Civilization What
We continue to answer reader questions, not necessarily in the order asked:
Question One: what is civilization?
Civilization is specialization of labor. As a matter of practical fact, such specialization cannot exist without some form of right to trade goods and services, and some means of cooperative retaliation against those who would invade those rights.
Such rights cannot exist without the law. Hence, civilization is therefore, at it root, the habit of obedience in most or all men in a community to abstract law rather than to the person charisma of a tribal leader or patriarch.
If the law is abstract rather than particular, it applies to all men equally, or to all members of a class or rank equally, without regard to person. The operation of the law, in order to achieve this equality, must be regular and predictable in operation, proportionate and rational in its prescriptive rewards and punishments, and buttressed by procedural due process, that is, by such rites and rituals as most or all men in a community are habited to regard as lawful.
As a matter of practical fact, such laws are difficult or impossible to transmit between generations without the art of writing, which is rarely found outside settled communities of walled towns protected by a specialized warrior profession or class or caste. For this reason, the word civilization normally means not merely specialization of labor and the habitual obedience to law, but also the useful arts and sciences, institutions and amenities which spring from civic life.
Question Two: What makes civilization an end rather than a means to an end?
Civilization is not an end. It is a means to an end. The moment civilization becomes destructive of the ends for which man created it, it is the right and duty of a man to return to anarchy and barbarism.
The end of civilization is the cultivation or perfection of the nature of man, and this cultivation cannot be achieved without life or liberty or other natural human rights.
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.
