Michael R D James

Betsy, The common good is a Socratic Platonic and Aristotelian concept of the principle or law of the good. Principles or laws are responsible for things happening as they do. It really does not matter how we describe them, they are what they are, so I do not really understand your point. Before we cry halleluja let us first wait and see if the joint efforts of the Democrats and the Republicans can bring about a peace settlement with regard to NK. When that is done lets hope they can then agree to take measures to prevent the HUGE numbers of people dying in the USA because of the so called "right" to bear arms. If I were a parent in the US I would tremble with apprehension everytime I left my child at the gates of their school. This is good?

Michael, I do not think the democracies of the past would tell us everything we need to know about our own democracy and that is because democracy is not merely a description of a form of government but also at least insofar as the common good is concerned, democracy has a prescriptive connotation. The American argument, (according to Kissinger's work "Diplomacy") for spreading democracy over the world was not a historical one built on the principle of causality and historical description: it was a judgment of value or as R S Peters claims a policy judgment claiming what ought to be the case. The Greek fear of a democracy in which unnecessary desires becomes the obsession of rulers and ruled and the rule of law becomes an arbitrary process was enough to strike fear into the greek heart. I see no reason to believe that the Greek account this is not an acceptable historical account of the democracies of the past(There are many historically accepted documents bearing witness to this fact and the causal processes involved) Betsy , Everything turns upon what one means by a government by the people. I personally doubt whether Trump could be subtle about anything as complicated as this but you are right to draw attention to Brexit and that is surely an issue of sovereignty versus the Kantian project of Cosmopolitanism which the EU venture is all about. Turning one's laws over to other parties has had its negative aspects. The different nuances of French, German and English law can appear exaggerated to those who do not have the patience to wait for the European adventure to mature into a true cosmopolitan project. Aristotle pointed out that if the many can engage judicially in decision-making processes then the resultant decision will usually be less perspectival and more universal. We in Europe(and 48% of Britain) believe in Aristotle and Kant and government by people with as many different interests as possible but these people must know and respect the law. Some Brexiteers have suggested that government by the Eu is beginning to resemble government by a body which is not remaining true to Aristotelian and Kantian Principles and there may be some truth in this. But this situation is not in any way similar to the situation in the US where Republicans and Democrats refuse to accept the principle that the common good is the common ground of both parties.

Michael, Thanks for the reply. Yes I think there is a relatively clear fall in the stocks and shares of authority which Hannah Arendt talked about in her work on Totalitarianism. Mass movements are paradoxically anti-authoritarian(Anyone can do anything, anything goes). They use Science and Philosophy to get to power and then abandon these as useless tools. Arendt points to Stalin and the purges of millions of people without real cause(they were no real threat). The Principle of Causality would seem to me to be(along with respect for the facts) a minimum condition for explaining what happens in the political realm. Aristotle suggested the concept of representative democracy but claimed that the size of the unit to be organized must be in the hundred thousand range rather than the million range. He might have imagined the rise of mass education because that would be needed by the golden mean class(the middle class) but perhaps could not have imagined the rise of the role of the mass media, a process in which principles get lost in the volume of information transmitted(I say "perhaps" because Aristotle may have conceived of the impossibility of mass transmission of principles in basically anonymous information transmission processes). I do not mean to suggest that Europe is immune to any of the above problems.(Brexit!) For further discussion of these issues see the lectures on my blog http://michaelrdjames.org/ or in the journals I edit on https://www.aletheiaeducation.eu/

The USA has according to Henry Kissinger regarded itself as a beacon for the world insofar as the communication of democratic values is concerned. I believe the Trump phenomenon puts this claim into its correct context. The election of Trump represents the triumph of direct democracy and this, in turn, represents the requiem of representative democracy in the USA. The Republican/Democratic opposition seen from the perspective of Europe is a phenomenon of partisan politics that has abandoned the concept of representation and no longer represents the interests of the American people. The reaction to this has resulted in the election of Trump. This surely must signify to the politically knowledgeable a problem with American democracy as the legal nooses tighten around the throat of a man that thinks the truth is seasonal and that even the law is seasonal and that he can alter the power of the law with the power of his office. If Kissinger thought that the USA was going to be a major actor in what he called the New World Order he surely must be thinking again in relation to the Trump phenomenon.