Ethics: Drive & Desire - Nietzsche vs. Ayn Rand

Last time talked about Mill, Utilitarianism and looking at the Ends of acts rather than beginnings.

So far, we have been concerned with collectivist, not individualist ethical concepts. This time we talk about drive, desire and self interest, reading Nietzsche but also looking at a thinker important in American thought who takes this sort of thinking in an entirely different direction, Ayn Rand. With modern times and increasing technology that enables the individual comes new individualistic thinking and criticism of more collectivist traditional thought.

While Nietzsche and Rand both believe the individual should try to create something in the name of the self, Nietzsche says this is because no one is simply right while Rand says that she and her school of thought, Objectivism, are simply right. Myself, love Nietzsche, hate Rand. Both are critical for looking at modernized society.

There are many positive and negative things about individualism over collectivism. When individualism is a problem we call it ‘selfish’ to label it bad, but our society sees more than just evils in individualism and self-centeredness. As society has become modernized, it is up to the individual to regulate themselves and keep themselves in line. Foucault is the big thinker on this point (who was very influenced by Nietzsche). This means that individualism is just as much praised, as ‘self-starting’, ‘self-reliant’, that one should have ‘self-esteem’ (this is the repackaged ideas of Rand by Brandon, as it is scorned as ‘selfish’. There are many ways today that individuals are more enabled to be individuals than ever before, and it is very bound up with America being both the best and the worst so far in many things that civilizations have been doing from the beginning.

While America is very individualistic as a culture, with positive and negative aspects, it is important to recognize that ‘Western’ white European people are not individualistic by culture starting with the Greeks. This is unfortunately how it is often presented, that Greece was a very ‘human’ and ‘individualist’ place, and that’s why the West is so the West vs. all other cultures. As you know, I am a big fan of saying that the West is a bunch of enabled, wealthy HUMAN BEINGS, and so when they get ‘humanist’ they are actually getting stuff and culture.
When we look at Japanese teenagers in Tokyo and Kyoto, we can see profound individualism (like in the rising ‘Street Culture’ and Art that is shared the world over today beyond cultural differences).

Good evidence for this can be seen in a recent experiment where rural African children were given laptops and the researchers were surprised when the results showed that there was no lag time of any length in the learning compared to American urban children. The researchers all assumed that individualistic-culture raised children would be able to master laptops faster.

Thus, the Greeks and the Renaissance were ‘humanism’ rising, but only because there were surges of wealth and culture, just like in Baghdad 1000 years ago and in China before that. One should expect to see rises, not simple ‘achievements’ of freedom of thought, diversity of opinions, inventions and innovations, etc whenever a city or area becomes enabled. Americans, because of the last 150 years and due to geographic positioning, have become far more enabled and innovating than other areas of the world but we should not fool ourselves in thinking that we are the good culture that owns this, either genetically (by ethnicity) or socially (by form of politics, religion, or science).

In the context of ancient cosmology, individualism and self interest are typically BAD.
Consider that the big ONE is more important and ranks all of the little branches. Many has been characterized as bad and One as good on both an individual and social level. With modern individualist thinking and development, diversity becomes a good thing, both for the individual (post modern conceptions and novels, movies etc) and for the social (multiculturalism, in America called “the melting pot”).

Consider a tree. The more the branches, the larger the trunk has to be to support them, and the larger the trunk, the more branches are needed to feed the tree. Individuality and community are mutually supportive. While traditional society favors the collective and modern society prizes the individual, both can help each other in balance.

While individualism can be too extreme (for me, Rand is just this in particular ways, such as calling her group ‘Objective’ with a capital ‘O’ for praising selfishness) we are now waking to new levels of seeing how the individual can support the group and the group support the individual. This makes individualism and emphasis on drive, the self, and survival forces of GOOD (regardless of what one thinks of Nietzsche or Rand) and thus important for our Ethics even though Ethics has largely ignored individualism to concentrate on the collectivists dueling back and forth (most famously Kant and Mill, both of whom Nietzsche hated).


NIETZSCHE (1844-1900)

Nietzsche is often called the first modern thinker. In fact, depending on whether you say we live in modern or post-modern times, he is called the first modern OR post-modern thinker. He is without doubt one of the most influential philosophers of modern Europe, and most skeptical thought is now deeply in his debt.

Nietzsche came from a long line of protestant Lutheran preachers. Unfortunately, Nietzsche’s father died when he was very little, and though his family sent the boy to school to become a preacher and theologian (like Hegel, Heidegger and many other German thinkers) Nietzsche rebelled and turned to philosophy.


German Pessimism and Schopenhauer

Just before Nietzsche’s birth, Germany had been going through a great period of pessimism. Just like in China, Egypt, Greece and everywhere, human thought flourishes in the period after tragedy and warring states because people are forced to turn against old conceptions and institutions and ask hard questions that become very popular in these sorts of times.
German princes came together to crush the popular people’s movements for individual rights, and there was a great turning away from the German reason of Kant towards the German will of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Since reason failed in the world, the world is not a reasonable place but a tough place in which it is hard to push for what one sees as beautiful and true.
Marx wrote in this time, for this crowd.

Schopenhauer is deeply influenced by Buddhism and Indian thought, in a very pessimistic way.
He uses the image of a ship bobbing on the water, just hanging on in a watery, stormy ocean of a world. Rather than believe in a reason beyond, having the stomach to see the harsh reality of the situation became a value, a value that skeptical thought has retained.

German pessimism, including its famous thinkers Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, flourished in two more recent periods of pessimism: WWI for Europe and Vietnam for America. In fact, Nietzsche was the original guy who said ‘my home country is stupid and think they are awesome’, bashing Germany and all things German quite openly, for which he has been honored as not only individualistic but incredibly courageous. Thus European thought following WWI and American culture following the 60’s (Berkeley a key player in this) found deep meaning in calling their society and ‘the system’ a bunch of chumps.


Nietzsche vs. Morality

The text I gave you to read is ‘Beyond Good and Evil’, in which Nietzsche asks us to look at humanity critically and see that following the rules (like Kant) or ‘the greater good’ (like Mill) is for sheep. The individual rises above the masses and sees things in a new way. Nietzsche came up with these ideas reading Kant and Mill, reacting against their overall goods for everyone evenly. For Nietzsche, inequality are the beautiful mountain ranges to climb and conquer.

Nietzsche was a staunch individualist, believing that ANY group morality is a slave morality, and he called Christianity, Scientific ‘Objectivity’, German Nationalism and German Racism (very much centered in Anti-Semitism) out on this vocally. Again, he is seen as a hero by many for this. Consider: “When we create the master race, we will have to mix in a lot of Jews to get their good qualities”, a joke considering that Nietzsche would never advise creating a master race of equals but rather loves the individual who stands above the race as a herd.

It was a shame that Nietzsche was censored and used by the Nazis to support their ideas of the beautiful rising German will of the master race, taking Nietzsche’s individualism and twisting it into a racial and social doctrine. Nietzsche intended his words for individualists, as he says over and over again. In this, they famously used his concept of the Superman (and yes, Nietzsche is the first person on record to use this phrase, the UBERMENCH) to mean not the artist or visionary who creates but the German race.


Nietzsche vs. Nihilism
While many would say ‘Nietzsche believes in nothing, then”, this would not be true. Nietzsche was just as vocal about believing in something as he was about not believing the herd mentality. Nietzsche saw himself as a new sort of thinker who would be followed and imitated by many. Because of this, he warns over and over again NOT to make his thought into a school or a system. However, he did not believe like Schopenhauer that one could believe or not and it makes little difference. Nietzsche believed that the whole worth of the individual is that, in the face of nothing being absolutely true, staring into the void of being, you create something and stand for something in a beautiful way, creating your own meaning in life. He was very critical of ‘Nihilism’, believing in nothing, thought this is just what his critics, religious and not, have called him.

Nietzsche believes in Heraclitus and Hegel’s Becoming between Being and Nothing. He avoids believing in eternal positives, but also believing in nothing whatsoever. It is the overturning of the old into the new by the true individual who wills something created beyond themselves and the world that stands in the face of Nihilism that Nietzsche sees as modernity’s greatest threat. He sees a world where everyone sits on their couch, believes in nothing but is afraid to contradict the state or church and do SOMETHING other than sit there.

Thus, Nietzsche relentlessly bashes reason and judgment in himself and in others, but he believes that you must have the courage to create as a contradictory and mortal being.


Nietzsche’s bashing of women

An Interesting Example of Nietzsche’s Skeptical Individualism
One of the most beautiful and deep parts of Nietzsche’s writings is his turn in Human, All Too Human from bashing Kant and others for believing in objective truth to say ‘here are some of my truths’ and without warning start bashing women repeatedly including the famous “When you go to woman, do not forget your whip”. The beauty of this philosophical performance, what inspires Bataille and Derrida, is that Nietzsche here is showing you both sides of himself at once. Unlike Kant or Mill who are writing like they can be consistent and not contradict themselves in the building or seeing of the truth, Nietzsche knows the truth is psychological and complex, and that beauty comes from tension and pain. Thus, even in his bashing he knows he is a human being and flawed. This has had an amazing impact on Art and Literature (particularly since Bataille and his open obscenity in following Nietzsche).


Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil

In this book, Nietzsche attempts to push thought beyond categorical understandings of good and evil and of true and false to show the complexity of human meaning and life. He starts this work asking: Why do we want simple truth or suppose we can simply get truth? Philosophy seems like it has barely started, but it has been assumed that something in us wants absolute truth and can acquire it. Nietzsche says that asking this question is perhaps the greatest risk. If we question our ability to gain truth, it becomes possible that we will lose all hope for truth and turn to nihilism, which Nietzsche argues later is equally as dangerous to human creativity and the process of life as the belief in objectivity. Typically, thinkers have assumed that there must be absolute pure truth apart from or hidden within the messy world and various human opinions. He writes:

“This way of judging constitutes the typical prejudgment and prejudice which gives away the metaphysicians of all ages; this kind of valuation looms in the background of all their logical procedures; it is on account of this ‘faith’ that they trouble themselves about ‘knowledge’, about something that is finally baptized solemnly as ‘the truth’. The fundamental faith of the metaphysicians is the faith in opposite values. It has not even occurred to the most cautious among them that one might have a doubt right here at the threshold where it was surely most necessary...For one may doubt, first, whether there are any opposites at all, and secondly whether these popular valuations and opposite values on which the metaphysicians put their seal, are not perhaps merely foreground estimates, only provisional perspectives, perhaps even from some nook, perhaps from below, frog perspectives, as it were, to borrow an expression painters use. For all the value that the true, the truthful, the selfless may deserve, it would still be possible that a higher and more fundamental value for life might have to be ascribed to deception, selfishness, and lust. It might even be possible that what constitutes the value of these good and revered things is precisely that they are insidiously related, tied to, and involved with these wicked, seemingly opposite things, maybe even one with them in essence. Maybe!”
(BGE 2)

Note the ‘frog perspectives’ in their nooks, used by painters, is possibly from the Daoist Zhuangzi. Later, Nietzsche uses the term ‘well-frogs’ similarly. European painting was influenced in the Renaissance and later Enlightenment by Chinese landscape paintings.

“After having looked long enough between the philosopher’s lines and fingers, I say to myself: by far the greater part of conscious thinking must still be included among instinctive activities, and that goes even for philosophical thinking...most of the conscious thinking of a philosopher is secretly guided and forced into certain channels by his instincts. Behind all logic and its seeming sovereignty of movement, too, there stand valuations or, more clearly, physiological demands for the preservation of a certain type of life, for example, that the definite should be worth more than the indefinite, and mere appearance worth less than ‘truth’... (BGE 3)

“The falseness of a judgment is for us not necessarily an objection to a judgment. In this respect our new language may sound strangest. The question is to what extent is it life-promoting, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps even species-cultivating, and we are fundamentally inclined to claim that the falsest judgments (which include the synthetic judgments apriori) are the most indispensable for us, that without accepting the fictions of logic, without measuring reality against the purely invented world of the unconditional and self-identical, without a constant falsification of the world by means of numbers, man could not live, that renouncing false judgments would mean renouncing life and a denial of life. To recognize untruth as a condition of life, that certainly means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way, and a philosophy that risks this would by that token alone place itself beyond good and evil.” (BGE 4)

Notice Nietzsche calling Kant out on apriori truth as a fiction, as well as the title of the work stated here.

“What provokes one to look at all philosophers half suspiciously, half mockingly, is not that one discovers again and again how innocent they are, how often and how easily they make mistakes and go astray, in short, their childishness and childlikeness, but that they are not honest enough in their work, although they all make a lot of virtuous noise when the problem of truthfulness is touched even remotely. They all pose as if they had discovered and reached their real opinions through the self-development of a cold, pure, divinely unconcerned dialectic (as opposed to the mystics of every rank, who are more honest and doltish, and talk of ‘inspiration’), while at bottom it is an assumption, a hunch, indeed a kind of ‘inspiration’, most often a desire of the heart that has been filtered and made abstract, that they defend with reasons they have sought after the fact. They are all advocates who resent that name, and for the most part even wily spokesmen for their prejudices which they baptize ‘truths’, and very far from having the courage of the conscience that admits this, precisely this, to itself, very far from having the good taste of the courage which also lets this be known, whether to warn an enemy or friend, or, from exuberance, to mock itself. The equally stiff and decorous tartuffery of the old Kant as he lures us on the dialectical bypaths that lead to his ‘categorical imperative’ really lead astray and seduce, this spectacle makes us smile, as we are fastidious and finds it quite amusing to watch closely the subtle tricks of old moralists...” (BGE 5)

Notice Nietzsche calling the dialectic of Kant and Hegel, the two big names in German thought in Nietzsche’s time, a sham that parades itself as pure cold truth. Nietzsche argues that truth is seduction, we believe what we want to believe and project it through abstraction into the places we can not see or are afraid to look. Baudrillard, another French Nietzschean philosopher, took ‘Truth is Seduction’ as the starting point of his philosophy, wandering in Vegas and marvelling at the seduction of consumerism and the spectacles we can create through technology.

“Gradually it has become clear to me what every great philosophy so far has been: namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir...Indeed, if one would explain how the abstrusest metaphysical claims of a philosopher really came about, it is always well (and wise) to ask first: at what morality does all this (does he) aim? Accordingly, I do not believe that a ‘drive to knowledge’ is the father of philosophy, but rather that another drive has, here as elsewhere, employed understanding (and misunderstanding) as a mere instrument. But anyone who considers the basic drives of man to see what extent they may have been at play just here as inspiring spirits (or demons and kobolds) will find that all of them have done philosophy at some time, and that every single one of them would like only too well to represent just itself as the ultimate purpose of existence and the legitimate master of all the other drives.” (BGE 6)

“It is perhaps just dawning on five or six minds that physics, too, is only an interpretation of the world (to suit us, if I may say so!) and not a world-explanation.” (BGE 14)

“There are still harmless self-observers who believe that there are ‘immediate certainties’, for example, ‘I think’, or as the superstition of Schopenhauer put it, ‘I will’, as though knowledge here got hold of its object purely and nakedly as ‘the thing in itself’, without falsification on the part of either the subject or the object...I shall repeat a hundred times, we really ought to free ourselves from the seduction of words!” (BGE 16)

“With regard to the superstitions of logicians, I shall never tire of emphasizing a small terse fact, which these superstitious minds hate to concede: namely, that a thought comes when ‘it’ wishes, and not when ‘I’ wish, so that it is a falsification of the facts of the case to say that the subject ‘I’ is the condition of the predicate ‘think’. IT thinks...The strange family resemblance of all Indian, Greek and German philosophizing is explained easily enough. Where there is affinity of languages, it cannot fail, owing to the common philosophy of grammar, I mean, owing to the unconscious domination and guidance by similar grammatical functions, that everything is prepared at the outset for a similar development and sequence of philosophical systems, just as the way seems barred against certain other possibilities of world-interpretation.” (BGE 17)

“O holy simplicity! In what strange simplification and falsification man lives! One can never cease wondering once one has acquired eyes for this marvel! How we have made everything around us clear and free and easy and simple! How we have been able to give our senses a passport to everything superficial, our thoughts a divine desire for wanton leaps and wrong inferences! How from the beginning we have contrived to retain our ignorance...and only on this now solid, granite foundation of ignorance could knowledge rise so far, the will to knowledge on the foundation of a far more powerful will: the will to ignorance, to the uncertain, to the untrue, not as its opposite, but as its refinement! Even if language, here as elsewhere, will not get over its awkwardness, and will continue to talk of opposites where there are only degrees and many subtleties of gradation...here and there we understand it and laugh at the way in which precisely science at its best seeks most to keep us in this simplified, thoroughly artificial, suitable constructed and suitable falsified world, at the way in which, willy-nilly, it loves error, because, being alive, it loves life.” (BGE 24)

“Take care, philosophers and friends, of knowledge, and beware of martyrdom, of suffering ‘for truth’s sake’, even of defending yourselves...as though ‘the truth’ were such an innocuous and incompetent creature as to require protectors!” (BGE 25)

“In all seriousness, the innocence of our thinkers is somehow touching and evokes reverence, when today they still step before consciousness with the request that it should please give them honest answers...A philosopher has nothing less than a right to ‘bad character’, as the being who has so far always been fooled best on earth. He has a duty to suspicion today, to squint maliciously out of every abyss of suspicion...Why couldn’t the world that concerns us, be a fiction? And if somebody asked, ‘but to a fiction there surely belongs an author?’, couldn’t one answer simply: Why? Doesn’t this ‘belongs’ perhaps belong to the fiction too?...Shouldn’t philosophers be permitted to rise above faith in grammar?” (BGE 34)

“One should not dodge one’s tests, though they may be the most dangerous.” (BGE 41)

“Under peaceful conditions a warlike man sets upon himself.” (BGE 76)

“Whoever despises himself still respects himself as one who despises.” (BGE 78)

“A man’s maturity consists in having found again the seriousness one had as a child at play.” (BGE 94)

“A people is a detour of nature to get to six or seven great men. Yes, and then to get around them.” (BGE 126)


AYN RAND (1905-1982)

As said, I like Nietzsche’s individualism much more than Rand. I believe Nietzsche takes his individualism too far, to the point that he values it above collective truth where I would rather have a balance of individual and collective goods, both being equally enjoyable and profitable for human beings. Ayn Rand, however, takes what is beautiful in Nietzsche and rams it straight into the ground like the head of an ostrich.

For starters, to give fair warning, Ayn Rand believes that all Philosophers have simply been too stupid to see that reality is right in front of our eyes, that we see real objects, and there are times (MOST of the time for her and her Objectivist followers) when we are just right and others are just wrong and we should simply say so. While this can come in a good form as ‘self esteem’, it is easy to see why philosophy people bash her writings, say that she has never read any philosophy and since she now proposes to simply answer all of the deepest questions correctly with simple and obvious answers she has no idea what philosophy actually is. It is pointed out that she is very popular with individualist people who have never studied philosophy but not with philosophy students. This charge can be quite elitist, but in my opinion it is somewhat justified. What would Nietzsche think of common American people who have not studied great works but come together as ‘Objectivists’ in groups to say over and over again that they are objectively right and everyone who disagrees is simply wrong? He would say that they are hardly enabled individuals, but rather a herd suffering herd delusions of objectivity, like Kant but far less educated.

On the other hand, Ayn Rand is very much a popular, common person’s American Realist philosopher. American Realists, who actually come from Scottish realism, believe in the positivist position (reality is real, self is real, we perceive real objects for real, and one can simply judge things to be true or false, for real) and believe that philosophy, even the positivists like Kant and Aristotle, have been led astray by skepticism and compromised their positions. The problem for philosophy professionals is that, unlike the realists, Rand believes that she is simply right and there are no problems and the rest of philosophy is meaningless, which is a position that even hardcore American realists cannot support.


Rand’s life and Pro-Capitalism, Objectivism Stance

Ayn Rand is big in America because she defected from Soviet Russia and embraced America as Objectively right. This is why she has reading rooms dedicated to her in Marine academies and other hard core pro-American institutions. She is anti-collectivist like Nietzsche, but thinks that the Soviet Union is simply wrong and collectivist while America is simply right and individualist.

Ayn Rand believes in the value of Selfishness, termed better by Brandon as ‘self esteem’.
You may remember it: it has become a Neo-Con staple and artifact of the 80s.
Argue against Freedman’s (free market) argument that selflessness is an ideal never obtained, so we are based in the self and selfishness as anchor. Each is an extreme, and balance is best.

Think of how Nietzsche would weep at the end of Atlas Shrugged, after the collectivists have ruined society, Rand has her hero trace a dollar sign over the ruins. Praise of selfishness and the all-mighty dollar in a neo-con fashion are the truth that will lift society back up for Rand.
For Nietzsche, belief in the dollar or America is a sheep-like fiction for killing your individuality, not supporting it or lifting society up as a whole.


My Three Moments of Hating Ayn Rand

End of her speech to Marine graduating class of 1975: ‘and that’s why my philosophy is the only true philosophy’…

Her ejection of Nathaniel Brandon, the ‘King of Self Esteem’, from her Objectivist school after she found out he was two timing her with a model (thought this seems selfish, just not for Rand).

Her attempted cover-up of her lung cancer (from which she died) because she had been very vocal about how doctors who said cigarettes cause cancer are simply wrong and she ‘knew it objectively’.


The Moral of the Story

You should stand for yourself, and have self esteem, but do not let it blind you into going on and on about how you are right such that you are not critical of your views or the views of those who agree with you (in a school or otherwise). As Hegel says, it is fine that each individual believes themselves at first to be simply the positive truth, but it is important to be critical of oneself in order to develop the self. Doing things for the self and others should be mutually supportive, in balance.

There is decent evidence from biology that human beings are designed to balance self and other interest, and that selfishness kills the individual and isolates them from the supports of society. Angry and judgmental people naturally isolate themselves and have shorter life spans. Having a pet increases your life span, so caring for others is good for your individual self. As we will see in Violence week, Lt. Grossman tells us that people will stand up in fire for random strangers in particular situations entirely independent of personality. Thus, self interest is important for ethics and balance, but not as the sole anchor in the way that Kant and Mill try to make principle or ends the sole point of action.

Intro Philosophy: Socrates & Plato

Socrates (470-400 BCE) is a very famous yet controversial and obscure figure. Like many great thinkers of the ancient world, he did not write his own thoughts down but taught others and it was Plato (430-350 BCE) and another philosopher and historian named Xenophon who wrote about Socrates and his teachings after his death. The third source of ancient Athenian literature that speaks about Socrates is Aristophanes who wrote plays mocking Socrates and portraying him as an idealistic fool. It was believed and still is by many that Plato and Xenophon were Socrates’ students, but new scholarship has shown that this may well not have been the case. Plato was a playwright who wrote several unpopular plays before writing the dialogues between Socrates and his students that became celebrated as some of the first and central works of ancient Greek philosophy. While Plato never appears in his plays himself, he does put his own family members in roles. He has characters mention him as a young devoted follower of Socrates, but in one place it is said that Plato was sick which explains why he could not be with Socrates before his court ordered death by drinking hemlock.

As already mentioned last week before covering Heraclitus, it is often said that Plato’s dialogues such as the Republic are some of the first works of philosophy and ‘Western’ European thought, but really Plato and his student Aristotle were revered by Muslims and Christians alike and their texts survive because they were important to the Abrahamic religions, not because they started a new way of European thinking. Modern European philosophy is quite diverse in its opinions, and Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, the three celebrated Athenian thinkers, did not identify with Northern Europeans and did not believe that they were the first to be concerned with wisdom and the world. Before the rediscovery of the “presocratics” (like Thales and Heraclitus) they were even considered to be the birth of philosophy in ancient Greece by many, even though this proved also to be untrue.

It is generally accepted by scholars today that Plato’s early dialogues are one of the best sources for understanding Socrates and his ideas, but in Plato’s later dialogues Socrates is a mouthpiece for Plato’s own ideas. We will consider Socrates and his thought first, then turn to two of Plato’s most important later dialogues, the Republic and the Timaeus, to study Plato’s thought. Socrates and Plato were both influenced by Heraclitus (our subject last week), and while Socrates seemed to have been quite similar to Heraclitus, Plato’s thought changed and he began putting quite different views into Socrates’ mouth.

Consider two polar opposite views one can have of reality and the world. In the first view, everything changes constantly and all permanence is an illusion. In the second opposite view, everything remains the same and change is the illusion. Both of these views, in fact, can be found in Indian thought, particularly in Buddhism. As we saw last week, Heraclitus was a famous champion of the first view. He argued that only Being, the One and All, the cosmic fire or energy, is eternal and all other beings are temporary in spite of what our judgments tell us. Another presocratic thinker named Parmenides (who lived sometime before 500 BCE) argued for the second and opposite view. He argued that there is one unchanging reality that is eternal and all change and temporary beings are the illusion in spite of what our judgments tell us. This would mean, similar to some scientific theories today, that there is only one moment of time and it is our position and perspective within that moment that changes.

Socrates and Plato were both influenced by Heraclitus, but in his later dialogues Plato has Socrates argue for views that sound much more like Parmenides. Originally, Socrates questioned everyone to show that we know very little and it is the job of the philosopher to show this to people. He would argue with others, including famous thinkers and sages, who believed that they possessed certain truth and point out the contradictions in their reasoning. This is much like Heraclitus telling us to beware of experts and being seduced into thinking that one school of thought or perspective is simply correct but instead continue to investigate the self and world as both have no limit to their depth or the things we can learn. It is also very similar to Pyrrho and his skeptical school of thought, as well as Buddhist logic and debate, particularly Nagarjuna, one of the most famous Buddhist teachers and the central Buddhist logician.

While according to Plato, Xenophon and Aristophanes Socrates did not put forward views of his own but rather attacked others to show that human beliefs are imperfect and incomplete, in Plato’s later dialogues Socrates argues that there is one unchanging reality above the temporary perceivable world and it is the job of the philosopher to seek and understand this eternal reality. Plato uses Socrates to teach his own increasingly Parmenidean view that there are unchanging and eternal forms of things in the heavens and only the educated and the persistent come to see and understand these forms.


Socrates and his Method of Questioning

We know very little about Socrates’ early life other than the details supplied in Plato’s works. He mentions several influences, including two women. He says that the witch/shaman Diotima taught him about love and how it is central to life and the cosmos. Like Buddha we studied last week and Confucius we will study next week, Socrates identified love with wisdom and objectivity. There is an interesting dynamic in human thought about whether learning and acquiring knowledge make one passionate or dispassionate, whether science for example fills our hearts with awe or stills them. The word ‘philosophy’ is often translated ‘love of wisdom’, but in fact ‘wisdom love’ could refer either to the loving of wisdom or wisdom that is also love.

Socrates also gives credit to Aspasia, the mistress of the general Pericles, who he says taught him rhetoric. If true, this shows that Socrates was not a common person but just like almost everyone in Plato’s dialogues an aristocrat who knew politicians and the wealthy. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle lived at a time when the glory days of Athens were in decline. Eventually, Alexander (Aristotle’s student) would conquer the city and the surrounding city-states. Socrates was a critic of Athenian society, called “the horsefly” because he believed in stinging Athens into action, and he was eventually condemned to commit suicide for corrupting the youth of the city after there was a riot.

Socrates’ career as a philosopher began when his friend Chaerephon went to the oracle of Delphi to ask if anyone was wiser than his friend Socrates. Socrates, with characteristic modesty, protests that this was a very crass question to ask of the great oracle. Notice that Socrates does believe in the oracle and in the gods. His last wish, the last thing he said before he died, was that a rooster should be sacrificed to Asclepius, the ancient Greek god of healing and mystical insight who is associated with Thoth the Egyptian god of knowledge and insight. Socrates loved irony, and it seems that he viewed his death as being cured of life and its limitations.

Religious people, including Christians and Muslims for centuries, often view Socrates, Plato and Aristotle as making way for solar monotheism already popular in Egypt and Persia in their time and seeing the gods as many human shaped anthropomorphisms of what is rather one and without and above human form. Non-religious people often view the three Athenians as moving away from religion and toward atheism and questioning traditional understandings. Interestingly, traditional polytheists in Athens in their time said the same thing and called them atheists as well, along with other increasingly monotheistic thinkers such as Heraclitus who are likely being influenced by the latest developments of Egyptian and Persian thought. It seems that if you want thinking to evolve towards your own thought, you could view it either way.

The oracle replied to Chaerephon that no one was wiser than Socrates. Upon hearing this, Socrates says, with either genuine or false modesty, he was very troubled by this because he did not believe that he was very wise at all and this would mean that humanity is quite ignorant overall. He decided that he needed to determine if what the oracle said was in fact true, and so he began to wander and debate others, seeking someone wiser than himself.

Socrates felt that he knew nothing, but as he questioned the experts of Athens he came upon a horrible discovery and paradox. The experts believed themselves to be wise and possess great knowledge, but when questioned it turned out they knew very little. Socrates knew that he himself knew nothing. Therefore, Socrates says he discovered that he was wiser than the experts because he knew that he knew nothing, while the experts knew nothing but thought that they knew a great deal. Humble and modest Socrates was aware that mortal humans know nothing, but the politicians, artists and warriors were unaware of this great equality they shared with Socrates. The ignorance of Socrates was thus the greatest wisdom in all of Athens. It is certainly true that the more one knows, the more one knows there is an endless amount to know and that we are all quite equal in knowing very little even when we know a great deal. There is another paradox here: the more one surpasses others in wisdom, becoming different, one identifies with them more, seeing the similarity.

Notice the similarity between Socrates and Heraclitus, who argued that the experts believe themselves to know a great deal but do not understand that their knowledge and perspectives are mortal and we are all mere apes to the gods. Socrates argued, like Heraclitus, that the greatest wisdom is found in questioning oneself and others. Remember that great city-states and empires had risen and fallen along with increasingly specialized experts. Philosophy questions experts and the basis of our knowledge, which humans find useful particularly in times of crisis when hard questions must be asked.

Socrates argued that one should accept one’s own ignorance and the guidance of the world through intuition. He believed that he had a spirit, a ‘daemon’ in the Greek, a word which became “demon” as Christianity replaced the polytheism and spirits with monotheism and angels. This spirit was much like what we would call a conscience, a word which means “co-seeing” or seeing along with, an intuition that one should or should not do a particular thing, something Christians identified with angels sitting on shoulders just as ancient Greeks did with spirits.

Socrates says that his daemon told him to stay out of politics. Good advice, seeing as how his death was quite political. Not only did politics get Socrates killed in spite of this, but Plato has Socrates get increasingly political in his later dialogues, particularly in the Republic where Socrates debates the best form of the city. This is another piece of eminence that Plato may not have known Socrates and is using him as a mouthpiece for his own ideas. Socrates also praised the divinity of poetry, mysticism, love and getting drunk with friends as he does at the Symposium, a dialogue about a drinking party that turns into a philosophical discussion about the nature of love.


Plato & his Dialogues

Plato was long assumed to be a student of Socrates simply because Plato writes as much in many of his dialogues and he is the best source on him, though if he turns him into a mere mouthpiece for very different ideas in the later dialogues he may also be the worst. As Socrates is about to die, Plato has Socrates ask where the young Plato is, to which another student replies that Plato was sick and thus could not be there at the time. Scholars now are critical of this, and think that Plato had a habit of writing himself and his family into Socrates’ circle in his dialogues. Because they are our best sources on Socrates, it is difficult to tell whether or not Plato’s older cousin Critias or Plato himself were actual students of Socrates or whether they were simply influenced by this figure who became quite famous following his trial and death.

Plato’s actual name was Aristocles, but according to the story his wrestling instructor named him Platon or ‘Broad’ because he had a wide figure and wrestling stance. This may be merely a story, because Plato was known to have a wide and thus ‘broad’ breadth of knowledge covering all subjects of ancient thought and might have acquired the nick name in this way. Plato’s father died when he was young, and his step-father became the Athenian ambassador to the Persian royal court. Remember that Persia was a great source of ancient world cosmology at the time, and Zoroastrianism, Persia’s solar monotheism, would be a major influence on the Abrahamic religions just as Plato himself would.

Long after his attempts to become an established playwright, after his dialogues about Socrates had gathered some fame, Plato founded his Academy in 385 BCE, an open area near a sacred tree grove where he, his students and other lecturers would teach and debate matters of philosophy and cosmology. Academy in fact means ‘porch’ or ‘step’, an open area in front of a building, a fact it took scholars long to understand for they believed that the Academy must have been a building itself. Scholars made a similar error looking for the famed Library of Alexandria (an Egyptian center of ancient world cosmology, Platonism and Christianity), when in fact the library was a shelf that ran along a hall that connected two buildings, just as one would say a collection of books is a personal library. Plato writes in the Timaeus, his book on the cosmology of the world, that ancient Egypt was the birthplace of philosophy and science, which again he would have understood to be the same thing acquired through knowledge of the self and the cosmos.

To examine Plato’s thought in its later and mature form we will look at his two most influential dialogues which both come from his later period and are certainly to be read together. It is sad that the dialogue of the Timaeus is supposed to happen on the day after the dialogue of the Republic, and the Republic covers the proper order of the self and city while the Timaeus covers the cosmos and how it also works in the same way that the self and city should if ordered properly and justly, but it is difficult to find the Timaeus in print while every Intro Philosophy course covers the Republic. I made sure to give you both texts in your reader. It is much easier to believe that Plato and Aristotle invented secular scientific reasoning when you do not read the cosmology of the Timaeus. For Muslims and Christians, the Timaeus was understandably Plato’s most important work and Aristotle would be making modifications to this picture, that the world is a living being and vegetation is the body hair of the world. On campuses today, however, students read sections of the Republic that speak of the self and city and are often told that this is the birth of speaking abstractly about subject matters this way. Plato and Aristotle had much greater reverence for Egypt and Persia to believe such a thing.

In these two late dialogues, believed to have been written about 360 BCE, Socrates was no longer sharing much of the conversation with other debaters, but dominates the texts with monologues that are now Plato’s own Parmenides-like views of the unchanging form that is the hidden source of the temporary. Plato believed that Heraclitus was right about the world below, but Parmenides was right about the eternal world above, the unchanging model, form, order and cause of the ever-changing world below. Plato has Socrates argue that those who think they know the world below have mere opinions, but the one who knows the world above, the true eternal pattern of reality, has true knowledge. In this way, wisdom for Plato was not simply knowing that one knows little to nothing, but rather is acquired through the gathering of knowledge of the world and its patterns. In Plato’s Republic, Socrates debates with others on justice and the Good. Socrates debunks several common views, then constructs an ideal model of the city. The well ordered city is compared to the well ordered soul, three faculties that must be kept in their places. Thus, the Good is the proper order of the elements perfectly in accord with ancient cosmology. Just as the individual is a microcosm to the city, the city is a microcosm to the cosmos, and again the elements must be separated and put in their places with the highest element on top and the lowest beneath. The cosmos is ordered in its unfolding, producing the ideal order of the soul and the city.


The Republic

Socrates talks to several “interlocutors” and argues against their concepts of justice.
This is Socrates acting like the original Socrates. Polemarchus argues that justice is paying debts, helping friends and harming enemies. Socrates argues that in some situations, helping friends and harming enemies are wrong. Thrasymachus argues that justice is ‘the good of the stronger’. Glaucon similarly argues that without threat of punishment, no one would do good. Socrates argues that the strong will corrupt themselves if they only act for their own interests and not for the good of the whole. Remember the politics of the time, and that many tyrants and forms of rule came and fell, had some success but also great failure. This is the substance of Book 1.

Starting with Book 2, Socrates now turns into Plato. He says to those who remain and do not leave upset that he did not feel he had convincingly refuted these other views, and that perhaps they should continue to debate to figure out what justice actually is. This is the turn from Socratic questioning to Platonic forms and separate structures that should have ideal forms. Unfortunately, everyone who is critical of Socrates has left the party, and the two who stay are mindless yes men who agree enthusiastically to everything Socrates says and praises it as the most certain and good wisdom they have ever heard.

Plato, as Socrates, argues for an eternal form of the Good over the world of many temporary beings and desires. Socrates is challenged to give a positive account of justice, not just defeat opponents as Thrasymachus accuses him of doing before leaving similar to Hindu debaters accusing Jains and Buddhists of tearing down other positions rather than arguing for a consistent truth. Socrates argues that first they must construct the ideal or just city, and this will show how the ideal or just individual should be. Essentially, the just city is a threefold caste system, identical in many ways to the Hindu caste system of India. There are many similarities between metaphors and teachings of the Republic and Indian thought. While originally I believed that this was due to an Indian influence on ancient Greece, it is likelier that the cosmology and thought of Egypt and Persia, the interconnectedness of ancient cultures and the similarity of ancient cosmology are responsible.

This threefold division corresponds to the physical human being and the cosmic being. The head is fire as an element, reason, thought and consciousness in the individual, and the ruling philosopher kings in the city. The heart or chest is air as an element, spirit, breath and courage in the individual, and the police or guardians in the city. The hands and stomach is earth as an element, desire, craving and thirst in the individual, and workers, farmers and craftspeople in the city. The individual, city and cosmos form a continuum, a set of Russian dolls. Notice that authority and the good come from above, evil and chaos to be ordered from below.

Plato and Aristotle were not fans of democracy. Not only were they aristocrats and connected to royal courts like the educated often were in ancient Athens, Socrates was condemned to death by the Athenian assembly thinking and questioning too much. Unlike how it is often taught today with sections of the Republic, Plato and Aristotle thought much higher of the royal dynasties of Egypt and Persia than they did of the brief period of Athenian democracy. Like other educated Athenians, they revered King Darius of Persia, particularly because he gave Athenian nobles much freedom and rights.

All is sacrificed for the common good. There is to be no private property or partners or children, for any of the three classes. Socrates argues that the ruler who grabs for themselves will not be happy, filled with “horrid pains and pangs”, and will physically and mentally fall apart. This tyrant will never “taste true freedom or friendship”. Because this is not the order of the cosmos, it will not stick and will fall apart just like many tyrants have recently in ancient Athens. Similarly, if everyone shares everything in common, there will be greater justice and less selfishness.

The Soviet Union and America funded scholarship during the cold war that argued each was more like Athens than the other. The Soviet Union pointed out that they were much more like the Republic than America, a democracy fueled by individual consumption and private property. America pointed out that Aristotle was critical of Plato and argued there should be a balance of public and private property and Plato’s ideal city was impossible in the real world, while using the language of ‘West’ and ‘East’ to separate Russia from the ‘true’ Western tradition. I myself would like more of a balance today between the public and private, but to many this is very socialist and thus un-Western, like Soviet Russia.

Socrates argues that each person is best suited to one thing, and should be assigned this one job. If people do more than one job, they will not be able to do this one job as best as they can. He argues that we will lie to the people, tell them the ‘noble lie’ of a Phoenician story, that people were born from the earth and there are three races of people because the metals of gold, silver and bronze flow in their veins. While people will raise all children in common, they will be tested from early ages to see whether they can be athletic and educated. Those who cannot be athletic will be workers. Those who can be athletic but can’t study will be police. Those who are both athletic and educated are the philosophers, educators and rulers.

Why tell the lie, if we are striving for ideal good and justice? Because the common will not understand and grab for themselves, very much Plato’s opinion of the brief period of Athenian democracy when the rich each grabbed for themselves in the absence of a powerful and just king. Plato’s cave, which we will discuss, reinforces this point. If you tell the truth to everyone, they will not believe you and try to destroy you as they did Socrates.

Socrates argues and the interlocutors naively agree without much of a fight that if they separate out the police and train them as best as can be, and then take the philosophers out of the police and educate them as best as can be, no injustice will be possible. There is the simple belief that the order itself will generate justice throughout the whole. The police and philosophers will thus never be greedy or unjust to the people below. Plato elsewhere argues that this is how the Egyptians in Thebes did it, by elevating priests as a class. He also says to imitate Sparta as well separating out the warriors.

In the same way, if you put your desires and appetites in check with your feelings, and your feelings in check with your reason, you will be a well ordered soul or individual. The appetites crave, the spirit is passionate, and the mind is reasonable. These are their jobs, the single thing they do the best, their purpose. Socrates argues that sometimes we are very thirsty, but if we know the drink is poisoned our reason puts our desire in check. Other times we may want honor but realize that it is not the smart thing to do, putting our spirit and emotions in check by our reason. This is interesting, for in the Apology Socrates argues not only that he should not be condemned to death but given free food and drink for life because he is helping Athens out, but then when this angers the assembly (as one could have reasoned), Socrates argues with his students that he must drink the poison and not escape by bribing the guards because it is the right thing to follow the law even when the law is unjust.

Plato also suggests banning all art (music, poetry and theatre) that is counterproductive, which pretty much means everything that isn’t impressing the highest good and order.
The youth are to be taught that they must improve themselves for the good of the state, and that the gods never to injustice or desire. Remember that Heraclitus also thought it foolish to believe that the gods had the same problems and flaws as humans.

The Allegory of the Cave

After being questioned about lying for the purpose of the good and justice, Socrates says that this is best explained with an analogy. He describes the masses and the assent of the philosopher beyond opinion of the earthly realm to knowledge of the heavenly and eternal realm, showing why the philosopher alone should have authority. It also illustrates Plato’s placing of Parmenides above Heraclitus, the eternal and heavenly above the mortal and earthly.

Imagine that everyone is chained in a dark cave, watching shadows of puppets carried before a fire at the mouth of the cave. The people think that the shadows are reality, the real things. The one who escapes, breaking the bondage of appetites and earthly things much like Jainism and Buddhism teach, first sees that the shadows are shadows of puppets, and sees the fire that casts the shadows. This draws the seeker to the mouth of the cave. Coming out of the cave and past the small fire, the seeker is at first blinded by the sunlight, but then sees real things outside of the cave and realizes that the puppets were just poor copies of the real things casting shadows that were shaped like real things. The seeker now has knowledge and wisdom, not mere earthly opinion and belief.


The Timaeus

The Timaeus, the work of Plato which he as well as Christians and Muslims believed to the most important, is not in spell check when typed today. Aristotle refers to it more than any other text of Plato’s, and it was the most important book for philosophers and scientists of the Italian Renaissance, one of the only works of Plato that Christian Europeans kept until they got other works of Plato and Aristotle from Muslims. It is, again, sad that we have largely forgotten it while remembering to praise the ancient Greeks and Renaissance Italians for being the great sources of European culture and study. It is very clear after reading the text why both religious and non-religious people ignore the text, because both have forgotten what used to be central religious and scientific beliefs in the European tradition.

Socrates the day after the party where the ideal Republic is discussed says that he would like to talk more about the ideal state and how it corresponds to the cosmos. Then, Critas tells the story of Solon going to Egypt and that the Egyptians told him of the story of Atlantis. This is, indeed, where the story of Atlantis comes from and it is not found earlier in Egypt as Critas says. The Egyptian Priest tells Solon that the Athenians do not remember because they have just become educated and civilized, but the Egyptians know from their history records that thousands of years ago the Athenians stopped the people of Atlantis, who were threatening to take over the world. We now know that Egypt was not as many thousands of years old as Plato believed, but this does show Plato believed that they were civilized long before Athens. The story, which is now believed to have been an invention by Plato or a story told to him that he believed, is very similar to the Battle of Marathon, and the Athenians and Spartans repelling the Persians.

Timaeus now speaks of the creation of the cosmos out of the One, showing the order already described of the elements and how the individual human was created as a microcosm of the macrocosm. This implies that you put your faculties of desire, spirit and reason in their proper order to be good and healthy, which is the order of the cosmos. The One sprouts the eternal order or model of things, which includes all eternal models or archetypes of things, and the demiurge, the sky father being that is the small fire at the mouth of the cave, then produces copies of the models in the ever changing world of earth below. The whole is a living creature, with the heavens as soul and the all as reason. Timaeus, as Plato, says that human beings are a plant with their roots in the heavens. The demiurge fashions reason in soul, and soul in body in individuals. The demiurge then moves everything in a circle, bringing about the life and death in circles of earth beings from planetary orbits and starlight.

This is all done by sameness and difference. Sameness has the higher and encompassing role, difference being proportional downward. The four elements have certain shapes, which are then glued together by the fifth element, quintessence or ether. This is the cosmology of Christianity and Europe well through the middle ages, up to Newton and Leibniz, who read Islamic scholar’s commentaries on the Timaeus. The Medieval Christians had to retranslate Plato, with central interest in the cosmology of the Timaeus, from Arabic into Latin.

Social & Political Philosophy: Locke, Rousseau, Mill & Thoreau on Liberty & Freedom

John Locke (1632-1704) was an English doctor and philosopher who was very influential on the American Founding Fathers (Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson), the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. One passage of the Declaration of Independence is almost wholesale lifted from Locke’s political work. He is famous for two works, the classic text of Empiricism, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, and the political work, Two Treatises of Government. He was friends with scientists such as Boyle and Newton. Like Hobbes, he witnessed the struggle between the English Monarchy and Parliament, and his political writings are deeply influenced by his times. Jefferson considered him one of the greatest thinker who ever lived.

Like Hobbes, Locke believed that human beings have natural rights that they derive from the state of nature and that government gets its power and rights from this and not divine decree of God, but unlike Hobbes, Locke believed that the power of the sovereign must not infringe on the right to life, the right to liberty, and the right to property. Like Hobbes, Locke argued that the state of nature is not sufficient for individuals to live as they want and so they establish the state by natural contract, but unlike Hobbes Locke argued that this must be achieved by establishing a separation of powers and a system of checks and balances. While Hobbes argued that the sovereign is transferred the rights of the individual such that the sovereign can take life, restrict liberty and seize property for the good of the people as the people, Locke argues that the people have the right to rebel against the sovereign if the sovereign infringes on these rights. Thus, for Locke, the social contract with the sovereign is not unbreakable and does not fully transfer individual rights to the sovereign. Like Machiavelli and unlike Hobbes, Locke believed in checks and balances to the power of the sovereign to protect the rights of individuals.

As many critics have pointed out, neither Locke nor the American founding fathers believed that these rights extended to all of humanity and there resulted great contradictions between love of individual rights and the brutal practices of slavery and colonialism. Locke was a major investor in the Royal African Company, a secretary to the Council of Trade and Plantations and a member of the Board of Trade, all of which were central to the African slave trade that took Africans from Africa to America to benefit the English plantations. While he argued that labor gives the individual a natural right to property, he also argued that the work of servants and slaves rightfully belongs to their master. Marx would later, as could be expected, agree that labor gives a right to ownership but disagree that the master or ruling class have the right to the fruits of the labor of the slaves, servants and lower classes. Like the founding fathers wrote “All men are born equal” but owned slaves themselves, Locke was clearly in agreement with the racism of his times and was writing for the equality of Europeans who owned property, servants and slaves and not of all-inclusive humanity.

Locke argued that money allowed property to be accumulated without injury to anyone. Many, including Marx and Native Americans and Africans, would take exception to this. Locke also writes that government should act such that individuals can accumulate as much wealth as they can but that wealth is distributed to the rest of society. He does not provide many insights as to how to go about this. Locke does argue that one of the major reasons that individuals should seek a social contract in the state of nature is to preserve their property and the fruits of their labor. In this, he is much more like Aristotle than Plato as Aristotle argues the state must draw everyone into a common unity yet preserve the diversity of personal property and ownership. While Hobbes sees preservation of one’s life as the primary reason for the social contract, Locke argues that the preservation of both life and property are the primary reasons and that the sovereign cannot arbitrarily take life or property from the individuals bound together in the social contract.

One last idea of Locke’s that has been very influential on many is the idea of the individual as a blank slate or tabula rasa (“blank slate” in Latin). An Empiricist, Locke believed that there are no innate ideas in the human mind and that all ideas are acquired by experience (unlike Descartes and much like Hume). Locke read a 12th century Arabic novel (translated into Latin) by Ibn Tufail titled Living Son of Wakening which tells the story of a child isolated from human society on a desert island who grows naturally by experience and reason to human adulthood. Another popular novel at the time was Robinson Crusoe which presents a gentleman and native “savage” on an island in the state of nature. Locke believed that education (like Confucius and the Confucians Mencius and Xun Zi) is central to all development and that the mind is an empty cabinet waiting to be filled.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) was much influenced by many of the thinkers we have covered including the Confucians. He was particularly concerned with being on the side of individual liberty checking the powers of sovereignty with Locke vs. Hobbes. Unlike Hobbes but somewhat like Locke’s idea of tabula rasa, Rousseau imagined that the state of nature was innocent and pure and that it was society that corrupted the purity of the individual. Like Locke, Rousseau was a major influence on the American as well as French revolution (our topic for next week, after Mill and Thoreau). I gave you selections from his two most famous political works, the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality and On the Social Contract. Rousseau was not only influenced by many of the thinkers we have read so far, but was also an influence on many of the thinkers we have yet to read, including the founding fathers, Hegel, Nietzsche, Paine, Marx, Engels and Bakunin.

Rousseau was born in Geneva which was governed as a democracy involving a minority of the male property owning class having voting power. He wandered Italy and France for a time as a secretary and tutor to aristocrats. In 1749 he saw an advertisement by the Academy of Dijon in a newspaper which asked for essay submissions in response to the question, “Has the rebirth of the sciences and arts contributed to the improvement or the corruption of manners?”.

Rousseau had an awakening experience, and decided that the original human nature is innocent and pure and that it must be society that had brought about corruption and ignorance.
This was in complete disagreement with many of his contemporaries including his close friend Diderot, who were champions of the Enlightenment and science and believed that human nature was being freed by the progress of society. Diderot wrote to Rousseau about his Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, “never was so much intelligence used to make us stupid…while reading it, one longs to go on all fours”. Voltaire and Diderot were passionate about science freeing the mind of humanity from primitive superstitions. Rousseau argued that humanity was good in the beginning and that society would ultimately destroy all that was good about humanity. Society makes people take up artificial practices and wear masks (much like those worn to aristocratic parties at the time). Remember that Hobbes argued society was an artificial construction, but Hobbes believed that human beings were naturally selfish, not pure, like Xun Zi. Rousseau argues that the artificial nature of society is corruptive and breeds hypocrisy. Nietzsche would later take up this cynical turn against social progress and argue like Rousseau it chains the individual.

Unlike Locke, Rousseau saw property and the excesses of luxury as evil and destructive to our natural being. Rousseau, unlike Locke and Hobbes, praises the “savage” peoples, using his famous phrase, “the noble savage” and saw them as living a more authentic and peaceful existence than modern “civilized” people. Like Hobbes and Locke, Rousseau believed that human individuals were equal in the state of nature, but he does not see the social contract as helping but rather harming this natural equality. Like Locke, Rousseau believed that humans are a blank slate, but more than Locke he believed that human nature continues to be a free and changeable, determined by the situation in which it lives.

Rousseau avoided arguing about natural laws (key for Hobbes and Locke), preferring human nature as an undefined freedom. While Hobbes believed that the state of nature was brutal, and Locke believed that the state of nature had semi-responsible property retainers who had yet to establish laws for their benefit, Rousseau saw the state of nature as a peaceful and simple time. Society came about through domination and inequality, not natural equality cohering in a social contract of equals (much as Marx and Nietzsche will argue later). Some came to have more than others, and the social contract legitimated these differences (note that Locke would argue the same, but see it as a positive thing). Thus, property is the root cause of social problems because it is an inequality that disrupts the natural equality of humanity such that we have masters and slaves. Later in the class, we will see that Foucault, also influenced by Rousseau (as well as Nietzsche) argues that institutions use binary divisions like knowledge/ignorance and sane/insane to maintain divisions of power and inequality.

While we live in society and enjoy its conveniences, Rousseau argues that we must resist the urge to give up our freedom, our most basic human nature. Because human nature is free and changeable, society can turn us into machines and slaves. To resist this slavery, we must (like Locke argued) be able to overthrow unjust governments and break social contracts (unlike Hobbes who saw the contract as unbreakable). We must also (like Machiavelli and Locke argued) have checks on the power of the sovereign and society such that society preserves the natural freedom of humanity and does not replace it with restrictions and repression. Rousseau turns Hobbes’ sovereign on his head: because the sovereign or government is, in fact, the will and hand of the people, it must be subject to the participation of the people to be authentic. The social contract is founded on mutual agreement, and so it must be maintained by mutual agreement.

Unfortunately, as critics have pointed out, this does not solve all of the problems that many see easily in the theories of Hobbes. Rousseau replaces the sovereign with the general will, which is indeed democratic, but what about the individual or minority group that disagrees with the general will? Both Hobbes and Rousseau argue that those who disagree must be made to agree or they are outside society. Both argue that the individual must be subordinate to the collective for the good of everyone. Rousseau does argue for checks on the power of the state to preserve the liberty of the individual, but the expression of the general will is, for Rousseau, such a check that then overrides the individual who disagrees with the majority. Rousseau does not precisely specify how the general will or government will refrain from dominating the dissenting individual. Rousseau, unlike Marx, was afraid of revolutions because he saw them as domination of the powerless by the powerful and pointed out that they often have terrible consequences. Nevertheless, his ideas were important for both the American and French revolutions. Many have pointed out that Robespierre of the French Revolution referred repeatedly to Rousseau while using the idea of general will to brutally eliminate his opposition. This is very similar to the use of Nietzsche by the Nazis. Others have noted the similarities to the problematic Communist revolutions and their abuses.

In The Social Contract, Rousseau begins famously by writing, “Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains”. He goes on to consider the birth of the social contract and how it can be, if balanced properly, an aid to freedom as much as a restriction on it. The birth of society is in the family. The major difference is that the father dominates the children (and wife, unmentioned) but loves the children while the state dominates the individual but does not love the individual. Thus, the father encourages the freedom and life of the children out of love while the later relation of the social-contract state does not necessarily encourage the freedom of the individual.

If Hobbes is right, we are mere herds of cattle to be controlled by the state. If Aristotle is right, some are born superior to others and they should control the subordinates. Rousseau argues that society, like slavery, is not natural and came about by the force of the stronger. If we obey society because of force, then there is no reason for duty. He uses the example of a robber with a gun and argues that one is not bound by duty to tell the robber about hidden valuables. If the sovereign/state is given power by protecting the people, why should the people stand with the state when it persecutes them or needlessly seeks war? This is the major question one likely asks after reading Hobbes.

To renounce one’s liberty is to renounce one’s humanity. Any social contract which makes one side the absolute authority and the other the absolutely obedient contradicts itself such that it is meaningless. If a slave has rights but no power, then it is as if the master has the slave’s rights and these rights contradict the rights that the master has already. In so far as the master gives the slave no power, the slave has no duty to follow the master and follows the master merely by force. If it is not unjust for the master to chain or kill the slave, then it is not unjust for the slave to escape or kill the master when the gun or whip can be grabbed. Rousseau mentions Balboa taking possession of the Pacific Ocean and South America from the natives for Spain. The words “slavery” and “right” are mutually exclusive. In the case of the dissenting minority, if the state gets its power from the agreement of the majority, in what way is it just for the minority to be included in the social contract if they do not agree? The only just state is thus the state which enables individual liberty and is controlled by the people as equals.

Rousseau, as already discussed, does believe that the minority is subject to the general/majority will, but for Rousseau this is only because the state justly protects individual freedoms. Otherwise, without such protections, there is no injustice when the minority refuses to participate in the state. This is particularly interesting issue when one considers America and Jim Crow laws.


John Stuart Mill (1806-1873 CE) was born in London, influenced by Ancient Greek, French, and liberal thought. He is considered the major founder of Utilitarianism and one of the first champions of individual freedom, women’s rights, and the abolition of slavery. His father wrote a history of India, and Mill was for a time involved with his father in the British East India company, the corporation that helped Britain maintain their hold over India. Mill’s family was friends with the Bentham family, from whom Mill took up his consequentialist, ‘happy principle’ thought.

In fact, Mill’s father had Bentham tutor Mill as a child with the idea that Mill would become a champion of consequentialist thought. However, it was Mill who found the name ‘utilitarian’ in a Christian text that used the term to describe an evil way to strive for good without principles. Mill picked up the name and developed the thinking in line with Bentham, his mentor, becoming its famous spokesman. Mill is a central thinker in Logic, Economics and Ethics. In all of these subjects, he advocated rethinking basic principles and assumptions based on the ongoing experiences of their usefulness. For Mill and Utilitarianism, the true is not true in itself but true because it is useful for creating happiness and avoiding pain. Like Rousseau, Mill does not argue based on natural rights but rather on the natural liberty and freedom of the individual.

We can see two sides to the Utilitarian Principle, maximizing positive and minimizing negative. Bentham argued that one should always act in order to maximize happiness. Mill agrees, but says the MOST important thing is to minimize pain. It is important to add that Mill argues we must look at consequences in terms of the social view (for the most people) and the long view (for the greatest length of time). While Bentham and Mill are two sides of the same coin, they are different in important ways. There are times when striving for maximum happiness can cause much pain (majority happiness at the expense of the minority), and there are times when striving for minimum pain impairs much potential happiness (overprotective parenting, insurance issues, have to break some eggs etc).

Consider that Communism often sacrifices freedom for equality, providing structure for all but imposing this on those who dissent (much like Bentham) while Capitalism often sacrifices equality for freedom, providing little structural support but imposing very little on the lives of the people (much like Mill). Mill is considered one of the big influences on American law, and American Capitalism leans very much towards Mill. Consider also the example of the Dutch house where the socialist state provides allowances and living space for alcoholics to drink themselves to death vs. homeless people (including Vietnam veterans) drinking themselves to death in the streets in America.

Mill admits that there will be continuous problems whichever way we use the principle, but he argues that we must try to evolve in a positive direction and so we should stick to the Utilitarian social & long view even when there are problems if we want the best society. Some problems with Utilitarianism include the paradox of the bad example and the problem of authority.

The paradox of the bad example is used by critics to argue that Utilitarianism/Consequentialism causes contradictions such as the bad being always useful, and thus good. Any bad act is useful as a good example not only to the one who acted but to everyone else. Consider PBS documentaries on the US overcoming slavery as freedom and the average American of South Africa. Consider a prosecuting attorney arguing that an offender is bound to offend again vs. a defense attorney pointing at the same offender and arguing that they had a bad upbringing but are reformed and pulling their life together. Dennett uses three mile island as an example, arguing it caused nuclear standards to follow. Consider that we love villains who go from good to bad and heroes who go from bad to good. We can very easily see bad as good and good as bad. Is this a problem for Utilitarianism, as critics claim, or a problem for Ethics and humanity in general?

Nietzsche and Marx attack Utilitarianism with the problem of authority: guess who are the ones to tell you what is useful or makes us most happy? For Marx, it is the rulers, the privileged, and the upper class, who use the lower class as labor. For Nietzsche, it is the group, the majority, who cow the individual into agreement with the thinking and tastes of the masses. Mill in fact approves of war to advance civilization, and he approves of colonialism as improving the uncivilized.

Mill was a champion against the enslavement of black people and the second class status of women. His wife was brilliant and a significant influence on this thinking as well as On Liberty. He was one of the first passionate voices in philosophy, in fact one of the few, who argued that we must evolve to overcome slavery and second class status for any type of people. He writes, in 1850 on ‘The Negro Question’ words I love: “It is curious, withal, that the earliest known civilization was, we have the strongest reason to believe, a negro civilization. The original Egyptians are inferred, from the evidence of their sculptures, to have been a negro race: it was from negroes, therefore, that the Greeks learnt their first lessons in civilization; and to the records and traditions of these negroes did the Greek Philosophers to the very end of their career resort (I do not say with much fruit) as a treasury of mysterious wisdom.” I must say that we still are not wise to this in many of our texts and museums today.

In his work On Liberty, which I gave you to read, Mill argues that society only has the right to check or limit individual freedom when the individual is harming others or significantly harming themselves. Otherwise, individuals should have the freedom to do anything. If the state destroys life or property, this affects not only the targeted individual but the entire community. Mill argues that failing to act can also be unjust when it causes harm, such as allowing a child to fall into a well (like the child discussed by Mencius). He argues that the Utility principle will not only protect the individual from the state, but also the minority from the majority (useful, considering the problem Rousseau shares with Hobbes as discussed last time). The state must have checks and balances to prevent abuse of the individual and minorities. Interestingly, in his work on economics Mill argued that managers and executives should be voted into positions of power by the laborers or else there will be economic dictatorship.

Unfortunately, Mill does argue that children and the “uncivilized” (read: native populations of Africa, India, and the Americas) can be limited by the family or state because they are not fully developed and so should not be given full freedom to act on their own. In such cases, strict yet loving parenting and benevolent despotism is justified. Sad to say, this is much in line with British and American foreign policy in Mill’s time and still is today.

Mill also argues for radical freedom of speech. Because offense does not constitute harm, the state has no right to regulate offensive speech or arguments. We learn more by hearing arguments we hate rather than prohibiting them, and any argument may contain an element of truth no matter how much we hate it. As a Utilitarian Mill believes in the evolution and progression of truth over dogmatism and tradition, and new truths are often offensive.


Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) was a writer, naturalist, transcendentalist, and abolitionist who is most famous for his proto-environmental and autobiographical book Walden and his political work On Civil Disobedience. He advocated simple and natural living and the right of the individual to nonparticipation with unjust laws and states. Like Rousseau, Thoreau believed that modern society was corrupting and abusive and hoped that people would cease to participate in war, slavery and other brutal practices by returning to nature and simplicity. Like Rousseau, he argued that many comforts and luxuries are not aids but hindrances to the progress of humanity. Like Rousseau, at least one critic wrote that if Thoreau was right we may as well go back to walking on all fours.

Thoreau did not believe in leaving society or rugged naturalism, but balancing modernity and city life with an appreciation of nature and the transcendent unity of existence. He is sometimes called an anarchist, as he wrote, “That government is best which governs least,” in On Civil Disobedience. While Thoreau did love nature and despise much of modern society, he argued for balance and did not believe in leaving civilization or abolishing government. Many know that Thoreau wrote Walden while secluded in a cabin at Walden pond (on land owned by his mentor and fellow transcendentalist Emerson) but few know that Walden pond was not far removed from society and in fact Thoreau had accidentally burned down 300 acres of Walden Wood with the help of a friend several years before staying in the cabin.

In 1846, Thoreau was jailed for refusing to pay past taxes on the grounds of opposition to the American slave trade and the Mexican-American War. Moved by the experience, he gave lectures on his experience and how it strengthened his convictions and later reworked these lectures into his famous On Civil Disobedience (published in 1849). Many great leaders have been profoundly influenced by the work, including Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Tolstoy, JFK, Hemingway, and John Muir. MLK wrote in his autobiography that he first found the idea of noncooperation with the unjust system as effective means of protest in On Civil Disobedience while studying at Morehouse College in 1944, and that he became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as important as cooperation with good.

On Civil Disobedience would make Xun Zi scream. Thoreau argues that government is supposed to be an aid but is most often a hindrance. He points to the Mexican-American war and says that a few, not the people, are benefited by using the state as a tool. Even democracies can dominate the minority and individual. The state does not make us more just and often uses us for great injustice such as war and slavery. We often serve the state as machines, not people, and being like a dog or horse is being a “good citizen”. How should we act toward the state today? Thoreau writes he can’t acknowledge his government as the government of the slave too. If the US is invaded, he says, he will take up arms for the US, but it is we who are the invaders!

We should refuse to follow unjust laws and governments, and be friction against the machine. If you live simply, and have less, then you can more easily not participate in the injustices of war and slavery. The rich are always indebted to the system that maintains the riches. Thoreau quotes Jesus: “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s”, and Confucius, “In an unjust state, riches and honors are shameful”.

Thoreau acknowledges that there has been great progress for individual freedom in the transition from monarchy to democracy, but asks: is democracy the final step of this evolution?

Ethics: Balance - Egyptian Wisdom & Confucius

In studying balance as an Ethical concept, we will look at Ma’at in the wisdom of ancient Egypt, the doctrine of the middle way in the teachings of the Buddha of India and Aristotle of ancient Greece, and then finish with the Analects of Confucius, one of the great ancient world Ethics texts and a masterwork on the balance of concern for the self and others.

Ma’at and the Wisdom of Ancient Egypt
The idea of balance was identified with the Goddess Ma’at in the early periods of Egyptian history, but just like the sun became the abstract principle of life and the universe Ma’at became the abstract conception of the balance of opposites.

In the Egyptian wisdom quotes, one of my favorite examples of early city-state texts, we can see that the Egyptians were concerned not only with the balance of good and evil that exist in particular desirable things but also in the ethical virtue of the balance of concern for oneself and for others. As many tribes gathered into the earliest city-states and empires, people saw more and more of human behavior and became concerned with balancing excess and lack. People saw that some had much to eat, much money, much power, and others had none. They saw that excess can hurt the individual and society as much as deficiency, power and riches as much as oppression and poverty. In Egypt and many societies that followed, including India, Greece and China, we can see a concern with balance and avoiding both excess and deficiency being praised as wise and ethical.

In the Egyptian texts (as well as Confucius) we can see a heart centered theory of the human being that ties into this concept of balance and wisdom. The heart was thought to be the center of the human being, as ancient people soon learned that the heart is the center of the vessels that branch throughout the body and which are crucial to its health and nourishment. The Egyptians thought that if one was unkind to others it would choke the breath and blood from the heart and hurt one’s physical as well as mental health (remember that in ancient cosmology, physics was identical with psychology and spirituality). Consider that we still wear the wedding ring on the finger next to the pinky, which has a large vein in it and was thought to control love and lust by the ancient Egyptians (the Greeks and Romans picked up much medicine and physiology from the Egyptians, and we keep this custom today). The ancient Israelites, in contrast, had their wives wear a ring on the index finger to keep her from casting spells while pointing.

In the Egyptian wisdom literature, the “heart-guided-individual” (very similar to the language and theories of Confucius) put wisdom over desire, mind over the body, and thus had self-control and the full powers and potential of the human individual. This was seen as putting oneself in-line with the cosmos, as Being, the one eternal way, is the source and guide of the many individual mortal beings.

Let us turn now to the proverbs themselves, considering the wisdom of specific passages.
Let not your heart be puffed up because of what you know, nor boast that you are a wise man. Consult with the ignorant as well as with the wise, for there is no limit to where wisdom can be found. Good speech lies hidden like a precious stone, yet wisdom is found among maidens at the grindstone.

This passage of Phah-hotep (Vizier to the Pharaoh, 2500 BCE) is similar to some we will read in Confucius of ancient China and it is also similar to Socrates of ancient Greece. We should learn from everyone, and remember that no one is perfect and no one knows everything when we are tempted to put ourselves above others. This questions not only human knowledge, but social inequality. It does not call for getting rid of social divisions (indeed, the last verse is somewhat sexist) but it does ask us to look beyond inequality and identify with others.

More acceptable to (the Father/Highest) God is the virtue of a just man than the ox of one who works iniquity.

In this verse, we see Marikare (a local king offering advice to the crown prince, 1500 BCE) questioning the value of traditional sacrifice. In India, Greece and China, we will see similar thoughts questioning the value of traditional practice over being virtuous. If the wealthy make sacrifices, but rule with cruelty, those who dare to question will ask if performing sacrifices truly gains one merit. Jesus chasing the money changers and sellers of sacrificial animals out of the temple is a similar move.

Rage destroys itself. It damages its own affairs.

Ani (a scribe of the 18th dynasty, 1550-1300 BCE)

Because we refuse to imitate the wicked man, we help him, we offer him a hand…That he may know shame, we fill his belly with bread.

Amen-em-opet (local king, 1800 BCE) is suggesting that we do the opposite of what we typically think to do to those we consider evil. Rather than punish bad with bad, like fighting fire with fire, we can show them the compassion and consideration they lack even if they do not deserve it. This is similar to Jesus saying, “Turn the other cheek”.

Never permit yourself to rob a poor man. Do not oppress the down-trodden, nor thrust aside the elderly, denying them speech.

Amen-em-opet shows not only concern with social justice, but giving freedom of speech to the disempowered.

Who plunders the goods of a poor man takes the very breath of life away from (herself or himself). Such cheating chokes off justice, but a full measure increases its flow.

The Eloquent Peasant or The Complaint of the Peasant is a story about a peasant who has been robbed by a local official and who gives a series of nine arguments to the local magistrate appealing for justice which shows again that the ancient Egyptians were concerned about the poor and social justice, while also having problems with each as we still do today. It also shows ancient Egyptian cosmology holds that the world works like a giant person, and breath and air carry order downward from the fire of the stars, sun and moon. If we do injustice, we not only choke the universe but ourselves as well. The Egyptians were the foremost doctors of the ancient world and were revered by the Romans in the beginning ages of Roman empire, and only in the empire’s later years did the Romans begin turning to Greek doctors, who had learned much from the Egyptians and added to it. Consider that we still practice the Egyptian custom of wearing the wedding ring (originally just worn by women) on the ring finger (which is how it got its name) through the Roman Catholic tradition. There is a large artery running through this finger, which the Egyptians found by doing anatomy, and because it was thought to be associated with lust a man puts a wedding ring on his wife’s finger to serve as a sort of lust collar. We do not practice the Israelite tradition of wearing the wedding ring on the index finger, which a man would put on his wife’s finger to prevent her from casting curses on him.

Honor men of achievement and the people will prosper, but keep your eyes open. Too much trust brings affliction…Exalt no man because of birth. Judge the man by his actions. A man should do that which profits his soul. Let him perform the services of his temple. Let him share in the mysteries of his religion.

Merikare shows great skepticism of authority, not only of political position and noble birth but of a central singular religious tradition. Notice both ritual and mystery being included as religion.

Love the wife who is in your house. Feed her belly, clothe her back. Provide oil and cosmetics for her limbs. Gladden her heart all the days of your life, for she is like a field that will prosper its owner, but do not go into court with her, and never let her get control of your house.

Ptah-hotep is being quite sexist, but shows us that women had the power to speak in court and ruled the home as they often do in Islamic traditional culture and our own today in spite of the sexism. Ptah-hotep is giving this advice to his son.


Provide generously for your mother with double rations, and carry her even as she once carried you. It was a heavy load that she bore, but she did not cast it off, and even after you were born, did she not feed you at the breast for three years? Your dirt was unpleasant, but she did not say, “Why should I bother with him?” It was she who placed you in school. It was she who came daily with food and drink for you.

Ani seems to be giving us the old, “You never call, you never write” routine of ancient Egyptian mother syndrome. It is hilarious how he is not only reminding us to take care of the elderly, but of our own mothers as well.

If you have grown to some account in greatness, do not forget the time when you were small. If you have now become a rich man in your city, do not forget how it was when you were in need.

Ptah-hotep shows us that there was social mobility in ancient Egypt, and one could become wealthy or poor depending upon circumstances. Like the passage that tells us the maidens at the grindstone have wisdom yet no one can obtain it entirely, it suggests we always keep the view of the poor and unfortunate in mind to not only appreciate what we have but prevent ourselves from being unjust.

Boast not how many jars of beer you can drink! Soon your speech turns to babbling nonsense, and you tumble down into the gutter…and when people seek to question you, they find only a helpless child.

Ani shows us that as people gathered into ancient city states, they became critical of human behavior.

Eat no bread while another waits in want, but stretch out your hand to the hungry. One man is rich, another is poor. Yesterday’s master is today’s servant. Don’t be greedy about filling your belly. Where only last year the river ran, this year the course is dry. Great seas have turned to desert wastes, and the sandy shore is now an abyss.

Ani again shows us that one could become rich or poor in society, and it is wise to remember it.

Do not lie down at night being afraid of tomorrow. When day breaks, who knows what it will be like? Surely, no man knows what tomorrow will bring.

Amen-em-opet, like Aztec poets and the Indian Vedas, reminds us that no one can predict the future, either through prophecy or science.

The Buddha and The Middle Way
The Buddha (550 BCE), the founder of one of the largest systems of thought in history, taught moderation between extremes as a fundamental doctrine. Known as “The Middle Way” in both Buddhism and Confucianism, this teaching is quite similar to the ancient Egyptian conception of Ma’at. According to the story of the Buddha’s life he tried extreme practices in the jungle to rid himself of attachment and desire and gain unity of mind and enlightenment as many were doing in his time and still do today, but he found that extreme self denial brought self hatred. Moderation became a core part of the Buddha’s later enlightenment and teaching. Rather than try to rid the self of selfhood or desire, release is found in the moderation between seeking and denying, neither running toward nor away from the self or desirable things. Thus, Buddhist conceptions of ethics often center of moderation between extremes, neither going completely without desirable things nor completely indulging in them.

Aristotle and The Doctrine of The Mean
Aristotle (350 BCE) argues for a very similar concept of moderation in his texts on ethics and health. He associates each virtue with two vices, one more extreme than virtue and the other too deficient. Thus, one should not be afraid of money or family or war but neither should one be a glutton for these things either. He argues that too much drinking and athletics can destroy the body, but no drinking or athletics can make the body and mind weak and deficient.

Confucius and the Golden Rule
Confucius (550 BCE – 480 BCE) was one of the great ethical geniuses of the ancient world. It is worth noting that in Christianity, Buddhism and Confucianism we find Jesus, Buddha and Confucius telling us to press ourselves to identify with others, to see things through their eyes and treat them as we wish to be treated. All three were identified with the central gods of the heavens in each tradition. No matter how religious or non-religious one is, this shows us that humans consider love and wisdom to be quite divine and the supreme goal of individual life and activity.

The Golden Rule:
Jesus and Confucius both say almost the same “Golden Rule”: treat others the way one wants to be treated. Sometimes scholars say that Confucius rather says the negative “Silver Rule”: DON’T treat others the way one DOESN’T want to be treated. It is easy to see that these are two sides of the same rule, quite the same but slightly different. We will see almost the same dual sided rule shared between Bentham and Mill next week as we study consequentialism/utilitarianism. Bentham argued that one should act in a way to bring about the maximum happiness, and Mill argued (taking his ethics from Bentham) that one should act in a way to bring about the minimum pain. Consider that communism often idealizes the positive side of each rule (provides structure but little room for choice) and capitalism often idealizes the negative side of each rule (room for choice but provides little structure). Many scholars have noted that American law is quite influenced by Mill, and follows his idea of erring on the side of doing little harm rather than Bentham. Consider that communist countries often put their former rulers on trial for crimes against the people when things go wrong (except for the top cult-figures), while capitalist countries rarely send their rulers to jail even when crimes could be punishable in court (there are severe problems with both methods, of course).

Heart over Ritual, Intention over Action:
Confucius and Confucianism are often identified with ritual and tradition, such as the father ruling over the household. In many places in the Analects, however, Confucius is quite clear that although ritual and tradition are essential for the cultivation of the individual and the maintenance of society, they are secondary to love and having the right intentions. This can be seen as an extension of ancient cosmology placing mind over body. In courts of law today, and individual is only guilty if they intentionally performed an action. Confucius tells us that action and tradition without the right intention and emotion are the worst things imaginable. One would think that if the two elements of an act are the right intention and right action, having the right action would be half good, but this is wrong according to Confucius. He even argues that if a ruler is corrupt, one should overthrow the state and put a proper ruler in place. Strangely, the Analects became the core text of the Confucian state in China which was quite conservative of traditional structures.

Nothing is Perfect, but Everything is Good:
Another beautiful idea that is central to Confucius’ teachings is “Perfection is nowhere, but good is always at hand”. Confucius says several times that he is not perfect, and that he has never met a perfect person (or even, in some passages, an excellent person), but he tells us that we all share the same virtues and vices and we can learn to be good by listening to the lowest of people (just like the first passage of the Egyptian wisdom , which tells us that “Wisdom can be found even among the maidens at the grindstone”). He even says that Yao and Shun, the two legendary emperors and ancestors of China, could not obtain perfection, so how could we? The best quote on this is Analects 7.22:
“Put me in the company of any two people at random – they will invariably have something to teach me…I can take their qualities as a model and their vices as a warning.”

Examine Oneself:
The last ethical point to consider while reading through the Analects is Confucius’ emphasis on modesty and examining the self for fault before one finds fault with others. This certainly fits snugly with the quote just mentioned. Confucius praises individuals who question themselves rather than others and who display modesty rather than pride. Confucius displays these virtues with regards to himself many times in the Analects. Consider 1.16, “Don’t worry if people don’t recognize your merits; worry that you may not recognize theirs”. Consider 4.17, “When you see a worthy man, seek to emulate him; when you see an unworthy man, examine yourself”.

In reading the Analects, pay particular attention to the following passages in light of the above:
1.10, 1.14-16,
2.12-15, 2.17,
3.13, 3.26,
4.6, 4.7, 4.10, 4.11, 4.14, 4.17,
5.5, 5.12, 5.13, 5.18, 5.27,
6.15, 6.17, 6.18, 6.20, 6.29,
7.7, 7.22,
9.8, 9.17, 9.26,
11.17,
12.22,
13.24,
14.22, 14.29,
15.21, 15.23, 15.24, 15.36, 15.39