Do we need politics?

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
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Part 1.

This is a response to The Little Book of Philosophy by Andre Comte-Sponville, a philosopher of impeccable credentials such as would lead one to expect him to be a reliable and trustworthy spokesman for philosophy……………

…………which is unfortunate for philosophy because the man shows a lamentable lack of humanity or of any human virtues, and shows, besides, a complete lack of understanding of human nature ……………… this in someone who would talk authoritatively on a subject like politics!!! If you have no understanding of human nature then by all means tinker with cars and computers, but DO NOT assume yourself fit to be able to do anything at all useful in areas such as ethics (see my post: Could nature really have got it so wrong?) or politics and the like.

The man damns himself right from the start by damning humanity: he subscribes whole-heartedly to the notion, expressed so long ago and so famously by Hobbes, that the natural state is ‘where every man is enemy to every man’, and man’s life is therefore ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’.

Well, if this is the concept of human nature that politics is based upon then one need read no further because it could not be more wrong ie the whole justification for politics is based on a lie without which there would be no need of politics.

If you just forget science, forget selfish genes and survival of the fittest and forget philosophy and just BE A HUMAN BEING, and think about what makes you WANT TO LIVE, and what DISHEARTENS you, think about what energizes you and what drains you of energy and makes you have to drive yourself, then you will soon see that there is NOTHING NATURAL about wanting to fight with other people all the time………… in fact, the author even asks, ‘who would wish to live in constant conflict with others?’, taking it for granted that no-one would, yet unable to accept that that is a perfectly NATURAL wish.

He supposes that no-one would wish to live in constant conflict with others, yet that nature has imposed constant conflict upon us as a condition of life and as an instinct, forcing us to live in a way that goes against our ‘wishes’ …………he has not understood that such a conflict would destroy people; if everyone was forced to live their entire lives in a condition of constant conflict and enmity while longing for peace and friendship they would quite simply lose the will to live. They would become depressed, would become susceptible to disease and lacking real motivation they would do things badly, from raising their children to hunting to creating tools …………… it is a recipe for disaster, and NATURE does not do disaster, it does success — of necessity!!!

Or would Mr Comte-Sponville examine his own feeling and tell us that he WANTS and DESIRES to fight other people, but that when he THINKS about it, when he REASONS things out, THEN he does not want conflict? In other words, that his desire for peace is a purely intellectual stance?

If that was the case he would be setting the intellect in opposition to nature and telling us that the intellect knows better ---- oh dear, oh dear, oh dear ---- that would be to fail to grasp the limitations of the intellect and of reason. It would be to fail to appreciate the complexity of the natural world and I am back to lamenting the man’s lack of understanding of human nature, and of NATURE as a whole.

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(Do we need politics?)

Part 2.

Nevertheless, one cannot deny that humanity DOES live in conditions of constant conflict. Why? How can I reconcile the idea that it is natural for people to want peace and friendship while knowing perfectly well that they live in conditions of conflict and enmity?

In the first place, as a human being, I KNOW that conflict, survival of the fittest, and all that stuff JUST WILL NOT WORK. Animals and people alike need more than that. Computers could live like that; real, living animals and people cannot. So, first, I say that it is natural to live in friendship with all and sundry. Then if we are in constant conflict I have to assume that something has gone wrong, something has got people behaving ‘badly’.

And having done just that, I have concluded that what has gone wrong is that people have become addicted to the drug POWER. We all know that people who become addicted to drugs can descend to the most appallingly bad behavior; a strong addiction will drive a person to steal from their own parents/children, to ‘selling their granny’, to betray their friends ………… is their anything to which a druggie will not stoop to get that next fix?

Human beings are good and there is no need for politics — that is, when they are doped on power or some other drug.

Philosophers from Thales of Miletus onwards have been trying to make us believe that the life of the philosopher is THE noble life; that living in the intellect and spending all one’s time reasoning things out is the best kind of life …………… I just want to say to philosophers: get a life! If you have not had a life then how can you know what life is about?

I have raised all sorts of questions in this post. Does anyone want to mount a defense for politics, the selfish gene, the Hobbsian view of human nature, that the life of the philosopher is the noble life, the use of pure reason to over-rule the laws of nature? —

— as to the latter, the author of the book himself admits that there is no justification for the use of pure reason. Basically, to BELIEVE in philosophy you have to BELIEVE in reason ie that reason is the right tool to deal with all the issues that philosophers deal with, from ethics to epistemology to metaphysics to…………………there is no end to what philosophers deal with.

Having said all I have, I would then turn around and say that we DO need politics, but not for the reasons philosophers think — but that is another story.

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What philosophers think of politics has very little bearing on politics.
Even what politicians think of politics (if you can call it “thinking”) has very little bearing on politics.

And no, the world does not “need” politics.
The Emperor needs politics so as to remain the Emperor.
But the world does not need the Emperor.

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Yes, we need politics. We even need leaders. At least if you don’t want to get wiped out by other people with leaders and stuff.

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Do you need a leader? Do you need someone to lead you?

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i think we, as a society, need rules and laws. And as long as there is a legal system there will be politics.

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Hobbes doesn’t say that the life of man IS everybody vs. everybody, nasty brutish and short. He says that it would be in the absence of the security provided by the state. The reason why it seems that there’s nothing natural about wanting to fight each other is that you live under a political system that works very hard, and has for a very long time, to ensure that there’s nothing to be gained in everybody fighting each other. I think you’re right that fighting each other isn’t ‘natural’ in the sense that most of us don’t get a thrill from killing each other for no reason, but fear, scarcity of resources, and etc. makes it a compelling option just the same.

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Politics:
A term meaning how one man, or a group of men, interacts or relates with another.
The moment you have two men in a relationship, you have the foundations of politics.
Politics, of course, is a formalized, institutionalized, rule over how one man, or a group of men, relates to another.

Agon is a state of being.
A man is in constant struggle to maintain himself within the world.
Whether he does so in conflict or in a cooperative alliance, is but a matter of circumstantial utility.

Shared goals, and shared identifications, lead to alliances and cooperative structures.

A man may also be in conflict with himself.
There are autoimmune diseases, such as MS which turns the body on itself, and many other genetic malfunctions, but then there’s a socially constructed conflict with self which result in an institutionalized schizophrenia.
Psychology can also be defined as the discipline studying how organs interact within the organism, resulting in a psychological type.

To give a short example:
In the christian faith this relationship with an invisible Being, may manifest into what is called an “intimate relationship with Jesus”, where the individual believes that the internal dialogue in its own head is coming from an external source.
This also leads to holding two standards simultaneously and arbitrarily applying one and then the other, as it suits the desirable goal.
A schism in judgment.

Similar forms of schizophrenic thinking is the idea that consciousness resides outside the brain.
It is the result of self-consciousness, where part of consciousness turns on itself, as if it were a separate entity.
The brain begins to believe that is own mind is something other than itself - mind separate from brain/body.

This schism of the psyche can be explained as a consequence of self-consciousness emerging out of consciousness, and how, relatively, new an event this is on this planet.
Julian Jaynes labeled this the Bicameral Mind.

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Can you read?

Yes, I’d like people working for me who could possibly do something about, say, the quality of my drinking water. Not an employee or a slave. A leader.

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The highest kind of philosophy legislates.

There is no split between philosophy and politics, when one regards politics as an art of en-nobling power.

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I can’t read. But if I could I’d ask you why you can’t get together with your neighbors and do something about the quality of your drinking water?

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If your only knowledge of philosophy entails using formulas for obtaining power, how would you know what the “highest kind of philosophy” entails?

Philosophy is about reasoning and rationality.
Politics is about manipulation and control.

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Here the ideal, the motive, is important.
We look into the past, select what parts of it resulted in desirable outcomes, without glorifying them, and we reject the parts that did not, without demonizing them.

In life it is not the attainment of an ideal but the striving towards it that identifies us.
How close to the intended goal we get honors us, but the goal is never attained, for this would be the attainment of perfection - to be gods.

The brain constructs abstractions and then projects them to direct the will - to orient the organism.
This movement ‘towards’ is what defines us.

Philosophy is about deciding what the best life is, and trying to live it.
It must be pragmatic otherwise it is left at the hypothetical and theoretical.

Politics is philosophy applied.
Science is philosophy applied using a method.

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We did. What don’t you understand about this?

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Politics is one particular philosophy applied (and they call that “religion”).

Science is but another particular philosophy applied so as to attempt to verify that a hypothesis isn’t false.
Science alone can never tell if anything is actually true.
It requires an expert philosopher for that.
…hence truth and politics almost never mix.

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If you actually did, it was only by permission of your political owner.

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Politics is supposed to be about settling differences peacefully. Not about winning or power. It would be nice if we got back to that.

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You’re stating that you need a leader to improve the quality of your drinking water, but also that you and your neighbors improved the quality of your drinking water on your own. So why do you need a leader? Unless you’re saying that other people need a leader, just not you.

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George, i think Anon’s implication is that he and his neighbors chose a “leader” via the democratic process, in lieu of actually getting together and digging a well or something like that.

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I think we need to define “leader”. We’d need pretty broad term boundaries for someone voted into a position of manager of a well project to be called a leader.