the totality of facts determine all that is the case, and also all that is not the case. The facts in logical space are the world. The world can be broken down into facts.26
These facts which constitute reality are broken into elementary facts. Wittgenstein, however, defined elementary facts as the combinations of objects. Emphatically, he stated that there is nothing accidental in logic, because if something can be a constituent of elementary facts, it must also include within itself the possibility of elementary facts. In other words, “if I know an object, I also know all the possibilities of its occurrence in elementary facts.”27 What makes it possible for an object to be part of an elementary fact is the form of the object. So, it could be said that objects are the substance of the world.
Furthermore, Wittgenstein went on to note that the way a fact is made is dependent on the structure of its elementary facts. Since the world is the totality of all the elementary facts, it thus determines those elementary facts which are not in existence. “The existence and nonexistence of elementary facts is reality.”28 So, the world is the sum total of reality.
Wittgenstein, however, stated that the structure of language corresponds to the structure of reality, and it is pictured for us by language. A sentence is a model of reality as we think it is. A sentence, basically pictures reality because if it is understood, then the fact which it represents or pictures is thus known. “A sentence determines reality to the degree that one only needs to say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to it and nothing more to make it agree with reality.” 29 He also added that a sentence or language in general constitutes reality “with the help of logical scaffolding, so that one can actually see in the sentence all the logical features of reality if it is true…. One understands the sentence if one understands its expression.”30
When language pictures reality, it pictures is in their elementary facts. If the elementary proposition is true then the elementary facts exist, and if the elementary proposition is false, the elementary facts does not exist.31 In addition, Wittgenstein went on to say that elementary proposition provides the foundation to understanding other kinds of proposition. Elementary proposition could be tautologous or empirical. When it pictures mathematical approve facts, it is tantologous, but when it pictures concrete facts, it is empirical. The truth or falsity of a proposition could be based on how it pictures reality both in its tautologous and existential form. So, any proposition that is not classified under any of the above cannot be said to be true. That is to say that metaphysical and ethical propositions, since they are neither tautologous nor empirical, they are thus, false and apparently nonsensical. They cannot be put into words or propositions because they are transcendent.32 He also noted that metaphysical postulations failed to give any meaning to certain signs in their sentences.
To wrap up his philosophical postulations in his Tractatus, Wittgenstein posited that the only right method for every philosophical investigation is to say nothing except that which can be said with the usage of sentences of natural sciences. This is because, according to him, to understand whatever someone has said, one must understand the sentences. It is only through this we can really capture correctly the reality which the sentences tried to picture.
WITTGENSTEIN’S LATER THOUGHT: THE GAME THEORY OF MEANING.
About 1933 Wittgenstein experienced what might be called an Intellectual break through that led to a philosophical about-face. The most basic assumption of his great work now seemed to him wrong, not just slightly wrong, but entirely wrong. He under went a complete reaction against his own ideas as well as against the Logical atomism and guruship of his mentor, Bertrand Russell.33
Having rejected his early philosophical thought in his Tractatus as non-sensical, Wittgenstein gave a new philosophical postulation as a replacement to his previous thought. This new thought he expounded in his book titled ‘Philosophical Investigation’.
The basic thought in Wittgenstein’s philosophical investigation is his game theory of meaning. In this theory, Wittgenstein laid much emphasis on how language is used in our everyday life. He likened language to tools in a toolbox. According to him, “think of the tools in a toolbox; there is a hammer, pliers a saw, a screw driver, a mile, a glue pot, glue, nails and screws. – The functions of words are as diverse as the functions of these objects.”34
Accordingly, Wittgenstein asserted that every language is like a game. As every game has a rule which governs how it is to be played so also language. Wittgenstein made it glaring that Wittgenstein outlined several usages of language, for instance;
Giving orders, and obeying them – Describing the appearance of an object, or giving its measurements…. Reporting an event-speculating about an event – forming and testing hypothesis…. Making up a story and reading it …. Translating from one language into another – Asking, thanking, curing, greeting, praying. 35
Accordingly Wittgenstein classified the ways in which languages are used under the term ‘Language-Game’. According to him, “… the term language-game is meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life.”36 He also made it glaring that just as there are different kinds of games with distinct rules so also, there are different kinds of languages with rules governing them. He, however, noted that although we have games like card, board, ball, Olympic, and so on, there must be something common to all these which make them to be called ‘games’. Although there is no visible denominator of the above things which are called games, they only have similarities or relationships. Some of the similarities he identified are that in each of the games, they are played by skill and luck, there is always winning and losing, there is amusement or entertainment, and so on. For him, there is no better to characterize these similarities than family resemblances; for the various resemblances between of a family; build, features, colour of eyes, gait, temperament, etc. over lap and crisscross in the same way. “And I shall say: ‘game’ form family.37
As there are similarities in game so also there are similarities in language that is why they are called language. Since there is no game which is private so also there is no private language. Every word has meaning within the context in which it is used in language. To understand how a word is used in language, however, requires understanding the rules of that particular language. Our knowledge of anything, thus, is how it is expressed in our everyday usage of language.
Wittgenstein further stated that it is non-sensible to put all the various usage of language into one absolute structure as he did in the Tractatus. Language cannot be understood from its abstract natures because to say that language pictures reality is to make a metaphysical assertion. The main task of language is
….to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use …. When philosophers use a word – ‘knowledge; “being, object, “” I, “” proposition, “name” – and try to grasp the essence of the thing, one must ask oneself: is the word ever actually used in this way in the language-game which is its original home?38
From the above, Wittgenstein clearly pointed out the basic function of philosophy as it concerns our everyday use of language. For him, philosophy should never in any way interfere with the actual use of language nor claim any foundation for it. Philosophy neither gives us any absolute knowledge of the world nor does it add new knowledge to what is already known. The basic task of philosophy is to describe how we use language in our everyday activity, that is to say, “To show the fly the way out of the fly bottle.”39 What this means is that philosophy helps in describing our everyday use of language so as to end the misuse of language.
REFERENCES
1Joseph Omoregbe, A Simplified History of Western Philosophy:Modern
Philosophy, Vol. 11, (Lagos: Soja Press Limited, 1991,) p.2
2Rene Descartes, “D B course on The Method “in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Vol. 1, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p 115
3 William F. Law head, The Philosophical Journey:An Interactive Approach, 2nd ed., (New York: McGraw – Hill 2003), p.59
4 William F. Law head, The Philosophical Jouney: An Interactive Approach, p.63
5 Pantaleon Ireegbu, Metaphysics: The Kpim of Philosophy, (Owerri: International University Pree LTD, 1995), p.205
6 Joseph Onuregbe, A Simplified History of Western Philosophy: Contemporary Philosophy, Vol. 111(Lagos: Soja Press Limited, 1991), p.29
7 Edmund Husserl, The Paris Lectures, Trans Peter Roesten Baum, (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970), pp. 14-15.
8 Joseph Omoregbe, A Simplified History of Western Philosophy; Contemporary Philosophy, pp. 36-37.
9 Jordam J. Lindberg, Analytic Philosophy: Beginnings to the Present, (California: Mayfield Publishing Company, 2001), p. 107.
10 James L. Christian, Philosophy: An Introduction to the Art of
Wondering, 8th ed., (Canada: Wadworth, 2003), p. 294.
11 James L. Christian, Philosophy: An Introduction to the Art of Wondering, p. 295.
12 Bertrand Russell, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, 3 Vol., (London: (George Allen & Union, 1967), p.
13 James L. Christian, p. 295.
14 Luding Wittgenstein,
15 Jordan J. Lindberg, Analytic Philosophy: Beginnings to the Present, p. 108.
16 Luding Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico - Philosophicus, trans. By Daniel Kolak, (London: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1998), p.
17 Gottlob Frege, On Sense and Meaning, trans. By p. T. Geachh and Max Black, 3rd ed., Lamham: Ronman and Little field Publishers, Inc., 1980), p.
18 Luding Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico – Philosophicus, p.
19 Bertrand Russell, “Logic as the Essence of Philosphy,” in Our Knowledge of the External World as a field for scientific Method in Philosophy, (London and New York; Routledge, 1993), p.
20 Luding Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico – Philosophicus, p.
21 James L. Christian, p. 649.
22 John Gibson and Welfgang Huemer, The Literany Wittgenstein, (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 228.
23 Luding Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico – Philosophicus, p.
24 Luding Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico – Philosophicus, p.
25 Lunding Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico – Philosophicus, p.
26 Luding Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico – Philosophicus, p.
27 Luding Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico – Philosophicus,
28 Luding Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico – Philosophicus, p.
29 Luding Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico – Philosophicus p.
30 Luding Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico – Philosophicus p.
31 Luding Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico – Philosophicus p.
32 Luding Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico – Philosophicus p.
33 James L. Christian, p. 297.
34 Luding Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigation, 3rd ed. Trans. By Elizabeth Anscombe, Oxford. Prentice – Hall, 1953), p.
35 Luding Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigation p.
36 Luding Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigation p.
37 Luding Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigation p.
38 Luding Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigation p.
39 Luding Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigation p. 309.
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