Notes on "A History of Political Theory" -- Episode 26

For episode 25, see here

The Theory of the Nation State: The Moderns

XXVI. Jean Jacques Rousseau and Rediscovery of Community
 A. Great gap between Rousseau and his contemporaries.
 B. Was a deeply divided personality, noble vs base, ideal vs real.

     "More than most men, Rousseau projected the contradictions and maladjustments of his own nature upon the society about him and sought an anodyne for his own painful sensitivity. (Sabine, 577)"

 C. Used contrast between the natural and the actual not as appeal to reason 
      but to attack reason.
 D. Against intelligence, growth of knowledge and Enlightenment progress,
      he set amiable and benevolent sentiments, good will and reverence.

     "What gives value to life is the common emotions, perhaps one may say instincts, in respect to which men differ hardly at all and which he imagined to exist in a purer and less perverted form in the simple uneducated man than in the enlightened and sophisticated."

 E. Based his values on "realities" of everyday life.
 F. Intelligence and science are dangerous because they undermine 
     reverence and faith.
 G. Pulled philosophy away from union with science and implanted 
      distrust of intelligence.
 H. Rejected systematic individualism and self-interest as virtue.
 I.  Took from Plato a general outlook.
       1. Political subjection is essentially ethical and only secondarily a
           matter of law and power.
       2. Community itself is chief moralizing agent and represents the
           highest moral value.
       3. Therefore fundamental moral category is citizen not man.
 J. Saw rights not as against community but within it.
       1. Natural egoist is fiction, some kind of community is inevitable,
           society is purely instinctive.
       2. Community has corporate personality, a general will.
       3. Government is agent for this will (could be radical or conservative).
       4. General will is the source of law and morals.
 K. The General Will
       1. Saw city-state as the best example of venue for the general will.
       2. Contract useful device even though government has no
           independent power; citizens exist as members of society,
           individuals have no rights except as members of the community.
       3. General will is the collective good of the community which is not
           the same as the private interest of its members.
       4. Men become equal within a society not because (per Hobbes)
           their physical power is substantially equal.
       5. Absolute authority of general will vis-a-vis indefeasible individual
           rights.
       6. When one is forced to obey general will, one is being forced to
           be free because one doesn't know his own good.
 L. Rousseau originated romantic cult of the group contrary to rationalist's
      cult of the individual.  
 M. In adapting the model of citizenship within the city-state to modern
      modern nation-state, Rousseau helped to recast it in such a form
      that national sentiment could appropriate it.
 N. Rousseau's impact
       1. Idealizing moral feeling of the common man led to Kant
       2. Full significance of idealizing collective will and participation in the
           common led to the idealism of Hegel.
       3. Descartes split reason from custom, Rousseau tacitly set it aside,
           Hegel tried to reunite them.
       4. Burke supplied missing content to "general will" by giving
           corporate life of England (custom and tradition) a conscious reality.

Next week:  Convention and Tradition -- Hume and Burke










 
 


 
 




 

Notes on "A History of Political Theory" -- Episode 6

For episode 5 see here.

Theory of the City-State

VI. Aristotle: Political Actualities
 A. Lays groundwork for the study of politics separate from the study of ethics
 B. Looks at the ethical basis, arrangement of offices, social classes within state,
       as well as recognizing the differences between the legal constitution and 
       the constitution in practice
 C. Analysis based upon an understanding of the political and economic
       constitution of the state
       1. Democracies differ according to inclusiveness and economic structure
          of the state
       2. Oligarchies differ on eligibility and distribution of property
 D. Three branches of government: deliberative, administrative and judiciary 
 E. Combining best of both types is the polity or constitutional government*
       1. Foundation of large middle class which is the most stable as not too
           rich or too poor
       2. Balancing of quality (aristocracy) and quantity (democracy)
 F. Defines state as community between contractual relations and paternal rule
 G. State originates from bare needs of life but continues for the sake of the good
       life -- which is the first truly civilized form. 
 H. The "nature"of a thing revealed after growth has taken place; nature redefined
       as convention. Through the growth of community comes the state.
 I. The state is natural because it contains the possibility of a fully civilized life
      but conditions must be right, thus an arena for the statesman to act.
 J. Fundamental constituents of nature: form, matter and movement
       1. Statesman must be descriptive and empirical to ascertain the possibilities
          of the actual
       2. Also must consider the ideal to give form to the possibilities

*Note:  Aristotle divides governments into six types, three ruled by the best one, few or many and their negative forms were rule is in the hand of those not guided by reason but by self-interest.

 

 Next week: The Twilight of the City-State

Notes on "A History of Political Theory" -- Episode 5

For episode 4 see here.

Theory of the City-State

V. Aristotle: Political Ideals
 A. Pupil of Plato at the Academy
 B. Politics is probably not a unified work but a collection of essays 
 C. The Politics can be divided into two parts
       1. Books II, III, VII and VIII on an ideal state
       2. Books IV, V and VI offer final thoughts on political science
       3. Book I considers nature-convention problem
 D. Prefers to stick more to common experience rather than logical departures
      from it.
 E. His ideal state is the second best of Plato, never accepted Plato's ideal
       1. Best was constitutional 
       2. Based on some degree of moral equality of men [citizens]
       3. Rejects the model of the father's rule over children
 F. Aristotle sees law as "reason unaffected by desire"
       1. Law gives authority of the magistrate a "moral quality" to which all are
           obliged
 G. Under constitutional rule, the public, or general, interest determines law
       rather than factions or tyrannous rule by one or some 
       1. Government carried out by general regulations not arbitrary decrees
       2. Government of willing subjects not merely due to force 
 H. Saw experience of ages as embedded in law, or capable of being so, 
      contrary to Plato
       1. Saw possible supremacy of collective wisdom over single wise lawgiver
       2. Wisdom that should guide the state goes from being the exclusive domain
          of the philosopher to being the result of social custom embodied in law. 
 I. Aristotle's ideal state based on Plato's Laws. 
 J. Wisdom as embodied in custom must be the guiding principle in taking
      advantage of actual conditions to gradually reform them. (For Plato, the
      ideal often in radical opposition to facts.)
 K. The state is the association of men to realize the good in the form of the best
      moral life
 L. Looks to build up the best state from experience and from not a preexisting
      ideal
       1. Saw some merit in the usual claiments for power -- democrats and 
          aristocrats
       2. Reasoned that since none had absolute claim, law (good law) must be
          supreme
M. Aristotle saw forces working on and through real agents and not from Plato's
      Ideal Forms. [Perhaps two sides of the dialectic.]


Next week: Aristotle: Political Actualities

Notes on "A History of Political Theory" -- Episode 4

For episode 3 see here.

 Theory of the City-State

IV.Plato: The Statesman and The Laws
 A. Written much later than The Republic
 B. Resemblance between the two
       1. Marked difference from The Republic
       2. Plato's final reflections on the city-state
 C. Of greater influence on political thought after Plato, departure point for
     Aristotle
 D.The Laws sketches a government in which law is supreme
       1. Was a change from government of philosopher-kings of The Republic
       2.  Plato did not fully recognize these changes in his theory
       3. Law-based government is still only the second best and not logically
          compatible with it 
       4. The Republic presumed opposition between intelligence and perception
       5. Law was seen by the Greeks as on the side of perception and experience
         (i.e., convention)
       6. Even now, law can be seen as irrational obstacle to intelligent chance or
          action
       7. For Plato, the good ruler, one who rules through knowledge and reason
          should not be bound by law as that is meant to govern the average man
       8. In The Laws, law become a surrogate for reason
 E. The Statesman puts off The Republic as an ideal model not usually attainable
       1. Has six-fold classification of governments, three good and three bad that
          Aristotle later used
       2. Sees democracy more favorably 
 F.  The state in The Laws constructed with temperance as its chief virtue 
       1. Seeks to achieve harmony through a spirit of obedience to law
       2. This meant a mixed state as the mode of political organization
 G. The mixed state --  harmony through balance of forces or tendencies
       1. Mixed monarchic principle of wisdom with democratic principle of
          freedom
       2. Saw original 'state of nature' as the life of peaceful herdsmen. With
          agriculture comes civilization.
       3. Urges study of politics attached to history of civilization (causes and
          changes in political stability)
 H. In The Laws, still favors communism but concedes private property and
       private family life, due to human frailty, but regulates both
       1. Land inherited but not to be divided or alienated
       2. Produce goes to common (public) mess
       3. Property to be equal except for limited personal items allowed
       4. Citizens not to engage in industry or trade; what is necessary to be done
          by resident aliens
       5. Use of property regulated, only token currency, no loans with interest
 I. Government belongs to the citizens, those who can afford to leave private
      business of earning a living to slaves (on farms) and aliens. This was not
      Periclean democracy. 
       1. State still to be weighted in favor of richer through four-fold division on
          basis of private property
       2. Education and religion remain roughly the same as in The Republic except
          education becomes institutionalized
       3. Religious persecution and the Nocturnal Council out of line with the rest
 J. Government in the [ideal city]* of The Republic follows the rule of the father
      over children, while The Laws more in line with government of and by 
      responsible citizens through law.

*Note:  Sabine's reading of The Republic, Laws and Statesman follows traditional lines.  He takes them literally, especially The Republic.  But if one reads Plato's Socratic dialogues closely, it should be noticed that he actually is focused on justice, virtue (arete) of the individual.  The Republic presents the model for the healthy soul balanced between its three parts with reason guiding desire and will.  Socrates presents the outer polis to better see the inner one.  As Plato understood the 'ideal city' of The Republic to be difficult to achieve in reality, he offered in The Laws a model for a city guided by reason embodied in law.  (Even here he did not trust any particular system so added the Nocturnal Council, a group to be guided by philosophy to meet at night and review that was done during the day.)  In The Statesman, he offers a model for rule by an individual guided by knowledge.  But such a person would also be hard to find achieving or holding power.


Next week: Aristotle: Political Ideals

Notes on "A History of Political Theory" -- Episode 3

For episode 2 see here.

 Theory of the City-State

III.Plato: The Republic
 A. Elaborated from Socrates the belief that there is a discoverable, objective
      good life for the individual and the polis
 B. Political philosophy is the effort to discover this 'good life'
 C. Plato's version primarily found in The Republic, Statesman and Laws (written
      in that order)
 D. The Republic concerns the good man and the good life and the means for
      knowing what these are and how to attain them
       1.Political theory of The Republic an over simplified version of the later
        presentation. Plato's fundamental focus was the soul (psych, the inner polis]
       2. The good is objectively real, will is secondary
       3. Man with knowledge of the good ought to have decisive power in the polis
       4. Association of man with man in society depends on reciprocal needs and
          resulting exchange of goods and services.
       5. Philosopher attends to his share of the work, three classes are all
         necessary
       6. Class-based specialization of function depends on natural aptitude and
         training (whereby the given is made better) 
       7. Two parts of the theory:
           i. government ought to be art (techne) depending on exact knowledge 
           ii. society is mutual satisfaction of needs by persons whose capacities
              supplement each other
 E. The public is the great sophist
       1. Man has a split nature, higher and lower
       2. Politicians, especially in a democracy, are ignorant and  incompetent
       3. The incompetence of popular opinion ought to be countered through
        education -- the coupling of questioning and training
 F. Factional conflict arises from class, property owners vs the poor
 G. The Republic presented the 'ideal city' because it was important for the
      statesman -- the 'physician' of the state  -- to know the healthy city
       1. Plato wanted to establish the art of politics
       2. The ideal city modeled along the lines of geometry and ideal types
 H. Conceived society as a system of services in which every member both gives
      and receives
       1. Men have many wants
       2. No man is self-sufficient
       3. The state seeks to arrange the most adequate satisfaction of needs and
        most harmonious interchange of services
 I. Man receives freedom not for exercise of free will as much as for the practice
    of his calling (given by nature)
       1. Exchange implies division of labor
       2. Man has natural aptitudes which become skills when men apply them-
        selves to what they are given, as they work at it.
       3. Philosopher rules because his knowledge is at once his right and duty to
        do so
       4. Assumes that properly educated, man is not anti- or unsocial and can live
        in harmony.
           i. Man and the state have underlying structure
           ii. These structures are parallel, what is good for one is prevented from
             being different from what is good for the other (the polis is the individual
             "writ large)
 J. The division of labor necessitates division into three classes
       1. Workers and Guardians (divided into soldiers and rulers) 
       2. Rulers were source of sound knowledge of the good leaving the others as
         political onlookers
 K. Justice is the bond holding society together
       1. All should fill the station to which he is entitled
       2. "giving to every man his due"
           i. Man should be due treatment as what he is, in light of his capacity
             and training
           ii. Due from him is an honest performance of tasks which place accorded
             him requires
       3. What is due is based on services performed not power or "rights"
  L. The task becomes reaching perfect balance between human beings and
      possibilities of significant employment that the state affords 
       1. Achieved by removing hindrances to good citizenship; and
       2. Creating positive conditions of good citizenship through education
 M.  Achieved for rulers through 'communism'
       1. Prohibited from holding private property
       2. Abolition of permanent monogamous sexual relations
       3. Controlled breeding
       4. Wealth equalized to remove disturbing influence on government, along
          with abolition of family (affection)
 N. Education is the positive means to direct human nature
       1. Main reliance placed here
       2. State would control compulsory education
       3. Elementary till age 20, gymnastics and "music" as training, direct or
          indirect, for the mind
 O. The Republic has been eternally the voice of the scholar, as such overly
      simplified, leaving out human dignity and the person
 P. Omits law and influence of public opinion 

Next week: Plato: The Statesman and The Laws
   

 
       
      

Design Without A Designer?

My previous riff on the possibility of a designed universe considered what that might say about the designer. Would that be a First Cause that created the physical laws that seem to have governed the Big Bang and subsequent evolution of the universe, or perhaps a “programmer” using a preexisting set of tools to design a very elaborate simulation? Thomas Nagel offered instead the concept of a design without a designer, one arising through a somehow ordered process of mutation and natural selection. He opposed this to a teleologic explanation (such as divine intervention or creationism) or a merely material and chance elaboration of physical law. His alternative include “the constitutive possibility, in the character of the elements of which the world is composed, of their combination into living organisms with the properties of consciousness, action, and cognition which we know they have.” (pg 93) This “constitutive possibility” is in the same category as mathematical truths. They are just are, embedded in reality. The same can be said for moral truths – such as the imperative not to harm other sentient creatures – that are facts, he says, that we call values. These are accessible to consciousness. “We exist in a world of values and respond to them through normative judgements that guide our action…. The response to value seems only to make sense as a function of the unified subject of consciousness…. Practical reasoning and its influence on action involve the unified conscious subject who sees what he should do.” (pg 114-15 ) This gives consciousness a hook by which to express free will. We chose right or wrong. Nagel calls the whole process – the evolution of life, rise of consciousness and emergent perception of right and wrong – as one “of the universe gradually waking up.” (pg 117)

The emergent ability to perceive good and evil doesn’t mean an automatic tendency toward the good. “No teleologic principle tending towards the production of a single outcome seems suitable. Rather, it would have to be a tendency toward the proliferation of complex forms and the generation of multiple variations in the range of possible complex systems.” (pg 122) According to Nagel, teleology can be restated as “a cosmic predisposition to the formation of life, consciousness, and the value [of what is good for each creature] that is inseparable from them.” (pg 123)

I like all this, it echoes Plato and his notion of the Forms as the basis of reality, perceivable through reason. But it begs the question of how and why there should be any “constitutive possibilities” pre-baked into the creation of the universe. Nagel, a self-declared atheist, wants to avoid the notion of any Devine Designer. But it seems to beg the question of how to posit a design without a designer. It violates Occam’s Razor. So I return to the question of what sort of designer would set this universe spinning. Perhaps Nagel here can point in the right direction. There does seem to be a moral order to the universe as well as a governing set of physical and mathematical laws (which we are still discovering). We can, in fact, know good from evil. (Mere good and bad may vary according to the individual, group or civilization.) We also have the free will to ignore this distinction and clearly human history is full of examples of those who did and do.

A while back, near the start of my ruminations, I suggested that perhaps the designer was a kind of cosmic Shakespeare, setting up the grandest possible stage on which a myriad of actors could perform. Or perhaps, out of loneliness, it formulated an elaborate simulation it could inhabit in the form of individual conscious agents, bound by time and space. I don’t know but it’s been fun, at least for me, ruminating on it. In the end, my own, I may, or may not, find out.

Maybe Reality Is Not An Infinitely Peelable Onion?

Science is the search for rational understanding of nature and the universe achieved through replicable observation.  2012 has seen a fundamental advance in the effort to achieve an ultimate understanding of physical reality and the cosmos with the discovery of the Higgs boson.  In July, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in CERN found direct evidence of the Higgs.  Since then, further LHC data appears to place the Higgs more firmly in the Standard Theory that unifies three of the four fundamental forces (electromagnetic, weak, strong and gravity).  Perhaps equally significant, however, is what LHC seems not to be finding - evidence supporting Supersymmetry, the only candidate theory physics has to unify all four forces and explain the dark matter that seems key to holding galaxies together.

Supersymmetry posits an unseen partner particle for every particle now known to science.  Supersymmetry is a basis for string theory, which directly seeks to account for quantum gravity.  With evidence for supersymmetry and string theory, we would have a unified theory of forces and particles, uniting the big and the small and explaining "everything."

Trouble is that those particles that LHC could be finding if the simplest versions of supersymmetry were predictive don't seem to be there.  This does not rule out more complex versions of the approach but modern physics has generally been guided by the notion that the simple is most beautiful and the beautiful is more likely to be true.

But its not the details of the current state of physics that I want to talk about here but the very quest for an ultimate understanding, one that explains everything we can see and know by some set of fundamental scientific laws and equations.  The notion that everything has an ultimate explanation, according to a laws-based structure that puts everything in its place, cannot logically be true.  Any explanation of what is by another set of what-ises begs the question of what explains those.  Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem puts this nicely:  “Anything you can draw a circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle – something you have to assume but cannot prove.”

The menagerie of particles now known by science includes all sorts of particles with mass (fermions) and those without (bosons).  The smallest fermions include quarks and leptons.  Supersymmetry and string theory seek to explain all these particles by placing them within a frame with many other particles and dimensions that we cannot observe and for which we so far have no evidence.  Meanwhile, an extension of string theory - superstring theory - seeks to explain the Big Bang and space-time by positing other things we cannot observe:  colliding branes.

Let's suppose that we find evidence of some form of the supersymmetry and superstring theories, i.e., that they are "true."  What will explain them?  What will account for whatever laws and equations that seem to predict everything else we can observe?  Where do the laws that govern lawful action come from?  As Gödel proved, nothing can explain itself.

Perhaps, Plato was right.  The cosmos is made up of Forms.  What if the basic building blocks of existence - the bosons and fermions we observe, the structure of space-time, the Higgs field that creates mass, the gravity that pulls mass so tightly that it releases the energy of life in the middle of our sun - all these, just are? 

The explanation of everything is either infinitely recursive - each peel of the onion of explanation simply uncovers the next layer to be explained - or the ground of everything is/was simply there.  Either way, it makes science no less important and useful but not necessarily the answer to all questions and especially to those most human of all questions - why are we here, where do we come from and for what ends?

In or Out?

Was recently talking about the Higgs boson and what it seemed to indicate about the Big Bang.  I gushed that the only way to think about it was as an act of conscious intention, an act of creation.  My friend responded by asking "so what."  How does that help us live now?  That was a good question.

If the Big Bang was a conscious act of creation, if the universe in which we live was "engineered" to be a home for life and consciousness, what was the meaning of the act and what does it say to us today?

First of all let me say that I do not believe in "God."  After thousands of years of human history, that concept is too loaded with unhelpful freight.  Indeed, I don't "believe" in anything as an act of faith.  Rather I follow Saint Thomas in following reason until it can go no farther.  At that point, the finger is pointing at God.  Or as Plato saw it, we can never describe the Good, we can only perceive the world in its light.

However, quantum physics and relativity present us with a deep understanding of the universe.  We can trace back the expanding cosmos we see now to a moment in time and a place in space - the Big Bang - that in fact created time and space.  We can paint a picture of the elementary particles that fill the universe in the form of matter and energy.  We can understand gravity as a bending of spacetime.  We can explain the entire material world of our day-to-day existence.   That our understanding is incomplete - gravity cannot fit into the Standard Model yet, we cannot so far explain dark matter or dark energy and we have no explanation of consciousness - does not impact on all that modern science has so far allowed us to understand and do.

So we tend largely to allow the question of what it all means and where it comes from to hang in the air.  Just one of life's mysteries, the answer to which is beyond our reach and really not essential.

Nevertheless, for some, unless there is a meaning, a reason, life may seem rather pointless.

Following Aquinas and using Occam's Razor, I've come to believe that the Big Bang was the result of a conscious act, an act we'll never understand the mechanics of on this side of the veil.  How something is created from nothing and where the agent of that creation comes from, that defines the outlines of the essential meaning of "God."  But one can think about the "why's."

Being a conscious being, we can at least hypothesize about why.  We can, for example, wonder about how it would be to be everything and eternal, the one thing that is and neverchanging.  Lonely and bored?  Finally coming to the point of dumping oneself into an act of creation that created a stage for consciousness to inhabit space and time in pieces, to fill each fragment and create many from one?  Think about a universe filled with 100's of billions of planets that support various forms of life.  Uncountable numbers of individual consciousnesses each looking out on Others?  No one lonely anymore and not at all boring.

And this bring me to the answer to my friend.  The whole point of creation is to experience fully the many splendored world we occupy for our allotted time.  Not everyone needs this answer.  Some instinctively inhabit their lives fully.  But some cannot help but see humanity as full of folly and much of what passes for news as pointless, evil or just epiphenomenal.  For us, it is worth realizing that the point of the universe may be that it exists, and so do we, for the shear experience of it.  It is all important, we are all important, our lives and loves are all important, our acts and efforts are all important because that it why the universe was created.  Nothing is epiphenomenal or beside the point because the point is us. 

If this is the case, then it is besides the point not to be fully engaged in all that life presents to us, not to strive to understand and act in the best way we know how.  Our "duty" then is to try to make this ride as enjoyable as we can for everyone.  To seek beauty, to do good and to have fun.  Fun was almost surely lacking before the Big Bang.

The choice is to be all in or to be all out.  To be engaged in everything or take no real interest in anything.  Freud called this choice one between Eros (love) and Thanatos (death).  Choosing the later would be a real waste.  To be or not to be. 

Freud and Plato - The Politics of the Soul (Pt 1)

Freud -- with Marx, Darwin and Einstein -- ranks among the intellectual fathers of the 20th Century.  The core concepts of Freudian psychoanalysis still pervade Western society.  We talk about the meaning of dreams, make "Freudian" slips, appreciate the power of unconscious desires and accept the influence of childhood experiences on the adult.  However, Freud’s relevance for the 21st Century lies more in his call for a renovation of human consciousness.  Freud's concern with the health of the soul and the support he sought to give to reason and intellect places him in a dialogue with Plato and gives psychoanalysis roots deep in Western culture.  Both Freud and Plato practiced statecraft of the soul, reforming the “inner city” that determines individual and collective character.  Both attempted to help the individual gain control over desire through establishing proper order among the parts of the soul.

As we move through these first years of the new millennium, it sometimes appears that the world has become too large, too complex and more dangerous and inhospitable every day.  We seem beset by nightmares: terrorism, fanaticism, fascism, communism, tribalism, nationalism, racism and the other -isms that have prevented us, as individuals and as societies, from thinking clearly and acting with humanity.  We paid dearly for these nightmares in the 20th century and the end is nowhere in sight.  We feel increasingly challenged to preserve a minimum sense of security and well being in the midst of the planet-wide struggle of billions of others to do the same.  In this struggle, our political systems -- the governments that oversee our domestic and foreign affairs and the organizations that connect us internationally -- often seem overwhelmed by the effort to stave off ever-threatening crises and disasters of one kind or the other.  No place, no one, no system appears immune to difficulty.  At a time when the major ideological and systemic competitors to Western liberal-democracy and free-market capitalism have collapsed, neither democracy nor the market appear to offer, by themselves, the answers we need to our many problems.

We in the West have been especially blessed by history.  But with an abundance of natural and human resources, a long and secure tradition of democracy and individual rights, and the strongest and richest mass economies the world has ever seen, we nevertheless remain afflicted by poverty, prejudice, racial injustice, declining living standards and political system mired in parochialism and shortsighted partisanship.  We have proved incapable of preventing the death of innocent men, women and children from terror, war, famine and disease -- which are, after all, largely the result of human action or inaction.  And although the world has providentially taken a step back from nuclear Armageddon, we are still poisoning our environment and degrading its capability to feed, care and comfort us.  To be fair, it is not that we are at a loss for ways to resolve many of these problems.  One can imagine solutions to most of them that could succeed if we were determined enough, worked hard enough and sacrificed enough.  Yet, when we are not dreaming, it seems naive to believe that we could ever achieve such outcomes in the "real" world.  So, our feet firmly planted on the ground, we hope for the best while fearing, more and more, the worst.

In all, it seems hard to avoid the conclusion that we have reached a point in global history that demands finding new ways to live, individually and collectively.  We have lost our faith in ourselves and in our ability to reason our way forward.  After the terrors of the 20th Century, the Enlightenment and its faith in the ability of human intellect to help us perfect our world have come to seem like a bad joke.  The nightmares have entered our very souls and made us doubt our ability to think, reason, discuss and decide with our fellow human beings the many problems that we face.  Some believe that the only response is to trust instinct, listen to our blood, and fight to protect what we have while seizing the high ground before others do so.  Reason must be rescued if we are to find a better way. 

Freud can yet help us begin.  His conception of the human soul and the conflict within us reconnects our problems with the similar concerns of Plato and Aristotle.  Freud's work recalls Socrates' invitation, in the Republic, to establish within ourselves the rule of reason without which we cannot have just and well-ordered societies.  2300 years later, this solution remains difficult to achieve.  But after all this time, we have even more cause to believe that "knowing thyself" may be the only way to leave the nightmares behind.