The God of the Machine - Tranche 25
Posted by mshupe 1 year, 4 months ago to Government
Chapter XII, Excerpt 1 of 3
The Structure of the United States
The American revolutionaries had declared the axiom of the rights of the individual, the Society of Contract, as the reason and justification of their independence. The question immediately presented was how to bring them together without lapsing into democracy. The premise of democracy is supposed to be natural equality. Equality in itself signifies nothing, implies no values; two zeros are equal. Liberty attaches value to it.
Materialism must regard mankind as simply an animal species. In materialistic terms, psychology becomes a branch of physiology, behaviorism. This calls for a fixed objective standard with an unimaginable common denominator. The Platonic theory of the Ideal was an unsuccessful attempt to get around this difficulty. It is falsely assumed that when the claim of the few to command the many is refuted, the claim of the many to command individual is proved. This is strictly materialistic.
Liberty is truly a natural condition; for life itself is possible to a human being by virtue of his capacity for independent action. If any living creature is subjected to absolute restraint, it dies. Human life is of an order transcending the deterministic necessity of physics; man exists by rational volition. Therefore, the proper organization of society must be that of free individuals. Their equality is posited on the fact that the attributes of a human being are not subject to measure; a man equals a spiritual entity.
The Structure of the United States
The American revolutionaries had declared the axiom of the rights of the individual, the Society of Contract, as the reason and justification of their independence. The question immediately presented was how to bring them together without lapsing into democracy. The premise of democracy is supposed to be natural equality. Equality in itself signifies nothing, implies no values; two zeros are equal. Liberty attaches value to it.
Materialism must regard mankind as simply an animal species. In materialistic terms, psychology becomes a branch of physiology, behaviorism. This calls for a fixed objective standard with an unimaginable common denominator. The Platonic theory of the Ideal was an unsuccessful attempt to get around this difficulty. It is falsely assumed that when the claim of the few to command the many is refuted, the claim of the many to command individual is proved. This is strictly materialistic.
Liberty is truly a natural condition; for life itself is possible to a human being by virtue of his capacity for independent action. If any living creature is subjected to absolute restraint, it dies. Human life is of an order transcending the deterministic necessity of physics; man exists by rational volition. Therefore, the proper organization of society must be that of free individuals. Their equality is posited on the fact that the attributes of a human being are not subject to measure; a man equals a spiritual entity.
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