RIEAS E-book, No 2

RIEAS E-BOOK July 2013 Athens, Greece

NICOLAS LAOS

KAIROPOLITICS The Ontological Foundations of International Relations With Forewords by: Professor Alexander Dugin, State University of Moscow Dr John M. Nomikos, RIEAS

Copyright: Research Institute for European and American Studies (RIEAS)

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About the author: Dr Nicolas Laos was born in Athens, Greece, in 1974. He is associated with the Research Institute for European and American Studies (RIEAS), the University of Indianapolis (Athens Campus, Greece), and the Saint Elias Seminary and Graduate School (Faith-Based Diplomacy Programme, Virginia, USA). Additionally, he is a member of several editorial boards.

He has studied Mathematics, Humanities and politics and graduated from the University of La Verne (California), and he has earned a Doctoral Degree in Philosophy from the St Andrew’s Theological Academy (Mexico, Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church Canonical). Additionally, he holds an MBA (Free European School of Economics-European University, Switzerland). Dr Nicolas Laos has published several monographs and research papers in Philosophy, International Relations, Political Economy, and Mathematical Analysis.

In 2013, the Ecclesiastical Noble Title of Duke of Bethphage was awarded to him by the Anglican Episcopal Church International (by decision of Metropolitan Archbishop the Most Rev’d Dr Norman S. Dutton) for his scholarly and charitable work. In 2008, at St Paul’s Anglican Church in Athens, he was invested and installed as a Knight of Grace of the Hospitaller Order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem (United Grand Priories of the Order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem, under the patronage of the Lord Lingfield).

About the book: What is reality? What is ‘real’ and what is ‘ideal’? How is consciousness related to the world? Is history created by the intentionality of the historical actors or are the historical actors determined by historical processes beyond their control? The previous ontological questions are of crucial significance for the creation of a theory of international relations and for the management of world affairs. In the present book, Dr Nicolas Laos gives a clear answer to the aforementioned ontological question, and he articulates a new theory of international relations, which he has called “Kairopolitics”.

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CONTENTS

PREFACE FOREWORD by Professor Alexander Dugin, Faculty of Sociology, Director of the Center of Geopolitical Studies, State University of Moscow FOREWORD by Dr John M. Nomikos, Director of the Research Institute for European and American Studies (RIEAS) CHAPTER 1: The Philosophical Underpinnings of Policy Analysis and Kairicity CHAPTER 2: The Rise and Fall of International Orders: The Two World Wars in Focus CHAPTER 3: The Defects of Political Realism and Neorealism CHAPTER 4: The Dynamics of the Political System

Bibliography

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PREFACE

This book concerns itself with the articulation of a new research programme, which I have called “kairopolitics” (I will explain this term in the sequel), and its goals are to transcend the antithesis between political realism and political idealism and to provide guidelines for the management of the international/global system in the context of advanced modernity and complex multipolarity.

These pages come as a response to the 21st century phenomena of change and crisis as well as a calling to the need for a new theory of international politics capable of addressing new problems and absorbing advances that have taken place in philosophy, cybernetics and quantum science with respect to ontological, epistemological and moral questions and that have been ignored by traditional political realists and political idealists.

What I have called kairopolitics is a new research programme that reflects the identity of the human being as a cognitive being and as a creative species. Each human subject around the world has in principle a limitless potential of self-perfection and of historical self-actualization. Kairopolitics is also an attempt to update and enrich the humanistic core of the European Renaissance by taking into account the historical mistakes, the psychological problems and the existential crisis of the human subject, which became manifest in the era of advanced modernity (or, for some other scholars, ‘postmodernity’), and, hence, to promote an idea of a continued path of illumination, as opposed to the diverse forces that lead to a regression to obscurantist medieval and feudalist/quasi-feudalist structures and value systems. In other words, kairopolitics is a radically anthropocentric research programme.

In an era of “global political awakening” (according to Zbigniew Brzezinski’s terminology), civilization clashes and advanced technology, the United States’ centre of power is not so much Washington DC as the political and cultural legacy of George Washington, and the Russian Federation’s centre of power is not so much the powerful regime of Vladimir Putin as the spiritual legacy of Alexander Pushkin and St Seraphim of Sarov. In addition, without delving into difficult ontological and epistemological questions, one cannot correctly address fundamental issues in intelligence analysis, e.g. he cannot discern real, significant ‘signals’ from background ‘noise’, and, of course, he cannot conduct successful psychological operations.

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In this book, I follow a philosophical attitude to the scholarly discipline of international relations. Philosophy, in general, is a methodical study and systematic investigation of the problems that result from the relationship of consciousness to the world and to itself. Thus, the philosophy of international relations is a methodical study and systematic investigation of the problems that result from the relationship of an international-political entity to the international system and to itself.

Like the ‘special’ sciences, philosophy is also a science, only one of a more general character. But there is an important difference between philosophy and the ‘special’ sciences. The aim of philosophy goes beyond the standard scientific work, which is concerned with the establishment of relations and laws, because philosophy aims, additionally, at evaluating the objects of philosophical research in a unified manner. Philosophy is not only concerned with the creation of theories, but it is also concerned with the creation of theories regarding the creation of theories (i.e. theories of theories). In other words, the difference between ‘philosophy’ and ‘science’ does not refer only to the level at which they study their problems, but also it refers to the manner in which these problems are experienced by the consciousness of the researcher and to consciousness itself.

I should gratefully acknowledge the inspiration and intellectual influence that I have received from the research works of the renowned Russian politologist Professor Alexander Dugin (State University of Moscow), the philosophers and the psychoanalysts who have studied the notion of ‘kairos’ (primarily Professor Evangelos Moutsopoulos, who is a prominent Member of the Academy of Athens, the psychiatrist Dr Daniel N. Stern and the psychoanalyst Dr Harold Kelman), as well as several international-relations scholars associated with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (primarily Professor Joseph Nye Jr), the RAND Corporation (primarily Dr John Arquilla and Dr David Ronfeldt), and the Research Institute for European and American Studies (primarily its Director, Dr John Nomikos).

Moreover, my gratitude extends to the prominent mathematician Professor Themistocles M. Rassias (National Technical University of Athens), who introduced me in nonlinear analysis and differentiable dynamics during my mathematical studies at the University of La Verne (California).

Athens, Greece, June 2013

Dr Nicolas Laos Research Institute for European and American Studies

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FOREWORD BY Professor ALEXANDER DUGIN Kairos: welcome to the Revolution, here and now!

Reflections on the essay “Kairopolitics” by Nicolas Laos The essay on “Kairopolitics” by Greek policy analyst Nicolas Laos is very important and timely in many respects. I am going to make a quick survey of the main points that seem to me of great operational significance.

The author demonstrates very broad knowledge in different fields of science from philosophy and psychology to geopolitics, economics, and the theories of International Relations and Communication. In the framework of such interdisciplinary research Nicolas Laos tries to propose a kind of original synthesis expressed in the concept of kairos. So let’s start with studying the very concept.

The Greek term kairos (καιρός) means literally “opportunity”, “right moment”, “(good) chance”. I could suggest the following interpretation of it. Kairos is not only a “proper moment” to do something but the exclusive “temporal point” where the “common” time undergoes the fundamental qualitative change of its deep nature. This is the moment of transfiguration of time, of its mutation in the something different than it was before. In order to illustrate this idea we can describe kairos in at least five different perspectives: Neoplatonic, phenomenological (Heideggerian), religious (Hesychastic), mystic (Islamic gnosis studied by H. Corbin) and psychological (Zen Buddhism).

1) In Neoplatonic terms, kairos signifies the particular moment when the ‘horizontal’ flow of time is intersected by the vertical line understood as a kind of eternity or “eidetical chain”. The Neoplationic thought follows Plato in perceiving time as the reflection or image of eternity. However, eternity, according to Plotinus, is not the whole time but the everlasting moment of being always equal to itself. If so, then the direct experience of eternity is possible as the act of transcending time, of ecstatically moving out of time. This process doesn’t mean ‘exit’ from time, but rather the transfiguration of time, the leap inside the inmost essence of time itself (as the image of eternity), the transformation of the ‘horizontal’ time into the ‘vertical’ one.

Hence, kairos is the moment of rapture and instant elevation to the utmost levels of being.

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2) In Heideggerian sense, kairos can be understood as event/en-owning (Er-eignis), a kind of simultaneous switch of the regime of existence of Dasein (“being t/here”) from the unauthentic mode to the authentic one. This is the moment of the awakening of Dasein to its own finitude, of the direct meeting with its own limits (death, nothingness), of the explosion of being inside “being t/here” when the latter becomes the “openness”. In this context, kairos can be compared with the future ecstasy of time as it is described in the second part of Being and Time (Sein und Zeit, 1927). This is the time of authentic being by contrast with the time of unauthentic being that always hesitates between to be and not to be (not yet). Summing up, for Heidegger, kairos is the moment of decision (Entscheidung) that implies the possibility or not for the return of gods.

3) In the context of the Eastern Christianity’s Hesychastic tradition, the Fathers spoke about the moment of enlightenment of the heart that comes as a result of the long practice of silence and the Great Work of Mind. It has been interpreted by St. Gregory Palamas as the ray of the uncreated Light of Thabor (Φῶς του Θαβώρ) intruding in the purified heart of a monk. In this context, kairos can be seen as the meeting point of enscreatum with ensincreatum. This idea was further elaborated in the context of the Russian religious philosophy of XIX-XX centuries, in a school known as sophiology. According to its terminology, kairos can be recognised as a “sophiological moment”.

4) We can also recall the concept of “discrete time” proposed by French philosopher Henri Corbin in his analysis of the structure of time in the Shia and Sufi Islamic traditions. According to Corbin, a mystic following the path of Islamic gnosis should make time somewhat personal; he can personalize it by discovering its unique features (name, figure, character and so on). By doing so, the mystic achieves the transformation of time into space. That was the original meaning of the ancient idea of Eon as a personalized ‘time entity’. Acquainting himself with this ‘time entity’, the mystic avoids the doom of the ‘horizontal’ time and finds the way into the imaginary one, “alam-al-mithal”, the world of Malakut “beyond the birth and death”. This is the very place where the hidden Imam lives.

5) We could also point out the Zen Buddhist practice of the search for “satori”, the momentary and spontaneous enlightenment of the mind reached through a special mental technique called “koan”. The latter is a sort of “short circuit” of the mind, and it follows from the concentration on snippets of a master. It stimulates the specific mental state in which emptiness (shunyata) of existence is clearly perceived and inner transformation of the self is achieved. Therefore, it can be seen as an analogue of kairos in the Japanese (Zen Buddhist) ambiance.

There is a question here: how can we apply such a sophisticated concept as kairos to the world around us and more precisely to the sphere of IR, given that Nicolas Laos insists on the practical value of his suggestions? It could be perceived as something weird, and it does seem so on condition that we are fully satisfied with the way things go round and we are quite sure about the direction in which humanity moves further and further into the process of liberalization, globalization and (post)modernization on a world scale. In other words, if we are quite certain that the existing global trends (in 7

economy, culture, science, communication, technology and so on) lead us safely and directly to a better or at least tolerable future, then kairology defended by Nicolas Laos doesn’t have much sense or any sense at all. But all this changes immediately if we begin to examine the status quo in more anxious terms, if we get concerned about the uncertainty of the future, about the limits of the economic growth reached and outdone, about multiplying social gaps and inequalities between the people despite (or due to) globalization, about uncontrolled progress of technologies breaking remaining ties with moral values. If we recognise that we are in a state of deep crisis and need a fundamental change, then Laos’s text is quite opportune. In such a case, the concept of kairos acquires a real sense and becomes pressing.

What does this mean? First of all, it means that kairos cannot be grasped only by rational means. It also needs deep existential experience though in total connection with the other realms of the “outer world”. Secondly, it refers to a personal decision about the destiny of the human being and humanity as a whole: there is the necessity for them both immediately to change their inertial course in a truly revolutionary way.

They cannot proceed anymore philosophically, culturally, geopolitically, technologically, morally, ideologically as they did before. Thirdly, kairos refers to the possibility (albeit problematic and not granted) of a revolutionary alternative to the existing order of things.

Change is absolutely necessary, and Nicholas Laos gives us his idea about how it could be possible. Kairos here is the key word. It is a fundamental, immediate and radical shift of all the existential regimes, a leap in the other direction, an unexpected strike of lightning, a sudden intrusion of the different. But kairos presupposes the evaluation of timing, risk and dangers. If the step is taken too early or too late all will be lost. The stakes are high. Kairos induces us to change the horizontal development in order to experience the verticality. The author describes what ‘horizontality’ signifies today.

In the field of philosophy, ‘horizontality’ signifies an obsolete dualism of subject and object introduced on the eve of Modernity but preserved till now in the mainstream way of thinking (positivism, rationalism, materialism and so on). Instead, we must turn to what lies in between and can be called “kairicity” (by Evangelos Moutsopoulos), or Dasein (by Heidegger), or Lebenswelt (by Husserl), or “rhizome” (by post-structuralists), or “sophiology” (by Vladimir Solovyov). We need to rediscover the nature of the human being from the ‘intermediate point’, which lies between subject and object, idealism and realism, consciousness and cosmos. If not, we are doomed to be absorbed into the information society where the agglomeration of information quanta will flood the hermeneutic capacity of man, making the ever growing databases less and less meaningful until they become completely meaningless. In other words, we are in dire need of a radical epistemological change.

In the field of International Relations, the existing process of globalization becomes more and more insecure, disastrous and self-destroying, being based on the quite weak, questionable and unjustified presumption of the universality of the ‘Western idea’. In its present form, globalization is the ‘monologue’ which imposes an uniformed and standardized set of values, practices and technologies on different, 8

heterogeneous cultures, societies and religions. Proceeding in this direction will, sooner or later, erode the Western values at its core, inevitably provoking global resistance against the new kind of colonialism and consolidate radical anti-Western forces all over the world. What we are confronted with is the West losing its own identity precisely at the moment when this identity seems to have become universal and reached the most distant areas of the Earth. The victory of the West will become its doom and the very reason for its profound defeat. In winning control over humanity, the West is losing control over itself, and, thus, it is sacrificing itself to its unlimited “will for power”. The West simply cannot afford to be global anymore.

It is impossible to grasp the present international world order in the realist or liberal perspective. Nowadays, nation-states are being eroded, and the civil society appears to be somewhat different from what the humanitarian idealists originally envisaged. So, without a paradigm change in International Relations, the morally corrupted “double standards” accompanied by disillusionment, growing irritation and all-absorbing fear are unavoidable. “Why do they hate us?” –ask Americans sincerely today. It seems like the USA has never thought seriously about the others, about the diversity of other cultures, societies and identities. Even if the American way of life is good for Americans, this doesn’t mean automatically that the others share the same enthusiasm.

So the world order should be fundamentally changed. In what sense? In the sense that kairicity could mean the recognition of the plurality of the times. There is a time of the West and there is a time of the East. In the case of Greece, the country which Nicolas Laos represents, the presence of this plurality is obvious. Being the cradle of the Western civilization, Greece belongs at the same time to the Eastern Orthodox Church. Therefore, on Greek soil, both times and corresponding value systems are equally present, while the differences between them are clearly perceived. In a similar way, any other culture, society, or civilization possesses its own version of time, as well as its own value system, historical identity and so on. The alternative, the “kairological world order”, could be constructed on recognition of this fact. This statement implies that we should see globalization as a “polilogue” of different groups of people with their own temporalities, spaces, visions of cosmos, cultural identities.

This is the only way to save the West from itself and also to protect the Rest from the West.

Kairopolitics is concerned with the realm of geopolitics, too. Sea power (winning actually) and Land power (being today on defense) are very useful intellectual concepts by means of which one can understand the conflictual nature of world politics. But it is unlikely that the imbalance in their mutual positions could make the world safer. The victory of the West (Atlanticism, the USA and NATO) over the East (Eurasianism, the Soviet form) was seen in the beginning of the 1990s as decisive and even described as “the end of history”. It was also hurriedly declared that the era of geopolitics had come to an end and the whole planet turned into a single prosperous post-modern market. But now the fragility of this victory and the impossibility of unipolar ‘monologue’ are obvious. The readiness of Land power to strike back (in the

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form of a resurgent Russia or, more broadly, the Eurasian Union, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, or the BRICS) revives the old geopolitical tensions…

The only solution to get out of this ‘cyclical law’ of geopolitical confrontation is not the return to the old Westphalian ‘anarchy’ (the nation-states being irreversibly gone) nor the re-establishment of the bipolar ‘dialogue’ (there being the curse of dualism) but the institution of the real and equal ‘polilogue’ of civilizations in the true spirit of multipolarity. Such centres of the new world order must be integrated on the basis of their values and identities, or, in other words, they must share the same kairos. This means the reconfiguration of the classical geopolitical map into the new one, with cultural poles or “greater spaces” embracing Sea and Land power areas as well as the crucial intermediate zone in between –Rimland. And here the amphibious nature of the Greek and wider Mediterranean geopolitical identity could serve as a key-factor, uniting, separating and balancing the plethora of culturally integrated spaces –Western European, Eurasian, Middle Eastern, North African and so on. The Greek Neoplatonist philosopher Proclus declared Athens to be the centre of sacred geography with the mythic Atlantians to the West and the real Persians to the East (A.-J. Festugière (transl.), Commentairesur le Timée, 5 vols, Bibliothèque des textes philosophiques, Paris: Vrin, 1966-1968). Therefore, the strategic place in between for ever and ever is reserved for a kairic geopolitical entity, i.e. for Greece –modern, ancient, eternal.

In the field of economics, the concept of kairos means the deep revision of the liberal presumption of everlasting growth (although at this point Nicolas Laos seems to have another opinion). The linear accumulation of goods, technologies or knowledge is a dangerous liberal illusion. The present Greek crisis having its origins in the crash of the American mortgage system in 2008 is only a herald of the forthcoming catastrophe. There are limits and they will remind us of their existence more and more menacingly. What has happened to Greece recently is the end of the absolute certitude that liberalism is a miraculous panacea applicable universally.

Hence, we need to outdo the “new economy” with its massive pervasive propaganda.

We need to return to ‘reality check’, although it will be painful. If the growth of income isn’t guaranteed anymore and the ‘swelling’ of the middle class not evident, if the pauperization is a real menace and massive immigration creates more problems than it solves, while the shortage of energy resources becomes more acute on the global scale, then the faith in liberalism as the universal solution has lost its power.

That is why we need an alternative to liberalism in this sphere, too.

Since it is simplistic and simultaneously impossible to return to socialism or to the protectionism of good old Modernity, we have to ‘imagine’ something really new, something revolutionary new. Right now. Otherwise, it will be too late. The economic kairicity obliges us to act precipitously. If not economic liberalism, what? Here as always nothing can be taken for granted. We need to rush through, “riding the tiger” at the post-modern high speed, playing in the rhythm of growing velocity, acting in the “dromocratic regime” (P.Virilio). But in what sense this can be done, remains to be discovered. I foresee it as a bold discourse between pre-modernity and postmodernity, beyond liberal dogmatism but without straight appeal to its failed historic 10

alternatives (Left or Right). We need to leap out of liberal inertia…and into a vertical dimension. Maybe here the essential ideas of a prominent Russian philosopher and economist father Sergey Bulgakov could be of use. Another Russian thinker and sociologist, Piterim Sorokin, once predicted the collapse of “sensate culture” and the near advent of “ideational social order”. If so, we need to think of a non-material approach to the material world, non-technical solutions to technical problems.

All the issues mentioned above invoke a necessity for a new ideology, alternative political vision, the other world-outlook, absolutely radical, revolutionary and innovative. Could this be “kairopolitics” suggested by Nicholas Laos? Maybe. The term as far as I understand is very relevant, promising and fruitful. Certainly, it can’t be taken as an accomplished and fully elaborated solution but as a brave invitation to think in a completely different direction where Premodernity (spirituality, Platonism, mysticism, tradition) meets Postmodernity (information society, communicativity, dromocracy, high technologies) bypassing the impasse of Modernity with its numbered days.

For all the above, I am inclined to accept this invitation, regarding it as an authentic Greek initiative similar to our own ideas (Eurasianism, Fourth Political Theory, Global Revolutionary Alliance, theory of Multipolar World), which are also quite open for questioning and not frozen dogmatism.

Nicholas Laos’s essay is absolutely worth reading, meditating on, analysing about.

It is a kind of challenge. Kairos is present there. And that is precisely what is most important…

Professor Alexander Dugin Faculty of Sociology Director of the Center of Geopolitical Studies State University of Moscow

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FOREWORD BY Dr JOHN M. NOMIKOS Reflections on the research work “Kairopolitcs” by Nicolas Laos The research work titled “A New Research Programme for a New World Order: Complex Multipolarity, Advanced Modernity and the Fusion of Geopolitics and Noopolitics” written by Dr Nicolas Laos is a masterpiece for any analyst/researcher/policy-maker who seriously wants to comprehend the complexities that societies and human beings face in the twenty-first century.

The Greek term kairos (καιρός), signaling a revolutionary conceptual change in today’s societies with different cultural traditions, political systems and characteristics, covers many parameters in International Relations, Geopolitics, Economics, and Religion.

While from its earliest days as a discipline the main debate in International Relations has been that of realism versus idealism/liberalism, to which later was added the debate of rationalist approaches versus reflectivist ones, Dr Nicolas Laos with the term “kairopolitics” aims to revisit this conventional typology in order to develop an appreciation for pluralist theoretical thinking in the context of both Western and Eastern cultural identities.

Dr Laos focuses on key concepts (power, Westphalian anarchy, sovereignty, international system, interest, change, system versus actors) and he juxtaposes diverse modes of theorizing, thus providing an opportunity to scrutinize different theoretical imaginaries, such as “kairological world order”, in an analytical and operational manner.

Last but not least, Dr Nicolas Laos’s “kairopolitics” provides us with ‘food for thought’, and I am certain that Dr Laos’s new vision of kairos stimulates scholars of International Relations and Geopolitics to read as well as think about his outstanding research work!

Dr John M. Nomikos Director Research Institute for European and American Studies

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Chapter 1 THE PHILOSOPHICAL UNDERPINNINGS OF POLICY ANALYSIS AND KAIRICITY

The social sciences in general and international politics in particular are characterised by several debates between realists and idealists. Moreover, the antithesis between realism and idealism in international politics and in the social sciences in general has taken various forms, which often complicate the debate between realist and idealist scholars. In the context of the academic discipline of international relations, the antithesis between realism and idealism was originally centred around the academic debate between David Davies on behalf of idealism and E.H. Carr on behalf of realism. David Davies has been stereotyped as “the industrialist/landowner/Welshman-believing in education/and Liberal Members of Parliament”1, and he emphasized the study of law, politics, ethics, economics, other civilizations and international relations. Carr “became stereotyped as the scourge of utopianism and the advocate of an unrelenting realism”2.

The ‘school’ of political realism tends to model the state as a rational unitary actor, whose rationality is interpreted not so much as a human attribute, but as a behaviourally engineered quality of actors within an ‘anarchic’ political system. Both classical realism and neorealism borrow intentionally from classical microeconomics, seeing the members of the international system as analogous to firms, ‘anarchic’ structure as analogous to market structure (according to physiocratic economic models), and power as analogous to utility. Furthermore, political realism is strongly linked to empiricism and positivism.

Whereas political realists stress necessity and historical continuity, political idealists stress freedom and historical discontinuity. Whereas political realists argue that the equilibrium of the international system should be pursued though balance-ofpower arrangements, political idealists insist on “peace through law”3 and emphasize questions about the moral standing of states and the nature and extent of normative relations within, between and beyond individual states.

Ken Booth, “75 Years On: Rewriting the Subject’s Past –Reinventing Its Future”, in: S. Smith, K. Booth and M. Zalewski (eds), International Theory –Positivism and Beyond, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 328.

2 Ibid, p. 329.

3 Hidemi Suganami, “The Peace Through Law Approach”, in: T. Taylor (ed.), Approaches and Theory in International Relations, London: Longman, 1978, pp. 100-121.

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In general, in philosophy and science, one of the most important research problems is the analysis of the relationship between consciousness and the reality of the world (external reality). The arguments that have been articulated about this research problem can be grouped into two philosophical (and, more specifically, ontological) ‘schools’: realism and idealism.

The earliest formulations of the ontological problem According to philosophical realism, since experience provides us with images of a reality that seems to be external to our minds, it logically follows that this reality is the generator of those partial images. Hence, on the basis of the principle of causality, there exists a mind-independent reality.

Realistic philosophical theories can be divided into two categories: monism and dualism. According to monism, only one basic substance or principle exists as the ground of reality. If this principle is material, then we talk about monism of the materialistic type (or materialistic monism), and, if this principle is spiritual, then we talk about monism of the idealistic type (or idealistic monism). For instance, the earliest Greek philosophy (i.e. the Ionian physicists, the Atomists, Anaxagoras, etc.) is realistic, in the sense that attention is directed towards the external nature, and mainly monistic of the materialistic type, since it seeks to explain phenomena by means of a single material principle, such as a single natural element or a concrete combination of different natural elements. Monistic theories of the idealistic type were developed much later in the history of philosophy as extreme forms of dualistic theories.

Two characteristic examples of dualistic realism are the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle. Platonism is an archetypal form of realist philosophy: according to Plato, the idea comprehends or holds together the essential qualities common to various particulars. Plato argues that ideas are not mere concepts (abstractions) in the minds of men or even God, but, instead, Platonic ideas are the original, eternal and transcendental archetypes of things, existing prior to things and apart from them and thus uninfluenced by the becoming of the manifest world.

However, under the influence that Aristotle exerted on Plato’s theory of ideas, Plato qualified his previous arguments about the irreducibility of ideas (i.e. beings) and phenomena (i.e. non-beings). Thus, in his books Timaeus, Critias, Philebus and Laws, Plato argued that reality is composed of beings and non-beings as well as of nearly beings and nearly non-beings. In Timaeus, in particular, Plato asserts the existence of a series of different ontological levels, which inspired Neoplatonism.

Neoplatonism –mainly through the works of Plotinus, Proclus and Dionysius the Areopagite– has formulated a religious and philosophical argument according to which there exists a series of substances. These substances are related to each other, either through emanation or through return, and compose the universal ontological hierarchy, which starts from the One, i.e. the absolute being, and ends in matter, i.e. the absolute non-being. Within the framework of Neoplatonism, Plato’s dualism is transformed into a theoretical spiritualism, since the One, or the idea of Good, is 14

considered to be the absolute being, whereas matter as such has neither form, nor quality, nor power, nor unity. However, Proclus, in his book In Platonis Timaeum commentaria, asserted the value and goodness of both stable matter, as a cosmic substratum created by the One, and unstable, ‘gross’ matter found in the world of senses.

Aristotle’s philosophy is a dualistic realism, too, because it is based on the equality between two elements that are related to each other: matter and form. Aristotle, in his Metaphysics, argues that all objects have matter, i.e. a material of which they are composed, and form, i.e. they are characterised by a certain way in which the matter is arranged. The form makes a thing what it is. For instance, form allows us to distinguish between a vase and a sculpture. Whereas Plato asserts the separation of the form of a thing from the thing itself, Aristotle argues that every form is, like the Platonic ‘idea’, eternal, but, instead of being outside of matter, it is in matter; they coexist. Hence, according to Aristotle, reality itself is formed within the world of senses by matter and by the manifestation of a spiritual factor, i.e. form (or species).

Furthermore, intimately related to the distinction between form and matter is the distinction between actuality and potentiality. Aristotle identifies actuality with form and hence substance, while identifying matter with potentiality. For instance, as long as a pot remains stored in a cabinet, it exists potentially, but, when it is used in accordance with the purpose for which it has been constructed, it exists actually.

In the 9th century AD, Johannes Scotus Eriugena, an Irish theologian, Neoplatonic philosopher and poet, initiates the early medieval Western philosophy with his book De divisione naturae. In his book, Eriugena departs from traditional Neoplatonism, and he formulates a new definition of nature: Nature is defined as “universitas rerum”, the totality of all things, and it includes both the things that are (ea quae sunt) as well as those that are not (ea quae non sunt). Moreover, according to Eriugena’s version of Neoplatonism, the highest generality is associated with the highest reality. Therefore, universals not only exists but also they exist prior to things and apart from them, being the archetypes of individuals.

Realism mingles God with Nature. Within the framework of realism, God is transcendental, universal and eternal, but still He is mingled with Nature. The argument that God’s mind contains universals –i.e. the ontology of generality– suffices in order for God to be reduced to a part of Nature (He may be the uncreated part of Nature, but still He is a part of Nature). This reasoning was followed by Anselm of Canterbury (11th century AD) in his book Proslogion, in which he attempted to derive the existence of God from the concept of a being than which no greater can be conceived.

The realist philosophers of scholasticism argue that universals constitute the authentic reality, whereas individuals belong to the world of imperfect phenomena. In other words, the concept of a human being is more real than I am. Therefore, according to the scholastics’ realism, my life and my relation to the world are subject to rules and doctrines that transcend my personal being, i.e. they transcend any significance that I may have as an existential otherness (individual). Within the

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framework of this realist philosophy, the ultimate duty that I have as an individual is to learn and understand the logic of the universal and comply with it.

At the political level, the scholastics’ philosophical realism has a clear consequence: the basis and the purpose of society must be to serve the corresponding universal, i.e. the ‘Kingdom of God’. In other words, historical authorities and institutions are and must be images or reflections of a transcendental order. And who has the authority to explain and impose the logic and the will of the highest (i.e. of the most general) concept (i.e. God)? The Pope, of course, according to the realist philosophers of scholasticism.

Using realism as an instrument of cultural diplomacy throughout the Middle Ages, the Pope managed to impose his ‘plenitudo potestatis’. On the basis of philosophical realism, the Pope could act like his archetype –namely, like God. In general, the argument that the individual has meaning and value only if and to the extent that it serves the universal implies that the authority that supposedly represents, or reflects, the universal has the right and the duty to suppress the individual in order for the universal to be served in accordance with the directives of the established authority. In the 20th and the 21st centuries, this way of thinking was followed by the Nazis and the Soviets in order to justify their concentration camps and consolidate their authoritarian rule as well as by the Federal Reserve System and the Eurozone in order to establish a system of generalized conformity to the will of a global financial elite, whose interests were treated like categorical imperatives.

Gradually, the medieval man understood that the most effective way of fighting the Papal absolutism was the refutation of philosophical realism. In fact, the bourgeois class was the first social actor that became aware of the fact that the papal and generally the feudal absolutism had to be struck at its core, i.e. realism.

In the Middle Ages, the most important philosophical reaction against the scholastics’ realism was nominalism. Nominalism was originally formulated by Roscellinus (ca. 1050 – ca. 1125), a French philosopher and theologian, and it can be summarized in the following phrase: “universalia sunt nomina”, i.e. universals are names. According to nominalism, the universals do not have real subsistence, but they are “flatus vocis”, i.e. simple words, which are used for taxonomic purposes.

According to nominalism, only individuals are real, and anything apart from individuals is not real. The nominalists invoked Aristotle’s philosophy in order to refute the quasi-Platonic character of medieval realism (thus, in 1210, the regional Council of Paris banned the teaching of Aristotle’s works, with the exception of his Logic and Ethics).

Modern rationalism Modern philosophy arose as a protest against the old scholastic system, and it made human reason the highest authority in the pursuit of knowledge, but it did not break with the past. In fact, the founder of modern philosophy, René Descartes (1596-1650), formulated a philosophy that belongs to the school of dualistic realism. Descartes’s 16

dualistic realism is based on the distinction between two concepts: extension (i.e. a spatial continuum of three dimensions: length, breadth and thickness) and thinking.

According to Descartes’s books Meditations and A Discourse on the Method, bodies exist independently of our thinking, but the only reason we have in order to believe in their existence is a deeply rooted conviction in the existence of an external world.

Two of the most influential students of Cartesianism were Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Baruch Spinoza.

Rationalism –whose paradigmatic representatives are Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza– was very much influenced by the scientific revolution of Newton, Kepler and Galileo, and thus it has subscribed to the view that the kinds of mechanisms discovered by the previous natural scientists were quite different kinds of things to those which people can observe. In other words, rationalists stress that perception or observation is never sufficient on its own, and it requires logical processing. The central rationalist premise is that the sense cannot give us an understanding of the mechanisms that generate the observables we perceive and that the notion of logic, which is a property of the human intellect, can work out the relationship between observables and deduce the causal mechanisms at work. We can only gain knowledge of the world by using logic in order to process and explain what we observe or experience. This notion of rationality, with mathematics as the exemplar, was based on a foundation of certain truth, which for Descartes was an intuitive truth known by all minds; thus he declared “cogito ergo sum” (I think therefore I am): reflective minds could doubt everything, except they could not doubt that they were thinking, and this provides the basis for secure knowledge about the world.

Rationalism has the following defects: (i) Descartes maintains that rationality is a deductive system based on intuitive axioms, but he fails to see that there is more than one kind of rationality. Different individuals might argue that their intuitions were different from those of others. For instance, Descartes has argued that Euclidean geometry is absolute, being based on definitive axioms, but Riemann, Lobachevsky and other mathematicians have created non-Euclidean geometries, based on different intuitive axioms. Moreover, N.A. Vasiliev, Jan Łukasiewicz, Hans Reichenbach, A.H.S. Korzybski, Lotfi Zadeh, R.A. Wilson and other logicians have created various non-Aristotelian logics, based on intuitive axioms that are different from those of Aristotle. (ii) Man relates to beings and things in the world by assigning significances to them 4 . Therefore, the fundamental significations (i.e. the values) that underpin human action must explicitly find their position in every meaningful discussion about social systems.

4

Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Volume One: Language, Volume Two: Mythical Thought, trans. R. Manheim, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955.

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The idealist reaction and modern empiricism As opposed to philosophical realism, idealism does not distinguish between the reality of the world (external reality) and the reality of consciousness. According to the idealist philosophers, the very fact that we can know the external reality implies that the substance of the external reality is not distinct from the substance of consciousness. Idealism presents the world not as something reflected in human consciousness, but as an extension and a projection of human consciousness and as a part of human consciousness.

The realist philosopher Descartes was the unintentional founder of idealism. His principle “cogito ergo sum” implies that consciousness is the ultimate foundation of reality and assurance. Another unintentional founder of idealism was the empiricist philosopher John Locke. In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke is concerned with the discovery of the source from which our knowledge springs, and he argues that, if it is true –as Descartes and others argued– that we have innate knowledge of principles, it cannot be explained why we question its validity. In other words, Locke refutes the Cartesian doctrine of inborn truth by assuming that the mind must be conscious of its innate principles, if there be any. According to Locke, the two sources of all our ideas are sensation (which supplies the mind with sensible qualities) and reflection (which supplies the mind with ideas of its own operation, e.g. perception, believing, doubting, willing, etc.).

David Hume, who is the most characteristic representative of modern empiricism, agrees with Descartes and Locke in requiring that genuine knowledge must be selfevident, but he argues that he has not found such knowledge anywhere except in mathematics, which merely analyses its own concepts. In his Treatise of Human Nature, Hume argues that the constitutive and fundamental elements of knowledge are impressions and ideas. By the term impression, Hume means a lively perception, which brings with it conviction of positive belief in the existence of a corresponding objective reality. All our sensations, passions and emotions as they make their first appearance in the mind are characteristic examples of impressions. By the term idea, Hume means a copy of a corresponding impression, left behind by the given impression. In other words, based on the philosophies of Hume and Locke, the central empiricist premise is that science must be based on a phenomenalist nominalism, i.e. the notion that only statements that refer to observable phenomena are cognitively significant and that any statements that do not refer to independent atomized objects cannot be granted the status of justified knowledge5.

Empiricism has the following defects: (i) According to empiricism-positivism, the only cognitively significant statements are tautologies and statements that are based on direct observation. This is an extremely restrictive epistemological thesis, since it rules out any consideration of (unobservable) things, e.g. social structures, or even social facts (which, according to Émile Durkheim, refer to those shared social 5

Leszek Kolakowski, Positivist Philosophy, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972, p. 11-17.

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concepts and understandings such as crime, which he argued that should be treated as ‘things’). (ii) Empiricism does not legitimate discussions about ‘causes’, since these are unobservable. The empiricists reduce causation to mere correlation. Thus, their enquiry is limited to that of ‘prediction’ and cannot involve causal analysis. (iii) Empiricism presupposes a kind of pure perception and objectivism that is impossible.

John Searle has pointed out that subjectivity is an essential characteristic of conscious states 6 . Additionally, W.V.O. Quine has pointed out that theory is involved in all empirical observation, and, therefore, absolute objectivism is impossible 7 . Both Immanuel Kant8 and Gestalt Psychology9 have pointed out that consciousness plays a much more active role in perception than the one thought by empiricists.

Pragmatism Pragmatism is based on the philosophies of William James, Charles Pierce and John Dewey. Its main purpose is to combine the rationalist thesis that the mind is always active in interpreting experience and observation with the empiricist thesis that revisions in our beliefs are to be made as a result of experience10.

6

John Searle, The Rediscovery of the Mind, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992.

W.V.O. Quine, “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”, in W.V.O. Quine (ed.), From a Logical Point of View, 2nd edition, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961, p. 20-46.

8 Immanuel Kant formulated a philosophy that he called “critical”, and it is a compromise between realism and idealism. According to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781), there are two different worlds: the first world is called the noumenal world, and it is the world of things outside us, i.e. things that exist independently of our minds, but, according to Kant, our consciousness cannot comprehend the essence of this world and, instead, we can only perceive an altered version (a fainted image) of this world, which Kant called the phenomenal world. The phenomenal world is the world that we perceive, i.e. the view we have of the world that is inside our minds. In Kant’s philosophy, the communication between the noumenal world (pure concepts) and the phenomenal world (phenomena) becomes possible due to the theory of schema. By the term ‘schema’(plural: schemata), Kant refers to a set of pre-existing (a priori) judgments, or rules, which are hard wired into our minds and interact with the noumenal world, thus helping us to create the phenomenal world that exists in our minds. Our perception of the world is necessarily conditioned by schemata (Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

9 Gestalt Psychology was founded by Max Wertheimer (1880-1943). Wertheimer noted that we perceive motion where there is nothing more than a rapid sequence of individual sensory events. This argument is based on observations he made with his stroboscope at the Frankfurt train station and on additional observations he made in his laboratory when he experimented with lights flashing in rapid succession (like the Christmas lights that appear to course around the tree, or the fancy neon signs in Las Vegas that seem to move). Wertheimer called this effect “apparent motion”, and it is actually the basic principle of motion pictures.

According to Wertheimer, apparent motion proves that people don’t respond to isolated segments of sensation but to the whole (Gestalt) of the situation. See: Wolfgang Köhler, Gestalt Psychology, New York: Liveright, 1992.

10 For a general introduction to pragmatism, see for instance: C.J. Misak (ed.), Pragmatism, Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1999.

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“The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief” is the much quoted centre of pragmatism 11 . John Dewey elaborated this position in books on epistemology, ethics and politics, and he has argued that no attempt to form a purpose in a definite case is final, but, instead, any purpose should be held only as “a working hypothesis” until it is empirically confirmed12. Thus, Dewey obliterates the gap between ‘is’ and ‘ought’. McIntyre has summarized Dewey’s position by stating that “all reason is practical reason” and, therefore, whenever one characterises something as good, he means that it will provide him with satisfaction in his purposes13.

Pragmatism is ultimately self-defeating. Pragmatism gives the impression that it is a dynamic attitude towards reality and epistemology and also that it is a progressive epistemological stance. On the contrary, it assigns a deeply passive role to consciousness, and it is a form of passive conservatism. Pragmatism stresses the adaptation of our ideas to an unfolding experience, ignoring the fact that reality is submissive to the intentionality of human consciousness since there is a structural continuity between the reality of the world and the reality of consciousness.

Conscious beings are not merely obliged to look for methods of adaptation to a reality that is external to their consciousness, but they can utilize and restructure reality according to their intentionality.

Scientific realism Scientific realism is based on the philosophies of Roy Bhaskar 14 and Rom Harré15, who emphasize the existence of an objective (mind-independent) cosmos. The primary purpose of scientific realism is to uncover the structures and things of an objective scientific cosmos. Scientific realism treats theoretical concepts, such as ‘electrons’ or ‘sets’, in the same way as so-called ‘objective facts’, and, therefore, it argues that the empiricist conception of the role of theories (as heuristic) is wrong.

Bhaskar distinguishes among the real, the actual and the empirical: the first refers to what entities and mechanisms make up the world, the second to events, and the third to that which we experience. From Bhaskar’s viewpoint, empiricism makes the mistake of looking at the third of these as a way of explaining the other two so that it reduces ontological questions to epistemological questions. Furthermore, Bhaskar rejects rationalism, too, by arguing that it too reduces ontology to epistemology by its reliance on theoretically necessary conceptual truths to explain the world.

William James, “What Pragmatism Means”, in his Selected Papers on Philosophy, London: Dent, 1917, p. 215.

12 John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, Boston: Beacon, 1957, p. 177.

13 Alasdair McIntyre, A Short History of Ethics, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967, p.

253.

14 Roy Bhaskar, A Realist Theory of Science, Brighton: Harvester, 1978.

15 Rom Harré, Varieties of Realism, Oxford: Blackwell, 1986.

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But many of the arguments of scientific realism have been falsified by recent advances in science, especially in the context of quantum theory and cybernetics. In quantum physics, one learns that reality is not being ‘out there’ by itself. There has to be a process by which a being recognises reality ‘out there’, and this process of recognizing (i.e. becoming aware of) reality involves a recognition, a consciousness, a mind. If the mind changes the way of processing this ‘out there’ reality, then we will be talking for another experience. According to quantum physics, as we begin to delve deeply into the question of how one’s observing mind interacts with, is in a relation to, the object of his observation, we realise that the thing that we are observing is not just something that is itself physically ‘there’, but it is something that has been created in our mind as having a certain form, shape, size, material, substance and generally all the various attributes that we call physical reality and also that, without these memorized concepts of the things that we see ‘out there’, we would not be able to create even a picture or an assemblage of understanding of what is ‘out there’. In other words, there is a structural continuity between the ‘out there’ (external reality) and the ‘in here’ (consciousness).

Niels Bohr, who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum mechanics, is reported to have said to Werner Heisenberg, who was another great pioneer of quantum physics: in the field of atomic and sub-atomic physics, “language can be used only as in poetry”, since, like poets, physicists are not concerned so much with the description of facts as with the creation of images 16 .

Moreover, in the same spirit, Alfred Whitehead, who co-authored the epochal Principia Mathematica with B. Russell, has argued that nature is always in a state of becoming and that the reality of the natural world is the natural becoming itself17.

Within the framework of cybernetics, epistemologists focus on the observer in addition to what is observed. Lynn Segal18 and Ernst von Glasersfeld19 have explained that, according to modern cybernetics, scientific laws should not be considered as ‘discoveries’, as one, for instance, might discover an island in an ocean, but they should be considered as ‘inventions’ by which scientists explain regularities in their experiences. Consciousness interacts with reality, and hence the first constructs and reconstructs the latter.

Quantum theorists, cybernetics experts and modern philosophers, such as Henri Bergson, Gaston Bachelard and Evangelos Moutsopoulos have emphatically argued that, if the structure of the world were totally distinct from the structure of consciousness, then consciousness would be unable to know the world.

16

Quoted in Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man, Boston: Little, 1974, p. 340.

Alfred Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, New York: Macmillan, 1944, p. 106.

18 Lynn Segal, The Dream of Reality, New York: Norton, 1986.

19 Ernst von Glasersfeld, The Construction of Knowledge, Salinas, CA: Intersystems, 1987.

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Phenomenology, Structuralism and Hermeneutics Skepticism, being founded on empiricism, emphasizes the gap between the ‘for oneself’ and the ‘in itself’, and, therefore, it tends to limit human knowledge to an elementary level. On the other hand, phenomenology departs from the traditional discussions about syllogism and is directed towards “the things in themselves” as they are constituted in consciousness.

The phenomenological method is based on a position prior to reflexive thought, called pre-reflexive thought, which consists of a turn to the very things. At that moment, the philosopher holds a phenomenological stance by means of which he can remain open enough to live that experience in its wholeness, preventing any judgment from interfering with his openness to the description. In the context of phenomenological inquiry, the philosopher is not concerned with the particular elements of the object of his research, but with its ideal essence, i.e. he intends to purify experience of its factuality.

The acknowledged father of phenomenology is Edmund Husserl20, who argues that consciousness is the only thing that exists in itself and for itself and that, by ceasing to be simplistically oriented towards the external world, it can attain spiritual selfsufficiency. According to the method of phenomenology, the philosopher focuses on the essential structures that allow the objects that are taken for granted in the “natural attitude” (which is characteristic of both our everyday life and ordinary science) to “constitute themselves” in consciousness. Husserl used the term “epoché” (suspension of judgment) to refer to the purification of experience of its factuality.

Phenomenology is characterised by subjectivism, since phenomenological inquiries are initially directed, in Cartesian fashion, towards consciousness and its presentations. On the other hand, phenomenology is not characterised by any psychological or mentalistic forms of subjectivism, because, in contrast to empiricism, phenomenology is not concerned with psychological ideas, but it is concerned with the ideal meanings and universal relations with which consciousness is confronted in its experience.

In his preface to Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology –First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology, Husserl argues that phenomenology, like mathematics, is “the science of pure possibilities”, which “must everywhere precede the science of real facts”. By bracketing factuality, phenomenology exerted important influence on existentialism, and, in fact, it became the method of existentialism21, which is based on the thesis that consciousness attributes meaning to the reality of the world. In contrast to Aristotle’s philosophy –which assigns primary significance to the essence of things (namely, to the attribute or set of attributes that make an object what 20

Herbert Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement, 3rd revised and enlarged edition, The Hague: Nijhoff, 1982; Elisabeth Ströker, Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993.

21 Haim Gordon, Dictionary of Existentialism, New York: Greenwood Press, 1999; Thomas Flynn, Existentialism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

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it fundamentally is, and which it has by necessity, and without which it loses its identity)– the philosophers of existence, such as S.A. Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger and J.-P. Sartre, argue that what is ontologically significant is not the essence of being but the presence of being, i.e. its existence.

The next major step in the development of the phenomenological method took place when it was applied in the investigation of the elements that constitute the structure of reality (whose knowledge is prior to the knowledge of the essence of reality). By the term ‘structure’, we mean an intimate reality that is organized and reorganized by itself and that is determined by its intrinsic logic, which also constitutes its core. The method of structuralism is the final stage of phenomenology’s attempt to cope with the problems that emerge from the philosophical investigation of the intimate meaning of reality. Additionally, structuralism corroborates Gaston Bachelard’s argument that there is a dynamic continuity between knowing consciousness and known object22.

Closely related to the project of investigating the intimate meaning of reality is Hans-Georg Gadamer’s method of hermeneutics. Hermeneutics is based on textual analysis, and it emphasizes the difference between the analysis of nature (‘explanation’) and the analysis of the mind (‘understanding’). Gadamer’s hermeneutics has adopted Jaspers’s distinction between ‘explanation’ and ‘understanding’. Karl Jaspers 23 defines the scientific analysis of “objective causal connections” as “explaining” (“Erklären”), whereas he designates the “understanding of psychic events ‘from within’” as “understanding” (“Verstehen”).

According to hermeneutics, we can only understand the world if we have accepted a system of significance. Gadamer24 argues that people have a “historically affected consciousness” and they analyse and act within an “horizon”, by which he means their beliefs, preconceptions and in general their embeddedness in the particular history and culture that shaped them. Thus, from the viewpoint of hermeneutics, the notions of truth and reason are consequences of man’s embeddedness in systems of significance (value systems). In other words, epistemology can never be something prior to or independent of culture and has to be seen as secondary to ontology.

Mary Tiles, Bachelard –Science and Objectivity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

23 P.A. Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of Karl Jaspers, New York: Tudor Publishing Company, 1957.

24 H.-G. Gadamer, Truth and Method, London: Sheed and Ward, 1975.

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Critical theory Critical theory has developed out the work of the Frankfurt School in the inter-war years 25 , and its most influential thinker has been Jürgen Habermas. According to Habermas, there are three generic fields of knowledge 26 : (i) empirical analytical knowledge (e.g. physics, chemistry, biology, etc.), which is primarily concerned with the manner in which one controls and manipulates one’s environment and with prediction; (ii) historical-hermeneutic knowledge (e.g. descriptive social science, history, aesthetics, legal studies, ethnography), which is primarily concerned with meaning and understanding (norms can be related to empirical or analytical propositions, but their validity is determined by the intersubjectivity of the mutual understanding of intentions); (iii) critical science, which is primarily concerned with emancipation from libidinal, institutional or environmental forces, which limit our options and rational control over our lives but have been taken for granted as beyond human control. Thus, emancipatory knowledge involves a methodical investigation of the manner in which one’s history and biography has expressed itself in the manner in which one sees oneself, one’s roles and social expectations. Critical theory agrees with Karl Marx’s argument that one must become conscious of how an ideology reflects and distorts reality.

In the 1960s, Habermas developed a theory of communicative action27, according to which truth is based on rational consensus. By the term rational consensus, Habermas means the consensus that would be achieved purely on the basis of argument, without the interference of any extra-logical or extra-rational elements. The context in which this kind of rational argument would be possible has been described

by Habermas as an “ideal speech situation”28. Habermas sees the notion of an ideal speech situation as implicit in the act of communication and as rationally entailing moral and normative commitments. The ‘ideal speech situation’ 29 is based on the notion that acts of communication necessarily presuppose that statements are comprehensible, true, right and sincere.

For Habermas, the ideal speech situation is not only a description of a context in which truth could be established, but it is also a picture of a particular kind of society, one in which individuals lead free lives and the “force of the better argument prevails” 30 . Habermas, following Kantianism, seeks to avoid the simplistic objectivism of positivism, and simultaneously he refuses to endorse the kind of relativism implicit in traditional hermeneutics. Just as for Kant all rational beings 25

David Held, Introduction to Critical Theory, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1980.

26 Jürgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, Cambridge: Polity, 1987 (first published 1968).

27 Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 2: The Critique of Functionalist Reason, Cambridge: Polity, 1987.

28 William Outhwaite, Habermas –A Critical Introduction, Cambridge: Polity, 1994, p. 40.

29 Ibid, p. 40.

30 Ibid, p. 40.

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have the capacity to make synthetic a priori judgments, so for Habermas all language users, by their use of language, have the capacity to create free, equal and open societies.

In order to avoid the fallacies of rationalism, the philosophy that invokes the dialectic of kairicity argues that the dialectic of kairicity should substitute for the ideal speech situation in Habermas’s critical theory.

Postmodernism Whereas critical theory attempts to reconstitute a guarantee that the Enlightenment project of rational autonomy can be fulfilled, postmodernism seeks the overthrow of virtually all preceding positions of epistemology and rational morality.

Postmodernism is strongly influenced by the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche.

Michel Foucault, one of the most influential postmodern scholars, argues that “nothing in man –not even his body– is sufficiently stable to serve as the basis for self-recognition or for understanding other men” 31 ; therefore, there is no constant human subject in history, and power is an integral component in the production of truth: “Truth is a thing of the world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it induces the regular effects of power. Each society has its regime of truth, its ‘general politics’ of truth: that is the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true”32.

Nietzsche33 has posed the following question: “What in us really wants ‘truth’?”

His own answer to the previous question is the following: the will for power. This is Foucault’s epistemological thesis, too. Moreover, following this Nietzschean epistemological argument, Jacques Derrida, one of most influential post-modern scholars, developed the theory of deconstruction, according to which texts collapse under their own weight once it is demonstrated that their ‘truth content’ is merely the “mobile army of metaphors” identified by Nietzsche34.

According to Nietzsche, a false judgment can be seen as an expression of creativity, and, hence, it can be interpreted as a consequence of a dynamic attitude to life. But, by identifying will as such with truth, Nietzsche’s philosophy is necessarily indifferent as to whether a false judgment underpins injustice and violence. Nietzsche respects creativity as such, without any presuppositions. Thus, Nietzsche’s approach to creativity is unable to provide a firm foundation for human knowledge and human values.

31

Michel Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, ed. D.F. Bouchard, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977, p. 153.

32 Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge, ed. C. Gordon, Brighton, Sussex: Harvester, New York: Pantheon, 1980, p. 131.

33 Friedrich Nietzsche, Basic Writings of Nietzsche, trans. and ed. W. Kaufmann, New York: Random House, 1968 [Includes The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music; Beyond Good and Evil; On the Genealogy of Morals; and Ecce Homo.]

34 Christopher Norris, Derrida, London: Fontana, 1987 25

Nietzsche argues that philosophers are dishonest because they pretend that their thoughts echo objective reality, whereas, for Nietzsche, what they really do is to reduce their prejudices, their ideas, to “the truth” 35 . From Nietzsche’s viewpoint philosophers merely defend judgments that are equivalent to advocates’ tricks or their own hearts’ desires and they present them in abstract forms. The previous Nietzschean thesis underpins Richard Rorty’s post-modern approach to epistemology, according to which philosophers should give up on the idea that our knowledge ‘mirrors’ nature and instead adopt a pragmatic theory of truth, which is compatible with Rorty’s self-description as a “postmodern bourgeois liberal” 36 . However, Nietzsche and in general postmodern scholars fail to see that the validity of truth depends on its logic, its consistence, and the logic of truth, in turn, depends on the fact that it can harmoniously unite a multitude of data into a meaningful system.

Therefore, philosophers are not as dishonest as Nietzsche contends.

Kairos: beyond realism and idealism ‘Kairos’ means literally the ‘opportune moment’. The concept of kairos can be traced back to the ancient Greek philosophy and religion. In particular, in the ancient Greek mythology, the notion of kairos was divinized, and Kairos was a son of Zeus.

For instance, Aesop (Fables 536, from Phaedrus 5:8) writes: “Running swiftly, balancing on the razor’s edge, bald but with a lock of hair on his forehead, he wears no clothes; if you grasp him from the front, you might be able to hold him, but once he has moved on not even Jupiter [Zeus] himself can pull him back: this is a symbol of Tempus [Kairos] (Opportunity), the brief moment in which things are possible”.

The famous Greek travelogue Pausanias, in his Description of Greece, 5.14.9 (trans. W.H.S. Jones), writes about Kairos: “Quite close to the entrance to the stadium [at Olympia] are two altars; one they call the altar of Hermes of the Games, the other the altar of Kairos (Opportunity). I know that a hymn to Kairos is one of the poems of Ion of Khios [5th century BC poet]; in the hymn Kairos is made out to be the youngest child of Zeus”. Moreover, Callistratus (Greek rhetorician who flourished in the 3rd/ 4th century AD), in his Descriptions 6 (trans. by A. Fairbanks), wrote about Kairos: “On the statue of Kairos (Opportunity) at Sikyon. I desire to set before you in words the creation of Lysippos [4th century BC sculptor] also, the most beautiful of statues, which the artist wrought and set up for the Sikyonians to look upon. Kairos (Opportunity) was represented in a statue of bronze…but a man who was skilled in the arts and who, with a deeper perception of art, knew how to track down the marvels of craftsmen, applied reasoning to the artist’s creation, explaining the significance of Kairos (Opportunity) as faithfully portrayed in the statue: the wings on his feet, he told us, suggested his swiftness, and that, borne by the seasons, he goes rolling on 35

Ibid.

Richard Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism and Truth: Philosophical Papers, Vol. I, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 197-202.

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through all eternity; and as to his youthful beauty, that beauty is always opportune and that Kairos (Opportunity) is the only artificer of beauty, whereas that of which the beauty has withered has no part in the nature of Kairos (Opportunity); he also explained that the lock of hair on his forehead indicated that while he is easy to catch as he approaches, yet, when he has passed by, the moment of action has likewise expired, and that, if opportunity (kairos) is neglected, it cannot be recovered”.

One of the pioneering philosophers of kairos, Evangelos Moutsopoulos, has stressed that the concepts of kairos and kairicity37 do not merely refer to the sense of timing, but they signify something much more important than that. They signify that, even though the reality of the world is not a projection of human consciousness, it can, under certain conditions, be utilized and restructured by the intentionality of human consciousness.

Philosophical realism sees the Greek god Kairos as if he were totally bald, i.e. it fails to notice and grab the lock of hair that exists on Kairos’s forehead. On the other hand, idealism sees Kairos as if he had hair on the back of his head, too, i.e. it fails to understand that Kairos cannot be arbitrarily manipulated. Contra realism and idealism, a kairic consciousness recognises and respects the existential ‘otherness’ of the reality of the world, but simultaneously it acts in order to impose its intentionality on the reality of the world. Moreover, Hunter W. Stephenson 38 has drawn an analogy between kairos and archery, and he argues that kairos represents the moment in which one may fire an arrow with sufficient force to penetrate the target.

Moutsopoulos has explained that the philosophical method that invokes the kairicity of consciousness is derived from the synthesis between structuralism and hermeneutics. As a criterion of reality and action, kairicity stems from consciousness, but, since it is not committed to idealism, it is activated only when it is possible to be applied on objective reality. The method of kairicity is based on the ontological position that objective reality is actively present in consciousness when consciousness assigns meaning and significance to objective reality. Even though reality is multidimensional, it becomes significant for consciousness according to the manner in which and the extent to which it is related to the intentionality of consciousness.

Therefore, the knowledge of reality that is based on the method of kairicity is in agreement with both the nature of consciousness and the nature of cosmic reality.

According to Moutsopoulos, the notion of ‘kairos’ (i.e. ‘opportune moment’) is combined with Aristotle’s notion of ‘metron’ (i.e. ‘right measure’), and it appears under the form of the temporal categories of ‘not yet’ or ‘too early’, and ‘never again’ or ‘too late’39.

Evangelos Moutsopoulos, Kairos –la mise et l’ enjeu, Paris: Vrin, 1991; Evangelos Moutsopoulos, “Sur les dimensions ‘kairiques’ de la structure de l’ être”, Homage à François Meyer, Aix-en-Provence, Publications de l’ Université de Provence, 1983.

38 H.W. Stephenson, Forecasting Opportunity –Kairos, Production and Writing, Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 2005.

39 Evangelos Moutsopoulos, “Kairos ou minimum critique dans les sciences de la nature selon Aristotle”, Revue Philosophique, Vol. 24, 1999, pp. 481-491.

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In psychoanalysis, the concept of kairos plays a very important role, too. Daniel N. Stern has stressed the importance of our “need for intersubjectivity”, and, hence, our ability to share our mental states with other persons40, and, he has focused on the socalled “now moments”41, during which the patient, most often unconsciously, needs the therapist to actively and directly intervene in the process of psychotherapy (“the moment of kairos”), thus transcending the normal role that the psychoanalyst plays in the context of psychotherapy. Harold Kelman has described kairos as the right and unique moment for the psychoanalyst to be “totally present” and to “actively intervene” in a longer psychological process within the patient, and he mentions that this opportunity is “unique and will not reappear”42.

The method of kairicity consists in the following four-fold dialectic, which – following Moutsopoulos’s terminology– I shall henceforth call the dialectic of kairicity: (i) consciousness imagines a better world and intends to intervene in the reality of the world in order to improve its existential conditions; (ii) consciousness endorses the Aristotelian doctrine of the mean, and, therefore, when it acts, it attempts to avoid causing uncontrolled turbulence, which could ultimately put the continuity of existence in danger; (iii) when the turbulence that is caused by the action of consciousness on the world tends to become chaotic, consciousness attempts to reduce the negative consequences of its action by taking new action that balances its previous action (i.e. consciousness follows a policy of risk management that prevents the emergence of a totally unknown new order of things); (iv) during its action on the reality of the world, consciousness intends to create the necessary conditions that will allow consciousness to act again on the reality of the world in the future.

Whenever a conscious being follows the previous four-fold dialectic, we say that it is characterised by kairicity, or that it acts kairically.

The dialectic of kairicity implies that there is a dynamic continuity between the reality of the world and the reality of consciousness. Therefore, policy analysis should be understood as a process for organizing and managing information about the reality of the world as a tank of opportunities and about the reality of consciousness as a tank of intentions, in order to help policy-makers act according to the dialectic of kairicity.

This statement is the essence of what I call kairopolitics.

Lennart Ramberg, “In Dialogue with Daniel Stern: A Review and Discussion of the Present Moment in Psychotherapy and Everyday Life”, International Forum of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 15, 2006, pp. 19-33.

41 D.N. Stern, The Present Moment in Psychotherapy and Everyday Life, New York: Norton, 2004.

42 Harold Kelman, “Kairos: the Auspicious Moment”, The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, Vol. XXIX, 1968; Harold Kelman, Helping People, New York: Science House, 1971.

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Chapter 2 THE RISE AND FALL OF INTERNATIONAL ORDERS: THE TWO WORLD WARS IN FOCUS

The diplomatic tradition that was dominant in Europe from the 17th to the 19th centuries is known as “Realpolitik”. This tradition consists in two principles, which have been analysed by Henry Kissinger as follows: (i) the principle of ‘reason d’état’ (reason of the State), according to which the interests of the state justify whatever means are necessary to pursue them, and “the success of a policy of reason d’état depends above all on the ability to assess power relationships”43; (ii) the principle of the balance of power. In the European international order that emerged from the principle of reason d’état, “states were no longer restrained by the pretense of a moral code…The stronger would seek to dominate, and the weaker would resist by forming coalitions to augment their individual strengths. If the coalition was powerful enough to check the aggressor, a balance of power emerged; if not, some country would achieve hegemony” 44 . Thus, “a sort of equilibrium gradually emerged out of this seeming anarchy…no state…was strong enough to impose its will on all the others and thus form an empire. When any state threatened to become dominant, its neighbours formed a coalition…out of pure self-interest to block the ambitions of the most powerful”45.

The European system of balance of power collapsed dramatically in 1914, when World War I began. The fact that the European system of balance of power could not any more safeguard a sort of equilibrium became clear due to the following reasons: (i) The power of Germany increased at extremely high levels vis-à-vis the power of Great Britain46. In particular, at the beginning of the 20th century, the growth of the German GNP was twice that of Great Britain. Moreover, in the middle of the 19th century, Great Britain had one-quarter of the world’s industrial production, but by 1913 that had been reduced to 10%, whereas Germany’s share had risen to 15%.

Germany used its industrial strength in order to increase its military capability. Great Britain reacted to the rise of Germany’s power by changing its diplomacy. In particular, in 1904, Great Britain ceased to function as the balancer47 of the European balance of power and established an alliance with France, and, in 1907, the Anglo43

H.A. Kissinger, Diplomacy, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994, p.63.

Ibid, p. 67.

45 Ibid, pp. 69-70.

46 See: J.S. Nye Jr., Understanding International Conflicts –An Introduction to Theory and History, New York: HarperCollins, 1992, pp. 59-60.

47 In the 18th and the 19th centuries, England was the one European country whose reason d’état did not require it to expand in Europe. Perceiving its national interest to be in the preservation of the European balance, “it was the one country which sought no more for itself on the Continent than preventing the domination of Europe by a single power” (H.A. Kissinger, op. cit. (ref. 34), p. 70).

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French partnership broadened to include Russia, thus giving rise to the Triple Entente.

As a reaction to the Triple Entente, Germany tightened its relations with AustroHungary. These two alliances were becoming more and more rigid, and therefore the diplomatic flexibility that was underpinning the European balance was lost. The traditional European balance was based on shifting alignments that were not allowing any country to achieve hegemony. After 1907, this was not the case any more. The major powers were divided in two rigid alliances.

In addition, two more factors contributed to the loss of flexibility in the early 20th century balance of power. As first we should mention the fact that, for 40 years, the great powers had not been involved in a major war in Europe had eroded their political judgment, and thus they were thinking complacently that the established international system could continue automatically deterring long and major wars. On the other hand, the diplomacy of all the great powers was founded on a simplistic application of Darwin’s principle of survival of the fittest in politics, and thus the diplomacy of each and every great power was becoming more and more egocentric (i.e. more and more nationalistic) and short-sighted.

The second factor that contributed to the loss of flexibility in the early 20th century balance of power was the confusing and vague character of the German diplomacy. In particular, Germany was pursuing its “world ambitions” by antagonizing all other great powers at the same time48. As the British diplomat and historian Sir Eyre Crowe (1864-1925) has pointed out, Great Britain, France and Russia failed to understand on time the “world ambitions” of Germany and they complacently believed that a long war was unlikely and that short wars won by the strong would not cause unwelcome consequences. However, Sir Eyre Crowe, in his 1907 Memorandum on the Present State of British Relations with France and Germany, opposed appeasement of Germany by arguing that “to give way to the blackmailer’s menaces enriches him, but it has long been proved by uniform experience that, although this may secure for the victim temporary peace, it is certain to lead to renewed molestation and higher demands after ever-shortening periods of amicable forbearance”. (ii) Changes in the domestic society and politics of the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman Empires and of Germany undermined the efficiency of the European balance of power. In particular, the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman Empires were multinational empires, and, therefore, their integrity was threatened by the rise of nationalism. Moreover, the Treaty of London which was signed on 30 May 1913, to deal with territorial adjustments arising out of the conclusion of the First Balkan War 49 , terminated officially the five-century rule of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans.

48

Germany antagonized Great Britain by starting a naval arms race, it antagonized France over a protectorate in Morocco, and it antagonized Russia over issues in the Ottoman Empire.

49 The First Balkan War broke out on 8 October 1912, when Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro and Serbia, having large parts of their ethnic populations under Ottoman sovereignty, attacked the Ottoman Empire.

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In addition, German social problems were important contributors to the outbreak of World War I. According to Fritz Fischer50, the German political and economic elite followed expansionist policies in order to overcome the problems of the established socio-economic system without reforming it substantially and in order to react against mounting socialism 51 , which was threatening the German political and economic establishment.

However, the previous factors are not enough in order to articulate a complete explanation for the collapse of the European balance of power. In fact, the previous factors describe the collapse of the balance of power but do not really explain why that system collapsed. As we have already mentioned, Realpolitik can be summarized as follows: “The ruler’s, and later the state’s, interest provides the spring of action; the necessities of policy arise from the unregulated competition of states; calculation based on these necessities can discover the policies that will best serve a state’s interests; success is the ultimate test of policy, and success is defined as preserving and strengthening the state”52. In the light of the previous definition of Realpolitik, we can understand the defects of the thesis that the European balance of power collapsed because (i) the hegemonic tendency of Germany was not deterred by the creation of the adequate alliance, (ii) the alliance system became rigid, and (iii) domestic political and economic developments in certain great powers influenced their capabilities and the manner in which they defined and pursued their national interest. The previous thesis about the collapse of the European balance of power describes how exactly the European balance of power collapsed, but it does not explain why this happened.

The reason why the European balance of power collapsed is because Realpolitik (or the balance-of-power system) is inherently unable to provide a viable international order. In a balance-of-power system of international politics, the behaviours of the states are not coordinated with each other by any universal moral code. On the contrary, the states’ behaviours serve the logic of selfish historical goals and particularly are based on the calculation of necessities of policy that arise from the unregulated competition among them. The calculation of necessities of policy can only temporarily balance the explosiveness of the expansionism of the state and harmonize it with a form of social consciousness, which is necessary in order to create anti-hegemonic alliances and thus sustain equilibrium. The calculation of necessities of policy can only temporarily balance the explosiveness of the expansionism of the state because, according to the system of balance of power, the state –with its selfish goals and requests– is the ultimate criterion of balance-of-power politics. When the individual state –with its selfish goals and requests– is the ultimate criterion of an international order, and when an international order is not guided by any universal values that could transcend the sovereignty of the state (due to their universality), then such an international order is self-destructive and ends up in war, not because states F. Fischer, World Power or Decline: The Controversy over Germany’s Aims in the First World War, New York: Norton, 1951.

51 In 1912, the Social-Democratic Party (SDP) became the biggest party in the German Parliament.

52 K.N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979, p. 117.

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stop calculating their interests, but exactly because they calculate the maximization of their interests independently of any moral code and culture as the source of that moral code. In other words, since the state –with its selfish goals and requests– is the ultimate criterion of balance-of-power politics, an international order based on balance of power makes the states more and more ego-centric and hence less and less social, and this means that states become less and less capable of creating viable alliances among them in order to keep the international system in equilibrium.

A balance of power is not a self-sufficient ideal. Power is sought for certain ends, which reflect the value systems of different societies. The first Europeans who talked of redressing the balance and formed coalitions were fighting for concrete values against concrete threats. In particular, they were protecting their political and religious liberties. For instance, when William of Orange (1650-1702) taught the British to think in terms of the balance of power, it was because Britain was threatened with an invasion that would end up in the restoration of a despotic king. Moreover, when The Right Hon. William Pitt (1759-1806) revived the principle of balance of power against Napoleon, he was representing a nation that was fighting for hearts and homes. Neither William of Orange nor William Pitt aspired to a balance as a principle good and necessary in itself, or as a necessary condition for Europe.

When a statesman –such as Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642)– talks of a balance as an end in itself, he usually means a balance favorable to himself. Without any agreement on common values and institutions, the balance-of-power system means that all negotiation is carried on according to power calculations. Therefore, this system urges the actors of the international system to negotiate in order to maintain the status quo, and at the same time it urges them to continually increase their power, since their arguments are weighed by the power of each actor. Hence, the balance-ofpower system ends up in catastrophic results, as great powers become more and more concerned with the maximization of their power, since they do not share a common set of moral and institutional commitments, or as all great powers are regimented –as they were before World War I– in one coalition or another and thus they lose the advantage of open-mindedness in political problem-solving.

The balance-of-power system recognises the significance of collective action for the maintenance of international order, but the absence of common values and institutions and the obsession with power calculations implant mutual hatred and suspicion and they make the states split into factions, at feud with one another and incapable of undertaking effective initiatives of joint action. The major consequences of the spiritual poverty of the balance-of-power system is, apparently, to make united action impossible because of factions and quarrels and also to set every member of the international society at enmity with any opponent and with the powers that want to maintain the established international order. By eroding the social consciousness of the members of the international society, the balance-of-power system incubates results that it is supposed to deter –namely, nationalism and/or rigid coalitions.

Woodrow Wilson, the American President during World War I, openly blamed balance-of-power politics for the war. According to Wilson, “the balance of power is the great game now forever discredited. It’s the old and evil order that prevailed 32

before this war. World War I was to do away with an old order, one that was unstable.

The balance of power is a thing that we can do without in the future”53. Woodrow Wilson was right in pointing out the instability of balance-of-power politics; for, the ultimate priority of the balance of power is the sovereignty and the interest of the state, and states must create alliances in order to prevent any state from becoming preponderant, and thus the resulting balance of power is consistent with war. In other words, from the viewpoint of Realpolitik, the state makes war, and war makes the state54. However, Woodrow Wilson did not fully understand the contradictory nature of balance-of-power politics. Therefore, instead of emphasizing that balance-of-power politics weakens the social consciousness of the states as members of an international system and finally makes them too ego-centric to make the necessary collective decisions in order to avoid war and preserve order, Woodrow Wilson emphasized the need to strengthen the right of national self-determination beyond the limits imposed by a balance-of-power system. In other words, Wilson was right in arguing that balance-of-power politics is not successful, even according to its own criteria (i.e. in preserving order), but Wilson’s own proposition was the strengthening of the egocentrism of the states and not the strengthening of their social consciousness.

Whereas, in balance-of-power politics, alliances were created against any state that was becoming too strong, Wilson’s doctrine of collective security was focused on the aggressive policies of a state rather than its capacity. However, in both cases, the individual state is the ultimate criterion of the international system. The ‘telos’, purpose, of Wilson’s doctrine of collective security was not the restoration of the centrality of universal moral criteria, but its ‘telos’ was the promotion and institution of an idealistic approach to national self-determination and the domination of a “procedural morality”, based on external rules guiding international conduct and interaction. In other words, in Wilson’s system, moral judgments remain dispensable, and there is no need to differentiate between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’; instead, for pragmatic reasons of international order, the major distinction is between what is ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’. Therefore, in Wilson’s system, legal procedure, especially compliance with the Covenant of the League of Nations55 and arbitration within the 53

The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson, eds R.S. Baker and W.E. Dodd, Vol. I, New York: Harper, 1925, pp. 182-183.

54 C. Tilly, Coercion, Capital and European States AD 990-1990, Oxford: Blackwell, 1990.

55 Wilson’s doctrine of collective security was embodied in the Covenant of the League of Nations. In particular, the League of Nations Covenant includes the following articles: Article 10: “The Members of the League undertake to respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence of all Members of the League. In case of any such aggression or in case of any threat or danger of such aggression the Council shall advise upon the means by which this obligation shall be fulfilled”. Article 11: “Any war or threat of war, whether immediately affecting any of the Members of the League or not, is hereby declared a matter of concern to the whole League, and the League shall take any action that may be deemed wise and effectual to safeguard the peace of nations…”. Article 12: “The Members of the League agree that, if there should arise between them any dispute likely to lead to a rupture they will submit the matter either to arbitration or judicial settlement or to enquiry by the Council, and they agree in no case to resort to war until three months after the award by the arbitrators or the judicial decision, or the report by 33

framework of the League of Nations, substitutes for morality and culture as the source of that morality. Therefore, the international system remains focused on the selfgratification of the state. Wilson’s doctrine of collective security and the League of Nations do not substitute the sovereignty of some universal value for the sovereignty of the state, but they only establish a different method through which states can pursue their selfish historical goals.

The system of collective security that was established after the end of World War I had not overcome the fundamental antinomy of Realpolitik: Realpolitik stresses the need for alliance between states, but simultaneously it weakens the states’ social consciousness, because, within the context of Realpolitik, the state is recognised as the ultimate criterion of the international system. Hence, the system of collective security that was established after the end of World War I was unable to safeguard a viable international order. When Hitler’s Germany decided to disregard the political pretenses of the League of Nations and pursue a ruthless plan of national-interest maximization, the institutions of multilateral diplomacy not only proved to be unable to deter German expansionism but they also encouraged the Western Allies, particularly Chamberlain’s Great Britain, to endorse a policy of appeasement towards Germany56. However, appeasement was the wrong approach to Hitler, and thus World War II was not prevented.

the Council…”. Article 15: “If there should arise between Members of the League any dispute likely to lead to a rupture, which is not submitted to arbitration or judicial settlement in accordance with Article 13, the Members of the League agree that they will submit the matter to the Council…”.

56 P.M.H. Bell, The Origins of the Second World War in Europe, London: Longman, 1986.

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Chapter 3 THE DEFECTS OF POLITICAL REALISM AND NEOREALISM

The first Chair in International Politics was established at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth (renamed Aberystwyth University in 2008), in 1919, and the first university entirely dedicated to the study of International Relations was the Graduate Institute of International Studies (now the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies), which was founded in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1927, to educate diplomats associated to the League of Nations.

One of the primary concerns of the new academic discipline was the methodical examination of the reality of its object, i.e. of international politics. This concern was not only the result of philosophical quests, but it was also the result of the Western World’s attempt to understand reality in order to cure the social, economic and political traumas caused by the two prolonged and extraordinarily devastating World Wars. Thus, the school of political realism emerged, which “is widely thought of as both the orthodoxy and the classical tradition of thinking about international relations” 57 . The characteristic representative of “classical realism” is Hans Morgenthau, and the characteristic representative of “neorealism”, or “structural realism”, is Kenneth Waltz. Both Morgenthau and Waltz present international politics as a realm of necessity and power politics. “Realism in all of its forms emphasizes the continuities of the human condition, particularly at the international level. Classical realists, most notably Morgenthau, tended to find the source of these continuities in the permanence of human nature as reflected in the political construction of states.

Neorealists find them in the anarchic structure of the international system”58. In the sequel of the present section, we shall analyse the theories of Morgenthau and Waltz, and we shall explain why they have not been successful in their attempt to articulate a theory of the reality of international politics.

Political realism Hans Morgenthau states that his purpose is “to present a theory of international politics” founded on what he has called the “principles of political realism” 59 .

Morgenthau argues that, in order to understand the behaviour of states, it is necessary to have previously understood and explained individual behaviour: “the relations B. Buzan, “The Timeless Wisdom of Realism?”, in: S. Smith, K. Booth and M. Zalewski (eds), International Theory: Positivism and Beyond, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 47.

58 Ibid, p. 50.

59 H.J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, revised by K.W. Thompson, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993, pp. 3-4.

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between nations are not essentially different from the relations between individuals; they are only relations between individuals on a wider scale”60. Additionally, he has argued that “politics, like society in general, is governed by objective laws that have their roots in human nature…The operation of these laws being impervious to our preferences, men will challenge them only at the risk of failure”61.

Morgenthau argues that, whereas “non-political action is ever exposed to corruption by selfishness and lust for power, this corruption is inherent in the very nature of political act”62. In other words, Morgenthau asserts the autonomy of politics as a distinct form of social life, which is characterised by the “will-to-power”.

Moreover, Morgenthau considers the structural distinction between international and domestic politics to be the cause of the continuity of international politics as an arena of power politics. For, within a state, the “will-to-power” is not allowed free reign as a result of the existence of civil government. But Morgenthau argues that international politics is an anarchic system, in the sense that each state claims sovereign control over its own territory and people and considers itself to be the ultimate foundation of the norms relating means to ends. Thus, Morgenthau argues that “continuity in foreign policy is not a matter of choice but a necessity; for it derives from [factors] which no government is able to control but which it can neglect at the risk of failure”63.

Morgenthau assigns to a theory of international relations the task of determining and classifying the patterns that are recurrent in human history and of specifying the trans-historical conditions that make the genesis of these patterns, their change, or their disappearance possible64. According to Morgenthau, power is the key element of action in international politics, and reason is the factor that determines the goals for the pursuit of which a state competes in the international arena as well as the means by which a state pursues its goals.

Based on the assumption that states seek to maximize their power, Morgenthau argues that all foreign policies reveal three basic patterns of policy: (i) defending the status quo, i.e. “the distribution of power which exists at a particular moment in history”65; (ii) imperialism, i.e. “a policy devised to overthrow the status quo”66; (iii) prestige, i.e. a policy devised “to impress other nations with the power one’s own nation actually possesses, or with the power it believes, or wants other nations to believe, it possesses”67.

Morgenthau argues that imperialism is likely to take place when a nation anticipates victory in war and thus pursues “a policy that seeks a permanent change of 60

H.J. Morgenthau, Scientific Man versus Power Politics, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1946, p. 43.

61 H.J. Morgenthau, op. cit. (ref. 59), p. 4.

62 H.J. Morgenthau, op. cit. (ref. 60), p. 196.

63 Ibid, p. 66.

64 H.J. Morgenthau, “The Nature and Limits of a Theory of International Relations”, in: W.T.R. Fox (ed.), Theoretical Aspects of International Relations, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1959, p. 25.

65 H.J. Morgenthau, op. cit. (ref. 59), p. 51.

66 Ibid, p. 65.

67 Ibid, p. 85.

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power relations with the defeated enemy”68, or when a state has lost a war and desires “to turn the scales on the victor, to overthrow the status quo created by this victory, and to change places with him in the hierarchy of power”69, or when there exist weak states or politically empty spaces “that are attractive and accessible to a strong state” 70 . However, Morgenthau admits that it is not easy to distinguish between imperialistic and status quo policies. For, power cannot be accurately quantified, because, in addition to such quantifiable elements as geography, natural resources, industrial capacity, population size, military capacity, etc., important non-quantifiable human elements, such as quality of leadership, national and social cohesion and character, must be taken into account71.

Even though Morgenthau acknowledges these difficulties in distinguishing between status quo and imperialistic policies, he maintains that the outcome of the struggle for power among states at the international level is the balance of power: “the international balance of power is only a particular manifestation of a general social principle to which all societies composed of a number of autonomous units owe the autonomy of their component parts; …the balance of power and policies aiming at its preservation are not only inevitable but are an essential stabilising factor in a society of sovereign nations”72.

Although Morgenthau argues that an international-political theory should be consistent with itself and with facts, the pursuit of unitary understanding (“power politics”) and the tension between the abstracted (necessity in the form of power politics) and the unabstracted (the realm of freedom and morality, which have been separated from politics by Morgenthau) undermine the empirical relevance of his theory and the cognitive significance of his theorems. Having restricted himself to the abstraction of the ‘political man’ from the real man and of ‘political life’ from the real life, having made those assumptions and those assumptions alone, Morgenthau’s theory reduces to a form of monistic realism and fails to understand that, as we explained in Chapter 1, the reality of the world and the reality of consciousness, even though they are not one, they are unified and that consciousness is not the field on which external objects act, but consciousness exerts its intentional influence on reality.

Morgenthau, having committed himself to the necessity of power politics, is oblivious of the dialectic of reality, and thus he understands the history of politics as an expression of universal laws and not as an expression of human creativity.

However, as we explained in Chapter 1, instead of being defeated in his battle against a necessary historical becoming, man can overcome necessities and restructure reality according to his intentionality through his kairic action.

As far as the coherence of Morgenthau’s own theory is concerned, we must point out that the necessity that emanates from the postulate of power maximization 68

Ibid, p. 65.

Ibid, p. 66.

70 Ibid, p. 67.

71 Ibid, ch. 9.

72 Ibid, p. 183.

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contradicts the distinction between imperialist and status quo powers that has been proposed by Morgenthau. Once there are various kinds of foreign policy with respect to the pursuit of power, international politics is a struggle for power only to the extent that state interests are conflicting, and the supporters of Realpolitik apply Realpolitik in order to solve problems that would not exist if they had not been applying Realpolitik.

Moreover, Stanley Hoffmann argues that Morgenthau’s power monism cannot become the ultimate foundation of a theory of international politics because “it is impossible to subsume under one word variables as different as: power as a condition of policy and power as a criterion of policy; power as a potential and power in use; power as a sum of resources and power as a set of processes. Power is a most complex product of other variables, which should be allowed to see the light of the theory instead of remaining hidden in the shadow of power”73.

The manner in which Morgenthau construes the ‘national interest’ is simplistic because it cannot answer to the following question, originally posed by Plato: “was this how you meant to define what is right, that it is that which seems to the stronger to be his interest, whether it really is or not?”74.

In his Republic, Plato argues that politics would betray itself if its purpose were not the moral improvement of both the individual and the society. However, in his History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides (ca. 460 BC-ca. 395 BC) puts in the Athenians’ mouth the following words towards the Melians: “As for the gods, we expect to have quite as much of their favour as you: for, we are not doing or claiming anything which goes beyond common opinion about divine or men’s desires about human things. Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a law of their nature wherever they can rule they will. This law was not made by us, and we are not the first who have acted upon it; we did but inherit it, and shall bequeath it to all time, and we know that you and all mankind, if you were as strong as we are, would do as we do”75. Furthermore, in his “First Olynthiac” Speech76, Demosthenes argues that the policy-maker must make decisions instead of debates and that every policy must be judged on results and not on moral principles. Walking in the path of Demosthenes’s pragmatism, Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) argued that his political method consists in drawing maxims or rules for successful political behaviour from history and experience. Machiavelli’s method is based on a pragmatic and utilitarian approach to politics77.

73

S. Hoffmann, Contemporary Theory of International Relations, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1960, p.32.

74 Plato, The Republic, trans. D. Lee, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987, 340c.

75 Thucydides, tr. B. Jowett, ed. A. P. Peabody, Boston: D. Lothrop & Co., 1883, book 5.

76 The Olynthiacs were three political speeches delivered by Demosthenes. In 349 BC, Philip II of Macedon attacked Olynthus, which at the time was an ally of Athens. In the Olynthiacs, delivered in 349 BC, Demosthenes urged Athens to help Olynthus.

77 The Portable Machiavelli, selected writings trans. P. Bondanella and M. Musa, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979.

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However, Plato has posed a crucial political question which has been rather evaded in an unsuccessful manner by Morgenthau, Thucydides, Demosthenes and Machiavelli: “was this how you meant to define what is right, that it is that which seems to the stronger to be his interest, whether it really is or not?” Contra the selfcomplacent ‘political realism’ of the Athenians, their decision to destroy the Melians, even though it seemed to be their interest, proved to be “wrong and deluded”, because: “The Athenians look at the present and can see nothing will save Melos.

They are right. The Melians look to the future. They are right too. Melos is destroyed.

But the very next sentence in the history begins the story of the decline of Athens and the justification of the Melians”78. Furthermore, if we judge politics on results –as Demosthenes urges us to do– then history vindicated Philip II of Macedon and Alexander the Great and not Demosthenes. In addition, Machiavelli wrote the book Discourse on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy, in which he qualified and moderated the political model he had previously proposed in The Prince79.

In the modern era, a policy based on a pragmatic and utilitarian management of impressions and on the belief that something is right simply because it seems to the stronger to be his interest caused serious problems to the United States of America.

For instance, in 1953, American covert operatives (“Operation Ajax”) helped overthrow Iran’s left-leaning government and restored the Shah to power. The CIA had funded ayatollahs, mobilised the religious right and engineered a sophisticated propaganda campaign to successfully further its aims, but, finally, Iran’s religious leaders were among the first to turn against the United States and they established a theocratic constitution in December 1979. Moreover, during the Cold War, the United States provided staggering quantities of aid to anti-Marxist Islamic extremists, who were fighting against the Soviet Union, but, in the post-Cold War era, those very same extremists became America’s next great enemy.

Furthermore, Hoffmann argues that “the conception of an objective and easily recognizable national interest…is one which makes sense only in a stable period in which the participants play for limited ends, with limited means, and without domestic kibitzers to disrupt the players’ moves…Today, however, survival is almost always at stake, and technological leaps have upset the hierarchy of stable factors…In such circumstances, interpretations of the national become almost totally subjective and the relative weight of ‘objective factors’…is almost impossible to evaluate”80. For W. Liebeschuetz, “The Structure and Function of the Melian Dialogue”, The Journal of Hellenic Studies 88 (1968), p. 76.

79 For instance, in The Prince (ch. 14), Machiavelli writes that a “prince should therefore have no other aim or thought, nor take up any other thing for his study but war and its organization and discipline, for that is the only art that is necessary to one who commands”; however, in the Discourse on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy, Machiavelli writes that: “when there is combined under the same constitution a prince, a nobility, and the power of the people, then these three powers will watch and keep each other reciprocally in check” (book I, ch. 2), “in a well-ordered republic, it should never be necessary to resort to extra-constitutional measures” (book I, ch. 34), and “the governments of the people are better than those of princes” (book I, ch. 58).

80 S. Hoffmann, op. cit. (ref. 73), p. 33.

78

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instance, P. Seabury 81 and V. Van Dyke 82 argue that Morgenthau’s claim that the national interest could be defined independently of any consideration of American ideals undermines the empirical significance of Morgenthau’s analysis of U.S. foreign policy.

Morgenthau’s assumption that states tend to maximize their power is not in complete accordance with the way he considers balance of power to be a condition of stalemate and mutual deterrence contributing to the maintenance of international order. Morgenthau, referring to the European balance-of-power system in the 18th and 19th centuries, argues that, in order for the balance-of-power arrangement to function properly, the competing nations must have previously restrained themselves by consenting to the maintenance of this settlement, and thus this settlement depends on common mores, civilization and interests83. Therefore, neither power politics nor the distinction between domestic and international politics is a fixed static condition.

Apart from ‘power politics’ and ‘national interest’, Morgenthau’s third major concept is that of the ‘balance of power’. Morgenthau argues that balance of power is “a universal concept” 84 . However, Morgenthau’s attempt to demonstrate the universality of the balance of power led him to such a broad use of the term that it produced an inconsistency85. In particular, Morgenthau uses the ‘balance of power’ to refer to a situation of equilibrium as well as to any situation characterised by a struggle for power. Yet, since Morgenthau does not regard equilibrium as inevitable, the dual use of the ‘balance of power’ becomes a source of antinomies.

In summary, Morgenthau construes international politics as a struggle for power among states, and he extracts this conclusion from an a priori human nature, which may cause destructively irrational behaviour unless it is properly constrained by balance-of-power arrangements. Waltz’s approach to international relations is different from that of Morgenthau. Waltz maintains that the earlier realists conceived “anarchy simply as setting problems for statesmen different from those to be coped with internally and as setting standards of appropriate behaviour”86, and he argues that the previous approach is insufficient. Waltz’s position is characterised by the quest for an analysis of the external context of the state action itself as a distinct factor that determines state behaviour.

81

P. Seabury, Power, Freedom and Diplomacy, New York: Random House, 1963, ch. 4.

V. Van Dyke, “Values and Interests”, American Political Science Review 56 (1962).

83 H.J. Morgenthau, op. cit. (ref. 59), parts 4 and 5.

84 Ibid, pp. 183-185.

85 I.L. Claude, Power and International Relations, New York: Random House, 1962.

86 K.N. Waltz, “Reflections on Theory of International Politics: A Response to my Critics”, in: R.O. Keohane (ed.), Neorealism and Its Critics, New York: Columbia University Press, 1986, p. 336.

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Neorealism In order to clarify his views and differentiate them from those of earliest realists, Kenneth Waltz distinguishes between ‘reductionist’ and ‘systemic’ theories. Waltz’s analysis of the international-political system is based on the following elements: a set of interacting units (states) and a political structure. Waltz assumes that an international-political system arises from the mutual interaction of states, which are the constitutive units of the system; but, once formed, the structure “becomes a force in itself, and a force that the constitutive units acting singly or in small numbers cannot control”87. Waltz maintains that, whereas reductionist theories are concerned with unit-level forces, the purpose of a systemic theory of international politics is to determine what kind of behaviour is encouraged by the international-political structure and how much of the behaviour is caused by the given structure or by unitlevel forces. As a result, in the fifth chapter of his Theory of International Politics, Waltz undertakes the task to “contrive a definition of structure free of the attributes and the interactions of units” 88 , and he defines the international-political structure with respect to three criteria.

The first criterion is that, whereas domestic political systems are hierarchic, international political systems are anarchic, self-help systems89. The second criterion is that, in domestic politics, due to the hierarchy of authority relationships, there is a functional differentiation among the units in the system, whereas, in international politics, the units are functionally undifferentiated 90 . The third criterion is the distribution of capabilities among the units of the system: “Although capabilities are attributes of units, the distribution of capabilities across units is not. The distribution of capabilities is not a unit attribute, but rather a system-wide concept”91.

Having defined the international-political structure independently of the attributes of the units that compose the international system, Waltz studies anarchy as structure and shows how structure functions as selector in a Darwinian fashion. Waltz maintains that, under a given distribution of capabilities within the international system, the enduring anarchic character of international politics explains continuity.

Thus, Waltz’s approach to international order is not based on the evaluation of the units’ intentions, but it is based on the analysis of the norms of the international system and on the distribution of capabilities.

Waltz treats the ‘system’ as a homogeneous entity (i.e. as unaffected by unit-level forces), and also he isolates the study of the ‘system’ from the study of the ‘units’.

But, in order to determine the functioning of the system, one must know, among other things, the relationships of the ‘components’ to the ‘ensemble’ and the ‘performance’ of the system. However, as J.G. Ruggie has pointed out, in Waltz’s Theory of 87

K.N. Waltz, op. cit. (ref. 52), p.90.

Ibid, p. 79.

89 Ibid, p. 88.

90 Ibid, pp. 93-97.

91 Ibid, p. 98.

88

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International Politics, “structural features are sharply differentiated from unit-level processes, and structure is the productive agency that operates at the level of the system…The problem with Waltz’s posture is that, in any social system, structural change itself ultimately has no source other than unit-level processes. By banishing these from the domain of systemic theory, Waltz also exogenizes the ultimate source of systemic change”92.

Thus, Waltz, by failing to describe the dialectical relationship between ‘agent’ and ‘structure’, slips into the fallacy of the earliest realists’ reductionism, against which he has warned us. For, apart from the classical realists’ form of reductionism, according to which the international-political causes are reducible to the dark nature of the ‘agents’ (or ‘units’), there is another form of reductionism, which consists in the absence of a dialectical understanding of the relationship between ‘agent’ and ‘structure’; according to this latter form of reductionism the international-political causes are reducible to structural forces. Therefore, Waltz and other ‘neorealists’, by failing to understand the kairic character of the human activity in the way that we explained it in Chapter 1, limit their work to monistic theories, which of course cannot explain reality.

Furthermore, Waltz, like Morgenthau, by being committed to the necessity of power politics, cannot differentiate between what seems to be the interest of a state and what actually is the interest of a state. For instance, the Punic Wars brought Rome to political supremacy in the Mediterranean in the late second century BC. But those wars triggered off domestic changes in the Roman Empire that eventually destroyed it93. The prolonged campaigning alienated many peasant soldiers from their ancestral farms, an idle urban proletariat with increasing political significance gathered in Rome, and simultaneously senators and tax farmers collecting provincial revenues accumulated unprecedented wealth. Additionally, even though the frontiers of Roman power continued to expand in the first century AD, its cultural integrity was undermined by Eastern religions, such as Christianity, and the armies lost their moral bonds with Rome and became instruments of ambitious generals coveting the imperial title. The fall of Rome came when peoples who had been Roman subjects turned against their former rulers. Moreover, the development of armoured cavalry weakened the long neglected Roman agriculture, which could not satisfy the needs of the swollen urban population and of the cavalry.

Another weakness of the theories of Morgenthau and Waltz is that they treat the actors of the international-political system as homogeneous states. However, subnational groups and indigenous peoples promote politics of identity that challenge the traditional conceptions of national community and demand group rights, thus giving

J.G. Ruggie, “Continuity and Transformation in the World Polity: Towards a Neorealist Synthesis”, in: R.O. Keohane (ed.), Neorealism and Its Critics, New York: Columbia University Press, 1986, pp. 151-152.

93 E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, London: Saturn Book, 1979.

92

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rise to new forms of political community 94 . Additionally, the international system includes non-state actors, such as public international organizations, multinational corporations, non-governmental organizations, terrorist organizations, etc., which, together with the states, give rise to a much more complicated international system95 than the one which has been described by Morgenthau and Waltz.

Waltz claims that his theory of international politics is analogous to microeconomic theory, which “describes how an order is spontaneously formed from self-interested acts and interactions of individual units –in this case persons and firms”96. However, the manner in which Waltz construes microeconomics has undergone serious criticisms by many economists. In fact, Waltz is intellectually anchored in the classical view of the firm, whereas, in modern microeconomics, there is a significant alternative way of studying the firm.

In Waltz’s microeconomic analysis, the firm is an ideal type formulated to fit its prescribed role in partial-equilibrium economic theory. On the other hand, various economists have proposed the conceptual autonomy for the ‘firm’, gained by treating it as a case of the general phenomenon of social organization 97 . Where such organization involves conscious cooperation, as it does in the firm, the key role is that of the “maximization centre” 98 (the peak of the executive organization), which determines the ends of the organization and the means of coordination for achieving the ends. The behaviour of the “maximization centre” cannot be explained merely by means of structural necessities, since it is subject to a variety of influences some of which affect the value premises while others affect the factual premises of its decisions. The preference system of the “maximization centre” is a resultant of all these influences. Therefore, microeconomics is neither just the realm of the firm nor just the realm of market structures; a microeconomic theory aims at explaining how economic actors react to modify their environment. In other words, an empirically meaningful microeconomic theory contains both unit-level and structural 94

See for instance: M. Ringrose and A.J. Lerner (eds), Reimagining the Nation, Buckingham: Open University Press, 1993; R.B.J. Walker, Inside/Outside –International Relations as Political Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

95 Writing in 1971, Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye defined transnational interactions as “the movement of tangible or intangible items across state boundaries when at least one actor is not an agent of a government or an inter-governmental organization” (J.S. Nye Jr. and R. Keohane, “Transnational Relations and World Politics: An Introduction”, International Organization 25 (1971)). While arguing that transnational relations had always existed, Keohane and Nye go on to argue that, in the super-industrial era, governmental control has been restricted by changes in technology which facilitated interaction among societal actors in different countries, by the increasing agendas of governments which impinge on more and more groups in civil societies, and by the acceleration of the flow of information.

96 K.N. Waltz, op. cit. (ref. 52), p. 89.

97 These developments in microeconomic theory started taking place already in the decades of the 1930s and 1940s. See: C. Barnard, The Functions of the Executive, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1938; J. von Neumann and O. Morgenstern, The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1947; H.A. Simon, Administrative Behavior, New York: Macmillan, 1947.

98 The term is originally due to G.F. Thirlby, “Notes on the Maximization Processes in Company Administration”, Economica XVII (1950).

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considerations. In general, according to the dialectic of kairicity, which we proposed in Chapter 1, the continuity of the historical becoming is not completely substituted by the discontinuity that is caused by the historical action of man, but it is reconstructed by the imposition of the intentionality of consciousness on time.

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Chapter 4 THE DYNAMICS OF THE POLITICAL SYSTEM

Necessity and Freedom As we have already argued in this book, there is a structural continuity between the reality of consciousness and the reality of the world. Therefore, consciousness can restructure and utilize reality. Furthermore, kairology –namely, the methodical study of the kairicity of consciousness– implies that the scientific world-conception is not only determined by the reality of the world, but it is also a creation of consciousness.

Science is an expression of human creativity, in the sense that its purpose is to create theories that help consciousness to approach reality (both the reality of consciousness and the reality of the world). The stages of scientific creation are the following99: (i) stage one: consciousness has an intuitive, general perception of its object; (ii) stage two (analysis): consciousness analyses the constituent elements of the given object in order to investigate it in a systematic way; (iii) stage three (synthesis): consciousness reassembles the previous elements, so that, through synthesis, it can arrive at the final interpretation of its scientific object as a whole.

In the light of the dialectic of kairicity, which was defined in Chapter 1, it follows that analysis and synthesis constitute an important dual instrument by means of which consciousness restructures and utilizes reality. From this perspective, reality is a goal towards which scientific consciousness is dynamically directed, and additionally scientific consciousness pursues its identification with reality. In other words, by fulfilling its programme, scientific consciousness tends to obliterate the original gap between itself and its object.

The difference between social science and natural science As Michael Nicholson has pointed out, “at the most general level a social science is the study of human beings in a social context”100, and “international relations is just one of those contexts and we would expect the same problems and probabilities to be involved in it as with any other social science”101. Therefore, according to Nicholson, “the central question is, to what extent can these phenomena be described by the same sort of procedures as natural phenomena, such as planets or genes, and are the 99

For an extensive analysis of these issues, see: Martin Curd and J.A. Cover, Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1998.

100 Michael Nicholson, Causes and Consequences in International Relations: A Conceptual Study, London: Pinter, 1996, p. 54.

101 Ibid, p. 54.

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differences, which clearly exit, of such a nature as to preclude their analysis by the same sorts of methods?”102.

We can answer the previous question by explaining the difference between the evolution of the physical world and history103. The evolution of the physical world includes several crises. Prigogine and Stengers have emphasized the dynamic character of the world of nature: “Our universe has a pluralistic, complex character.

Structures may disappear, but also they may appear. Some processes are, as far as we know, well described by deterministic equations, but others involve probabilistic processes”104. However, a crisis of the physical world can be considered as an object of history or of social-scientific research only if it has an impact on a human society.

History is an exclusively human creation and an exclusive characteristic of human life. From the perspective of kairology, history expresses the ontological potential of humanity.

From the previous viewpoint, there is a fundamental asymmetry between physical (or astronomical) time and historical time, and, therefore, there is a fundamental asymmetry between natural science and social science. Physical time is, more or less, uniform, and it is characterised by irreversible processes that involve an “arrow of time”. In other words, physical universe is characterised by its own entropy105. On the other hand, historical time is a free outcome of the action of human consciousness, and, therefore, it is subject only to the laws imposed upon it by the intentionality of human consciousness through the ages. Whereas physical time obeys its own entropy, historical becoming is determined by the kairic activity of humanity. In other words, historical becoming combines alternatively causality and freedom, progression and regression, recurrence and uniqueness.

Because we can find causality and recurrence in history, many social scientists – especially those who follow the positivist-empiricist tradition– are led to “the notion that we can identify certain sorts of situations as the ‘same’, or at least ‘the same’ in some crucial and relevant aspects”106, and, therefore, they argue that “generalization is possible” and “we can move on to formulating deductive theories of social behaviour in the standard scientific way and devise a social science of behaviour in this

102

Ibid, p. 54.

Evangelos Moutsopoulos, “L’ idée d’ intentionalité en histoire”, Pela filosofia, Homenagem a Tarcisio Padilha, Rio de Janeiro, Pallas, 1984, pp. 581-585; Evangelos Moutsopoulos, “Modèles historiques et modèles culturels”, Humanitas, Vol. 22, 1981, pp. 1923, and also in Diotima, Vol. 25, 1997, pp. 143-147.

104 In general, according to the Oxford Dictionary of Science (2005), ‘entropy’ is “a measure of the unavailability of a system’s energy to do work; also a measure of disorder; the higher the entropy the greater the disorder”. According to the second law of thermodynamics, as one goes forward in physical time, the entropy of an isolated system will increase. Thus, entropy measurement is a way of distinguishing the past from the future. For more details, see: Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, Order out of Chaos –Man’s New Dialogue with Nature, New York: Bentam, 1984, p. 9.

105 Ibid.

106 Michael Nicholson, op. cit. (ref. 100), p. 62.

103

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mode”107. On the other hand, because we can find freedom and uniqueness in history, idealists, like Peter Winch 108 and postmodernists, like Michel Foucault 109 , Jacques Derrida110 and Richard Rorty111, “are averse to causal analyses of the sort practised in behavioural political science” 112 and argue that “there are no social events but multiplicities of events – perhaps as many as there are people who have experience of the event either directly, as observers or by report”113.

All the above views are partial approaches to reality, and, therefore, they give only a fragmented knowledge of reality. According to the dialectic of kairicity, history is characterised by a dynamic, dialectical relation between causality and freedom, progression and regression, recurrence and uniqueness. Therefore, neither positivismempiricism nor idealism-postmodernism can stand as a general epistemological theory. Positivism-empiricism can be philosophically legitimated by invoking the existence of causality and recurrence in history, but positivism-empiricism cannot account for freedom and uniqueness in history. Idealists and postmodernists, on the other hand, have correctly recognised historical phenomena characterised by freedom and uniqueness, but they treat history as if it were an outcome of arbitrary idealistic action, and, thus, they fail to recognise the kairicity of human activity.

History is created by the intentionality of consciousness according to the dialectic of kairicity. Thus, the most adequate way of studying history consists in the study of the intentionality, and particularly of the kairicity, of the actors’ conscious minds.

107

Ibid, p. 66.

According to Winch, “social relations fall into the same logical category as do relations between ideas”, and, therefore, “social relations must be an equally unsuitable subject for generalizations and theories of scientific sort to be formulated about them” (Peter Winch, The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy, London: Routledge, 1990).

109 Foucault argues that the development of scholarly disciplines is determined by power relations and is not a neutral result of scholarly enquiry. As a result, Foucault does not ask for a correspondence theory of truth, but he construes truth as a tool for resisting power (Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History”, in: P. Rabinow (ed.), The Foucault Reader, Harmondsworth, Peregrine Books, 1986, pp. 76-100).

110 Derrida expresses his anti-foundationalist epistemology through deconstructions involving a reading of a text where the author fails to produce the conclusions he intends (Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. and ed. G. Spivak, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976). Thus, Derrida “refuses to see the knower as a given and instead as merely one more construction of language and culture”, so that “the knower is always caught up in a language and mode of thinking which, far from interpreting a world, instead constructs it” (Steve Smith, “Positivism and Beyond”, in S. Smith, K. Booth and M. Zalewski (eds), International Theory –Positivism and Beyond, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 30).

111 The task undertaken by Rorty consists in the deconstruction of analytical philosophy.

112 Michael Nicholson, op. cit. (ref. 100), p. 112.

113 Ibid, p. 112.

108

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Politics as a phenomenon of conscious communication In the light of the arguments that we put forward in Chapter 1 and according to Evangelos Moutsopoulos’s philosophical research in the kairicity of consciousness, consciousness is not merely a framework within which the accumulation of experiences takes place, but it is an alive and structured presence that has all the characteristics of a being –namely: substance, structure, temporal and spatial activity– and it is continually restructured, instituting the rules of its activity, of its intentionality and of its integration into the world. Thus, consciousness is the fullest expression of the reality of the human being. Consciousness is both the ontological synopsis of the human being and the means by which the human being confirms its autonomy and its quest for other beings.

Conscious beings interact with each other in the context of their conscious minds.

This interaction takes place in accordance with the intentionality of consciousness and especially in accordance with the kairicity of consciousness. The means by which conscious beings communicate with each other are called symbols, which are the basis for all human understanding. Moreover, symbols are forms, or vehicles, by means of which conscious beings participate in each other’s mental reality.

Symbols are forms that express collectively accepted intentions and actions and can have multiple levels of meaning, as opposed to signs, which have only one meaning.

Symbols can be organized in sets that are called codes114. When conscious beings act and behave according to common codes, a society of conscious beings is an intersubjective and conscious continuum.

By the term ‘formal language’, we mean a set of strings of symbols that may be constrained by concrete rules. The ‘alphabet’ of a formal language is the set of symbols/letters/tokens from which the strings of the language may be formed (the strings formed from this alphabet are called words). Let S and T be two finite sets, called the source alphabet and the target alphabet, respectively. A code C: S → T* is a total function mapping each symbol from S to a sequence of symbols over T, and the extension of C to a homomorphism of S* into T*, which maps each sequence of source symbols to a sequence of target symbols, is referred to as its extension.

The elements of a code are sings (a sign is the smallest unite of meaning). Each and every sign receives a meaning that is related to its acceptance by the users of the corresponding code and to its participation in the corresponding code. Every code and every sign have a dynamic structure that makes it possible for them to be functionally adjusted according to the requests of their users. The functional success of any system

114

Jean Berstel, Dominique Perrin and Christophe Reutenauer, Codes and Automata, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011; Yaser Abu-Mostafa (ed.), Complexity in Information Theory, New York: Springer-Verlag, 2011.

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of communication depends on its compliance with a generalized correspondence between the signifier and the signified115.

In addition to having a ‘meaning’, i.e. a denotation, or conceptual definition, every sign also has a ‘significance’, i.e. a mode of relating us to a being (or a collection of beings) that is denoted by the given sign, transcends the given sign and constitutes the correct interpretation of the given sign.

In its attempt to assign meanings and significances to things, consciousness has the continuous tendency to adopt two attitudes –an extroverted one and an introverted one. When consciousness adopts an introverted attitude, the purposes of its action are the following: (i) to recognise, look at, its own self in order to structure and experience it in a more complete manner, (ii) to achieve a high level of existential security by being sheltered in its own inner world, and (iii) to strengthen its ontological status by itself. In this way, a being becomes psychologically deeper and, by refusing to widen itself, avoids the danger of wasting its potential. However, this entrenchment in the inner ego does not suffice for the psychological integration of a being, because every being is characterised not only by its autonomy but also by its participation in other beings. If consciousness persists in intensifying its inner ego, then the inner ego inhibits the development and expression of the social ego, and, therefore, such a person cannot utilize the advantages of its spiritual interaction with other conscious beings, and its social skills remain weak.

In its attempt to endow things with meanings and significances, the ego needs assistance from and cooperation with other egos. The existence of symbols and signs corresponds to the need of the ego to be psychologically integrated by means of its communication with other egos. Symbols and signs elucidate the relations among conscious beings that partake of common aesthetic experiences or exchange information with each other.

In the context of communication, consciousness runs two risks: the risk of overinformation and the risk of under-information. The risk of over-information refers to high information entropy116. The risk of under-information refers to low information entropy.

115

According to Ferdinand de Saussure, language is made up of signs and every sign has two sides: (i) the signifier, i.e. the ‘shape’ of a word, its phonic component (the sequence of letters or phonemes, e.g. H-O-R-S-E), and (ii) the signified, the ideational component, the concept or object that appears in our minds when we hear or read the signifier. See: Hadumod Bussmann, Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics, London: Routledge, 1996.

116 In information theory, the concept of ‘entropy’ was originally devised by Claude Shannon in 1948 in order to study the amount of information in a transmitted message: in this case, ‘entropy’ is the average amount of data deficit (‘Shannon’s uncertainty’) that the informee (i.e. the person/the machine for whom/which a message is intended) has before the inspection of the output of the informer (i.e. the producer of the given message). See: Claude Shannon, “A Mathematical Theory of Communication”, Bell System Technical Journal, Vol. 27, 1948, pp. 379-423, 623-656. Following Shannon, W. Weaver, in his article “The Mathematics of Communication” (Scientific American, Vol. 181, 1949, pp. 11-15), presented a tripartite analysis of information in terms of: (1) technical problems concerning the quantification of information and dealt by Shannon’s theory, (2) semantic problems relating to meaning and 49

Over-information may intensify the social ego, but, by increasing information entropy, leads to a disorientated being. Under-information may intensify the inner ego, but it leads to an ego-centric being and to phenomena of aggressive communitarianism or aggressive traditionalism. The risks of over-information and under-information can be avoided by following the four-fold dialectic of kairicity.

The political system from the perspective of kairopolitics In general, by the term ‘system’, we mean a set of elements (known as the members of the system) endowed with a structure117. In the mathematical theory of models, by a ‘real system’, we mean a phenomenon or a situation posed by reality, being regarded as changes of variable quantities that influence and interact with each other according to a concrete behaviour. The quantitative study and the analysis of the entire functional behaviour of a real system presuppose the development of a theory of the system in consideration, i.e. a set of statements describing and explaining the behaviour of the given system118.

The political system is a particular case of the general phenomenon of the communication among conscious beings. If we leave the realm of unconscious interdependence –which is the realm of classical and neoclassical microeconomics and of political neorealism (Waltz’s theory of international politics)– and if we attempt to deal with problems of deliberate cooperation, we need a new way of theorizing about the members of the international system based on kairicity. In the sequel, we shall study the states to which an international-political actor (or the international system as a whole) is attracted –namely: (i) stable equilibrium, (ii) instability, and (iii) kairic point.

Stable equilibrium: According Chester Barnard 119 , organizations are systems of consciously coordinated human activities or forces. An organization can emerge only if the following conditions are met: (i) two or more persons intend to contribute to the (cooperative) system; (ii) they share a common objective; and (iii) there is a system of deliberate communication.

Herbert Simon120 has defined the following criterion of efficiency: whenever two alternatives have the same cost, the members of an organization choose that one truth, and (3) what he called “influential” problems concerning the impact and effectiveness of information on human behaviour.

117 Nicolas Laos, Topics in Mathematical Analysis and Differential Geometry, Singapore, New Jersey, London, Hong Kong: World Scientific Publishing Co., 1998.

118 Nicolas Laos, “A Comparative Study of Linear and Nonlinear Differential Equations with Applications”, in: S. Bilchev and S. Tersian (eds), Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Differential Equations and Applications, Rousse, Bulgaria: Angel Kanchev University of Rousse and Union of Bulgarian Mathematicians, 1995, pp. 42-76.

119 Chester Barnard, The Functions of the Executive, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1938.

120 H.A. Simon, Administrative Behavior, New York: Macmillan, 1947.

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which will lead to the greater attainment of the organization objectives; and that, whenever two alternatives lead to the same degree of attainment, that one is chosen which entails the lesser cost. Furthermore, Simon has analysed the issue of organizational identification and loyalty: an actor identifies himself with a cooperative system when, in making a decision, he evaluates the several alternatives of choice in terms of their consequences for the specified cooperative system.

The purpose of the formal system of an organization is to carry out established, repetitive, day-to-day activities as efficiently as possible, and, therefore, it must function according to well-defined hierarchical structures and strictly applied rules and procedures. Furthermore, in order to be efficient, the formal system of an organization necessitates that at least part of the interactions that are included in the organization, and, thus, it tends to resist change and sustain the status quo. Hence, the formal system of any fit organization is orderly and stable121. The formal system of an organization is pulled towards stable equilibrium by the forces of integration, maintenance controls and the need to adapt to the environment122.

By the term ‘stable equilibrium’, we mean an equilibrium state of a system in which the system, if disturbed, tends to return to its former position, as, for instance, the body A in the following figure.

Stable equilibrium

Whereas the formal system of an organization consists of the organizations’ institutions and technology, the informal system of an organization is the organization’s culture. In case the above-mentioned pull of the formal system of an organization towards stable equilibrium is reinforced by the informal system, then the specified organization as a whole will be attracted to stability. Negative feedback 123 drives both formal and informal systems. In organization theory, by the term negative feedback, we mean the law of diminishing marginal utility 124 or to the law of diminishing returns.

121

For a mathematically rigorous study of the notions of stability and instability, see: Nicolas Laos, op. cit. (ref. 117).

122 P.R. Lawrence and J.W. Lorsch, Organization and Environment, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967.

123 By the term ‘feedback’, we mean a situation when output from an event in the past will influence an occurrence or occurrences of the same event in the present or future.

124 According to the law of diminishing marginal utility, “as the amount of a good consumed increases, the marginal utility of that good tends to diminish”; P.A. Samuelson and W.D. Nordhaus, Economics, 14th edition, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1992, p. 84.

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In the absence of strong destabilizing conscious and/or unconscious causes, organizations seem to be attracted to a stable bureaucratic state in which they maintain the same behavioural rules: this state is the centre of classical and neoclassical microeconomics, balance-of-power politics and structural realism125.

Instability: Apart from the forces that pull organizations to stability, there exist powerful forces of division and decentralization, which pull organizations to instability126.

By the term unstable equilibrium, we mean an equilibrium state of a system in which the system, if disturbed, does not tend to return to its former equilibrium, but it tends to move farther away from it, as, for instance, the body A in the following figure.

Unstable equilibrium

Let us consider an organization X. If sufficiently strong forces of division and decentralization are exerted on the formal system of X, then X becomes fragmented and unstable 127 . Moreover, even if the formal system of X is stable, the informal system of X may be pulled towards instability by even more powerful forces. It should be mentioned that informal systems are a device not only for security and conformity but also for satisfying human desires for innovation, individuality (experience of existential ‘otherness’) and isolation from the environment.

If informal systems are dominated by behaviour patterns that refer to innovation, individuality and isolation from the environment, then they pull the entire organization to fragmentation and instability. According to the terminology of organization theory, the attractor to instability means that positive feedback 128

For more details, see: Danny Miller, The Icarus Paradox –How Excellent Organizations Can Bring About Their Own Downfall, New York: Harper Business, 1990; R.T. Pascale, Managing at the Edge –How Successful Companies Use Conflict to Stay Ahead, London: Viking Press, 1990.

126 P.R. Lawrence and J.W. Lorsch, op. cit. (ref. 122).

127 Danny Miller, op. cit. (ref. 125).

128 A system is said to exhibit ‘positive feedback’, in response to perturbation, if it acts to increase the magnitude of the perturbation. In social-economic systems, positive feedback effects may also be referred to as ‘virtuous’ or ‘vicious’ cycles.

125

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behaviour, such as political interaction and organizational defense mechanisms, cause disorder in the system129.

Kairic point: The alternative to either stability or instability lies in the border between them –namely, at a kairic point. When an organization is at a kairic point, both negative and positive feedback, both stability and instability, operate simultaneously.

According to the terminology of organization theory, at a kairic point, the formal system of an organization operates in a stable way in order to secure the survival and the efficient operation of the specified organization, whereas the informal system of the specified organization operates in an unstable way in order to cause change. For an organization to be open to change and innovative, its informal system –namely, its organizational culture and the shifting network of social and other informal interactions among people within an organization and across its borders– must be at the edge of chaos, and it must be managed according to the dialectic of kairicity130.

The term ‘edge of chaos’ was coined by mathematician Doyne Farmer in order to describe the transition phenomenon that was discovered by computer scientist Christopher Langton131. In science in general, the term ‘edge of chaos’ refers to a situation in which a system operates in a region between order and either complete randomness or chaos, where complexity is maximal, as shown in the following figure.

Edge of chaos

129

Chris Argyris, Overcoming Organizational Defenses: Facilitating Organizational Learning, Boston: Allen & Bacon, Prentice-Hall, 1990.

130 See: R.D. Stacey, Strategic Management and Organizational Dynamics, London: Pitman, 1993.

131 Christopher Langton, “Computation at the Edge of Chaos”, Physica, Vol. 42, 1990, pp. 1237.

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The informal system of an organization operates according to the dialectic of kairicity when opposing behavioural patterns are simultaneously present and the logic of the system does not eliminate the existential otherness of the system’s members132.

If an organization is attracted only to the state of behaviour that we call stability, then it will stop being creative; in fact, Cornelius Castoriadis has argued that: “if the system were actually able to change individuals into things moved only by economic ‘forces’, it would collapse not in the long run, but immediately…A factory in which the workers were really and totally mere cogs in the machine…would come to a stop in a quarter of an hour”133. If an organization is attracted only to the state of behaviour that we call instability, then it will be dissolved.

An organization can remain simultaneously orderly and changeable if and only if the disorderly dynamics of antithesis and dialogue produce a viable new synthesis, i.e. if and only if it operates according to the dialectic of kairicity.

The dynamics of complex interdependence The dynamics of complex interdependence, which is associated with globalization, can be analysed by means of the concept of a Boolean network134. A Boolean network is a particular kind of sequential dynamical system, where time and states are discrete.

In the 1970s, complex systems researcher Stuart Alan Kauffman studied organization and dynamics properties of Boolean networks, and he found out that highly connected networks behave differently than lowly connected ones. In this way, we can also analyse Émile Durkheim’s concept of “dynamic density” 135 –namely, the quantity, velocity and diversity of transactions– as a determinant of change in world politics.

A Random Boolean Network (RBN) consists of N randomly connected nodes, each of which has a binary state: ‘on’ (1) or ‘off’ (0), as shown in the following figure. In RBNs, every node receives exactly K inputs chosen randomly from other nodes in the network (each node has its own randomly chosen local state transition rule). The state of each node in the specified RBN at time t+1 is determined by the states of its inputs at time t through a randomly generated Boolean function. In an RBN, the Boolean function for each node maps each of the 2K possible input combinations to an output state of 0 or 1.

See: Ikujiro Nonaka, “Creating Organizational Order Out of Chaos: Self-renewal in Japanese Firms”, California Management Review, Vol. 30, 1988, pp. 57-73; M.M. Waldrop, Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos, London: Viking, 1992.

133 Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, London: Polity Press, 1987 (originally published in 1975 by Éditions du Seuil), p. 16.

134 S.A. Kauffman, “Antichaos and Adaptation”, Scientific American, August 1991, pp. 7884; S.A. Kauffman, Origins of Order: Self-organization and Selection in Evolution, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.

135 Dietrich Rueschemeyer, “On Durkheim’s Explanation of the Division of Labor”, The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 88, 1982. According to John G. Ruggie, such changing patterns of interdependence could affect world politics even without changes in the structure of the system, narrowly defined. See: J.G. Ruggie, op. cit. (ref. 92).

132

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Example of the topology of a Random Boolean Network

Suppose that each node in a network is randomly connected to others and randomly assigned a different decision-making rule. Moreover, suppose that we randomly assign different initial conditions. When every node is connected to every other, the whole system is attracted to instability (and it may exhibit chaos, which means persistent instability). When each node is connected to only two others and random decision rules are assigned to every node, the whole system is attracted to stability.

Furthermore, it should be mentioned that, at a kairic point (at the edge of chaos), the system behaves in a different manner: coherent structures that grow, split apart, and recombine in different patterns136, because the system is at the edge of chaos and it is managed according to the dialectic of kairicity.

The mutual interactions among the members of a human organization have the character of a deterministic nonlinear feedback system 137 . In any deterministic nonlinear feedback system, actors must necessarily move around nonlinear feedback loops, which are formed by the corresponding balance of power or institutional framework (this is why we call such systems ‘deterministic’). On the other hand, every time an actor moves around such a loop, he is free to transform, ignore or even overthrow the given balance of power or institutional framework (this is the essence of nonlinearity and complexity in international relations). Actors follow decisionmaking rules and concrete models of behaviour, but these rules and these models allow freedom of choice, i.e. they are subject to change (this is why, for instance, human history includes business innovations, social revolutions, changes in legislation, changes in morals and customs, creation and collapse of world orders, etc.).

As we have already explained, the consequences that free choice has for the system can be divided into the following three categories: (i) stable outcomes (generalized conformism); For a mathematically rigorous study of these patterns, see: Stephen Wolfram, “Computer Software in Science and Mathematics”, Scientific American, September 1986, pp. 188-203.

137 By definition, in every feedback loop, information about the result of a transformation or an action is sent back to the input of the system in the form of input data. In human systems, feedback loops are nonlinear primarily because of the following reasons: (i) conscious states are characterised by subjectivity; (ii) an action can be followed by several possible outcomes; (iii) there are structural causes (group behaviour is something more than the mere sum of individual behaviours); (iv) small changes can escalate and lead to outcomes of major significance.

136

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(ii)

(iii)

unstable outcomes (all political actors constantly change the rules that govern their behaviour; when ‘paradox’ 138 becomes the central issue of political analysis, political actors are treated as systems out of equilibrium, and their dynamics are characterised by disorder and evolve through political processes139 according to a dialectic manner140 and exhibit a series of crises141); kairic state (when a nonlinear feedback system operates in a state characterised by kairicity, then its behaviour is simultaneously characterised by stability and instability).

Beyond rational choice theory In the light of the arguments that we put forward in Chapter 1, when human action is an autonomous activity, it takes place according to the intentionality and especially according to the kairicity of the actor’s consciousness.

The links between the consciousness of action and the object of action are known as ‘values’. Louis Lavelle142 has explained the difference between the terms ‘value’ and ‘price’ as follows: a price is a fact whereas a value is a judgment (an act of consciousness). Additionally, R. Polin 143 has argued that a value is the “centre of interest” towards which consciousness is oriented whenever it is engaged in a practical activity. Hence, values transcend action and simultaneously they are embedded in action, since values constitute the structure of action, and action confirms the existence of values.

The philosophies of value can be divided into two general categories: objectivist theories of value and subjectivist theories of value.

René Le Senne 144 has summarized several objectivist theories of value and has argued that values are not mere creations of consciousness, because the fact that consciousness searches for values implies that consciousness is unable to provide its own self with values. Similarly, Gabriel Marcel 145 has argued that each value is a particular mode of being, which enriches the set of the basic modes of being that are studied in ontology.

138

Charles Hampden-Turner, Charting the Corporate Mind, New York: Free Press/ Macmillan, 1990.

139 Andrew Pettigrew, The Awaking Giant, Oxford: Blackwell, 1985.

140 R.T. Pascale, op. cit. (ref. 125).

141 Danny Miller, op. cit. (ref. 125).

142 Louis Lavelle, Traité des Valeurs –Théorie Générale de la Valeur, Paris: PUF, 1951; see also: J.J. Kockelmans (ed.), Contemporary European Ethics, New York: Anchor Books, 1972.

143 J.J. Kockelmans (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 142).

144 R.W. Sellars, “The Spiritualism of Lavelle and Le Senne”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 11, 1951, pp. 386-393; René Le Senne, Le Mensenge et le Caractère, Paris: F. Alcan, 1930.

145 Gabriel Marcel, Man Against Mass Society, trans. G.S. Fraser, St Augustine’s Press, 2007.

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In contrast to the objectivist theories of value, the subjectivist theories of value stress the right of each and every conscious being to formulate and defend its values according to its free will. Sartre146 argues that one’s personal freedom is the ultimate foundation of values and that no value system is mandatory. For Sartre, the human being is free because it is not a self (an “in-itself”) but a presence-to-self (the transcendence or “nihilation” of one’s self). Hence, we are “other” to ourselves, and, irrespective of what we are or what others ascribe to us, we are “in the manner of not being it”. According to Sartre, we are responsible for our “world”, we create our “world”, as our existential horizon, and, therefore, our value system stems from our life-orienting fundamental “choice”.

In the light of kairology and particularly in the light of the dialectic of kairicity, which was defended in Chapter 1, the objectivist philosophy of value and the subjectivist philosophy of value are the two components of the kairological philosophy of value. According to the kairological philosophy of value, consciousness is the source of values, consciousness is experienced by itself as the ultimate (i.e. the supreme) value and as the model for the creation of every other value, but, once created by consciousness, values constitute a separate mental world147. Furthermore, within the framework of a dynamic process of objectivation, values are objectivated in the fields of language, science, art, action and history.

After their creation by consciousness, values must be objectivated because only then can consciousness look at them from some distance and, hence, experience them more fully. According to Lavelle, every value is the object of a desire and of a judgment, and, therefore, the objectivation of values creates the necessary conditions for the expression of desire and judgment: consciousness takes some distance from the values that it creates in order to experience its attraction to them, and values have a tendency to return to consciousness. In the context of the previous dialectical game, consciousness acts kairically, because it creates a mental world in which consciousness moves towards values and values move towards consciousness 148 .

Thus, values are determined by the kairicity of consciousness.

Through values and due to values, man is aware that he is not necessarily determined by the ‘physical objectivity’, but he can control and change the physical conditions of his existence, instead of being passively controlled by them.

The existence of the human being takes place in the physical realm through natural functions of the body and the mind149, but consciousness can intervene in the fields of

146

J.-P. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. H.E. Barnes, New York: Washington Square Press, 1992 (originally published in French in 1943).

147 Evangelos Moutsopoulos, “Fondement ontologique et fondement existentiel des valeurs – Approche phénomenologique”, Diotima, Vol. 11, 1983, pp. 149-152.

148 Ibid.

149 John Searle has made the following observations: “consciousness…is caused by neurobiological processes”, but “conscious mental states and processes have a special feature not possessed by other natural phenomena, namely, subjectivity. It is this feature of consciousness that makes its study so recalcitrant to the conventional methods of biological and psychological research”; John Searle, op. cit. (ref.6), pp. 90, 93.

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biological functions and impulses in order to improve its existential conditions according to its intentionality. This is the essence of personhood150.

In the light of the arguments that we have put forward up to this point, if we restrict ourselves to the rationality postulate without making any additional assumptions, then we find ourselves on the path to empirically insignificant political theories. Rational choice theory is intrinsically defective because it treats human beings as if they were like units of a system, which operates autonomously from the intentionality of human consciousness. On the other hand, kairology –namely, the methodical study of the kairicity of consciousness– shows that political reality and reality in general are characterised by plasticity, and they are submissive to the intentionality of human consciousness.

Kairopolitics is concerned with the study of the relationship between the political world as a tank of opportunities and the political actor’s consciousness as a tank of intentions. From the viewpoint of kairopolitics, the keystone of policy analysis is the political actors’ ability to restructure and utilize political reality according to the fourfold dialectic of kairicity.

John Searle has mentioned that “conscious states always have a content. One can never just be conscious, rather when one is conscious, there must be an answer to the question, ‘What is one conscious of?’”; John Searle, op. cit. (ref.6), p. 84. Additionally, see: John Campbell, Reference and Consciousness, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002.

150

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