Read the ancient Greek play, The Oresteia, by Aeschylus and you will discover in this wonderful tale how it gave the western world the roots of its justice system – our own independent and jury based justice system. Plato’s Republic, a book that I first read when I was about nineteen, wide eyed and open mouthed as it opened the world of philosophy to me, describing the perfect community and the rights and responsibilities of those living within it. Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan written in the 16th and 17th century describing in detail man’s relationship with the state; Hobbes wrote his great work in times of great national peril at both a societal and individual level - the Spanish Armada, religious unrest and persecution, the English Civil War, plague, abject poverty and food shortages - he famously said life in his world was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”. And his answer to these ills was that only good strong, enlightened government could protect the individual from the worst that the world could throw at him or her. And what of Immanual Kant? – I turn to him to remind me and advise me what is the right thing to do, the right way to act in my dealings with other people and in every situation. In short, Kant is my moral compass, he questions the motives in my words and actions - he tells me that the morality of my words and my actions lie in my motives. I wonder how Trump, Musk, and Vance's words and actions would be judged when assessed against Kant's moral imperatives - poorly, I think?
Today, as America, a nation that was a short time ago revered and venerated as “the land of the free”, a beacon of hope for much of the world, is in thrall to a mad President and Vice President and an unelected billionaire monster – a wanna be James Bond super villain – and both supported by millions of easily led voters I need these works more than I have ever done in my life. For these are the accumulated wisdom of mankind over thousands of years. They make me think, help me to decide on issues that I read about in the news or witness on the TV, give me intellectual and spiritual sustenance. Our world is being turned upside down; the old truths and wisdoms cast aside by unthinking, uncaring charlatans in the most powerful countries of the world, men of no understanding and less humility but filled with great hate and even greater malevolence: Donald Trump, Vance and Elon Musk playing some kind of villainous race to the bottom game aided and cheered on by their millions of ill intentioned, self-obsessed, and mind-numbingly stupid supporters and acolytes. We truly are spiralling into what another philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, termed the abyss; which, Nietzsche promised, would, if we were not careful suck us all into its bleak blackness.
Against this backdrop, however, three great works stand out. Books written not by philosophers sitting in their ivory towers, but by people who have lived through the worst that mankind can do and that they have seen for themselves: things that can so easily happen when those with evil intentions and no understanding gain the upper hand. The three books are seminal works, works to inspire and terrify, books not written thousands of years ago but within my own lifetime by people who have been there and seen the worst.
So, what are these books that I find myself returning to again and again? Not in any order they are: The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt, The Open Society and Its Enemies by Karl Popper, and A Theory of Justice by John Rawls. I don’t expect any of those who cast their vote for the Republican Party in America or cling to the every mad and dangerous utterance of Vance or Trump have ever read these great works, for if they had then they would not have acted as they did when the entered the polling booth. I do not expect that Donald Trump or Elon Musk, or JD Vance could quote or comment upon these works for they are so caught up in their own narcissistic worlds that they have no time or inclination to understand the human condition or consider the terrifying repercussions of what they are doing.
Hannah
Arendt the most taught and arguably most influential political thinker of the
20th century was a German Jew who was forced to flee her homeland when the
Nazis came to power. After working with the French Resistance she eventually
found her way to the United States where she took citizenship. Her works cover a
broad range of topics, but she is best known for those dealing with the nature
of power and evil as well as politics and totalitarianism. She is especially
remembered for her comments about the nature of evil as she watched the trial
of Adolf Eichmann for his war crimes. In her book The Origins of
Totalitarianism she explains how ordinary people become unthinking “actors”,
removed from reality in totalitarian states. Ordinary, unthinking people become
monsters, she suggests, "The sad truth is that most evil is done by people
who never make up their minds to be good or evil. Evil comes from a failure to
think. It defies thought for as soon as thought tries to engage itself with
evil and examine the premises and principles from which it originates, it is
frustrated because it finds nothing there. That, said Arendt, is “the banality
of evil” a phrase that has echoed down the years: in short anyone can be evil,
it’s easy, just don’t think. I ponder this now in 2025 when watching or reading of millions of Americans, decent but unthinking people clinging to every word
uttered by Trump and Musk; how easily they could and are being misled, made to
do the bidding of these manipulative charlatans, turned into unthinking monsters.
Karl Popper was an Austrian who like Arendt fled his native country when the Nazis took over Austria. He eventually settled in England and became one of the foremost philosophers in the world. His book The Open Society and Its Enemies published on 1945 is considered one of the top three most influential books of the 20th century. Popper had witnessed in his own country and wider Europe how easily legitimate, elected democratic parties and politicians caved in and failed to prevent the rise of fascism and totalitarianism He was also troubled by the influence that powerful people - like Hitler and Mussolini - had over millions, moulding opinion to their own evil ends. Popper was clear: “If we are to survive then we must break with the habit of deference to great men.” But he identified another important issue – what he termed the "paradox of tolerance". Democracies, he argued, are by their very nature tolerant; they see everyone’s point of view, they understand and value everyone and their opinions equally. But, he argued within that there is a potential problem, a paradox. Unlimited tolerance, he argued, must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. “We must therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate intolerance". If a society is tolerant without limits, then the intolerant – the Trumps, the Musks, the Vances and all their acolytes - will eventually destroy the society's ability to be tolerant - just as Hitler, Stalin and Mao did in their countries. If intolerant ideologies are allowed unchecked expression, they will exploit a society’s values and erode or destroy tolerance itself through authoritarian or oppressive practices. We have seen this in the USA in recent weeks, at the Washington Capitol in 2021, we have seen it in other right wing countries. In America and the UK in 2025 extreme views are gaining an ever-increasing foothold because we “tolerate” those who hold them – on University campuses, in the right wing media, in the political life of the nation, on streets in sleepy Southport and across other cities as the flames of hatred were fed by misinformation, and we see it weekly in the chanting immature mobs of men-children in our football stadiums. We should be very afraid when unelected extremists such as Elon Musk or Tommy Robinson have a voice, the slope downwards is very slippery – we saw it in 1930s Germany and we are seeing it increasingly in our own world, bit most terrifyingly in America, a country that has long prided itself in "freedom".
My final book of solace – and solace is indeed the right word here – is John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice. Rawls experienced, during his life, several worrying and tragic events which increasingly shaped his views of the world and what it might or should be. He lost his two bothers to illness as a child and served in the American army during the Second World War. He witnessed intensive trench warfare and traumatizing scenes of violence and bloodshed and the result was that he lost his previously strong Christian faith and became an atheist. He became further disillusioned with the way the world and America was conducting itself when he witnessed first hand the aftermath of the atomic blast in Hiroshima. His criticism of this led to him being demoted from an officer to private and he consequently left military service in disgrace and returned to academia.
As a result of his lived experience Rawls believed that the world needed to do better, be a better and more just, fair, decent place. He believed that disputes in societies and between societies, (think of that between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza) and the basis of justice were often found in, or as a result of, bias learned from birth. For example, why investment bankers and wealthy oligarchs often disagree with the likes of and social workers and teachers about issues such as what is a fair rate of tax. From this Rawls developed the idea of what he called “a Veil of Ignorance”. If, said Rawls, we were unaware of the facts about ourselves – rather than the prejudices and belief systems that we have each grown up with - then, Rawls thought, reasonable citizens would endorse certain and similar values for they would realize they were all in the same boat and it was in their long term interest. We would want, he argued, the maximum liberty and rights compatible with everyone else having the same. We would want everyone to have fair equality of opportunity. And most interesting of all, Rawls claimed, we would only accept inequalities if they were to the greatest benefit of the least well off. To explain in simple terms: suppose, suggested Rawls you are behind “a Veil of Ignorance”. You don’t know if you’re going to be born rich or poor, healthy or sick, born in a palace or a ditch, highly intelligent or poorly educated, black or white, male or female, old or young, straight or gay, a city or a country dweller, a lover of sports or the arts etc. You have no knowledge whatsoever of your talents or lack thereof and what your future life might be. From this position of ignorance, you are asked to select the principles of fairness and justice to regulate society, including those regulating the distribution of wealth and income. Rawls suggested that given that scenario, most reasonable people and societies would choose a world where the sick are taken care of irrespective of wealth, where, everyone has an equal chance in life to a good education, where there are systems in place to ensure that particular groups are not disadvantaged, where everyone’s talent and skill has an equal chance to be developed and to rise to the top..... and so on. People would choose this because it was in their own interests to do so.
Hannah Arendt and Karl Popper’s views of the real world are frightening and in these 2025 days are the new normal in many parts of the world – especially the USA, parts of Europe, the Ukraine, Gaza, Russia and the rest. But I reread these two magnificent works to help me understand and have a “position" on these matters, so that I can read the newspapers and watch the TV with some kind of understanding . Rawls is different. I read him to inspire me, to show me what might be, what the human condition and humanity could and should be. When I read of modern day America with its gun mentality, its aversion to some kind of cohesive and affordable healthcare system, its vast inequalities, its rampant drug problem largely caused by these inequalities, its mafia like modern Republican Party, its vilification of various ethnic groups and the notion of building walls, expelling and imprisoning those it despises, its disproportionate and racially biased prison population, its use of the often racially biased death penalty…………. I think that Rawls would, if alive today, weep at what the country he loved and served has so easily become.
These
three books are very much books for today – even though they were written
decades ago. Their authors hoped that the things they had witnessed during
their lifetimes might be avoided in the future – indeed that was their reason
for writing these volumes. The paradox of 2025 is that our fathers and
grandfathers knew, like these three philosophers, the horrors that come with
totalitarianism and evil leaders; our generations, however, lulled by
prosperity, extravagance and increasing narcissism have forgotten and no longer
value the very things that our parents and grandparents worked and fought for –
a better, more caring, more thoughtful world. With the coming of Trump, Musk, Vance and the resurgent and twisted "Grand Old Party" - the Republicans - we are about to pay for our lack of diligence and
the nurturing of our inheritance. Read Arendt and Popper and you will
understand today's world and why the USA in particular has become what it has -
and what it will become if we allow these madmen to have their way. But, read
Rawls, too, for in him you will find what America used (sometimes imperfectly)
to endeavour to stand for – common decency, essential goodness, fairness and
hope; what it might be like if we stand firm and say no to Trump, Vance and Musk et al and their evil, delusional and narcissistic intentions and actions.
No comments:
Post a Comment