Materialism
History of Materialism
Greek and Roman Materialism
Though Thales of Miletus (c. 580 BC) and some of the other Pre-Socratic philosophers have some claims to being regarded as Materialists, the Materialist tradition in Western philosophy really begins with Leucippus and Democritus, Greek philosophers who were born in the 5th century BC. Leucippus is known only through his influence on Democritus. According to Democritus, the world consists of nothing but atoms (indivisible chunks of matter) in empty space (which he seems to have thought of as an entity in its own right). These atoms can be imperceptibly small, and they interact either by impact or by hooking together, depending on their shapes. The great beauty of atomism was its ability to explain the changes in things as due to changes in the configurations of unchanging atoms. The view may be contrasted with that of the earlier philosopher Anaxagoras (c. 480 BC), who thought that when, for example, the bread that a person eats is transformed into human flesh, this must occur because bread itself already contains hidden within itself the characteristics of flesh. Democritus thought that the soul consists of smooth, round atoms and that perceptions consist of motions caused in the soul atoms by the atoms in the perceived thing.
Because Epicurus' philosophy was expounded in a lengthy poem by Lucretius, a Roman philosopher of the 1st century BC, Epicurus (died 270 BC) was easily the most influential Greek Materialist. He differed from Democritus in that he postulated an absolute up–down direction in space, so that all atoms fall in roughly parallel paths. To explain their impacts with one another, he then held that the atoms are subject to chance swerves—a doctrine that was also used to explain free will. Epicurus' Materialism therefore differed from that of Democritus in being an indeterministic one. Epicurus' philosophy contained an important ethical part, which was a sort of enlightened egoistic hedonism. His ethics, however, were not Materialistic in the pejorative sense of the word.
Modern Materialism
Materialism languished throughout the medieval period, but the Epicurean tradition was revived in the first half of the 17th century in the atomistic Materialism of the French Catholic priest Pierre Gassendi. In putting forward his system as a hypothesis to explain the facts of experience, Gassendi showed that he understood the method characteristic of modern science, and he may well have helped to pave the way for corpuscular hypotheses in physics. Gassendi was not thoroughgoing in his Materialism inasmuch as he accepted on faith the Christian doctrine that men have immortal souls. His contemporary, the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, also propounded an atomistic Materialism and was a pioneer in trying to work out a mechanistic and physiological psychology. Holding that sensations are corporeal motions in the brain, Hobbes skirted, rather than solved, the philosophical problems about consciousness that had been raised by another contemporary, the great French philosopher René Descartes. Descartes's philosophy was dualistic, making a complete split between mind and matter. In his theory of the physical world, however, and especially in his doctrine that animals are automata, Descartes's own system had a mechanistic side to it that was taken up by 18th-century Materialists, such as Julien de La Mettrie, the French physician whose appropriately titled L'Homme machine (1747; Man a Machine, 1750) applied Descartes's view about animals to man himself. Denis Diderot, an 18th-century French Encyclopaedist, supported a broadly Materialist outlook by considerations drawn from physiology, embryology, and the study of heredity; and his friend Paul, baron d'Holbach, published his Système de la nature (1770), which expounded a deterministic type of Materialism in the light of evidence from contemporary science, reducing everything to matter and to the energy inherent in matter. He also propounded a hedonistic ethics as well as an uncompromising atheism, which provoked a reply even from the Deist Voltaire.
The 18th-century French Materialists had been reacting against orthodox Christianity. In the early part of the 19th century, however, certain writers in Germany—usually with a biological or medical background—reacted against a different orthodoxy, the Hegelian and Neo-Hegelian tradition in philosophy, which had become entrenched in German universities. Among these were Ludwig Büchner and Karl Vogt. The latter is notorious for his assertion that the brain secretes thought just as the liver secretes bile. This metaphor of secretion, previously used by P.-J.-G. Cabanis, a late 18th-century French Materialist, is seldom taken seriously, because to most philosophers it does not make sense to think of thought as a stuff. The Hobbesian view, also espoused by Büchner, that thought is a motion in the brain is usually viewed as a more promising one.
The synthesis of urea (the chief nitrogenous end product of protein metabolism), discovered in 1828, broke down the discontinuity between the organic and the inorganic in chemistry, which had been a mainstay of non-materialistic biology. Materialist ways of thinking were later strengthened enormously by the Darwinian theory of evolution, which not only showed the continuity between man and other living things right back to the simplest organisms but also showed how the apparent evidences of design in natural history could be explained on a purely causal basis. There still seemed to be a gap, however, between the living and the nonliving, though E.H. Haeckel, a 19th-century German zoologist, thought that certain simple organisms could have been generated from inorganic matter and, indeed, that a certain simple sea creature may well be in process of generation in this way even now. Though Haeckel was wrong, 20th-century biologists have proposed much more sophisticated and more plausible theories of the evolution of life from inorganic matter. Haeckel and his contemporary, the British zoologist T.H. Huxley, did much to popularize philosophical accounts of the world that were consonant with the scientific thought of their time, but neither could be regarded as an extreme Materialist.
Wikipedia
Materialism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For the prioritization of resources, see economic materialism.
Materialism is the philosophical view that the only thing that can truly be said to 'exist' is matter; that fundamentally, all things are comprised of 'material'. The view is perhaps best understood in its opposition to the doctrines of immaterial substance applied to the mind historically, and most famously by René Descartes. However, by itself materialism says nothing about how material substance should be characterized. In practice it is frequently assimilated to one variety of physicalism or another.
Materialism is sometimes allied with the methodological principle of reductionism, according to which the objects or phenomena individuated at one level of description, if they are genuine, must be explicable in terms of the objects or phenomena at some other level of description -- typically, a more general level than the reduced one. Non-reductive materialism explicitly rejects this notion, however, taking the material constitution of all particulars to be consistent with the existence of real objects, properties, or phenomena not explicable in the terms canonically used for the basic material constituents. Jerry Fodor influentially argues this view, according to which empirical laws and explanations in "special sciences" like psychology or geology are invisible from the perspective of, say, basic physics. A vigorous literature has grown up around the relation between these views.
"Materialism" has also frequently been understood to designate an entire scientific, "rationalistic" world view, particularly by religious thinkers opposed to it and also by Marxists. It typically contrasts with dualism, phenomenalism, idealism, and vitalism.
For Marxism, materialism is central to the "materialist conception of history", which centers on the empirical world of actual human activity (practice, including labor) and institutions created, reproduced, or destroyed by that activity.
The definition of "matter" in modern philosophical materialism extends to all scientifically observable entities such as energy, forces, and the curvature of space. In this view, one might speak of the "material world".
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Varieties of materialism
• Communist Philosophy of Nature
• Christian materialism
• Eliminative materialism
• Emergent materialism
• French materialism
• Reductive materialism / Reductionism
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History of materialism
Ancient Greek philosophers like Parmenides, Epicurus, and even Aristotle prefigure later materialists. Later on, Thomas Hobbes and Pierre Gassendi represent the materialist tradition, in opposition to René Descartes' attempts to provide the natural sciences with dualist foundations. Later materialists included Denis Diderot and other French enlightenment thinkers, as well as Ludwig Feuerbach.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, turning the idealist dialectics of Georg Hegel "upside down", provided materialism with a view on processes of quantitative and qualitative change called dialectical materialism, and with a materialist account of the course of history, known as historical materialism.
In recent years, Paul and Patricia Churchland have advocated an extreme form of materialism, eliminativist materialism, which holds that mental phenomena simply do not exist at all -- that talk of the mental reflects a totally spurious "folk psychology" that simply has no basis in fact, something like the way that folk science speaks of demon-caused illness.
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References
• Churchland, Paul (1981). Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes. The Philosophy of Science. Boyd, Richard; P. Gasper; J. D. Trout. Cambridge, Massachusetts, MIT Press.
• Flanagan, Owen (1991). The Science of the Mind. 2nd edition Cambridge Massachusetts, MIT Press.
• Fodor, J.A. (1974) Special Sciences, Synthese, Vol.28.
• Kim, J. (1994) Multiple Realization and the Metaphysics of Reduction, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 52.
• Moser, P. K.; J. D. Trout, Ed. (1995) Contemporary Materialism: A Reader. New York, Routledge.
• Vitzthum, Richard C. (1995) Materialism: An Affirmative History and Definition. Amhert, New York, Prometheus Books.
• Buchner, L. (1920). Force and Matter. New York, Peter Eckler Publishing CO.
• Maetmere, Man The machine
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Economic materialism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
This article addresses materialism in the economic sense of the word. For information on the philosophical and scientific meanings, see materialism.
Materialism refers to how a person or group chooses to spend their resources, particularly money and time. Literally, a materialist is a person for whom collecting material goods is an important priority. In common use, the word more specifically refers to a person who primarily pursues wealth and luxury. Sometimes such a person displays conspicuous consumption.
Many believe that a "considered" and "realistic" form of materialism leads to economic behaviors supporting a sustainable community. For example, thrift shops and garage sales permit moderate materialism with little environmental impact.
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See also
• Postmaterialism
• Cultural Creatives
• Consumerism
• Recycling
• Compost
This economics or finance-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
Ownership society
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Ownership society is a slogan for a model of society promoted by United States President George W. Bush. It takes as lead values personal responsibility, economic liberty, and the owning of property. The ownership society discussed by Bush also extends to certain proposals of specific models of health care and social security.
Critics have claimed that Bush's agenda for an ownership society also includes extending tax cuts, allowing wealthy Americans to shelter income from tax, and using the tax code to curtail the government's role in health care and retirement saving. Some say that the ultimate purpose of these proposals is the abolition of the graduated income tax, a progressive tax, and its replacement with a structurally simpler flat tax.
Contents
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• 1 History
• 2 Ownership and control
• 3 Political consequences and unexpected consequences
• 4 Quotations
• 5 External links
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History
The term appears to have been used originally by President Bush (for example in a speech February 20, 2003 in Kennesaw, Georgia) as a phrase to rally support for his tax-cut proposals (Pittsburgh Post - Gazette, Bush OKs Funding Bill for Fiscal '03, Feb 21, 2003 Scott Lindlaw). From 2004 Bush supporters described the ownership society in much broader and more ambitious terms, including specific policy proposals concerning medicine, education and savings.
The idea that the welfare of individuals is directly related to their ability to control their own lives and wealth, rather than relying on government transfer payments, is a longstanding one, particularly in British conservatism.
In a modern form its implementation was developed as a main plank of Thatcherism, and is traced back to David Howell, before 1970, with help from the phrase-maker Peter Drucker.
In political practice under Margaret Thatcher's administration, it was implemented by measures such as the sale at affordable prices of public housing to tenants, and privatization.
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Ownership and control
As formulated by the Cato Institute (see original quote and external link below), the desiderata are that
• patients have control [of decisions on] their personal health care,
• parents control [i.e. have power over] their children's education, and
• workers control [i.e. have some responsibility for the investment of, or explicit property rights in] their retirement savings.
Here the comments in brackets are an interpretation or paraphrase, consistent with a generalised idea of ownership. The conceptual link here is by means of the idea that private property, the most familiar and everyday form of ownership, is being extended. Control is closely associated with ownership in that sense.
This Cato Institute formulation is not, however, in terms of positive policies. It is more accurately a definition of ownership by taking the state out of the loop. So, for example, in health care ownership is not being defined just on the basis of informed consent.
There is no real originality, politically speaking, in the connection made between individual ownership of property and political stake-holding. This was an idea discussed in Europe and America in the eighteenth century. (For example that the franchise should only be for property holders.)
The novelty of the Cato Institute formulation would lie in the extrapolation. In the case of savings, for example, the extension would be an assertion of property rights in money held in savings or collected tax revenues.
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Political consequences and unexpected consequences
Consistently with the basic tenet, proponents of an ownership society usually support inherited wealth, and oppose inheritance taxes and wealth taxes. They are also likely to favour a pattern of property ownership based on the purchase, rather than rental, of accommodation.
The consequences for health and education are heavily dependent on details of implementation. For example, ownership in one's child's education, for a parent, might be in the form of an education voucher, a vote in the running of a school, influence on the school curriculum, or a generalised 'right' to have a child educated in line with one's own values.
One example from the UK of an unexpected or unintended consequence of government policy favouring direct share ownership, through some oversubscribed privatisation issues, was the holding of small parcels of shares by individuals numbered in millions. This broad-based ownership created an administrative overhead, for example in relation to every shareholder vote.
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Quotations
We Conservatives have always passed our values from generation to generation. I believe that personal prosperity should follow the same course. I want to see wealth cascading down the generations. We do not see each generation starting out anew, with the past cut off and the future ignored. - John Major conference speech 1991.
...if you own something, you have a vital stake in the future of our country. The more ownership there is in America, the more vitality there is in America, and the more people have a vital stake in the future of this country. - President George W. Bush, June 17, 2004
Individuals are empowered by freeing them from dependence on government handouts and making them owners instead, in control of their own lives and destinies. In the ownership society, patients control their own health care, parents control their own children's education, and workers control their retirement savings. Cato Institute
"Many people don't have the time, inclination, or expertise necessary to take full responsibility for their own well-being in areas that are so complex as assuring they have sufficient income for retirement or choosing a health plan appropriate for their circumstances," says Robert Reischauer, president of the Urban Institute, a Washington think tank.
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External links
• Fact Sheet: America's Ownership Society: Expanding Opportunities - White House press release 9 August 2004
• Cato Institute page
• dialectical materialism
a philosophical approach to reality derived from the teachings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. For Marx and Engels, materialism meant that the material world, perceptible to the senses, has objective reality independent of mind or spirit. They did not deny the reality of mental or spiritual processes but affirmed that ideas could arise, therefore, only as products and reflections of material conditions. Marx and Engels understood materialism as the opposite of idealism, by which they meant any theory that treats matter as dependent on mind or spirit, or mind or spirit as capable of existing independently of matter. For them, the materialist and idealist views were irreconcilably opposed throughout the historical development of philosophy. They adopted a thoroughgoing materialist approach, holding that any attempt to combine or reconcile materialism with idealism must result in confusion and inconsistency.
Marx's and Engels' conception of dialectics owes much to G.W.F. Hegel. In opposition to the “metaphysical” mode of thought, which viewed things in abstraction, each by itself and as though endowed with fixed properties, Hegelian dialectics considers things in their movements and changes, interrelations and interactions. Everything is in continual process of becoming and ceasing to be, in which nothing is permanent but everything changes and is eventually superseded. All things contain contradictory sides or aspects, whose tension or conflict is the driving force of change and eventually transforms or dissolves them. But whereas Hegel saw change and development as the expression of the world spirit, or Idea, realizing itself in nature and in human society, for Marx and Engels change was inherent in the nature of the material world. They therefore held that one could not, as Hegel tried, deduce the actual course of events from any “principles of dialectics”; the principles must be inferred from the events.
The theory of knowledge of Marx and Engels started from the materialist premise that all knowledge is derived from the senses. But against the mechanist view that derives knowledge exclusively from given sense impressions, they stressed the dialectical development of human knowledge, socially acquired in the course of practical activity. Individuals can gain knowledge of things only through their practical interaction with those things, framing their ideas corresponding to their practice; and social practice alone provides the test of the correspondence of idea with reality—i.e., of truth. This theory of knowledge is opposed equally to the subjective idealism according to which individuals can know only sensible appearances while things-in-themselves are elusive, and to the objective idealism according to which individuals can know supersensible reality by pure intuition or thought, independent of sense.
The concept of dialectical materialism—which is a theoretical basis for a method of reasoning—should not be confused with “historical materialism,” which is the Marxist interpretation of history in terms of the class struggle.
There exists no systematic exposition of dialectical materialism by Marx and Engels, who stated their philosophical views mainly in the course of polemics.
Now, enough of that junk about the GREEDY, lets turn our thoughts about the NEEDY
Through EPICTETUS
born AD 55, , probably at Hierapolis, Phrygia [now Pamukkale, Turkey]
died c. 135, , Nicopolis, Epirus [Greece]
Greek philosopher associated with the Stoics, remembered for the religious tone of his teachings, which commended him to numerous early Christian thinkers.
His original name is not known; epiktAtos is the Greek word meaning “acquired.” As a boy he was a slave but managed to attend lectures by the Stoic Musonius Rufus. He later became a freedman and lived his life lame and in ill health. In AD 90 he was expelled from Rome with other philosophers by the emperor Domitian, who was irritated by the favourable reception given by Stoics to opponents of his tyranny. The rest of his life Epictetus spent at Nicopolis.
As far as is known, Epictetus wrote nothing. His teachings were transmitted by Arrian, his pupil, in two works: Discourses, of which four books are extant; and the Encheiridion, or Manual, a condensed aphoristic version of the main doctrines. In his teachings Epictetus followed the early rather than the late Stoics, reverting to Socrates and to Diogenes, the philosopher of Cynicism, as historical models of the sage. Primarily interested in ethics, Epictetus described philosophy as learning “how it is possible to employ desire and aversion without hindrance.” True education, he believed, consists in recognizing that there is only one thing that belongs to an individual fully—his will, or purpose. God, acting as a good king and father, has given each being a will that cannot be compelled or thwarted by anything external. Men are not responsible for the ideas that present themselves to their consciousness, though they are wholly responsible for the way in which they use them. “Two maxims,” Epictetus said, “we must ever bear in mind—that apart from the will there is nothing good or bad, and that we must not try to anticipate or to direct events, but merely to accept them with intelligence.” Man must, that is, believe there is a God whose thought directs the universe.
As a political theorist, Epictetus saw man as a member of a great system that comprehends both God and men. Each human being is primarily a citizen of his own commonwealth, but he is also a member of the great city of gods and men, of which the political city is only a poor copy. All men are the sons of God by virtue of their rationality and are kindred in nature with the divinity. Thus, man is capable of learning to administer his city and his life according to the will of God, which is the will of nature. The natural instinct of animated life, to which man also is subject, is self-preservation and self-interest. Yet men are so constituted that the individual cannot secure his own interests unless he contributes to the common welfare. The aim of the philosopher, therefore, is to see the world as a whole, to grow into the mind of God, and to make the will of nature his own.
(from Encyclopedia Britannica 2003)
Simplicius of Cillicia
flourished c. 530
Greek philosopher whose learned commentaries on Aristotle's De caelo (“On the Heavens”), Physics, De anima (“On the Soul”), and Categories are considered important, both for their original content and for the fact that they contain many valuable fragments of pre-Socratic philosophers. Simplicius studied at Athens and at Alexandria and spent most of his life in Athens, except for a short period after the closing of the school of philosophy in 529. A commentary on the Encheiridion of Epictetus and a work on quadratures are extant.
"The truth is in the hands of the few and not the masses..."
Yes, 1.2 billion Chinese CAN be wrong!
...or so sayeth Mr. Zy@aol.com
Not that the protesters at Tienanmen necessarily spoke for all of China...
but the argument speaks for itself.
Freedom FROM government
vs.
Freedom TO OBEY government
"The ability as a free human being to walk the earth at will, breath the air, regard the frozen moon or the fiery sun without having to ask permission (or even so much as a "by your leave!") and think whatever thoughts one pleases is an end in of as itself. To be able to speak my mind and entertain a thought as it occurs to me! This is what freedom means. To live with dignity as a free man! For me, there is nothing more important in the whole world... When I read the thoughts of individuals such as Wei Jingsheng or Ding Zilin, they speak to me across cultures and thousands of miles of ocean and I consider them my compatriots. When I read Wei Jingshen and hear him talk about freedom and liberty, I know that even as he is in jail his spirit is free. And my bargain with him is that as long as China lives under despotism, this page will stay up on the World Wide Web for everyone to read."
At 07:01 PM 4/28/97 GMT, you wrote:
email=Zy@aol.com
comments="Democracy is the rule of the easily manipulated mob." This seems to be your favorite phrase, but yet you fail to make distinction between popular democracy which have been proven a failure in ancient Greek and representative democracy in which all the modern democracy are based upon. Popular democracy allow the mass to govern the agenda while representative democracy allow the people to choose those who will be the decision-maker for them. As to stress the wisdom of the mass to govern a nation is an intoxication of liberalism that are common in the irresponsible mass media who is only in favor of its profit margent.
You constantly remind people of Human Rights. But may I ask you what is human rights? Is it GOD or is it just because we are human that we are inherited with some inviolable rights? If so how come million are dying of starvation and malnutrition, where are their rights? Does human even have the rights to live on this planet? Well, at this rate, we won't be. No one is born with his or her rights given, they have to earn their rights.
You also mentioned power struggle. But do you realize that it is a competition not only for power and glory, but also for life and death. Law of the nature says, only under adverse condition and with fierce competition will specie mutate, adapt, and advance quickly. It is natural competition in its rawest form, and is that necessarily evil?
All that said, I'm not in favorite of a dictatorship. There are authoritarian governments which are dictatorship, there are constitutional authoritarian governments like Singapore, there are constitutional libertarian governments that is what we called democracy, and there are also libertarian which I call anarchy. Whether constitutional libertarian government is better than a constitutional authoritarian government, there is no conclusion yet. But as I have said, majority of Chinese favors the Singapore model instead of the US democracy, and that will be a choice of Chinese only. I do recognize that constitution is the most important element in creating a responsible and just society, and what is needed is a powerful and independent judicial system not an election.
As I always believed, the truth is in the hands of the few. You and I may not hold the truth, but there will be people who do, and they are not the majority. The difficulty is to allow those who do have the truth the access to the government, and that is where the western democracy comes from. Unfortunately, with today's high tech media and information age, the contest is no longer between ideas and wisdom, but mere acting skill. Of course there is another system that the West have entirely ignored. That is the examine system of the imperial China (KeJu), where intellectuals are promoted into important governmental posts by excel at the state examine. This is the crucial element that contributed towards more than 2000 years of Chinese imperial rules. Of course the hereditary system of the imperial court prevented competition at the highest level thus the collapse of the system become inevitable. An open system that allow those with the will and wisdom to participate and an open system that allows fierce competition at the highest level will always promote the most capable leader to govern a nation. And that is where the future of China lies.
Dear Zy@aol.com,
Finally! A conversation about Chinese politics worth having! I think we are getting closer to the heart of the matter.
It is true that the democracy of ancient Athens eventually degenerated and failed. Every democratic government - whether it be directly or indirectly governed - must tread a thin line between individual liberty and social cohesion. As founding father John Adams said about democracy at the inception of the United States of America: "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." A democracy can fall victim to demagoguery or internecine conflicts between different segments of the population. Perhaps Athens after the death of her ruler Pericles ("popular democracy which have been proven a failure in ancient Greek") is the best example of this, as you mention.
However, let's not forget that the democracy of Athens in the fifth century BC produced perhaps the most glorious example of an ideal culture devoted to excellence in both mind and body which history has yet produced. The first democracy in history, Athens under the leadership of Pericles was populated by citizens intensely loyal and proud of their city state where the government was renown for justice and the streets adorned with beautiful public buildings and art some of which survives to this day. Perhaps no other city or culture has enjoyed such a fertile period of genius and brilliance in so many different disciplines. In philosophy, Athens produced Socrates, Anaxagoras and Plato; in history, Herodotus and Thucydides; in literature, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. As a culture which prized intelligence and pleasure, Athens boasted a veritable pantheon of exceptional citizens who achieved brilliance in the arts, medicine, mathematics, and philosophy.
As Thucydides recounts Pericles claiming in a famous speech, "We are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes, and we cultivate the arts without loss of manliness." It was a happy moment of ancient history when free and prosperous men said things about the human condition which have not been said better since, in my opinion. Never before or afterwards has so much artistic genius and creative imagination been found in one place at the same time.
Many people have since held up classical Athens as a model to which we should aspire. Many of the most positive strains of Western thought - especially since the Renaissance - can thusly be explained. In my opinion, this all has to do with what men can accomplish working in freedom and allowing the mind to follow any idea no matter where it might take them. It shows the possibility of how self-respecting men living as their own masters can excel in philosophy and the arts and sciences while they cultivate the art of good living as an end in of as itself. In a human history all too full of oppression, destruction, ignorance, injustice, violence, cruelty, aggression, evil, murder both individually and generally, the genius of the Age of Pericles often appears to me like a bright light in the darkness.
Democratic Athens ended tragically, of course, but that has as much to do with warfare with her enemy Sparta as it does with any inherent weakness in democracy as a form of government. This is particularly interesting, since the government you seem to advocate bears a striking resemblance to that of Sparta: "Law of the nature says, only under adverse condition and with fierce competition will specie mutate, adapt, and advance quickly." You seem to advocate an ideal society which prizes a Darwinian survival of the fittest with the "strong" and "virtuous" surviving and thriving and the weak perishing. A warlike Spartan society, singularly ignorant of culture or the arts, also valued martial valor and iron discipline above all things in a society which deified the strong and denigrated the weak.
Sparta defined the sole purpose of a good life as to train to fight in war and win glory for the state. According to Plutarch, all young Spartans supposedly were subjected to a communal life with rigorous martial training from early childhood on. Those judged to be sickly and weak were shunted aside to die of exposure while the strong and cruel were held up as exemplary and rewarded. All of this "fierce competition will specie mutate, adapt, and advance quickly" is designed to produce the most effective and strongest society possible which may then thrive in a violent world, as you advocate. Life in Sparta was to be lived in the strict service of their government, an entity which resembled nothing better perhaps than a mute but grim rapacious bird of prey.
God knows what was the reality of Sparta, but the legend of the place - and especially the "incorruptible" supreme lawgiver Lycurgus - as recounted by Plutarch has perhaps been as potent a force in history as the idea of Athenian freedom. The theory of the strong and single-minded leader who rises to the top through force of will seems to have impressed you as it has many others in history: "It is natural competition in its rawest form, and is that necessarily evil? Sparta has always appealed to those who admire harsh discipline, focused industriousness, straightforward ignorance, unquestionable integrity, martial honor, and inflexibility of will and brute power. Not surprisingly, Sparta and Athens are ancient antagonists today in their theories of government as they were in warfare during the Peloponnesian War.
I would argue that such a culture and government based on a "natural competition in its rawest form" is worthy of beasts but not of men who desire to live in a just society. Your version of "natural competition" where a pack of jackals devour any other animal which lacks the power or speed to fend them off is not my idea of acceptable behavior for human beings. Many of what I consider the strongest and most noble use their power to protect the weak or vulnerable. Real leaders seek to CONVINCE those less powerful or possessing less insight or education as to the value and wisdom of their ideas and seek to LEAD a fractious humanity to a better place. Franklin Delanor Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Winston Churchill are all examples of such leaders whose views persevered in open elections and who led countries forward even as they were hotly opposed and even hated by many in their countries.
They were all leaders of democracies, and yet thrived in warfare if and when it came to their countries. As Pericles claimed of the soldiers of Athenian democracy in contrast to her enemy Sparta: "Our natural bravery springs from our way of life, not from the compulsion of laws." Perhaps this is the best we can expect from human political discourse. All of the aforementioned rulers and their societies would appreciate competition but not in its "rawest form" and only according to certain rules and laws. This is EVERYTHING, and it separates a man from a beast. It is the difference between a lawful man disposed to live at peace with his fellow creature and a predator desirous of fresh conquest.
"Man's special distinction from the other animals is that he alone has perception of good and bad and of the just and the unjust."
Aristotle
To our shame, human history is all too often littered with the examples of men who in their lives were little better than animals. Chinese history, American history, Russian history, Aztec history... no government founded and conducted by homo sapiens is immune from this reality. That is why it is so important to foster a respect for human rights and attempt to guarantee them through force of law.
For argument's sake, I will agree with you that the "truth is in the hands of the few." However, it is immensely dangerous and seductive to assume that those who manage to scrape and claw their way to the pinnacle of power in non-representative countries inherently possess the "truth." You argue that intellectuals able to pass tests (KeJu) will make the most virtuous rulers. Where is the historical evidence which suggests that intellectuals will make the best rulers? History (especially recent history) shows us that the enlightened few "intellectuals" able to fight their way to power are often the biggest villains of all! The best example of such a man is V.I. Lenin who claimed to have mastered the arcane religion of scientific socialism and would lead the Russian people (and eventually the world!) to a Paradise on earth, even if that road be littered with the corpses of half of humanity! Is it more often the case that the few who hold the "truth" do not undertake scorched earth campaigns for unlimited political power over others?
"The truth is in the hands of the few." Can you imagine Socrates, Bhudda, or Jesus Christ shoving their "truths" down the throat of reluctant believers? Sending people to jail or ordering their deaths if they didn't follow them unquestioningly? In reality, armed prophets laying claim to knowing the truth - even if others didn't understand them - have resulted in the reign of Robespierre, and later the German, Japanese, Russian, and Chinese totalitarian governments where mass murder, gulags, executions, genocide, and a sea of bloodshed and suffering have been the common lot of their peoples. Lycurgus and the "enlightened despots" have been the seductive theory of authoritarian government. Yet we see the reality has been all too often different.
I am unmoved by subtleties of nomenclature between a "constitutional authoritarian democracy" and a "constitutional libertarian democracy"; the defining issue is not the existence of a constitution per se but what the law guarantees and means in real life. Is everyone equal under the law? Can a man think his own thoughts and speak his mind as a free citizen?
"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy."
Abraham Lincoln
The Soviet Union had many constitutions during her lifespan and none of them was worth the paper it was printed on! To be exact, does the law protect individual freedom and is it respected as such?
In the case of Singapore, what can a constitution mean when all power is concentrated in a select circle of autocrats in government who answer to nobody? Even if the rule be relatively benign, there can be only the appearance of freedom without true freedom in such a power structure. If the economy were to take a turn for the worse or should political problems arise, the people of Singapore would find out just how "free" they are. In the Singapore model, the leaders would like everyone to think that in reality freedom means the right to obey the government and whatever they deem to be correct. Because of course they always know what it is correct. If not, they never would have risen to positions of power. Such freedoms will not keep you out of a concentration camp. In fact, to hear the Confucist mandarins proclaim the wisdom of a government-mandated lifestyle the following comes to mind:
"There is a road to freedom. Its milestones are Obedience, Endeavor, Honesty, Order, Cleanliness, Sobriety, Truthfulness, Sacrifice, and love of the Fatherland."
This, of course, comes from a message signed by Adolf Hitler that was posted in concentration camps. The "constitutional authoritarian" is a similar form of sham democracy, if it even makes such a claim in real life. Can anyone take seriously a judicial system in a country where all power is concentrated in a few persons? How possible is it to have a truly independent judiciary and consequent respect for the law for all citizens equally when the leaders are accountable to nobody? What action is taken by judges when the winds of fate blow against the government? Can they order the arrest of high-level - or even low-level! - members of the government with probable cause? Or maybe the Singapore government is immune to corruption and other crime. If so, it would be perhaps the first government in the history of mankind to be so.
I hear people defend Singapore and the benevolent reign of Mr. Lee Kuan Yew and I am not convinced; the form of government does not elude any of the ancient problems with regards to tyranny (or do you think tyranny a "natural" and correct form of government?). As Tomas G. Masaryk said: "Dictators always look good until the last minutes." And China is a very different country than Singapore with a much larger country and population. To be able to keep everyone under constant surveillance would be much harder in mainland China. Yet the principle remains the same at heart.
From what I have read and the conversations I have had with people from that country, Singapore seems to me a sort of perpetual Catholic school on a large-scale for adult citizens who are expected to shut up, do their work, keep their hair short, wear tasteful clothes, and stay out of trouble. Or else. Yew has used authoritarian government effectively to move his country from the 3rd world to the 2nd. Without liberalizing his country he will never be able to truly break into the leagues of the 1st world. A society needs creativity and innovation to become dynamic; it is not enough to have a society full of automons and engineers who would not recognize an original thought if it bit them in the bum. As J.S. Mill insightfully put it, "Culture without freedom never made a large and liberal mind."
Past a certain stage of development a society absolutely needs great minds. A culture full of engineers, businessmen, and computer programmers is not sufficient. Human beings need the liberal arts, free thoughts, and the free flow of information and ideas. In fact, I bet even many Singaporean businessmen would like more openness to grow and expand their businesses with imagination in order to remain highly competitive in a global economy. Yet I suspect all this to be anathema to the sclerotic Mr. Yew. "Be a good citizens and do your work dutifully!" he might say. That is not enough for adults. At least it shouldn't be enough. Mr. Yew is merely another of the dour bureaucrats of the stifling commissar culture. As Pericles claimed, "Although only a few may originate a policy, we are all able to judge it."
Let me ask you a question Zy@aol.com: Would you send a person to jail for giving speech to a thought or writing down an idea? Do you see such a thing as conceivably a criminal act? Would you advocate sending someone to a laojiao ("reeducation through labor" camp) to have their incorrect thought rectified through hard labor? I am not referring to speech like yelling "fire!" in a crowded theater, but something more ephemeral.
"It would be interesting to know what it is men are most afraid of. Taking a new step, uttering a new word."
Fyodor Dostoyevski
You ask me: "What is human rights? Is it GOD or is it just because we are human that we are inherited with some inviolable rights?" The answer to that question all depends on where one lives. If you are born in Rwanda, North Korea, Iran, Zaire, Cuba, Albania, Algeria, or mainland China, you have few or even NO rights at all depending on the actual circumstances in that country. It has nothing to do with God and everything to do with the reality on the ground. Life in such circumstances can be cruel and short with poverty and/or terror looming overhead at all moments like the sword of Damocles. For example, a follower of the Dalai Lama up in arms about the destruction of temples and monasteries in Tibet or a pro-democracy activist lives a life in China that only heroes dare venture due to a angry government which brooks no dissent. A peasant starving in North Korea or villager facing genocide in Rwanda is too terrified about the immediate circumstances of survival to care about anything else. Such has unfortunately been the reality for the vast majority of mankind both in the past and the present. Talk about rights is mere talk, since political or economic circumstances has made such places barren soil for any kind of political freedom.
However, if a person is born into a country where certain inviolable rights and freedoms are protected by law, he/she can perhaps live life with a modicum of security from the cruel vagaries of fate and fortune. The law can put in place various mechanisms which will work to protect the rights of minority interests and seek to promote empathy among all members of the polis. This is maybe the best we can do to try and check the perhaps inevitable slide of government into oppressor. Hopefully, such rights and liberties can enable a person to go to sleep not fearing that the police are going to kick down the door in the middle of the night without a warrant and take them away never to be seen or heard from again!
Having your human rights respected does not mean that happiness is guaranteed. A person can still contract terminal cancer, endure poverty, be victimized by a private citizen, and suffer any of a thousand other misfortunes that can befall a person in life. And even the government can violate those rights they are sworn to respect!
Yet in a free society, an individual by and large can effectively choose the "kind of society, political system and individual lifestyle that is compatible with human dignity." (to quote a demand by pro-democracy activist Ding Zilin) Free citizens can have their say in the affairs of their own country and can hold their head up with pride when greeting one another in public. The ability as a free human being to walk the earth at will, breath the air, regard the frozen moon or the fiery sun without having to ask permission (or even so much as a "by your leave!") and think whatever thoughts one pleases is an end in of as itself. To be able to speak one's mind and entertain a thought as it occurs! This is what freedom means. To live with dignity as a free man! For me, there is nothing more important in the whole world. I sometimes wonder about the many people who have enjoyed this kind of freedom all their lives and knowing nothing else take it entirely for granted. Until it suddenly be taken away, of course.
I hold it to be a great tragedy that so many persons today live in environments of utter poverty and political tyranny which conspire to enslave perhaps the greater part of humanity. I hope one day we as a species will advance to such a point where ALL of us can live without degrading need and in personal political freedom. This desire for a better human future and vision for it, I repeat, is what separates an animal from a man. It is what distinguishes a follower of Pericles and Athens from a patriot of Lycurgus and Sparta. It is for this reason why I would spend so much time, money, and effort creating a "Democracy in China" website. When I read the thoughts of individuals such as Wei Jingsheng or Ding Zilin, they speak to me across cultures and thousands of miles of ocean and I consider them my compatriots. When I read Wei Jingshen and hear him talk about freedom and liberty, I know that even as he is jail or in poor health his spirit is free. And my bargain with him is that as long as China lives under despotism, this page will stay up on the World Wide Web for everyone to read.
Very Truly Yours,
Richard Geib
P.S. Maybe all this is an "intoxication of liberalism." That sits OK with me. This all too often dreary and callous world of making money, trying to get ahead, and struggling to survive could use a little more "intoxication" - especially when it revolves around the positive themes of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. <<<<<<<<<<<
Please forgive me for repeating the above from the WWW, but I can't help it. I want to add several others to Geib's Pericles and his quest for truth in the Agora in Athens from its citizens (demos). We must remember that though, as Mrs. Rayner had it, The Golden Age of Greece was just as imperialistic as the one that followed later under Alexander. Plutarch chose Numa to contrast with Lycurgus, not Pericles. Numa Pompilius (from the EB, fl 700BC) was the
second of the seven kings who, according to Roman tradition, ruled Rome before the founding of the Republic (c. 509 BC).
Numa is said to have reigned from 715 to 673. He is credited with the formulation of the religious calendar and with the founding of Rome's other early religious institutions, including the Vestal Virgins; the cults of Mars, Jupiter, and Romulus deified (Quirinus); and the office of pontifex maximus. These developments were actually, however, the result of centuries of religious accretion. According to legend, Numa is the peaceful counterpart of the more bellicose Romulus (the legendary founder of Rome), whom he succeeded after an interregnum of one year. His supposed relationship with Pythagoras was known even in the Roman Republic to be chronologically impossible, and the 14 books relating to philosophy and religious (pontifical) law that were uncovered in 181 BC and attributed to him were clearly forgeries.
The other hero to mention is another Pericles, Prince of Tyre. He is associated with truth of another kind, witnessing King Antiochus' incestuous love for his own daughter and flees, leaving the loyal Helicanus to rule Tyre in his absence. This Pericles was fashioned into a Romance Play of Shakespeare, but the substance of truth whether from the masses or from witnessing remains valid, inspite of what King Antiochus told the citizens about the lies of Pericles.
It is curious that my great grandfather, knowing of these ancients, chose to name his first born son Irvin Lycurgus Scott.
Representative government, so cherished in our Republic, did not arrive in Rome until after ancestors of Caesar and Brutus vanquished the monarch.
Chess and Golf
Today's papers celebrate Tiger Wood's success at the Firestone Golf Tournament and his winning more than one million dollars. Coincidently John Tierney wrote a column which was also published today, concerning the results of last week's PGA Tournament at Baltusrol in New Jersey. He reports that more than 80% of the TV watchers are male, reasoning that about 80% of those happen also to be golfers themselves. Still the TV as well as the admissions create enormous excitement for the players themselves. NOT SO WITH CHESS, another heavily biased men's game. On the same page was another NY Times article translated by Sally Ann Welford from Spain.
Tomas Eloy Martinez
When Garry Kasparov lost his battle in May 1997 to the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue, in New York, chess players around the world realized that human imagination had surrendered to a machine that had no mercy or feelings.
The idea, as old as the world itself, that the human species would end up succumbing to the tools it had created also returned.
Thus the same hands that had lighted the sacred flame would end up snuffing it out.
In its beginnings, chess symbolized war, power and the ascendance of the soul to the serenity of the gods. When the game was invented in India, or in China (it is still not certain which), some 15 centuries ago, the chessboards represented prairies and kingdoms, valleys of blood, impassable rivers, ramparts of fire.
The Arabs took the game, freed of images, to Sicily and Spain, where the Abbot Ruy Lopez wrote a celebrated treatise in 1561, which is still in use today.
Now chess has returned to Spain, but the game is less solemn and more pathetic than it was in its initial days of glory.
A few weeks ago, I listened to a tale told by Joaquin Estefania, director of the journalism school run by Spain's newspaper El Pais. He revealed that some of the grand masters of Eastern Europe and Latin America wander like beggars around their country's villages and towns, competing for the carrion of slim earnings and traveling on night trains without paying for a ticket by hiding in the bathrooms.
Estefania told me that this story was written by an alumnus of the school, Daniel Borasteros, with such painful truths that you would rather not believe them. I made Estefania promise to send me the article, and when at last I read it, I realized that chess had reached a depth even sorrier than the defeat of Kasparov by the machinations of Deep Blue.
Losing against a machine is already disconcerting, but losing your own dignity is to lose against yourself.
When I was a boy, no one ever dreamed of beating the East European masters who devoted eight or even 10 hours a day to studying chess paid by the state or by philanthropists of the science of chess. As in the world championships, the winner's prize there, rarely more than $2,500, was always decided among the Soviets. That is the sum that Boris Spassky won against Tigran Petrosian in 1969.
They played not for money but for pride. I remember when the Pole Miguel Najdorf, left stranded in Buenos Aires by World War II, confronted 45 adversaries in 1940 for free. Blindfolded, he gave an extraordinary demonstration of memory and skill as he won 39 of those games, tied four and lost two.
Borasteros describes how Davor Kolmjenovic, a Croatian master based in Spain, lives like a primitive, surviving solely on the bread served during games, stashing it away in a paper napkin. Like many of his colleagues, he plays about 50 games a year for prizes that run from $24 to $1,213, and sometimes he comes away with empty pockets.
"We have gotten to a miserable stage," said an Azerbaijani master, Azer Mirzoev, who sometimes travels hundreds of miles a day to return home because he can't afford to stay in hotels.
When hunger takes a grip, solidarity becomes imperative: The players settle the results of the games and divide the prize money.
However, they don't always come to an agreement. At the beginning of this year, the Argentinian Gabriel del Rio offered to share the $145 winner's prize money with one of his opponents. It was fortunate that the other did not accept, because in the end del Rio came out first.
Nearly all of them, when they arrived in Spain, told exaggerated tales of prowess. Kolmjenovic managed to get into various tourneys boasting that he had defeated the Bulgarian Veselin Topalov, who is the world's No. 3 player. If that had really been so, it could only have happened through a lapse of Topalov's concentration.
Chess players' value is measured month by month by an infallible point system, according to which Kasparov who is in the top spot has 2,812 and Kolmjenovic only 2,440, some 300 places behind Kasparov.
Both Lenin and Stalin venerated chess, but the Soviet Union only presented its most tenacious champions, the ones who played with a solar-system-like exactitude. Geniuses sprang up in other places, however. Cuban Jose Raul Capablanca, the young prodigy of the 1920s, did not even study. His winning moves sprang naturally from his mind, like breathing.
Alexander Alekhine, the Russian aristocrat and immigrant who beat Capablanca, lost the world championship only once by showing up drunk at the matches.
Later, Bobby Fischer turned chess into a show for which he was paid millions of dollars, until he disappeared from the scene, victim of his own dissolute character, and ended up living shabbily and extravagantly, like Howard Hughes.
Barely a decade ago, fans passionately attended tourneys and discussed from a distance the grand masters' plays, which were projected on huge screens. Now, the majority prefer to try their skill against computer games that, for $15, offer millions of mathematical combinations to respond to each move.
The Chinese believed that chess, on a small table, reproduced all the figures of heaven, those of the past and those to come.
That vision, undoubtedly real, contains the powerful images of Deep Blue and the robots that would be permanent champions, as well as the images of the poor indigent masters who wander around Spain, village to village, exchanging their knowledge for a crust of bread.
Martinez, director of Latin American Studies at Rutgers University, is the author of "The Peron Novel." This article was translated by Sally-Ann Welford. (New York Times)
