Editorial: 20th Issue July 1st 2019

Blog: http://michaelrdjames.org/

Journal site https://www.aletheiaeducation.eu/

https://joom.ag/RRYe

The first lecture is entitled “ A Critique of The Conceptual Foundations of
International Politics: Lecture Eight”. The lecturer Mary Robinson outlines a
view of the importance of Human Rights and the success of international
insitutions such as the UN:

In the above quote by Mary Robinson, there is a reference to the "emergence of a world
culture" which fits neatly into the Kantian ethical framework of a kingdom of ends which is
distinctly cosmopolitan. There is, however, in Robinson no acknowledgment that the concept
of Human individual rights probably was grounded and founded in Kant's moral and political
writings. On her account, Human Rights are a relatively recent phenomenon, which can be
dated back to the post second world war era. There is no recognition of the fact that the
institution of the UN was actually suggested in the 1790s as a response to the extreme
nationalistic behaviour of the states of his time. Put this together with the Kantian suggestion
of a world cosmopolitan culture which in its turn is a consequence of his law-based moral
theory and we can then defend the claim above that "individual human rights were grounded
and founded upon Kant's moral and political writings". Some commentators have incorrectly
interpreted these writings as suggesting a world government but this was specifically ruled
out by Kant who claimed that such a government would eventually become a tyranny. Kant's
theories have often been embraced by humanistic liberals wishing to champion the dignity of
man. Robinson refers to such a world-creating value in the quote below:

"The world came together out of respect for the dignity of each human being. All human
beings are born free and dignified with rights. Human Rights are also the foundation stone for
national and international peace."

The dignity of each human being is, as we will recall, a central concern of Kant's moral theory
and this idea is also involved in Kant's almost Aristotelian account of the telos of moral
theory which is to treat individual men as ends in themselves in the cause of the
"construction" of the kingdom of ends. One of Kant's essays in political philosophy is entitled
"Perpetual Peace" and it too links this view of human nature with his moral and political
theories whilst simultaneously arguing that Peace is the necessary condition for achieving the
environment necessary to establish the free exercise of responsibilities in a kingdom of ends.

Human Rights are , we argue fundamentally a concept that condenses out of the
Kantian cloud of moral reflection and dates back then to the Enlightenment
period of the end of the 1700s. It is therefore associated with a Philosophical
Psychology that focuses on the concepts of Freedom and Equality.

Law and Human Rights are International Phenomena and therefore

Globalization must play an important role in their constitution:
Robinson then provides a number of defenses for the value of International law:

"Almost all nations observe almost all the principles of International Law and almost all of
their obligations almost all of the time. This is a practical reality. Many of the core concepts
of International relations such as sovereignty, nonintervention, immunity, were developed
through interstate relations and then codified into International Law. International law is the
normative system of the world and the standard currency of International Relations. Much of
the talk of leaders today about democracy building would be impossible without international
law."

All of the above is, of course, practical implications of the Kantian Cosmopolitan ideas of
freedom and responsibility(duty). The above points are also an argument for the actual
existence of International law and she further claims in the same spirit that a multiplicity of
actors have created with their combined and integrated actions a situation in which Human
Rights are as she puts it:

"the minimum condition that should be met in the process of globalization"

The second lecture is entitled “Globalization , the Origins of Totalitarianism and

the Origin of the ethical Imperative is an essay on the subterranean forces of
Golbalization. Hannah Arendt’s position on the Origins of Totalitarianism is
discussed in relation to the ethical imperative:
Hannah Arendt argues that Totalitarianism was unleashed by Imperialism which in its turn
unleashed the power of a subterranean stream of globalising forces that surfaced and began
to flow with a power that the nation-state was unable to harness or control: forces such as the
will to colonise, the omnipotent will which felt that there was nothing which could limit its
power, and the mass feeling of powerlessness in the face of powerful institutions. Running
deeply in a part of this stream is a paradoxical current: a belief amidst an educated middle
class in the actualizing potential of the moral personality and the universal importance of an
ethical imperative.

In relation to the above thought consider an interesting Philosophical and Historical

perspective which relates to Ernst Cassirer's work "The Myth of State". Cassirer claims that
all political theories of the 17th century have a common metaphysical/mathematical
background. Metaphysical thought in the following century, amidst philosophers, took
precedence over theological thought which in its turn was already being undermined by the
subterranean stream of Stoical belief in a moral personality that surfaced first in the form of
the thought of Thomas Jefferson's draft of the Declaration of Independence which began with
these famous words:

"We hold these truths to be self evident. That all men are created equal: that they are endowed
by their creator with certain inalienable rights: that among these are life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

The above themes are elaborated upon in relation to the moder Trump
phenomenon.

The third Lecture is entitled Introduction to Philosophical Psychology. Aristotle

Part Four is the focus of attention. The lecture begins with a discussion of the
similarities and differences between the respective ethcal thories of Aristotle and
Kant:
"Freedom is important to us not as one value among others, but as that which constitutes our
very being. Other animals may have beliefs and desire but humans distinguish themselves
from the rest of nature by the ability to become consciously aware of these beliefs and desires,
to consider them and to decide what to do on the basis of that consideration. A human agent
need not merely be caused to act by his desires: by his reflecting on his desires and deciding
which to satisfy and how the desires become reasons for him. In acting for these reasons and
agent manifests his freedom and humanity but, unfortunately, we have little understanding of
what this manifestation of freedom consists of. Since this freedom helps to constitute our
humanity, in being ignorant of its working we are ignorant of our essence. We lack an
understanding of what it is, fundamentally to be us:"

Now we could be forgiven for believing that the above remarks are about the ethics of Kant
but they are rather meant to articulate what Lear thinks is an important implication of
Aristotle's ethics. Lear does however throughout his work on Aristotle articulate support for
the claim that Aristotelian ethics is an ethics of freedom. In the course of this "comparison",
however, a surprise is in store:

"According to Kant, a free agent must reflect on his desires from a standpoint outside the
desires themselves. The deliberation will not be truly free unless it is carried out from a
perspective which can view the desire and so consider it as one factor among others, but
which remains independent of its causal sway. On this conception of reflection is a
manifestation of freedom precisely because it is a form of detachment. The moral agent, for
Kant, is one, who, in thought detaches himself from his desires, particular interests and
circumstances and considers solely what a purely rational would will. Hegel, a devoted
student of Aristotle, criticized Kant's conception of free will. Such a will, Hegel argued,
would be so detached from its own desires and from the circumstances of deliberation and
action that it would be empty: it would never be able to determine what to will."

Hegel claimed that he would stand the philosophy of Kant on its head and in attempting to do
so may well have turned the worlds of Aristotle, Kant, and the common man upside down.
Hegel's dialectical logic replaced the Metaphysical Logic of Aristotle and the Transcendental
Logic of Kant. Hegel's inversion of bottom and top via his dialectical logic remind one of the
psychological subjects of Stratton, wearing glasses which invert their retinal images and
seeing the landscape upside down on the first day. On the second day, these subjects felt that
their bodies were upside down until finally after a number of days acting under these strange
circumstances everything returned to normal again. Wearing the glasses of Hegel to view the
Philosophy of Kant can indeed make the world of Kant seem a strange world itself in need of
conversion. It is to say the very least rather surprising to find Lear subscribing to this
Hegelian position, succumbing to this Hegelian deconstruction.

Kant,it is argued distinguishes clearly between both theoretical and practical

uses of reason and situates his theory clearly in the field of the practical in which
he also then distinguishes between a lower principle of desire where objects are
separable from their psychic states and a higher principle of desire in which a
transcendental principle unifies object and psychological state. For Kant the
ethical form of pleasure or happiness is then connected to this latter state in
which an estimation of ones worthiness to be happy is the decisive feature of the
psychological state. This not however, necessarily a criticism of Aristotle whom
Hughes argues should also be placed in the deontological camp of ethical
theories, given presimably his commitment to principles and rationality rather
than causes and consequences:
Hughes continues by pointing out that this puts Aristotle in the deontological camp in our
modern ethical debates. He cannot be a consequentialist, argues Hughes, because:

"Aristotle has nothing comparable to Bentham's definition of action as a "mere bodily

movement" from which it would indeed follow that the value of an action must depend on the
consequences that action produces, as Bentham says. Instead, Aristotle defines an action in
terms of how the agent describes or sees their behaviour at the time and draws no particular
line between action and its consequences"

The implications of this are devastating for the utilitarian position which finds itself at odds
with two of the most important ethical positions. For Aristotle, the agent must adopt a first-
person perspective to what they are doing and not a third person observationalist perspective
which in the absence of the declaration of intention by the agent of the action might well see
"mere bodily movement". Confusion is endemic in this area of debate. We can see one kind of
confusion in the utilitarian camp where the theoretical obsession with a reductive-compositive
method together with an observationalist/experimental interpretation of that method
postulates "atoms" of pure movement which can then be inserted into a theoretical framework
of linear causes and effects. The movement "causes" a state of affairs which is logically
different from its cause, thus dividing what was a unitary action into two elements which can
only be composed into a unity at the expense of the holistic account of deliberative practical
reasoning we find in Aristotelian ethics.

The discussion ends by considering the role of knowledge in virtuous action and
Aristotles argument for the possibility of incontinence is juxtaposed to his
claims for the role of principle and rationality.