Page 22 - GALIET ILLUSION: Rousseau IV
P. 22

Immoral Holocaust party members, lacking character and virtue ethics,67 became not Philokalon-Kings but Philokakon-Kings debasing the perennial classical virtues of fortitude, wisdom, justice, and temperance. Thus, the infrahuman prevailed in manic stage that cast a spell, a spell, a spell of madness: ἄτη.
To respond to Berlin’s allegation that “the enemy of pluralism is monism,
“— the ancient belief that there is a single harmony of truths into which everything, if it is genuine, in the end must fit. The consequence of this belief (which is something different from, but akin to, what Karl Popper called essentialism – to him the root of all evil) is that those who know should command those who do not. Those who know the answers to some of the great problems of mankind must be obeyed, for they alone know how society should be organized, how individual lives should be lived, how culture should be developed.
This is the old Platonic belief in the philosopher-kings, who were entitled to give orders to others... To this I have to say that no better excuse, or even reason, has ever been propounded for unlimited despotism on the part
perverted. Thus, the rule of law becomes a tyranny that serves the master, and not the people or commonwealth. Rather than freeing and elevating minds to greater deeds and freedom, it enslaves them and reduces them to servility and fear, and dissent and civil war. Moreover, when the appetites govern, the desire for power overwhelms corroding virtue, and inviting disorder and chaos to reign. In this state, humans, incapable of self-governance are incapacitated to govern a nation.” Milton. Complete Poems and Major Prose. Ed. by Merritt Y. Hughes. The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1957. 754-758
67 Doris, John. Lack of Character. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. See Chapter I “Joining the Hunt” 5-14 and 38-40
—22—


































































































   20   21   22   23   24