The UCS and the Cosmopolitan Spirit of Ridvan
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Let us finish off today our examination of the Cosmopolitan History's fourth thesis and dip our toes into the fifth thesis.
Immanuel Kant has established that human glory and abasement both come of dual nature, both social and unsociable at the same time. In other words, we have both a body and a mind, a physical nature abiding in what Kant called the phenomenal world and a rational nature in the noumenal world. There are huge differences of kind between the two. But while our contradictions and self-oppositions run deep, so does our desire to rise above them. Direly challenged, we still feel that we were created to overcome our bounds. Kant concludes,
"The natural urges to this, the sources of unsociableness and mutual opposition from which so many evils arise, drive men to new exertions of their forces and thus to the manifold development of their capacities. They thereby perhaps show the ordering of a wise Creator and not the hand of an evil spirit, who bungled in his great work or spoiled it out of envy." (Kant, Cosmopolitan History, p. 253)
In misanthropy there is a mark of benevolence. Here we see the influence of Adam Smith. The author of the Wealth of Nations had shown in detail how a capitalist economy thrives on unsociableness, the division of labor. Many workers broken up by diverse skills work together to form larger enterprises. Insofar as their spheres of influence cover the same ground, these incorporations compete with one another. Fevered competition between rival companies and interests galvanizes them to greater effort and perfection. The result of all this unsociability -- against all expectations -- is sociability. With no central authority commanding their specific actions an invisible hand (Baha'is call it the Power of the Holy Spirit) seems to guide a roiling, impossibly complex economic entity slowly but surely towards ever improved productivity and prosperity.
This state of affairs is good but its fluidity depends entirely upon the rule of law. The machineries of justice are lubricated by widespread identification with duty, reason and respect for law. Only then can the invisible hand spin the works. Kant then opens the Fifth Thesis by stating the consequence of it all:
"The greatest problem for the human race, to the solution of which Nature drives man, is the achievement of a universal civic society which administers law among men."
Unlike certain recent philosophers of justice who begin all calculations with firm national boundaries already drawn, Kant insists that civic society be universal. Borders are artificial lines that do not change human nature any more than the ground on which they are drawn. Universal civic society (UCS) must take in the entire human race if it is ever to answer the challenges posed by our nature. Its formation will mark the beginning of history in a cosmopolitan sense, the end of history in a sectarian way.
The fact that even today we persistently refuse to recognize the oneness of humanity does not in any way negate the facts. Human nature, the very nature of the universe, cry out for a UCS. Kant emphasizes this in this in the very title of his essay; it is not a "Universal History of Mankind" because we had not and still have not acted as one. Instead he calls it an, "Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View."
It remained an abstraction, a mere idea in Kant's time.
It will take nothing less than the Word of God to establish a UCS as an imperative for peace. Since Kant's time conflict has rooted into every philosophy and ideology, such as Marxism, and remains virulent in every religious tradition. The two trees of "us" versus "them" took hold root and branch. Our unsociability and opposition, instead of being a challenge to overcome took over by consensus as our goal. This will be fatal in the long run. it is the cause of the decline and fall of empires and civilizations.
Consider how the Aqdas is at pains to remove one of the major struts of permanent conflict, the divide and rule technique of labeling others as other, as coody-ridden or ritually unclean:
"God hath, likewise, as a bounty from His presence, abolished the concept of `uncleanness', whereby divers things and peoples have been held to be impure. He, of a certainty, is the Ever-Forgiving, the Most Generous. Verily, all created things were immersed in the sea of purification when, on that first day of Ridvan, We shed upon the whole of creation the splendours of Our most excellent Names and Our most exalted Attributes. This, verily, is a token of My loving providence, which hath encompassed all the worlds. Consort ye then with the followers of all religions, and proclaim ye the Cause of your Lord, the Most Compassionate; this is the very crown of deeds, if ye be of them who understand." (Baha'u'llah, The Kitab-i-Aqdas, paragraph 75, p. 47)
As Baha'u'llah's mention of "diverse peoples and things" implies, by no means is the artificial concept of impurity confined to Muslims, or even to religion. It is part of the makeup of the political thing. This is how our minds and bodies work, and not even Kant was the first to recognize this. Modern psychology has found, for instance, that prejudice can color any judgment, no matter how mundane. If you go into a room with eye color on your mind you will divide everybody into blues, browns and greens, groups that otherwise have no significance and command no loyalty. Our minds are absurdly susceptible to divisions and frighteningly eager to follow them, no matter how spurious.
As it is, false labeling is everywhere and mud gets into everybody's eyes that enter the public forum. You are either a liberal or a conservative, a capitalist or a communist, a this or a that. Not long ago a popular comedian demonstrated by going onto a television news show -- one steeped in the spirit of the ritually unclean -- called "Firing Line." He lambasted them as a "bunch of dicks" for stirring up argumentation and shibboleths, for fostering partisanship and being generally "very bad for
Constantly and systematically removing prejudgments and false oppositions must be central in the public discourse if we are ever to have hope for a UCS. I think this explains why Baha'u'llah in the above selection from the Aqdas links the removal of ritual uncleanness to the Ridvan festival, the time of Baha'u'llah's declaration and when the most important elections in His Order take place. This greatest holiday is designed yearly to squeeze out dissent and partisanship from the very marrow of our political bones. Ridvan will in time forge a Universal Civic Society out of God's best beloved of all things, justice.
The more we become caught up in the Ridvan spirit the sooner the call in the Tablet to Maqsud will be answered,
"Our hope is that the world's religious leaders and the rulers thereof will unitedly arise for the reformation of this age and the rehabilitation of its fortunes. Let them, after meditating on its needs, take counsel together and, through anxious and full deliberation, administer to a diseased and sorely-afflicted world the remedy it requireth." (Tablets, 168)
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