Well, that's what's so nice about belonging to the human race. What we cannot do in our generation might well be done in a future generation. The point is the evolution of human consciousness and knowledge does not stop when either you or I do.
I guess to have a "comfort level" WRT such an observation requires, as Eric Voeglin said (quoted above), an experience of transcendence.
For me, the take-away from an experience such as that is the knowledge, seen in the spirit and by the spirit, that there really is -- ontologically speaking -- a human community, there really is a brotherhood of mankind.
To judge by what I see all around me today, human societies become increasingly unlivable in the degree they depart from what the transcendent vision reports as the truthful norm of human being and existence.
Some have put the point more crudely, bluntly: Man is by his nature a "social animal." The point ought to be clear.
Here's where Platonists and Autonomists part ways, even if they agree the point that sends them out onto different roads is true.
The reason I am not drawn to Objectivist or Autonomist perspectives is that neither spends much time or effort elaborating the problem of human society. One even gets the feeling that the main reason O+As want to elaborate a system of laws is to protect them from society.
While I can well understand why and how that is a reasonable concern these days, it does not follow that any body of thought that pretends to be philosophy or science can profit much from an extreme preoccupation with the discrete, individual self. Balance is needed.
Which is not to say that individual people aren't important and loved by other people. And moreover, each person is individually, uniquely, and eternally beloved and sacred to God. To say that balance is needed at the human/social scale is merely to recognize that "parts" have relations to "wholes," whether they want to have them or not.
There have been times -- say, reading Ayn Rand, and contemplating the wonderment of a Dagney Taggert or even Hank Reardon -- when I realized the relentless egocentric self-preoccupation of such characters seemed to border on the monomaniacal. I hardly regard them as "role models" myself.
It was like Romanticism on steroids, of the "Invictus" type. You know the poem I mean: "I am the Master of my Fate, I am the Captain of my Soul." (Or did I get that backwards?) Here we have the romantic picture of the Byronic individualist, manifesting an indominable will to always ACT, to always PREVAIL against ALL ODDS!
Well this would be all well and good, except for the untidy fact that human existence and experience universally includes more than just the ACTION PRINCIPLE!!!
It also includes suffering. The Greeks had a name for this: pathos: Our human feeling for the suffering of other human beings.
Pathos isn't about what a man does; pathos refers to what is "done to" a man. It is passion, in the sense of the experience of "suffering" from causes that one did not create. Examples: the loss of a loved one; the desperation of disease, or unrequited love. Victimizations of the self of multifarious description by unscrupulous, disordered others. And then the "final insult," physical death. You get the picture.
The point is: In a certain sense, pathos is the common feature of universal human existential experience, just as much as the "action principle," which gives impetus to the achievements of human reason and creativity....
Man's fate is that he, as an individual soul, participates in reality through action and passion. This is human nature.
This is also the human condition.
We may say that we have no way of knowing what another person knows or feels in his own consciousness. But do we not know the contents of our own? And make some "reasonable" guesses -- given our common humanity, our common existence -- that would make our (yet unacknowledged) neighbor into our brother?
Does that seem too "idealistic" for you, Hank?
Surely you realize by now that precisely this is the language of God's Call to His faithful.
In every age, I might add.
for sure.
We may say that we have no way of knowing what another person knows or feels in his own consciousness. But do we not know the contents of our own? And make some "reasonable" guesses -- given our common humanity, our common existence -- that would make our (yet unacknowledged) neighbor into our brother?
Does that seem too "idealistic" for you, Hank?
That is no ideal, it is surrender to evil.
Here we have the romantic picture of the Byronic individualist, manifesting an indominable will to always ACT, to always PREVAIL against ALL ODDS!
That is a real ideal.
Here is yours:
It also includes suffering. The Greeks had a name for this: pathos: Our human feeling for the suffering of other human beings.
Suffering is not an ideal, it is evil, it is a picture of all that is to be loathed, reviled, and despised. There is something despicable about making one's suffering and sores some kind of badge of honor to be lifted up as a claim on the lives of others. It is a sacrifice of virtue to vice, of the good to the valueless.
Pathos isn't about what a man does; pathos refers to what is "done to" a man.
No doubt that is what pathos is, and what is wrong with it. Life consists of what one does, not what happens to them. Things happen to a rock.
The reason I am not drawn to Objectivist or Autonomist perspectives is that neither spends much time or effort elaborating the problem of human society...
The only thing wrong with societies is the material they are made of. Those societies comprised primarily of those who are concerned with, "what is done to them," produce Zimbabwe or Bangladesh. Those countries that are comprised primarily of those concerned about what they do produce countries like the United States of America. Take your pick.
I have seen the result of those who seek to solve the "problem of human society," Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao Tse-tung, idealists seeking only to alleviate human suffering. And what is that ideal that has unleashed these horrors. It is the same as yours, "... that there really is -- ontologically speaking -- a human community, there really is a brotherhood of mankind ..." Its called collectivism.
I realized the relentless egocentric self-preoccupation of such characters seemed to border on the monomaniacal. I hardly regard them as "role models" myself. [Obviously] It does not follow that any body of thought that pretends to be philosophy or science can profit much from an extreme preoccupation with the discrete, individual self. Balance is needed.
Balance, between what and what? Since it is the "individual self," that is to be "balanced" with something else, what is that something else. It is the community, the society, the collective anything that lays claim to more importance than any concern of a mere individual. Balance means sharing the wealth of the producers with those that do not produce, demanding "help," from those who make something of their lives through "actions," for the sake of those who make wrecks of theirs waiting for something to happen to them. Balance means sacrifice of the individual to any collection of looters, parasites, and thugs claiming to be "society".
While the relentless egocentric self-preoccupied monomaniacs of this world, like Thomas Edison, are producing those things that really do improve the lives of human beings and relieve human suffering (the amount of human suffering the light bulb alone has prevented is inestimable), it is the altruists, like Mother Teresa, who have never produced a single thing that relieved the suffering of a single human being, who are held up as "ideals." There is a reason why Mother Teresa's flourish in India, and Thomas Edisons flourish in the United States. It's called individual liberty, without which no other true ideal can possibly be realized.
(There is another reason, of course. Mysticism and superstition are dominant influences in India, reason is a dominant influence in the United States.)
Hank
I see that my previous remark ("man was created for the express purpose of suffering") is finally being touched upon. The question then seems to be - Why, and to what purpose, was suffering created?