Is there any worldview that does not contain its antithesis if not in logic, then in practice? Can you think of any intellectual system, any philosophy, any ideal that anyone has ever been able to embody in a flawless realtime manifestation? Are worldviews like Platonic “ideal trees” whose very representation cannot be imagined? Do they, to ask a fourth question, exist only in the mind as formless forms?
Look, for example, at the arguments made by both those on the Left and those on the Right. Take “freedom of expression,” as a starting point. As has always been the circumstance in human interactions, the “freedom” does not extend to either the opposition or to the partially sympathetic. I think of the lockstep voting by members of political parties and the outrage within those parties when a few members express an opinion that appears to side with the opposition.
To avoid stirring the hornets over a specific twenty-first century matter, I will mention instead the 1848 insurrections against the political and social circumstances in Europe. The third and last of the “Roman Empires” (1. Western, 2. Eastern, and 3. Holy Roman) was about to fall after a thousand-year rule. The Industrial Revolution’s burgeoning working class challenged monarchical reigns from the Mediterranean to the Baltic. In uprisings, the “revolutions” led to changes in France and shook the ruling classes of Austria, Prussia, and Germany. Military, often brutal, intervention thwarted most of the insurrections, but the Powers in existence at the beginning of 1848 had by the following year begun to accede to the wishes of the insurrectionists by establishing some “constitutional rights.” Unfortunately for the French, the pendulum of social and political change never stops swinging, so over the course of just several years, the popular idealistic revolution that started in Italy and spread throughout Europe, led to the reestablishment of a monarchial rule as Napoleon III assumed control in 1852.
Back to the opening point: All worldviews contain contradictory positions. All worldviews suffer in practice. When manifested in social reforms, worldviews quickly lose support among those who see that the products of their ideals cannot establish a universal utopia of peace and harmony as promised in the “ideal form.” In short, disagreements arise just as they arose in the mid-nineteenth century between people who associated with the république démocratique and people associated with the république démocratique et sociale. Think of this in the context of today as a devision between those who support the anarchists and Communists and those who support the avowed “democratic socialists” in the American Congress. The pathway to “revolution” differs in practice; the results differ widely.
Writing that generalizes usually fails to make valid an argument, and in this I am guilty here. But note this. If you look at what has occurred in American society over the past couple of decades, you will see that those who march Left lose members to those who march Right and vice versa. And both Leftists and Rightists lose members who discover a “middle path” that they find after experiencing disappointment or discouragement. Upon reflection or after an “incident” that shows what an extreme position can produce (destruction, injury, or even death), some marching Left and some marching Right redefine their worldviews, noting that “That’s not what I stand—or march—for.” Thus, the shooting of Republican lawmakers while they practiced baseball or the burning and looting of stores in various cities stand for actions not supported by the membership from which the perpetrators originated. In practice neither worldview proves to be “ideal.”
Thus, I ask myself a question: Why am I so sure that I am sure? In searching for an answer, I came across this 1849 comment by Alexander Herzen * :
“Who doesn’t remember his own logical romance, who doesn’t remember how the first seeds of doubt, of audacious investigation, entered his heart, and how there they grew riotously until they reached its innermost recesses? That is precisely what it means to stand before the terrible court of the mind. It is not as easy as it seems to execute one’s convictions: It is hard to part company with thoughts which grew up with us, and became part of us, which cherished and consoled us; how ungrateful it would be to give them up! Yes, but there is no gratitude at that tribunal; nothing is held sacred, and if the revolution, like Saturn, devours its own children, then negation, Like Nero, assassinates its own mother to disembarrass itself of the past. People are afraid of their logic and, having rashly summoned to court the church, the state, the family. and morality, good and evil, they endeavor to save some scraps, fragments of the old.”
The problem with any group that supports a particular worldview is that it never accounts for the exceptions to the rule. It never accounts for individuality and for degrees of adherence. It never accounts for pride, that vice that prevents one from relinquishing long-held thoughts. You can see this problem in religions which span schisms both large and small: Protestantism, for example, breaking from Roman Catholicism and Protestantism breaking into High and Low Church, Lutherans, Methodists, Calvinists, Evangelicals, and denominations too numerous to mention. Even within a “unified” Church, the practice of the religion varies over place and time, as the various religious orders stand in testimony, Franciscans being the best example of a group divided (Secular Franciscan Order, Third Order of Saint Francis, OF Minor, OF Minor Conventual, OFM Capuchin, and Order of Saint Clare and other divisions—in both the Roman and Anglican churches). Would Saint Francis recognize his offspring?
There is a lesson in this for me if not for you. It’s that my own worldview is subject to change as I encounter other worldviews and real-world incidents. My own worldview is subject to the tribunal of the mind. And if I refuse to stand before that court, do I do so out of fear or pride? I think of an incident that occurred not too long ago in the breakaway “community” of CHOP (Capitol Hill Occupied Protest) in Seattle. Mayor Jenny Durkan called the protests the “summer of love,” ignoring, it seems, the arson, multiple assaults, and the gunfire death of a nineteen-year old.” Then, realizing the nature of CHOP, the mayor attempted to walk back her remark. One might assume that her worldview was somewhat altered by the actual events and by destructive reality that put indelible marks on idealism. The practice of any “ideal” inevitably faces trial in that court of the mind.
Like the 1848 revolution in Paris, the twenty-first century “revolutions” have also resulted in destruction and bloodshed. Everyone, not just the Seattle mayor, needs to think through to the consequences of putting a worldview on the stage of life. In practice, most ideals—if not all ideals—fail. Formless forms can’t have form. And they fail because no worldview can be inclusive enough to account for individual variations as the multitude of Franciscan orders attest. Those who want to “defund” the police, for example, find that reality demands some kind of police force to maintain public safety.
I recall the famous Brook Farm experiment started by nineteenth-century Transcendentalists. The ideal community they sought to establish fell apart rather quickly as individuals in the commune acted as individuals serving their own interests.
You can choose any contemporary worldview to test my hypothesis that practice reveals the imperfection of Perfect (Ideal) Forms. We all have hard choices to make about our own worldviews. Do we ignore the consequences of their application, or do we take them to the court of the mind to stand trial?
* A. Herzen. Selected Philosophical Works. Translated by L. Navrozov. (1956). Foreign Languages Publishing House. Available online. Accessed May 16, 2022.
Look, for example, at the arguments made by both those on the Left and those on the Right. Take “freedom of expression,” as a starting point. As has always been the circumstance in human interactions, the “freedom” does not extend to either the opposition or to the partially sympathetic. I think of the lockstep voting by members of political parties and the outrage within those parties when a few members express an opinion that appears to side with the opposition.
To avoid stirring the hornets over a specific twenty-first century matter, I will mention instead the 1848 insurrections against the political and social circumstances in Europe. The third and last of the “Roman Empires” (1. Western, 2. Eastern, and 3. Holy Roman) was about to fall after a thousand-year rule. The Industrial Revolution’s burgeoning working class challenged monarchical reigns from the Mediterranean to the Baltic. In uprisings, the “revolutions” led to changes in France and shook the ruling classes of Austria, Prussia, and Germany. Military, often brutal, intervention thwarted most of the insurrections, but the Powers in existence at the beginning of 1848 had by the following year begun to accede to the wishes of the insurrectionists by establishing some “constitutional rights.” Unfortunately for the French, the pendulum of social and political change never stops swinging, so over the course of just several years, the popular idealistic revolution that started in Italy and spread throughout Europe, led to the reestablishment of a monarchial rule as Napoleon III assumed control in 1852.
Back to the opening point: All worldviews contain contradictory positions. All worldviews suffer in practice. When manifested in social reforms, worldviews quickly lose support among those who see that the products of their ideals cannot establish a universal utopia of peace and harmony as promised in the “ideal form.” In short, disagreements arise just as they arose in the mid-nineteenth century between people who associated with the république démocratique and people associated with the république démocratique et sociale. Think of this in the context of today as a devision between those who support the anarchists and Communists and those who support the avowed “democratic socialists” in the American Congress. The pathway to “revolution” differs in practice; the results differ widely.
Writing that generalizes usually fails to make valid an argument, and in this I am guilty here. But note this. If you look at what has occurred in American society over the past couple of decades, you will see that those who march Left lose members to those who march Right and vice versa. And both Leftists and Rightists lose members who discover a “middle path” that they find after experiencing disappointment or discouragement. Upon reflection or after an “incident” that shows what an extreme position can produce (destruction, injury, or even death), some marching Left and some marching Right redefine their worldviews, noting that “That’s not what I stand—or march—for.” Thus, the shooting of Republican lawmakers while they practiced baseball or the burning and looting of stores in various cities stand for actions not supported by the membership from which the perpetrators originated. In practice neither worldview proves to be “ideal.”
Thus, I ask myself a question: Why am I so sure that I am sure? In searching for an answer, I came across this 1849 comment by Alexander Herzen * :
“Who doesn’t remember his own logical romance, who doesn’t remember how the first seeds of doubt, of audacious investigation, entered his heart, and how there they grew riotously until they reached its innermost recesses? That is precisely what it means to stand before the terrible court of the mind. It is not as easy as it seems to execute one’s convictions: It is hard to part company with thoughts which grew up with us, and became part of us, which cherished and consoled us; how ungrateful it would be to give them up! Yes, but there is no gratitude at that tribunal; nothing is held sacred, and if the revolution, like Saturn, devours its own children, then negation, Like Nero, assassinates its own mother to disembarrass itself of the past. People are afraid of their logic and, having rashly summoned to court the church, the state, the family. and morality, good and evil, they endeavor to save some scraps, fragments of the old.”
The problem with any group that supports a particular worldview is that it never accounts for the exceptions to the rule. It never accounts for individuality and for degrees of adherence. It never accounts for pride, that vice that prevents one from relinquishing long-held thoughts. You can see this problem in religions which span schisms both large and small: Protestantism, for example, breaking from Roman Catholicism and Protestantism breaking into High and Low Church, Lutherans, Methodists, Calvinists, Evangelicals, and denominations too numerous to mention. Even within a “unified” Church, the practice of the religion varies over place and time, as the various religious orders stand in testimony, Franciscans being the best example of a group divided (Secular Franciscan Order, Third Order of Saint Francis, OF Minor, OF Minor Conventual, OFM Capuchin, and Order of Saint Clare and other divisions—in both the Roman and Anglican churches). Would Saint Francis recognize his offspring?
There is a lesson in this for me if not for you. It’s that my own worldview is subject to change as I encounter other worldviews and real-world incidents. My own worldview is subject to the tribunal of the mind. And if I refuse to stand before that court, do I do so out of fear or pride? I think of an incident that occurred not too long ago in the breakaway “community” of CHOP (Capitol Hill Occupied Protest) in Seattle. Mayor Jenny Durkan called the protests the “summer of love,” ignoring, it seems, the arson, multiple assaults, and the gunfire death of a nineteen-year old.” Then, realizing the nature of CHOP, the mayor attempted to walk back her remark. One might assume that her worldview was somewhat altered by the actual events and by destructive reality that put indelible marks on idealism. The practice of any “ideal” inevitably faces trial in that court of the mind.
Like the 1848 revolution in Paris, the twenty-first century “revolutions” have also resulted in destruction and bloodshed. Everyone, not just the Seattle mayor, needs to think through to the consequences of putting a worldview on the stage of life. In practice, most ideals—if not all ideals—fail. Formless forms can’t have form. And they fail because no worldview can be inclusive enough to account for individual variations as the multitude of Franciscan orders attest. Those who want to “defund” the police, for example, find that reality demands some kind of police force to maintain public safety.
I recall the famous Brook Farm experiment started by nineteenth-century Transcendentalists. The ideal community they sought to establish fell apart rather quickly as individuals in the commune acted as individuals serving their own interests.
You can choose any contemporary worldview to test my hypothesis that practice reveals the imperfection of Perfect (Ideal) Forms. We all have hard choices to make about our own worldviews. Do we ignore the consequences of their application, or do we take them to the court of the mind to stand trial?
* A. Herzen. Selected Philosophical Works. Translated by L. Navrozov. (1956). Foreign Languages Publishing House. Available online. Accessed May 16, 2022.
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