Five Views of Man
This merits a long and involved column to explain this thought, but time does not permit. Allow me only to pose it as a gadfly question:
In my view, there are only five entirely logical political philosophies. Four of them are logical but untrue, since they are based on a false view of human nature.
1. Catholicism (based on the notion that men are sinners and Christ is sovereign) — several possible political systems, from Roman republicanism to imperialism to monarchy to constitutional and parliamentary government are possible under this view, but concentrating secular and spiritual powers in one head, Caesaropapism, is not possible. This view of man holds that man is a hopeless sinner yet somehow made in an divine image.
2. Classical liberalism, also called Libertarianism (based on the notion that men are sovereign, and are rational economic actors, motivated by self interest) — this is the default position of the Enlightenment, if carried to its logical John Galt extreme. This view holds that man is a rational animal, and, when virtuous, will follow reason to create a spontaneously self-organizing social order.
3. Marxism, also called Socialism or Naziism (based on the notion that men are helpless soldiers in a Darwinian war of survival, motivated by perfect altruism) — this is a corruption of the Enlightenment position, when economic as well as secular power is taken as the proper object of government, and men are regarded as patients, not citizens. This view holds that men are irrational animals, the byproducts of inhuman forces of biological and social evolution.
4. Confucianism, also called the Rule by Mandarins (based on the notion that reality itself ordains submission to a perfect social order, as perceived and interpreted by intellectuals.) This could also be called Spartanism — this is the default view of pre-Enlightenment and pre-Christian political thinking. Obedience to maat or me or dharma, that is, obedience to the divinely imposed social order, is the hallmark of ancient and postmodern thought on the topic.
5. Nihilism, also called Anarchy (based on the notion that men are not just sovereign over themselves, but over reality itself, as a god ergo bound by no law save willpower.) — this is the abrogation of political thinking.
I suggest that few or no thinkers have the stomach to carry out any of these five political philosophies to their logical extremes and that most political thought is a compromise or amelioration of each of these, held in suspension somewhere between two or three of them.
So, for example, Protestantism is somewhere between the Catholic view and the Libertarian view when it comes to the role of the Church in society: either the spiritual power is an adjunct of the state power, as it was in Reformation England, or spiritual power is private, outside the orbit of secular power altogether, as it was in the United States before the Obama Administration. Protestantism is compatible with several forms of government, from Monarchic to Parliamentarian to Democratic.
There is a sound reason to avoid taking any political philosophy all the way to one of these five logical extremes. Four of the five would make men into devils. The logical extreme of Anarchy would make men into devils of wrath; Mandarinism of pride, particularly intellectual pride; Socialism of avarice and envy; Libertarianism of gluttony, avarice and contempt for spiritual things.
The logical extreme of Catholicism would make men into saints. The sound reason to avoid this is because we love and adore our sins, and serve them as willing slaves.
A truly Christian society has not been tried and found wanting: it has never been tried.
Discuss!
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
