Some notes on Aristotle, Hobbes and Locke

There seems to be a radical antagonism between the ideas of men and society of Aristotle and Hobbes. Both seem to represent two contradictory interpretations of why men gather in society and constitute government. This difference springs from their radical opposite conceptions of what the nature of man is. However I find interesting that Locke in his Second Treatise of Government seems to be in a middle point between the two.

This is nothing but a mere sketch of an idea I developed some months ago reading Locke. It might be read as a temporary hypotheses. The premises are:

i. While Hobbes interprets man's nature from his strictly emotional self-centered condition, he underlines an antisocial tendency of man's individuality that is deduced from the apparently constant competitive behavior between, among and of each other. Because all men praise their safety above all else, there is a natural tendency to distrust and fear others as potential threats to his life and welfare. So man's first goal in life is security.

ii. Aristotle on the other hand interprets man's nature from his ethical inclination towards happiness and friendliness, which he deduces from the fact that all men live in society and none is known to be born and raised in solitude. Because all men seem to aim at happiness as the goal of life, and friendship is among the most praised goods from where happiness springs, men cultivate friendship, which in the aggregate forms society.

iii. However Locke agrees with Aristotle that there is a natural tendency given by God in man's nature which makes him sociable. But contrary to Aristotle and in agreement with Hobbes (and all Modern tradition in this sense), he considers that government is a rationally created institution for the preservation of all against each, as if the possibility of aggression is enough to distrust each other, but no so much as to render society impossible.

Conclusions: For Aristotle government springs naturally from the human condition of sociability. Man as the political animal lives under government in his natural self, whereas for Hobbes government and society are rationally established by individuals by their natural tendency to fear and distrust each other, but for the purpose of permitting civil life in tranquility. In Hobbes, society and government is built against nature, whilst in Aristotle it springs from human nature itself. For Locke society springs from human nature, but not government. Locke's State of Nature is a society without government. It is implicit in Locke that men can live without the need of government. The emergence of it is a rationally deduced mutual conclusion based on the utility of its existence. Therefore, the Minimal State is really justified by this idea that men can actually live in society without the help of government.

Secondary conclusions: in Antiquity, political man interpreted as natural, the vision of politics is somehow seen in an organic form. Government and politics, all its changes and eventualities are by nature, and hence by necessity. Liberty cannot be conceived in this way as the capacity of man to take control of his actions. In Christian and Western thought the notion is different. Human rational capacities are seen as superior to nature. So man makes himself the master of his nature and not his product. Therefore unless he is the rational author of government and his political condition, no notion of liberty can be imagined. This is the most profound and radical difference between all Ancient and Modern thought regarding politics and the human condition. The brilliant mind of Hanna Arendt traces the birth of this difference in St. Paul's discovery of the human will.

A defence on the Right to bear and keep Arms

In the United States there is a long debate regarding the Second Amendment to the Constitution. Personally, I'm a strong advocate of the rights established in it. The amendment as it is written in the Bill of Rights reads:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

There are plenty of arguments used in favor of regulating the right to bear and keep arms. These arguments take actual relevance in the aftermath of massacres, like the resent one in Tucson, Arizona. Many say that this right only endangers the life and security of average Americans, as mentally unhealthy persons carry, and sometimes use arms to perpetrate massacres. The anxiety caused by this right is intensified by school shootings, like Columbine (1999) and Virginia Tech (2007), which takes the life of youth and children. Especially for mothers, the right to bear and keep arms usually represents a threat to their children. Another current argument is the regulation of this right in order to combat crime, particularly gangs in big cities. Usually violence caused by firearms is the main reason used by liberals to regulate them. Recently I even heard the argument that the Second Amendment should be repelled by another amendment, so to end the debate in favor of disarmament.

Now, I'm not gonna follow the recurrent conservative answer "guns don't kill people; people kill people", because it has almost turn into a fetish; a pill argument to simply end the conversation. Instead of trying to convince the liberal, or making her understand the reasons for it, we just simply alienate ourselves from the other. And democracy cannot survive without debate and a level of agreement between the parts. Such a defense is mediocre, and it doesn't even tackle the real and valuable reasons why the Second Amendment should and must prevail.

Let us start by analyzing the content of the written text and its meaning. The first part of the amendment reads: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State...". The reason is already given. It implies that the survival of the freedom of the political community, the people composing it must be minimally organized in order to defend it. The goal is preserving freedom. It also implies aggression: external or internal threats to the constitution of freedom. We are before the most republicanist of arguments; freedom demands from its citizens the duty to defend it. Militia is the technique. This means that the United States cannot solely depend on a standing professional army to defend it. The citizen must also be engaged in the defense of their country and its institutions. How could he ever do this, fulfill this duty, if his right to bear and keep arms is infringed?

It is warranted to ask, why would the citizens have to engage themselves in the defense of their country if a standing professional army is already in place? To know the answer to this question we must go back to the times of the Founding Fathers. The American Revolution must also be understood as a rebellion against European power and ideas. But in this amendment we see a rebellion against one of the core characteristics of the European Modern State that was developing since the 17th century, but that was theoretically explained by 20th century German sociologist Max Weber: the monopoly of the legitimate use of violence. Weber discovered that the European State in its modern form expropriates all its individual and grouped members from any kind of use of violence, and by creating a monopoly of its means it claimed legitimacy over them. This policy was advanced by both monarchical governments, as by latter parliaments and republics in Europe. The result was an all powerful State that claimed the right to declare war and suppress sedition without opposition. Only the State would guarantee the defense of its citizens, leaving them defenseless from the State itself. The virtual link between people and democratized State helped hide this charade; because, if the State was the political abstraction that represented the people, the State would be the people, and the individual and grouped citizens wouldn't have to be armed without being defended.

The Americans thought differently. Their experience showed that the republic, and the liberty that springs from it, cannot be preserved without its citizens being actively engaged in certain duties. Among them the duty to defend the constitution against aggressors. One thing that the Europeans neglected, and that, thank God, Americans still preserve, is the common wisdom that the State is also a potential threat to the freedoms established in the republican constitution. State and Republic are not the same. Republic is freedom, State is planing and organizing. Republic is an idea of free community, State is a human machine of administering public policies. If the State claims a monopoly of the means of violence (of the means of self-defense), not always, but usually, it can use that monopoly to end the Republic; especially and mostly if the State has at its disposal a professional standing army. Quoting European, Hispanic-American, Asian and the Russian examples of this phenomenon are so abundant that it would be sterile trying to. How defenseless Americans would be if one day, and let us pray that day may never come, a tyrant usurps the power of the State and the citizens lack the weapons to defend the Republic against him. That would be a certain tragedy!

Today Americans rest comfortably on the security of their constitution. More than two centuries of the republic's success have blind them of the ever existing dangers against freedom. Many still carry this wisdom within their hearts. But an increasing minority has lost perspective of the value of the Second Amendment. Recent tragedies expressed by the shootings of civilians have turned their attention toward a social problem (which is reasonable and warranted), but they forget the political meaning of the right to bear and keep arms, without which no free State can be secured, and which infringement puts its survival at jeopardy.

The Wisdom

While reading the Bible earlier today, I caught a beautiful passage from The Book of Wisdom, also called The Wisdom of Salomon. It is one of the deuterocanonical book of the Bible, which means that it is strictly Christian canon, and it is not included in the Jewish Torah. The passage is the first chapter of the book and goes as follows, and then I will make a comment:

"Love righteousness, you rulers of the earth, think of the lord with uprightness, and seek him with sincerity of heart; because he is found by those who do not put him to test, and manifests himself to those who do not distrust him. For perverse thoughts separate men from God, and when his power is tested, it convicts the foolish; because wisdom will not enter a deceitful soul, nor dwell in a body enslaved to sin. For a holy and disciplined spirit will flee from deceit, and will rise and depart from foolish thoughts, and will be ashamed at the approach of unrighteousness.

"For wisdom is kindly spirit and will not free a blasphemer from the guilt of his words; because God is witness of his inmost feelings, and a true observer of his heart, and a hearer of his tongue. Because the Spirit of the Lord has filled the world, and that which holds all things together knows what is said; therefore no one who utters unrighteous things will escape notice, and justice, when it punishes, will not pass him by. For inquiry will be made into the counsels of an ungodly man, and a report of his words will come to the Lord, to convict him of his lawless deeds; because a jealous ear hears all things, and the sound of murmuring does not go unheard. Beware then of useless murmuring, and keep your tongue from slander; because no secret word is without result, and a lying mouth destroys the soul.

"Do not invite death by the error of your life, not bring on destruction by the works of your hands; because God did not make death, and he does not delight in the death of the living. For he created all things that they might exist, and the generative forces of the world are wholesome, and there is no destructive poison in them; and the dominion of Hades is not on earth. For righteousness is immortal.

"But ungodly men by their words and deed summon death; considering him a friend they pined away, and they made a covenant with him, because they are fit to belong to his party" (Wisdom 1:1-16).

The first thing that this passage presents us is the problem of faith. God cannot be put to test. Such pretension inevitably brings the mark of unrighteousness, because implicitly we put ourselves above God, and him below as an object of study. It cannot but be called pride. Those that stubbornly believe in science, and deny God because of lack of proofs are these, that trusting too much in their bodily senses, deny what can only bee seen with the eyes of the soul; and instead of admitting humbly the limits of their capacity, assume the most foolish of behaviors. Hence, they are unwise, and unfit for the knowledge of God. This seems almost like a curse to me.

The second paragraph tells us something of the "nature" of God. He is aware of everything that happens inside our consciousness. If he is the Creator and the Force from where everything living springs, he is the consciousness of the world, which means that our individual's consciousness are in His. Whatever we do, whatever we say and think, our relation with God is so intimate, that only he can trace the origin of our actions, emotions and thoughts, so as to judge their righteousness. So as to know if we are blamable or forgivable for what we do and say. The fragment shows God as a perfect universal judge of all that is human. At the end of our lives we stand trial, not so much for our concrete actions, but for the internal state of our soul from which those actions sprang. In more philosophical terminology, of the principles of our will. Only because of this the Lord can understand us, even more than we understand ourselves. This is what makes the Lord all forgiving, for the Lord recognizes our falls and separates them from real unrighteousness, which here is characteristic of atheists. This last point is what connects with the first paragraph.

The third paragraph explains why God is all forgiving. Here death is not seen as the departure of soul and body. The promise of eternal life for all living things explains death not as the end, but as a turning point between bodily life on earth and eternal life in Heaven. Because he hears and knows everything that takes place within our soul, and because he loves life and wants to make it eternal, God's judgment of a rightful soul is immortality. Curious enough the mention of the realm of Hades, a pagan deity, is seen as an end. This end, which is identified by not being from this world, precisely by the lack of world at all, is the result of an unrighteous life. Again, only an end is reserved for those that deny God, the most unrighteous of all.

And why are they unrighteous? Last paragraph explains: because their pride, as represented in the first paragraph, has clouded their souls, and they no longer distinguish what is right, precisely because what is right is and springs from the Lord. Because they are ungodly, they are unrighteous, and the promise of eternal life is denied to them. Precisely because they are condemning themselves to extinction, to real infinite death, they are absolutely unwise.

However, and this is the Good News of Jesus coming, as long as we are living, there is always a chance to convert into the righteous, and be saved.

United States Form of Government

If we approach the History of the United States of America from the perspective of forms of government, first we can trace its beginnings to the year of the foundation of Jamestown in Virginia (1607). It is true that the colonies of North America came from many European countries and not only from England. There were colonies from France, Spain and the Netherlands. But what later became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland is, on the aggregate, the form of government of the colonial times in what later became the United States. So we can plausibly proceed from the general assumption that the United States emerged as an independent free republic from the Monarchy of Great Britain, and from nowhere else.

What later became the free republic of the United States was first under a monarchical constitution; and the monarchs can be listed as follows:
1) King James I, 1607-1625 (from the foundation of Jamestown);
2) King Charles I, 1625-1649;
3) King Charles II, 1649-1685;
4) King James II, 1685-1688;
5) King William III, 1689-1702;
6) Queen Anne, 1702-1714;
7) King George I, 1714-1727;
8) King George II, 1727-1760;
9) King George III, 1760-1776 (until the Declaration of Independence).

The Declaration of Independence marks the overthrow of the monarchy and the constitution of a free republic: The United States of America under The Articles of Confederation. The final establishment of the republic came under the ratification of the United States Constitution (1789), and the inauguration of its first Congress and President. However, what could have been a free republic, came more in the form of an oligarchical constitution. Most of the Union had by that time property qualifications for voting right. That is common ground in the institutions of oligarchy since the political philosophy of Aristotle.

The prudence of the Founding Fathers was their capacity to understand the limits of their victory. A complete democratic revolution in 1776 (that of course would have included the African American population) would have caused civil war and total division, making the republican project a complete failure, and would have resulted in a dictatorship, most probably of George Washington, the strong man of the time. It happened in France after a so radical democratic revolution that began in 1789, that resulted in Bonaparte's dictatorship under the name of Emperor (The mirror revolution of 1848 also ended with another dictatorship by a Bonaparte). In Russia, the radicalism of the revolution of 1917 brought about a civil war and eventually Stalin's dictatorship under the name of General Secretary of the Communist Party. Not to go far from Anglophone experience, the English republicanist revolution of 1649 executed King Charles I, and its religious and political radicalism resulted in Cromwell's dictatorship under the name of Lord Protector. History of Hispanic American republics is filled with examples of the same phenomenon. What made the Founding Fathers so successful was their prudence to administer their victory according to the possibilities of the times. Hence, the first decades of the United States were more similar to an oligarchical constitution, with slavery included.

The impressive nature of the United States Constitution is its ability to adapt and evolve through time. No wonder why they call it a "living constitution". After the generation of the Founding Fathers finished their administrations in the White House and Congress, the next generation of politicians took charge. By the times of the revolutionary war, Clay, Calhoun, Quincy Adams and Jackson were children or unborn. When they took charge of the country, the next step in American Democracy took place: Jacksonian Democracy and the end of property qualifications made the United States a white male democratic republic. Lincoln was a mere teenager. When his republican movement (the generation after the Jacksonian, the founders of the GOP) took charge, they defeated the most dangerous rebellion against the Constitution, ended slavery and moved forward toward universal male democracy. Women had to wait till the 19th Amendment (1920) that ended the long road toward universal suffrage, the peak of Modern Democracy. However true republicanism, equal protection of the law, came during the 60's with the Civil Rights Movement.

My point is, just as in Rome, the United States began its history under a monarchical form of government, and through the abolition of that constitution it advanced toward a republic. First it came in the form of an oligarchy and later, with constant civil action, it democratized itself slowly. Also as in Rome, the United States has never turned into a full time generalized democracy, and nothing similar to it. It has preserved republican principles of mixed government that do not deny the elites their space for ruling, nor excludes the people from some engagement in political power, and always holding the creed that the law is the only legitimate way of making any reform.

The question now goes, is the United States heading on the same road that led Rome to universal empire and ultimately to slavery?

In a World of Uncertainty only Doubt is Warranted

I doubt magic, I doubt fairies, I doubt dragons, I doubt warlocks. I doubt the media, I doubt reporters, I doubt progress, I even doubt Human Rights. I doubt economics, I doubt free market, I doubt science, I doubt Einstein, I doubt socialism, I doubt the State, I doubt liberalism, I even doubt social conservatism. I doubt Bush, I doubt Obama, I doubt New York, I doubt Berlin, I doubt Paris, I doubt Beijing, I doubt philosophy, I doubt Kant, I doubt materialism, and I even doubt family.

Of the many things that I seem to doubt, of all this world filled with uncertainties, only one thing, and one thing only seems uncontroversially true for me, and it is this:

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth, of things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the begotten of God the Father, the Only-begotten, that is of the essence of the Father.

God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten and not made; of the very same nature of the Father, by Whom all things came into being, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible.

Who for us humanity and for our salvation came down from heaven, was incarnate, was made human, was born perfectly of the holy virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit.

By whom He took body, soul, and mind, and everything that is in man, truly and not in semblance.

He suffered, was crucified, was buried, rose again on the third day, ascended into heaven with the same body, and sat at the right hand of the Father.

He is to come with the same body and with the glory of the Father, to judge the living and the dead; of His kingdom there is no end.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, in the uncreated and the perfect; Who spoke through the Law, prophets, and Gospels; Who came down upon the Jordan, preached through the apostles, and lived in the saints.

I believe also in only One, Universal, Apostolic, and Holy Church; in one baptism in repentance, for the remission, and forgiveness of sins; and in the resurrection of the dead, in the everlasting judgment of souls and bodies, and the Kingdom of Heaven and in the everlasting life. Amen

This I don't doubt, and it seems the only thing worthy of not doubting in this life, for the rest is opinion and uncertainty, not worthy of giving credit or paying too much heed.
There is something else that I don't doubt. I don't doubt history, and I don't doubt the existence of evil.

Words of Prudence

Some great words from Pericles:

"For a private man, though in good estate, if his country comes to ruin, must of necessity be ruined with it; whereas he that miscarries in a flourishing commonwealth shall much more easily preserved" (Ch.60).

"Men do no less condemn those that through cowardice lose the glory they have, than hate those that through imprudence arrogate the glory they have not" (Ch.61).

"The quiet life can never be preserved if it be not ranged with the active life, nor is it a life conductible to a city that reigns but to a subject city that it may safely serve" (Ch.63).

"Evils that come from heaven you must bear necessarily, and such as proceed from your enemies, valiantly" (Ch.64).

"To be hated and to displease is a thing that happens for the time to whosoever he be that hath the command of others; and he does well, that undergoes the hatred for matters of great consequence" (Ch.64).

"They whose minds least feel and whose actions most oppose a calamity both among states and private persons are the best" (Ch.64)

(Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War: Book II)

The loss of Depravation (I NO LONGER HOLD MANY OF THE THINGS SAID HERE)

The sense of depravation is an experience that every decade after another has been lost in our current culture. What first started as a war against the corrupted and tyrannical Catholic clergy in Europe, turned into a war against the principles of its faith. Trying to be more rational we end up becoming nihilistic. No longer the war was against the bishops, but it was against God. By the turn of the 20th century we inherited two thousand years of Christian morality and tradition, but no longer with the hopeful belief in Christ. Curiously enough this loss of our moral standards came with the final triumph of democracy, and the first thing that comes to my mind is what Plato wrote in Book VIII of The Republic. However, let us remain in our monotheistic times.

Our loss was not only in the field of morality. No longer able to distinguish clearly between good and evil, we also lost our capacity to distinguish between the beauty and the ugly. Our sense of aesthetics was also gone. In a culture that gave birth to Rembrandt, we now enlighten ourselves with "conceptual art". In a society that gave birth to Beethoven, we now enjoy the talent of Britney Spears and Daddy Yankee. In a civilization that gave birth to Shakespeare, we now sit and watch the Jersey Shore. For me the difference is anything but problematical, if not self-evident. However not everyone sees it that way. What once was the line between the genius, the mediocre and the vulgar, today is a matter of taste. Is it because we are now more enlightened, because progress has made us better men, more tolerant and free-minded? Or is it because the state of our current culture is so wasted, so broken, that no longer can we recognize ourselves and we have given license to our most depraved senses?

I started this comment with the word depravation. I would like to return to the original meaning of this post by pointing out the squalid, if not crippled, state of our contemporary culture, the Western civilization. To remind us the loss of our aesthetical values is nothing but a way of remembering the loss of our moral values. As this goes on, our actions and practices as a society and the individuals living in it grow more depraved. We cannot stop it because we are handicapped of our sense to perceive and experience depravation as what it is in itself. Again, today is only a matter of taste. The peak, or the crown of this phenomenon is our stance regarding homosexuality.

Beware of what I'm about to say: our human soul is morally base, we incline toward corruption very easily, and I advance that almost all individuals, excepting perhaps the Saints, have and withhold a kind of depravation. To state a very usual example, pornography. A person that has lost the sense that pornography is a depraved cultural phenomenon has lost any sense of moral conduct whatsoever. He cannot even think morally. Morality as such is seen incomprehensibly. But still, pornography is widely watched even by persons with moral understanding. The difference is, while some admit their depravity with humility and probably guilt, others deny the notion of depravity itself, and engage in it without any experience of remorse at all. What I want to stress here is the inevitable depravation of our base instincts and our impossibility to eradicate them from our spirit. What we do, instead, is behave in society, we try to conceal it or to moderate it somehow not to insult or offend others around us, as a matter of education and respect.

Now I make my stance on homosexuality. Only a person that has lost a sense of morality would deny the experience of depravation. This has happened to a vast portion of the Western population. Because of this, homosexuality, which beyond personal opinion is a moral depravation wherever it is placed in any fragment of our Christian inheritance, is today seen by many as something completely casual and even legitimate. What a person does and thinks in his private sphere is not of my business. As I have stated previously, we all share a kind of depravation. Homosexuals have theirs; in this case the condition of homosexuality itself. I find that normal.

What I don't find normal, nor legitimate, is that motto that runs "Gay Pride". However something is true about it. Pride is one of the capital sins in Christian theology. It's precisely the moral baseness that prevents us from acting with humility and admitting that we might be wrong. Pride is equal to arrogance and haughtiness. I'm twisting the real meaning of "Gay Pride" on purpose for the sake of the argument. I'm not against individuals' depravations. That's up to everyone individually and their relation to God enjoyed in their private spheres. I'm talking about this pride of showing off to the world their depravation, and trying to force us to admit it as something casual and natural in the public sphere. The loss of our sense of depravation has made one of the most depraved behaviors, only surpassed because pederasty exists, a thing of common speech. Homosexuality, and what they call gay rights, is make public what should be private. Forcing everyone to bare the depravations of others in public, in the squares, in the parks, on the streets, in the supermarket, and even inside the churches.

I don't deny that depravation might be natural within our souls. It can't be purged. Such pretension can even be monstrous. But I think that our depravations should be keep up to ourselves. "Gay rights" and homosexuality has turned into an issue in which living a respectful, moral and conscious public life is impossible if not even a motive of derision. The cause of liberty, by being wrongly used against morality, is turning virtuous republicanism into a depraved ochlocracy; especially in the last country of the Western civilization that preserves barely what we once used to be as a culture: the United States.

Liberty in pills

"I shall not be very desirous of living in a city in which individuals are more powerful than laws; for that country alone is desirable in which property and friends may be safely enjoyed, not one where they me easily be taken from us, and where friends, from fear of losing their property, are compelled to abandon each other in their greatest need. Besides, it has always been less painful to good men to hear of the misfortunes of their country than to witness them; and an honorable exile is always held in greater esteem than slavery at home" (Machiavelli; History of Florence; Book IV, Ch. 7).

Any coincidence? Sounds familiar?

Opening the year with Machiavelli

What is a freedom and free government? Let his authority speak for itself:

"Republican governments, more especially those imperfectly organized, frequently change their rules and the form of their institutions; not by the influence of liberty and subjection, as many suppose, but by that of slavery and license; for with the nobility or the people, the ministers respectively of slavery or licentiousness, only the name or liberty is in estimation, neither of them choosing to be subject either to magistrates or laws. When, however, a good, wise, and powerful citizen appears (which is but seldom), who established ordinances capable of appeasing or restraining these contending dispositions, so as to prevent them from doing mischief, then the government may be called free, and its institutions firm and secure; for having good laws for its basis, and good regulations for carrying them into effect, it needs not, like others, the virtue of one man for its maintenance. With such excellent laws and institutions, many of those ancient republics, which were of long duration, were endowed. But these advantages are, and always have been, denied to those which frequently change from tyranny to license, or the reverse; because, from the powerful enemies which each condition creates itself, they neither have, nor can possess any stability; for tyranny cannot please the good, and license is offensive to the wise: the former may easily be productive of mischief, while the latter can scarcely be beneficial; in the former, the insolent have too much authority, and in the latter, the foolish; so that each requires for their welfare the virtue and the good fortune of some individual who may be removed by death, or become unserviceable by misfortune" (Machiavelli: History of Florence: IV: Ch.1).