When we don’t feel safe, we become afraid; and when we’re afraid, we often become less trustful of others and less willing to cooperate with them, which makes it hard if not impossible to sustain broad social commitments to the principles of opportunity and justice.
We (a great many humans now in the world) are in the grip of fear, even beyond the normal vicissitudes of life. We might say an existential dread because of climate change, environmental degradation, technological change, and the continuing threat oof war & nukes, to list my leading suspects. This, I contend, is part of the explanation of why we're seeing a decline in democracy and increased conflicts within and between nations. Fear: an excellent warning system; an undependable guidance system.
The British journalist and writer Anatol Lieven, now at Washington’s Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, recently argued that American patriotism has two faces. The first is the “American Creed,” a civic ideology that espouses liberty, democracy, and the rule of law. A powerful integrative ideology with elements of messianism has always been extremely important in the success of world empires. The Byzantines had their Orthodox Christianity, the Arabs had Islam, the French had la mission civilisatrice, and the Soviets had Marxism-Leninism. The American Creed impels its adherents to extend the Western values and Western democracy to the whole of the world.
This observation now seems rather dated, doesn't it? Our creed is slowly changing before our eyes, although the struggle to preserve the values of liberty, democracy, and the rule of law isn't over.
All this may still be presented as a Gibbonian narrative of long-term decline. Alternatively, however, Roman history can be understood as the normal working of a complex adaptive system, with political strife, barbarian migration (and integration), and imperial rivalry as integral features of late antiquity, and Christianity as a cement, not a solvent. Rome’s fall, by contrast, was quite sudden and dramatic—just as one would expect when such a complex system goes critical.
Kissinger pointed to “the environment, energy security and climate change.” Such problems could serve as avenues for cooperation between China and the United States, much as the problem of the Soviet Union had done during the 1970s.
Still true. See the recent U.S.-China agreement in Glascow. Think of the potential of a cooperative rivalry.
When Hippias goes home, he remains one, for, though he lives alone, he does not seek to keep himself company. He certainly does not lose consciousness; he is simply not in the habit of actualizing it. When Socrates goes home, he is not alone, he is by himself. Clearly, with this fellow who awaits him, Socrates has to come to some kind of agreement, because they live under the same roof. Better to be at odds with the whole world than be at odds with the only one you are forced to live together with when you have left company behind.
To wit, yourself.
On the level of common opinion, this means that clarity and greatness are seen as opposites.
An existential, meta-logical solution of the perplexity can be found in Heidegger, who, as we saw, evinced something like the old Platonic wonder in reiterating the question Why is there anything at all rather than nothing? According to Heidegger, to think and to thank are essentially the same; the very words derive from the same etymological root. This, obviously, is closer to Plato’s wondering admiration than any of the answers discussed. Its difficulty lies not in the etymological derivation and the lack of an argumentative demonstration. It is still the old difficulty inherent in Plato, of which Plato himself seems to have been well aware and which is discussed in the Parmenides. Admiring wonder conceived as the starting-point of philosophy leaves no place for the factual existence of disharmony, of ugliness, and finally of evil.
