Reason: We also lack a paradigm for reason, but with more reason, so to speak.
Just and ordered worlds do not exist at any level of aggregation. Greek philosophers had
For Plato, it was Kallipolis of the Republic or Magnesia of the Laws.
For Aristotle, it was homonoia, a community whose members agreed about the nature of
the good life and how it could be achieved. There would still be disagreements, but they
would not threaten the peace because they would take place within an environment
characterized by mutual respect and trust. Plato and Aristotle understood such worlds as
ideals toward which we must aspire, individually and collectively. They also served as
benchmarks against which to judge existing worlds. Even imperfect knowledge about an
abstract form could motivate citizens and cities to work toward its realization, although
they understood that it was an end that could never be attained. Partial progress could
bring about enough collective wisdom to sustain reasonable order in individuals, cities
and Greece more generally. Thucydides offers Periclean Athens as an example, and
Aristotle makes the case for polity, a mixture of oligarchy and democracy.
Historically, the triumph of reason has always been partial at best, and generally
short-lived. Writing in the aftermath of a destructive Greek civil war, Plato and
Thucydides, were committed to advertising its benefits, but deeply pessimistic about the
likelihood of people or their societies governing themselves in accord with reason’s
dictates. Neorealists are just as pessimistic, and maintain that states cannot exit from
realist worlds anymore than firms can exit from the market. For realists of all
persuasions, fear-based worlds are something akin to Stephen Hawking’s conception of
black holes: singularities from which -- in violation of the laws of quantum mechanics --
no information can escape. Hawking has recently questioned his own long-standing
interpretation, and we have reason to challenge realist understandings.
Greece in the
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Convention