V.J. Chalupa

On Post-Modern Politics

CHAPTER 16

AVAILABLE MEANS

Man uses means to transpose concepts whose "givenness" (Schall) is only teleological, into the sphere of existence (reality) -- the "moral laws in myself" into the "starry heavens above me" (Kant) .

Man's universal means suitable and useful for this process is his brain which generates impulses causing various body organs to initiate, by their activities, the causal chains leading towards the desired effect. Man looks at the body including the brain as a means of achieving his aims.

Where he is dissatisfied with the degree of usefulness of his body, he increases, by rationally willed acts, the capabilities of his body's specialized organs: strength, speed, accuracy of movements, sight, hearing, as well as his mental faculties: memory, intuition, reasoning, creativity.

The (mechanism of the) body expressed by instincts keeps the body in conflict with the demands of "man" identified as the point of origin of reason and will ("spirit", "soul"); where the body resists exertion, pain or self-denial, "man" forces it, more or less successfully, to submit to strain, pain or renouncement. This tension between the mechanism of the body and man as a source of reason and will not limited by the body's mechanism pervades the entire human life. It can be defined as the conflict of wants generated by the body's instincts with volition (will) generated by reason. (Both antiquity and Christianity considered the subordination of wants to will as virtue, as a victory of freedom over slavery to necessity.)

Man is not restricted to the improvement of his body; he transcends its limitation by using inanimate objects as tools, instruments which increase and complement his abilities: they supplement the strength of his muscles, improve his senses (correct vision, refine touch, sharpen hearing), train memory, count and classify notions and assist in forming conclusions. Tools are activated by human power; they become machines when powered by other than human energy. Their sum combined with the knowledge how to produce and use them constitutes technology which generates its own feedback on man. Machinery fulfills its purpose only under certain conditions. To provide and maintain these conditions can be performed by other machinery, but the ultimate impulse must come from man. The owners of machinery -- of means of production -- lack the ability to provide all the impulse needed; therefore they must induce other people to do so. Technology thus serves man on one hand and on the other hand, men must serve technology. If they want to use technology, they must respect, provide and maintain the conditions necessary for its functioning and adjust themselves to the changes of the environment caused by technology. Man's instruments co-determine the contents of his purpose of happiness by enabling him to pursue some of its derived purposes which are in competition with other derived purposes of his purposive system (for instance, his health against the survival of the community to which he belongs).

Under certain conditions, the most propitious means of accomplishing one's purpose is to subject other live beings to do his will  willingly or unwillingly. The way how to induce living entities to behave in ways man requires of them, was discovered first by experience, later by science. Natural  sciences discover how genes and environment limit and predestine causal chains which result in live beings' properties. By controlling the environment and selecting genes man  changed plants into means serving his purposes. The same approach -- control of the environment and genetic manipulation -- succeeded with animals in their taming, albeit to a lesser extent: some species  proved themselves resistant to taming, in others the reactions of individuals remained unpredictable even after taming.

The most effective means of an acting subject is man who integrates -- out of conviction or because of coercion -- the purpose of the acting subject into his own purposive system of happiness, i.e., accepts the acting subject as a normgiver, the normgiver's purpose as norm, its fulfillment as duty, and himself as a subject of duty.

A concrete norm, i.e., a norm which has a unique content and is imposed on a unique subject of duty, is extinguished by its fulfillment, its validity ends. An abstract norm remains valid regardless of its fulfillment: it is implemented repeatedly by the same subject or other subjects, and thus keeps transforming reality continuously and again and again. Achievement of purposes by persons who consider their fulfillment as duty, has become the greatest source of changing the world.

Man as Means

A normgiver institutes a norm because he judges as the most useful way of achieving his purpose to induce another subject of freedom to act according the normgiver's will, not according to his own (the normgiver's will may coincide with the subject's of duty will, but this coincidence is not relevant for the normgiver). The normgiver subordinates another's purposive system to his own.

It depends on the subject of duty, if he wills or does not will to obey the norm; obedience is not inevitable -- if it were, it would be a law of nature, a causal relationship, not a duty. The fulfillment of the norm depends on the subject's choice to obey. By such a decision, the contents of the duty become his own purpose, or rather: one of the secondary purposes of his purposive system, and the relevant causal chain a means towards its achievement.

In addition to the relative and absolute unachievability of this purpose due to external circumstances, there are internal obstacles imbedded in the nature of the acting subject of duty, i.e., disobedience.

As long as the normgiver admits that subjects of duty are endowed with reason and will, he overcomes disobedience in two ways. One is a promise of a reward. The normgiver links the fulfillment of duty with granting means the subject of duty needs for the attainment of a purpose willed by him. If the subject of duty is identical with a psycho-physical individual, such means can consist in a material reward or in psychological satisfaction: promotion, enlargement of authority, honors, titles, assignment of prestigious goods (cars, the proverbial corner office) and so on. For subjects identical with a point of origin of a purposive system (a "corporate" subject) the normgiver promises or grants means serving the former's purpose (for instance, subsidies or tax advantages for an enterprise whose primary purpose is monetary gain). The other way is punishment: sanctioned norms or an undefined threat of harm. Punishments are designed to increase the cost of disobedience to the point that  they act as a deterrent: the profit from disobedience does not exceed the harm caused by noncompliance with the norm. If punishment has to act as a deterrent, its severity is increased in proportion to the expectancy that the subordinated subjects will not fulfill their duty; the normgiver imposes a greater penalty in order to induce them to reorder their priorities. The harm inflicted on the culprit can affect his property (fines, confiscation, loss of a source of income -- job, license to perform a profession),  his freedom (incarceration, internment), his health (hard labor, dangerous assignments, torture) or existence (loss of life in case of individuals, dissolution in case of organizations or enterprises). Where such punishments do not induce obedience, they are extended to other values dear to the disobedient subject. Persecution of the family or exile from the community have been used as deterrents already prior to the birth of civilization.

Natural sciences discover how causal chains limit or determine reason as well as volition of human beings. Hereditary genes and environment as well as unique experiences determine the scope of knowledge and the choices between alternatives. The impossibility of explaining by causality the human ability to freely reason and decide lies in the impossibility of unraveling the "knot," the crossroad of causal chains which allegedly determine the choices. Attempts to do so and to unravel the "knot" completely and without any unexplained residue can only be derived from a dogmatic and doctrinaire belief that causal relationships are the only valid explanatory principle. The explanation by freedom (volition or norm) admits the existence of a more or less limited, but nevertheless irreducible, irrepressible and by causality inexplicable residue of reason and freedom as indispensable for the understanding of the interaction between the givenness of the world "as it is" and the givenness of the world "as it should be." Experience confirms the truth of this admission; it also corresponds to the way man knows himself: not as an animal, a computer or a machine, but as person: thinking, deciding, acting.

Legal, moral as well as religious normative systems acknowledge limitations in human intelligence and will when judging the guilt of a subject of duty, but only as limitations. Guilt is responsibility for a failure of performing one's duty. As long as guilt is attributed to a factor endowed by freedom and will, the punishment is made commensurate to the extent of the damage caused to the respective (moral, legal, religious) order; the punishment is or is not just or fair. In this sense, the punishment is a part of the order whose integrity it restores. A commensurate (just) punishment is the most effective one because the punished subject recognizes it as morally correct. A just punishment educates, an unjust, too strict or too lenient, punishment hardens.

A consistent explanation of actions as effects of causes, a denial of the faculties of reason and free will  leads logically to a denial of a subject's responsibility for his actions and invalidates the very concept of guilt: what is, is an inevitable result of inevitable causes; therefore it cannot be attributed to anyone as his guilt -- or merit. If human choices (combination of reason and volition) are explained exclusively as the crossing point of causal chains whose effects are inevitable, the concepts of guilt and punishment become nonsensical holdovers of less enlightened ages and a kind of vengeance. The place of duty is then taken by the requirement of conformity . If the cause of nonconformity is located in the nature of the nonconformist person, it is removed by education or medical care. If the cause lies in the environment, it is removed by changing the environment. According to the extent of nonconformity, this change may mean the restructuring of the entire society or its culture. Groups of people whose nonconformity is diagnosed as incorrigible, must be removed; by extermination or expulsion (Jews on the basis of their race, "class enemies" on the basis of their social origin, minorities on the basis of religion or nationality). A willingness of members of the to-be-removed groups to cooperate with the superior will does not change their fate or the fate of their posterity; their behavior is considered as inevitably predetermined by their racial, class or other environment and/or heredity, their free will as nonexistent and a choice contradicting their predetermination as (lastingly) impossible; therefore their removal is inevitable for the sake of the implementation of the  betterment of the object of care.

Attempts to "tame" man have been unsuccessful, but not abandoned; after the failure of efforts to mold human souls by "mental engineering" under communism they center on manipulation of human environment and are being extended to include manipulation of genes.

For the understanding of politics, the explanation of human behavior by necessity is insufficient and barren. Understanding politics, law, economy and statecraft requires the recognition of an area of necessity as well as an area of freedom. Man is present in both of them; his freedom influences the sphere of necessity and necessity hems in his freedom. The knowledge of his limitations does not release man from his freedom and responsibility of recognizing or ignoring such limits but it permits a normgiver to respect the limit of the possible (achievable) and impossible (unachievable).

A normgiver can for a long time force a multitude of subjects of duty to try to achieve the fulfillment of a norm which is unachievable, by increasing penalties in proportion to the difficulty of achieving such norms. If the unachievability is only relative, suitable means may be found by the increased efforts of the subjects of duty. If, however, the norm is absolutely unachievable, the intensification of punishment by torture, family persecution and elimination of groups of the population, is of course in vain. The subjects of duty usually recognize sooner than the normgiver the impossibility of achieving his goal, and punishments evoke anger and resistance. If anger and resistance remain ineffective, the accumulated frustration of people as subjects of duty leads to the loss of exactly those properties which qualify men as the best means for the implementation of a normgiver's will: inventiveness, initiative, cooperation and enthusiasm. Society progresses towards collapse.