Love is one of the few words in the human dictionary that has no clear definition. It is an ignorance of knowing and a force of feeling that keeps humans in a state of churning and longing, no matter what they encounter in the natural world. In universal and historical human experience, it has become painfully clear that love is not to be found in the physical, in direct contact with our senses. Love is frustratingly immaterial, and material things have failed time and time again to satisfy the spiritual and mental lust that have produced this “sacred” notion. Love has no business anywhere, except the transcendental and the a priori. But as it possesses physical beings, love must also have an attachment to the material world. For humans, love must be an attraction to a beauty of perfection that is beyond the physical but partly manifest in it. Apart from this point, which is agreed upon by many seekers of truth and wisdom, any further details have been unresolved.

Is love the end or is it just the means to an end? In Plato’s Symposium, love—or eros, as it is called—is discussed by several people who are unable to give a whole enough definition to satisfy Socrates, the final speaker. According to Plato, love in its true and best form goes beyond romantic and erotic love. It is not merely sexual attraction or the emotional bond in a human relationship, hence the popular term Platonic love. It has a higher, truer form than physical affection. In Socrates’s words, love is neither knowledge nor ignorance but something in between. It is neither poverty nor wealth but something in between. It represents the lack of something good and beautiful but at the same time, holds the wisdom and passion to attain it.

Humans can only feel love for things they do not have. The object of love has to be beauty—the greater the beauty, the greater the love. In order to feel and practice the best love, Socrates argues that one should look for higher forms of beauty; the highest beauties should be those that leave the physical and join the abstract and divine. He calls love or eros a daemon or a being of a nature between the divine and the natural. This indicates that love is a messenger between heaven and earth, a carrier that serves as the tether for humans to the abstract     and spiritual, to a beauty of perfection and to something higher and more meaningful than themselves and the world around them. Once this is realized, Socrates continues to explain that the object of love then needs to shift from beauty to the good. Love needs to become a desire for the good to be one’s own. Once love is directed at the perfect beauty, it needs to shift to the ultimate higher good for it to be complete and attain virtue. Love is the yearning for the true and divine form of Beauty, and its ultimate goal is the true and divine form of the Good, both of which exist in and of themselves, in accordance with the Platonic perception of forms. Socrates makes this point abundantly clear, as he argues that true love longs for an ultimate divine form of beauty and good.

Once Socrates explains the object and nature of love, he moves on to describe the act of love or eros. Love needs to lead to an action towards the object of its focus or desire. However, rather than possessing beauty, love is wanting to give birth in beauty. Love is the desire to engender or bring birth from what is beautiful. According to Socrates, experiencing and feeling beauty helps the lover give birth to something. In other terms, being in beauty or within the presence of beauty causes one to give birth to that which is the end result that love longs for.

In its most simple, crude form, this suggests intercourse with a physically beautiful body, thus giving birth to a child. But Socrates claims that there are higher forms of birth, just like there are higher forms of beauty, and the desire for one in the other arouses higher forms of love or eros. The object of love—beauty—becomes the means to a greater end, the birth. Giving birth grants a form of immortality, the highest form of existence, to the birth giver or the pregnant. Whenever the pregnant comes near beauty, they become glad, rejoice, dissolve, and produce offspring by giving birth. In a way, one who is beautiful releases the pregnant from labor pains through this divine act of love.

The offspring may come in many forms with ranging values and elevate the birth giver or the lover to a state of immortality, the level of which ranges according to the level of the offspring, the beauty, and the love. This indicates that the higher the love and beauty, the greater the offspring, and the greater the immortality. Therefore, the lover should always naturally look for the highest and best beloved in order to give birth to the best offspring and attain the highest attribute of immortality, something that all humans desire in a temporary, finite world. Once more, this shows how love always looks for something greater, higher, and outside of the physical world. Love is a desire for something it doesn’t possess. Ultimately, the only thing humans find themselves lacking or unable to have, is the divine perfection of good, something abstract and supernatural. As it is an impossibility in the physical, natural world, there exists a spirit of eros that knows wisely enough of this beauty but is too impoverished and worldly to reach it completely. This eros has nothing to do but possess the poor mortals and help them realize the true beauty.

Socrates gives a guide on how to do just that. He argues that a person needs to start by loving the beauty they are able to see around them, and, one by one, learn to recognize a higher level of beauty and redirect their love accordingly. To clarify, the lover needs to start feeling love for lesser beauties, and then pass on gradually to a love for higher beauties.

As this happens, one should naturally feel contempt for lesser beauty and aspire only for higher beauty. For example, a person should first feel love for a specific beautiful body, move up to love of all physical bodies, then move to a love of beautiful minds, then elevate to love the beauty of knowledge, then have a love for wisdom and continue on until the ultimate beauty and the ultimate good are reached. At each rung of this ladder of love, the lover should give birth to an offspring in the beloved, whether that is a child, a discovery of truth, or an idea in someone’s head. In the pursuit of love to behold the beautiful, a person should help the ones they behold, including themself, become more beautiful, so their love can magnify as beauty falls out of previous reach. In conclusion, Socrates explains this process of love to make the grand point that love in its entirety and true form, is a desire for the highest beauty and good, existing outside of the physical world. All other intermediate things are veils and stones, obstructing the way.

Love is the heart churning for what is higher and greater than what it possesses. It is a paradoxical state of neediness and fulfillment that drives the lover mad in the pursuit of the highest beloved. Just like Majnun, the true lover becomes insane as they wander in the desert, knowing and yearning for its Layla but never being able to possess it. According to Plato, humans are trapped in the desert of the physical and material while desiring the abstract and divine even though it is out of their reach. From this arises the origin of love. Socrates is just one in a long list of lovers in the painful pursuit of the highest and perfect beauty and good, existing outside of the natural realm, in a higher place that is divine, abstract, and spiritual. Love is what pulls us up, as our feet keep us down.

In a March 11, 2021, interview with Philosophy Magazine, Karl Lauterbach, now Germany’s health minister, concluded, “Corona policy is covered by Rawls.” Lauterbach, who advocates for limiting freedoms in favor of health protection during the current pandemic, had studied with Rawls in the 1990s. John Rawls, who would have turned 100 in 2021, is one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. His Theory of Justice was published 51 years ago.

Personal experiences may have contributed to the fact that Rawls devoted himself almost exclusively to the topic of justice (his second main work deals with international law). He came from a well-to-do family and enjoyed a private school education. He fell seriously ill twice in his childhood but survived while two siblings died. Rawls felt this was an undeserved privilege. In addition, he had personal experiences as a soldier in the war against Japan. He considered the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to be unjust, as he believed the war would have been won even without them.

The ancient understanding of justice

Rawls’ conception of justice has little in common with ancient virtue ethics, such as that of Aristotle. Virtue here means something like fitness to achieve an end (télos) inherent in a thing. Who should get a flute? For Aristotle, it is just to give it to the person who plays it best, because the purpose of the flute is to be played well. The fact that people enjoy its sound and thus benefit from it is secondary. Rather, the idea of merit plays a role.

With Plato, justice (dikaiosýne) means that all soul forces (reason, courage, desire) fulfill the activity assigned to them in the correct measure given by reason and thus fulfill the virtues of wisdom, bravery, and moderation. But justice implies also having the “right” inner order of the soul forces, as there is a “right” outer order, the cosmos ruled by the logos. The goal of justice, taken for granted, is the attainment of happiness (eudaimonia).

Kant’s categorical imperative

Rawls’ thinking, on the other hand, bears certain similarities to that of Immanuel Kant. With the categorical imperative, Kant had formulated a general rule on the basis of which personal or collective (traditional) principles of action are to be examined: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.” This imperative demands the generalizing of the personal: my norm must apply to everyone. For example: you shall not kill or lie. The similarity with the golden rule, which is based on the reversibility of actions, is obvious: “Do not treat others in ways that you would not like to be treated.”

Kant is not a utilitarian or consequentialist—i.e., someone who focuses on benefits or consequences. He is not concerned with advantages for society nor with the consequences of an action, but solely with the internal consistency of a will that declares itself to be good.

The original position in Rawls

Whereas Kant’s imperative represents an (ethical) norm of the verification of real (moral) rules of conduct originating in the living world, Rawls assumes an “original position,” a primal situation in which a rational subject oriented to self-interest must decide on a social constitution. In this way, he joins the contractarian thinking of the modern era, whose best-known representatives are Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. This had led to very different results, ranging from the authoritarian state (Hobbes) to the liberal state with separation of powers (Locke) to a state oriented to the common good (volonté générale) in Rousseau.

While the classical contract theories wanted to justify the emergence and thus the legitimacy of states, Rawls is only concerned with their institutional configuration and, in particular, with how economic life (markets, wealth, and income) can be fairly regulated in them. For him, justice means fairness of the initial conditions. The point of his primal choice is that it takes place behind a “veil of ignorance.” This image is reminiscent of the allegorical representation of Justitia, who makes her legal judgment blindfolded—that is, “without regard to the person.” The blindfold thus ensures impartiality.

With Rawls, man in the primal situation does not know his future social position (class, standing), gender, ethnicity, religion, etc., but also personal characteristics and talents are unknown to him [1]. Furthermore, he also does not know how often certain positions in society will be occupied—for example how many rich, how many poor, and how many middle-class people there will be. His choice is therefore not made under risk but under uncertainty. In a sense, it is a lottery, not a chess game, in which one must consider the behavior of other participants and calculate the best possible outcome. This represents a major preliminary decision against utilitarianism, which was dominant in the Anglo-Saxon world in his time. One variety of this doctrine holds that a society is just if it maximizes total and, consequently, average, utility. Determining this maximum utility, however, is impossible under Rawls’s specifications, since it presupposes that one can form the product of social position and “wealth” (benefits of all kinds). At most, one could assume that each of the possible social positions is equally probable (here, 1/3). However, this implies the completely unrealistic assumption that the number of kings (billionaires) and the number of slaves (unemployed, low-wage workers) would be equal.

Behind the rejection of utilitarianism lies a genuine ethical principle. According to Kant, man possesses dignity insofar as he is never only a means (e.g., an employee working for a company), but always also an end (a moral subject whom I must not deceive, etc.). Utilitarianism in the sense of the greatest happiness of the greatest number would mean, however, to instrumentalize a human being for the common good if necessary—for example, to withhold rights from him, if the loss of freedom is (over-)compensated for by the good of others.

Two principles

Rawls holds that, given ignorance of themselves, people would choose the following two social principles on rational grounds (i.e., without being driven by envy):

First principle: Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all.

Second principle: Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both: (a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, consistent with the just savings principle, and (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity [2].

In this context, the goods falling under the first principle, namely freedoms, are superior to those falling under the second—(a) income and wealth and (b) opportunities—and must not be impaired.

A rational person, Rawls argues, would decide according to the maximin rule in the face of complete uncertainty. He will not choose the state that promises him the most money, the most power (billionaire, king), but will take his orientation at the lower end and choose the state that grants the most rights, the best opportunities, and the highest income to the worst off. Not knowing what his future situation will be, he will seek to maximize the minimum because he shuns risk. As a loser in the lottery, he would eventually find himself homeless on the street.

With the first principle, Rawls specifies the freedoms of Western democracies (free elections, freedom of speech, assembly, religion, etc.). It states that one must compare the situation of the respective worse off in a “system of rights.” For example, with regard to religious freedom, Rawls would argue that a fundamentalist who wants to establish a state religion is less disadvantaged in a secular state, where religion and state are separate, than a person who does not belong to the state church is in a “fundamentalist” state.

The second principle also involves organizing the state “to the greatest advantage” of the worst-off. Thus, it is not enough that the worst-off also have some benefit from the distribution of goods (for example, according to the trickle-down principle, which states that the money of the rich “leaks out” to the poor), but it must be the greatest in comparison with other distributions. Intergenerational equity (“consistent with the just savings principle,” no state may incur excessive debt at the expense of the next generation) must also be considered, with which Rawls already anticipated a debt brake. (However, he did not yet have the destruction of the environment in mind).

But there is a second side to the coin: differences, i.e., inequalities, are permissible if they improve the situation of the deprived. Rawls called this principle the “difference principle.” As another example, a market economy would be justified, despite all social and financial differences, if it provided the weakest in society with a higher income than an egalitarian state economy in which everyone pro forma owned the means of production (without ever being able to sell them). Whether this is actually so, however, is a matter for economists to decide.

Rawls is thus not fundamentally in favor of an equal distribution of goods. The situation is different for rights and freedoms, but also for opportunities, such as access to education and public office. Here, the state must intervene—for example, by increasing the supply of good schools or introducing universal health care (which still does not exist in the United States). However, for the most part it is not at all clear who the worst-off in a society are. During the Covid-19 pandemic, is it the elderly who get sick, or the children who can’t go to school or visit friends? Does data protection (e.g., tracking cases of illness via apps) beat health protection? Or health protection the right to physical integrity (vaccination), freedom of assembly and movement (lockdown, breaking up demonstrations)? Incidentally, Lauterbach argues for the latter, citing Rawls, by pointing out that securing life is a prerequisite for being able to make use of freedoms at all. Whoever dies from Covid no longer has liberties to use.

Criticism

Philosophical theories suffer from a lack of ultimate justification. As a rule, they contain assumptions—e.g., about the “nature” of man—which are empirically disputed by others, such as with reference to presumed scientific evidence, personal observation, or introspection. Rawls, for example, considers humans to be risk-averse, which a philosophical optimist would probably doubt.

Above all, however, the conception of a primordial situation has been criticized. From a liberalist point of view, it lacks the historical dimension. According to this view, property goes back to free actions of individuals and thus to rights of entitlement (taking of nature, exchange, inheritance, donation, etc.) and has nothing to do with distribution patterns of any kind. Thus, even in an egalitarian society, new distributions (injustices) will emerge very quickly (which can be well observed in the game of Monopoly), necessitating constant new interventions.

Communitarians, on the other hand, emphasize the importance of community. With the fiction of a primordial choice and a veil of ignorance, behind which is chosen according to the rules of a calculus, a tabula rasa is arbitrarily established, from which neither solidarity nor substantial justice can be derived. Rather, the individual is involved in socially established cooperative practices that have internal rules, virtues, and purposes. In the background of these considerations is Hegel’s concept of “Sittlichkeit” (ethical life). Sittlichkeit implies more than an abstract system of (moral) norms, as conceived by Rawls. It is the form of life passed on by a community, which also includes religions with their canons of values.

Finally, especially in Germany, there is the position of discourse ethics, whose most prominent representative is Habermas. It differs from Rawls’ original situation in that it is not an abstract calculation that decides on justice but a discourse free of domination—a deliberation in which everyone can participate as a speaker equally but in which, turned against communitarianism, traditional practices, discourses, and virtues can also be questioned. Even if such a discourse does not take place in reality, so the assumption goes, it is implicitly presupposed in every utterance insofar as it lays claim to validity. Where Rawls considers the maximin principle to be generally agreeable, Habermas believes in the “unconstrained compulsion of the better argument” and the self-commitment of speakers to truth and reason. However, in view of the testy public debates, especially those around fake news that we are currently experiencing, this position also seems doubtful. One might suspect that they are rather “monologues” for the assertion of interpretive power, which, moreover, do not end in agreement but in the audience’s exhaustion.

Notes

1. From a moral philosophical point of view, this assumption can be justified by the fact that neither genetic endowment (nature) nor environmental conditions such as education and social milieu (nurture) can be attributed to merit. From this it should follow that also “strength of will” and “weakness of will” and consequently the use I make of my abilities are morally arbitrary. Diligence, decisiveness, resilience, etc., which are crucial for developing talents, would thus also not be in the hands of the individual. However, Rawls seems to be reluctant to accept this consequence, since it would have far-reaching consequences for the punishment system, for example.
2. John Rawls (1999): A Theory of Justice. Revised Edition. Cambridge, Massachusetts, p. 46, p. 266.

Plato’s (427-347 B.C.E.) political ideas remain influential. His idealist philosophy emphasizes ideas and ideals (independent of material and historical contexts), virtue vs. vice, and essential human values, and thus challenges modem philosophy’s general dependence on materialism, excess “objectivism,” and relativism. His search for the ideal person and the ideal city based on justice and harmony still motivates us. Although Plato is criticized for the totalitarian nature of his ideal city, his ideas are helpful when it comes to understanding the limits of democracy, especially direct democracy.

Plato was born into an aristocratic Athenian family. In The Republic, he analyzes the main psychological and sociopolitical pillars of the ideal person and the ideal city. His analyses are affected by such contemporaneous sociopolitical crises as the Peloponnesian War and Socrates’ execution by popular decision.(1) Believing that these problems have individual and systemic causes, he considers both the just person and the just city as an indispensable whole. In other words, a good individual life can be lived in a good city and good people can create a good city.

According to Plato, absolute truths are objective facts beyond relativistic opinion. Things have ideal Forms, whether they differ from the real ones or not. He emphasizes that things are good or bad by nature, and thereby accepts psychosocial phenomena as primordial instead of socially constructed.

Justice, the pillar of the ideal individual and social life, is a crucial good value. Plato rejects the idea that “justice is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger.”(2) On the contrary, justice, regardless of power, is based on virtue and is the main source of happiness. Justice is awarded in this life and the Hereafter, and injus tice is punished.

Ideal People, Ideal Society

The soul, according to Plato, is affected by three groups of motives: reason, spirit, and appetite. Human justice means maintaining harmony among these motives. Similarly, social justice depends on the harmony among the three social classes symbolizing these motives. Each motive might result in virtue or vice. The virtue of reason, courage, and appetite are, respectively, wisdom, courage, and moderation. But these motives can result in ignorance, cowardice, and licentiousness.

Since reason is the most significant factor for harmony among people and within the city, it symbolizes the guardians (the golden class). Spirit is symbolized by soldiers (the silver class), and appetite by farmers and artisans (the bronze class).

Plato considers knowledge, the source of wisdom, as coming from education instead of experience. Therefore public schools are crucial, as is the guardians’ task to censor other educational sources, such as poetry, to protect students from vice. Children begin to study music and poetry, the sources of a balanced and harmonious education, at an early age and are socialized independently of any family influence.

The guardians are the “soulcrafts” and holders of wisdom having absolute power.(3) Thus politics is a technical issue-there is no political race or opposition, and public opinion is irrelevant. The guardians answer only to wisdom and live a pure communist life, one without private property and family.(4) Military power is not used for imperialistic and other common militaristic purposes, but only for self-defense. Production is based on satisfying the citizens’ necessities and avoiding any accumulation of capital or market competition.

Plato explains four deviant types of political regimes as following: honor-oriented timocracy, wealth-oriented oligarchy, freedom-oriented democracy, and personal-exploitation-oriented tyranny. These regimes differ from the ideal reason-based regime (aristocracy), because timocracy is based on spirit, oligarchy on appetite, and democracy on a mixture of these two. Plato explains cyclical transformations of these regimes in light of the changes in the value structure, thereby stressing the significance of values and ideas on political transformation.

Plato and Modern Thought

Plato and modern social theory analyze several common issues, such as the importance of the division of labor. He considers people social creatures who must live within a complex and interdependent social life. Although he accepts social class as a consequence of division of labor, he rejects class warfare and class-based economic disparity. His understanding of this division, with its vertical and disciplinary structure, also differs from liberal social relations in terms of agreement or social contract.(5) In addition, he insists upon gender equality, for one’s class membership depends only on merit, which, in turn, is based on one’s quality of soul and education. For example, as “a male and a female doctor have souls of the same nature,” they are equal.(6)

Plato made great contributions to political theory by describing, generalizing, and systematizing psychological and sociopolitical issues. The Republic’s main contribution to political science is its sui generis emphasis on the role of ideas, values, and ethics in politics. He attaches importance to ideas and an intelligence not restricted by custom, instead of material/historical structural factors.(7) He questions “what ought to be” in politics, and stresses such moral and ethical values as justice and virtue as being the main criteria of normative social theory. As Wolin points out: “No one has ever surpassed Plato in insisting upon the moral urgency and centrality of political vision.”(8)

These contributions are very relevant now, for “the primary problem today is the reconciliation of the classical aim of politics-to enable human beings to live good and just lives in a political community-with the modern demand of social thought, which is to achieve scientific knowledge of the workings of society.”(9)

Some Critical Remarks

Plato’s ideas become problematic when analyzing the relationship between theory and practice, as follows:

•Sociopolitical issues exist in a dynamic structure and always face change and transformation. Therefore, even if the guardians grasp the knowledge, the impact of change on time and space might render their knowledge obsolete.

•Sociopolitical problems cannot be solved by transcending them because ignoring certain facts does not change the outer reality. Plato, however, seeks continued peace and stability by ending competition in politics, economics, and other spheres of activity. Moreover, he seeks to create harmony through social homogenization. As political theory’s essential aim is to solve real-life problems, it must “create a common rule in a context of differences,” instead of destroying social diversity.(10)

• Power is necessary to translate knowledge into practice, and only a stronger source of power can emancipate people from the pressure of another source of power.(11) Plato offers no specific methods to solve this vicious circle and make power subservient to knowledge.

Another, problematic aspect of The Republic is its totalitarian political ideology, which is neither necessary nor convenient for realizing Plato’s ideal people and ideal city (based on justice and wisdom). In his book, Plato supports indoctrination and social engineering instead of social contract and consensus. Such a totalitarian system has many potential problems, among them the following:

• It destroys the private sphere (i.e., the family), uses censorship to prevent any space for individual freedom, and violates basic human rights. Moreover, as the Soviet Union proved, it destroys the citizens’ motivation, creativity, and efficiency.

• A system that classifies people in a three fixed groups (gold, silver, and bronze) denies multiple identities and also results in discrimination.

• Politics is too important to be left to guardians. As it affects human life, ordinary citizens must be able to intervene to politics and determine their own interests and goals.

• A guardianship regime makes it impossible for people to recover their rights from manipulative dictators. The only way out is revolution, which is made all the harder by the systemic brainwashing received in the public schools.

• It is hard to find rulers who accept authority not out of personal desire but out of fear that they could be “ruled by someone worse than oneself.”(12) In this regard, Plato’s philosopher-kings might be very dangerous, for “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”(13) While disciplinary education may be somewhat suitable in semi-voluntary stitutions (monastic orders) or in the parent-child relations for a short time, it may be disastrous if applied to a whole society for a long time.

On the other hand, Plato’s non-democratic arguments include some good points that are used in modern political systems. For example, modern democracies are generally representative, instead of Athens’ direct variety, which Plato believes leans toward the tyranny of majority. The modern judiciary system, including a constitutional court and judges, symbolizes the dominance of knowledge’s quality over the majority’s quantity. Moreover, the main basis of a democratic state’s bureaucracy-meritocracy-refers to officials selected on merit, which is similar to Plato’s ideas.

Conclusion

Plato could not find the medium system and so tended toward totalitarianism as a reaction to Athenian direct democracy. Such a reaction derives from his bipolar mental world-everything is either good or bad. In this regard, his ideas resemble Zoroastrianism or the Confucian concept of yin-yang.(14)

However, as Aristotle stresses, psycho-social phenomena may be categorized into three groups, two of which are bad (excess and deficiency) and one which is good (means). For example, reason’s excess is demagogy, its negligence is ignorance, and its means is wisdom. The spirit’s excess is rage, its negligence is cowardice, and its means is courage. The appetite’s excess is licentiousness, its negligence is frigidity, and its means is moderation.(15) In this regard, the excess and negligence of political systems are Plato’s totalitarianism and Athenian direct democracy, while the ideal system is located in the middle way.

Footnotes

1. Arlene W. Saxonhouse, Athenian Democracy: Modern Mythmakers and Ancient Theorists (Notre Dame: 1996), 87.
2. Plato, “The Republic,” in Classics of Moral and Political Theory, ed. Michael L. Morgan (Indianapolis: 1996), 41.
3. Sheldon S. Wolin, Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought (Boston: 1960), 36.
4. In his ideal society, family ties are provisional and trivial.
5. George Sabine, A History of Political Theory (New York:1965),49.
6. Plato, The Republic, 125.
7. Sabine, A History of Political Theory, 63.
8. Wolin, Politics and Vision, 35.
9. Richard J. Bernstein, The Restructuring of Social and Political Theory (Pennsylvania: 1976), xxii.
10. Wolin, Politics and Vision, 61.
11. Ibid., 67.
12. Plato, The Republic, 48.
13. Robert Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics (New Haven:1987), 76.
14. Mulford Q. Sibley, Political Ideas and Ideologies: A History of Political Thought (New York: 1970), 69.
15. Aristotle, “Nicomachean Ethics,” in Classics of Moral and Political Theory, ed. Michael L. Morgan (Indianapolis: 1996), 268-71.

They did this within their own families as well, developing parent-child relationships, child rearing, values and beliefs, and other systems. If a society cannot develop one or more socially acceptable systems by which to raise its young people, its continued existence is called into question.

Like everything else, systems are dynamic and evolving. A major ingredient for a successful system-wide change is sufficient time to adapt. We hear of animal species dying out and indigenous peoples losing their culture because they could nol adapt fast enough. However, some people are impatient with the pace of change. They want to speed it up, by force if necessary. One man enforced rapid national change through decree and enforced it with raw power: Pol Pot, leader of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge. The results, nol surprisingly, were beyond belief.

Other Utopians, among them Plato and Sir Thomas More, confined their utopias to books. Ironically, a close reading of their texts or those of the self-proclaimed utopian societies that have emerged probably would encourage people to flee from them. Why? Because they are grounded in suppressing individuality in the name of pursuing “Ihe greater good”-usually at any cost. But what else is a man or a woman if not an individual? To insist upon being an individual under the Khmer Rouge literally meant instant death. We can only speculate how the inhabitants of Plato’s or Sir Thomas More’s ideal societies would deal with non-conformists.

In the scientific realm, scientists are devising artificial systems to improve our quality of life. One example is the electronic nose, which can be used to detect spoiled food and air quality, assist doctors and nurses in medical diagnoses, and help the military clear land mines. Another example is that of superconductivity. Using various combinations of elements, wires, and temperatures, scientists erect elaborate structures that result in supercomputers, mag-lev trains, SQUIDS (used to study the brain), particle accelerators, and other devices

One artificial system that has spread like wildfire in many countries is e-mail. Once the preserve of the American government and military, it is now an established part of many people’s and businesses’ daily routine. Although far from perfect, the current system seems to function rather well.

And then there are the more abstract systems that shape a culture: religion, one’s conception of how and why the universe functions, why things were created, what being civilized means, and how one can live a moral life. Some civilizations define themselves and are defined by-their religion. During the Middle Ages, Christian Europe applied this standard to the Muslim world. The resulting stereotypes and misunderstandings, despite calls for mutual understanding and acceptance, are alive today and color all relations between these two civilizations.

We hope that you enjoy this issue and, as always, look forward to your comments.